Folksy entertainment and cultural learning will abound in the 11th annual Albuquerque Folk Festival this Friday night and Saturday.
Jimmy Abraham, head of the festival's board of directors, said this year's fair will be better than ever because of the new two-day format.
"Last year too many things happened at exactly the same time," Abraham said. "Performers on the main stage only performed one set. If you had a conflict with their set, then you had a tough decision to make. This way we have more flexibility. We have performers doing more than one set. So you can still get there if you have a conflict."
The variety of events at the festival is staggering. There are musical, craft, dance and storytelling workshops and sing-alongs for children. In addition, there are vendors selling handmade goods, musical contests and raffles. Especially odd is the musical petting zoo, an exhibit that lets people play instruments from around the world, such as the accordion and zampoya.
Lead storyteller Dianne Rossbach, who has been with the festival for more than five years, said it is a great way for people to interact with one another.
"I rate it a 10 on a scale of one to five. It's just so much fun, so mellow, so much music absolutely everywhere," Rossbach said. "This is the kind of event that takes you back, and it would show children and gives children a warm and fuzzy thing they want to keep recreating. You don't want to do it alone, you want to do it as a community."
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Abraham said Tish Hinojosa, Boulder Acoustic Society and other musical acts will play on the main stage. All artists and performers were selected for their deep folk roots and their ability to teach traditional folk culture, because in addition to performing they will teach workshops, Abraham said.
"We tend to know who people are and what they do, and we know whether they have taught. That figures in," Abraham said.
From board members to performers, all of the Albuquerque Folk Festival's members are volunteers, Abraham said.
"The festival altogether has six- to seven hundred volunteers involved," Abraham said. "People enjoy it and want to get involved. A lot of those people are musicians, craft people, or dancers, or storytellers."
Abraham said the Folk Festival has slowly been gaining popularity over the last 11 years and has grown into a full-fledged charity corporation from its roots as a public program funded by the government.
"The folk festival started as Arts in the Park, which was a city program," Abraham said. "It got a little government grant to do a project in a park, an art project. Since that time it has gotten progressively bigger, and we have moved into the expo grounds."
Despite their differences, all the festival activities share a common goal: to pull people out of their electronic shells and engage them in the community. Festival director Erika Gerety said the festival is about inspiring people to preserve a sense of community identity through folk-driven activities.
"We see it as a really healthy development for the community," Gerety said. "All these folk activities bring people together, to take them out of what society has done recently. We have televisions and radios and phones, and all these ways of staying home and not getting out into the community. What we hope to do to make the community healthier is to learn things you can participate in, so that you're not looking at the entertainment, but participating in the entertainment yourself."
Albuquerque Folk Festival
Expo New Mexico
Friday night and all day Saturday
$20 for both days. For more price info visit AbqFolkFest.org.
