Four folk-filled days and nights with more than 50 music events have made their way to downtown Bellingham Jan. 22-25 as part of the Bellingham Folk Festival. The schedule was released earlier this month on the festival website, announcing the bands, artists, workshops, jam sessions and open mics featured during this year's festival.
Harper Stone, a festival organizer, said the festival will be “a beautiful mix of sit-down concerts, workshops and participatory music events.” He said people can expect “a whole lot of talent in unassuming packages.”
The festival aims to be accessible to the general community with almost all events being all-ages and free. The festival promotes community and inclusivity and will have plenty of diverse events.
One of the first concerts to kick off the festival was a folk trio concert featuring traditional folk musicians Sami Braman, Allison De Groot and Quinn Bachand at the Blue Room on Thursday, Jan. 22.
Braman is a fiddle player from Seattle and has been sharing her traditional folk tunes for a decade. She has played in festivals across the country, toured with musicians and writes music in Nashville. This marked Braman’s first time performing at the Bellingham Folk Festival.
“When things are hard and struggling in our country, as they have been for a long while, I think people gravitate towards the honesty and authenticity of traditional music,” Braman said.
In addition to playing a concert and accompanying a square dance, she will also be teaching a fiddle technique workshop.
“I’ll be teaching old-time tunes, bowing, and rhythm techniques,” she added.
Music venues like the Blue Room aren’t the only establishments hosting folk events. Restaurants like Honey Moon Meadery, Welcome Road Winery and Brandywine Kitchen are opening their doors to the folk lovers of Bellingham and the docket of talented performers involved in the festival.
Brandywine Kitchen will host a concert on Sunday, Jan. 25 at 4 p.m. titled “All You Fascists Bound to Lose! Songs of Resistance,” performed by Kevin Grgurich and Alex Sturbaum.
Grgurich will be bringing sounds of old traditional Irish folk music that many audience members may have never heard before. Grgurich has been immersed in Irish culture and music since he was a child. He continues to spread the songs and history of Ireland, and will even be performing Sean-Nós singing, a traditional Irish vocal music.
“I focus on Irish music and the Irish experience of oppression. It’s very universal,” Grgurich said. “A lot of sentiments that are shared in songs that could be over 100 years old are just as relevant now as they were then.”
Those attending the festival may notice that many of the artists and musicians performing are sharing sentiments of hope and resistance, which are common themes in the folk genre.
The concept of folk is traditions, stories and music passed down through generations. The folk music genre is an extremely diverse and overarching style. Each artist brings their own interpretation, which will be represented at the festival.
The Bellingham Folk Festival has been a part of the city’s culture and community for the last 12 years.
Previously, the creator of the festival, Cayley Schmid, had been the sole organizer since the first one in 2014. Schmid stepped down as organizer two years ago and has taken on smaller roles in directing the festival.
Since then, the festival has transitioned to a community-organized, crowd-sourced model of organization. The festival has a small circle of organizers who have been heavily involved in previous years. Now venues, artists and performers can easily get involved by sending an email through the festival’s website.
Stone explained how the change has improved the festival.
“Cayley laid the framework and the organizational structure so that other people can join the team and do things together,” he said.
This evolution of the festival has helped with promotion and outreach to the Bellingham community.
“It’s taken off because now instead of one person trying to do the work of the whole festival, now there’s a dozen people doing the same work.” Stone said.
Stone is also performing a banjo concert and workshop as well as a guitar concert titled, “The Enigma of Blind Joe Death: Harper Stone performs the solo guitar works of John Fahey.”
The wide range of events at the festival will be an opportunity for people to connect with the community and hear folk music from a variety of origins and time periods.
Each day the festival will run from 1 to 11:30 p.m. The festival has something for everyone, and the full festival schedule can be found here.
Katherine Rogers (she/her) is a reporter on The Front’s campus life beat. This is her first quarter on The Front. She is a second-year visual journalism major. Outside of the newsroom, she does concert photography for local artists. You can reach her at katherinerogers.thefront@gmail.com.
