This week we were asked to include these words in our story.

music, saxophone, curious,  root, garbage

Our village had many curious customs. Its what marked us as different from most of the other mundane villages around.

They saw great merit in the harvest festival for after all I did concede that the harvest was important to us all, but year after year of harvest festivals with the queen of the harvest always going to some member of the landowners family wasn’t anything that after twenty years you began to look forward to.

Instead our village looked for other means to celebrate the harvest as so many others not only had queen of the harvest but also the award to the most productive farm and farmer. These awards were fiercely contested and often resulted in conflict in which blood would be shed. We in our village, who were very much peaceful folk, decided it was not our idea of a festival, as the funeral after the festival concluded tended to detract from the whole festival atmosphere.

It was at a village meeting that the elders decided to change the nature of the festival. Instead of the traditional style we would venture down a new path. The elders were well aware of the musical talent that existed amongst us and decided that the village talents had best be put to use in the form of a music festival to mark the harvest.

Ours was a unique village in that so many of us played a musical instrument and or sang well enough to say we could all hold a note well. The root of all this talent lay in our forebears, one in particular, Patrick O Gorman, a man of great foresight.

One day whilst salvaging in the village garbage dump he came across a discarded saxophone. He remembered the troupe who the week before had come through the village playing all manner of music to which the community had danced and sung along to the songs they taught them.

Patrick had been fascinated by the sounds the instruments produced and on finding the discarded saxophone had set about the task of trying to play it. He returned to the village and sat each night trying to make the instrument sound something like he’d heard the troupe produce.

A neighbour ventured by and asked if he could try his lips. This neighbour who later became known by the name Larry ‘Magic Lips’ Cook had the ability to make the saxophone talk.

Within weeks the saxophone became the centre of a beginning musical journey for the village as different villagers took up the challenge of music. Some invented instruments, some found singing voices of great quality and versatility that it wasn’t long and evenings were spent instructing and playing the music they loved.

Over the years their talents increased until in my time the festival became a wonderful celebration. Over the years the word of our festival spread and soon musicians from other villages made the journey to join us in our festival.

What started as an afternoon of music grew into a three-day festival, which of course had its share of economic advantages as well. Our landowner seeing the benefits of our festival to himself as much as to our village set aside a parcel of land for the festival to be held each year.

Last year he surprised us by turning up with his ukulele and joined in the playing and singing on the Sunday afternoon. It was a great afternoon and one in which he admitted he had had the best of times.

The music festival is one of the many curious celebrations we hold during the year. You must make an effort and come along to our Midsummer Toad in the Hole Festival, with real toads, our Spring Time Sprinkle the Love Dust Ball and don’t ever miss our Christmas Kissing Under the Holly Week, no telling whose lips you’ll meet.

Written for: http://mindlovemiserysmenagerie.wordpress.com/2014/07/03/tale-weavers-prompt-15-wordle-style/