A celebration of all thing’s river-related brought locals to Cummington, Mass. over the weekend. The hilltown played host to its first-ever “Riverfest,” complete with tributes and tours centered around the waters that flow through it.
Weaving its way through rural western Massachusetts, the Westfield River and its branches spans miles before ultimately feeding the Connecticut River.
Called the "Woronoco River" by the indigenous peoples who long predated the region's current towns and villages, the river was at the center of a cultural celebration in Cummington on Sept. 19 and 20 – packing plenty of music along the way.
Capping off its “Year of the River” series of programming, the Cummington Cultural District and other organizers held the town's inaugural “Riverfest," complete with a bevy of river-themed tunes played by local at the Village Church Friday.
That included organizers Peg Cowan and John Bye, who got the room to sing along as the river flowed just behind the church.
“When the idea of the Riverfest came up and it was going to be on a Saturday, I was like, ‘Huh, well, maybe Friday Night Cafe could be the kickoff event,'” said Bye, noting how an already regular meeting of local musicians and artists factored into the itinerary. “We'd have another opportunity to pull together all of our musicians and do something really fun.”
“There's a magic in the room – there’s a magic… and who knows where that comes from - all the pieces come together,” Cowan told WAMC after about two hours of music came to an end.
The night itself featured songs written just for the occasion, like a tune about the Great Flood of 1874 by Dave Christopolis, executive director of Hilltown CDC, an event sponsor.
Organizers say Cummington, home to just over 800 people, owes much to the river.
“It's probably the reason why the community gathered here in the first place, before 1779,” said Ilse Godfrey, chair of the Cummington Cultural District. “The settlers who came out here … settled around/toward The Bryant because their idea was to stay away from the river, but they realized that the river was their sustenance ... that's where you can grow things, that's where you can fish, this is where the rest of the wildlife tends to congregate, and so, slowly, they came down the hill [and] gravitated toward the river.”
The water allowed industry to grow in the area in the 19th century, with sawmills, paper mills and tanneries popping up over the years. One by one, they would close over the years while the river never ceased, including the branch residents gathered along Saturday for a series of river-related activities.
That included a river walk with naturalist and field botanist Charley Eiseman, who led dozens on a tour aimed at showing the ecosystem the river supports, complete with fungi, vegetation and insects working in tandem – some of which make an appearance as his group made its way to the water
“It's a kind of katydid - it's called an angle-winged katydid,” he told Saturday’s group after a well-camouflaged, hopping green bug flew just overhead. “The true katydids are the ones that ‘say’ ‘Katie did, Katie didn't,’ but this is an angle-wing katydid, and they say something else! They're basically a kind of grasshopper.”
It’s a spot sporting not just a scene for wildlife, but one for artists as well. With tables of knitted clothing, crafts and other goods up for sale nearby, the festival continued on Main Street.
It was also an opportune time to get some Turkish bagels, cooked by Emmett Leader.
“Today, we're making simit, which is a Turkish street food,” he told WAMC. “[It’s] a bread ring, nominally … what probably differentiates it from, say, a bagel, is that, first of all, it's not boiled, but it's bathed in a molasses water bath and then dumped and slathered with sesame seeds.”
Leader came equipped with a special oven he started crafting over the past month especially for the event, he said.
“I bake for two things - I bake for the synagogue in Northampton - that’s one of my communities - and because I'm also in Cummington, I wanted to bake in this community,” he explained. “That inspired me to make a mobile oven because it seemed like best way to be present: baking. That’s what I do, I bake for communities I’m involved in.”
According to cultural district staffer Maude Haak-Frendscho, it’s a showing that drives home how Cummington’s a community that embraces the arts.
“There's such a rich arts and culture history, from Bryant to the Cummington School of the Arts, Cummington Press and so on and to this day, I mean, literally, this day as well - there are world-renowned artists who are participating in this event!" Haak-Frendscho said. "There was a state arts leader who was just saying the other day that the hilltowns punch above their weight and I think that's really true - there's a lot of folks here. I mean, you can find ceramicists who are showing across the world who are in a shed behind a house [here], right?"
With Riverfest, Godfrey says, putting that community spirit and more in the spotlight was the goal, calling the first-year festival a “calico blend” of different offerings found throughout the town.
“[There’s] a very solid sense of community,” she added. “We definitely are not part of the mainstream. We enjoy our surroundings, we enjoy our environment and our environment feeds us here - it gives us the ability to be creative in whatever genre/field of expertise that we each have and, it's just simple living and good community out here.”
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This piece originally aired Monday, Sept. 22, 2025.
Recordings of the Riverfest musical performances can be heard here:
Part 1*
Part 2
*Contains only a portion of the first half of Riverfest performances (recording commenced after Friday Night Cafe event had already started).
