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Festival Foundations

The Richmond Folk Festival is here. You might have seen our coverage running up to this weekend, but really, how did we get here?

Lisa Sims , director of events for the folk festival, gave Richmond.com some interesting insight into how Richmond has reaped the fruits of what the National Folk Festival left behind. Once the national festival left, the Richmond group looked towards two other cities to model this festival after.

"The two we looked at most closely were Bangor, Maine and Lowell, Massachusetts ," Sims said. "Bangor was the city immediately before Richmond, for the National, and the Lowell Music Festival has been around now for nearly 20 years."

The best thing about the folk festival is that there is no single best feature. So, how did this eclectic lineup come together? How did the organizers define "folk" when it came to choosing performers and artists? Sims says they stuck to the definition provided by the National Endowment for the Arts:

FOLK & TRADITIONAL ARTS -- a definition

The folk and traditional arts are rooted in and reflective of the cultural life of a community. Community members may share a common ethnic heritage, language, religion, occupation, or geographic region. These vital and constantly reinvigorated artistic traditions are shaped by values and standards of excellence that are passed from generation to generation, most often within family and community, through demonstration, conversation, and practice. Genres of artistic activity include, but are not limited to, music, dance, crafts, and oral expression.

"We actually keep this definition posted on our website to remind ourselves, and others, what we are trying to achieve," Sims said. "There are many, many talented performers out there who, while they would draw large crowds and we would all love to see them perform, simply do not meet the criteria we've outlined."

Eddie Pennington , who will be performing at the festival alongside his son Alonzo, said that folk music is a generational thing, and who better to prove that than this Kentucky-based father and son duo?

"Folk music means to me that it is music that people live with. Music you grew up with or passed from one generation to the next and continues to live," the elder Pennington said. "It can be about any type of music even including the '60s folk music movement, but it is far bigger and could include things such as the types of music people grew up with in church, or music that is recognized to be from certain areas, or even rock and roll, but it is a music that is part of the way people live now as well as in past times."

This year's festival will not feature any repeats from the National Folk Festival. Sims said the group tries hard to have a brand new set of performers each year. That doesn't mean that this year will be any lacking in any way.

  "We think this is our best lineup yet -- and that's not hyperbole," Sims said. Though she mentions one thing the organizers would like to work on.

"We would like to begin incorporating more "cross promotion" of performers who are in town on festival weekend. We'd like for this weekend to become a complete weekend of music in Richmond and to encourage festival goers to visit local venues when the festival ends for the night. At 10 or 10:30, there's still time to see more live music!"

It's tough to comprehend the amount of performances and activity taking place over the three days of the folk festival, but what's more amazing is that they've managed to keep it all free.

"This is already a very large event. It's truly amazing to us that our corporate partners have stepped up and allowed us to continue a free festival that costs about $1.5 million to produce," Sims said. "In any case, but particularly in this economy, it's a staggering amount of money."

It's hard to imagine how the festival could grow any bigger, but Sims says they do have some ideas, though the economy isn't going to make it easy.

"It would be difficult to grow the actual event much more in the near future. However, it would be wonderful if, via private venues, this event became a month of music and culture, focused on the traditional arts," Sims said. "We already take the Festival into the schools, and this year Capital One is sponsoring that program and in doing so has allowed us to take seven artists into 14 Richmond City Schools on Friday before the Festival begins. It would be fantastic to grow that program even more."

Richmond is known for its wide variety of people from all lifestyles and backgrounds that make this city such a cultural melting pot. As Sims says, the festival organizers wanted to make the festival and experience just as diverse as Richmond itself.

"One of the attributes of this festival, one of the reasons we wanted it in Richmond, is its tremendous diversity. We saw instances in other Festival host communities of real community building as the Festival was organized -- diverse groups coming together for a common good to produce something wonderful. 

"Richmond has been a stellar community in that regard. Each year more than 1,000 people volunteer countless hours to make this event a reality. The pride that residents feel, I think, is palpable in the weeks leading up to the event, during the Festival, and the weeks after. We think Richmond's community spirit makes this possible."

The Richmond Folk Festival will be held from 6 to 10:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 10, from noon to 10:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 11 and from noon to 7 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 12. The location of the festival will encompass 2nd to 7th Streets and from Byrd St. to the James River, including Browns Island, the New Market Lawn and all of Tredegar Iron Works. Admission to the festival is free. Multiple parking lots and shuttle points are listed online. For more information, visit richmondfolkfestival.org or just print out the schedule to take with you.