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The Berkeley Farmer’ Market String Band Contest is the centerpiece of the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention (BOTMC) which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. The contest is twenty bands competing for bags of wooden nickels, redeemable for fresh produce at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market, which sponsors the contest and is adjacent to the event. All kinds of musicians come out of the woodwork: plenty of fiddles and banjos playing old time and bluegrass, but also mandolins playing Italian tarantellas, jug bands, Jewish music from the Carpathian mountains, Irish jigs and reels with step dancers, Mexican fiddle tunes with banjo sexto and accordion. The band Big Hoedown will be featured in an intermission performance. Information for musicians is available on the Berkeley Old Time Music Convention website: www.berkeleyoldtimemusic.org. For everyone else, come out and enjoy a great day at the Farmers’ Market, with lively, informal String Band music making! For more details, click here.