Artists
The Richmond Folk Festival has grown to become one of Virginia’s largest and most anticipated events of the year. The Festival strives to present the very finest traditional artists from across the nation. In making its selections, a local Programming Committee is guided by the following definition, which is the guide for the National Council for Traditional Arts and the National Folk Festival, as well as 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, cultural mores, 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.
- National Endowment for the Arts
Applications for the 2024 Festival are Now closed
2025 artist applications will open this winter. Programming discussions take place from December to May with most decisions complete by June 1st in preparation for the annual festival. All artists must follow the same process, and those interested in applying should visit "How to be a performer at the Richmond Folk Festival" for more details.
Festival in Schools
The Richmond Folk Festival fills auditoriums and classrooms at Richmond-area schools with performances and presentations of deeply rooted cultural expressions, shared by some of the country’s finest traditional artists. Read more about this amazing outreach program.
artists performing in 2024
Southern Italian pizzica tarantata
Salento, Italy
In southern Italy, the region of Salento has a distinctive music called pizzica tarantata, which accompanies the trance-like dance associated with tarantism, the belief in ritual possession arising from the bite of a local spider. This music nearly vanished before becoming the most prominent symbol of a regional resurgence, a revival led by Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS). Started in 1975 by the musical scholar and activist Rina Durante, along with her cousin, Daniele Durante, this seven-member ensemble from the Salento peninsula of Apulia— “the heel of the boot” of Italy—is now led by Daniele’s son, Mauro, and is the biggest star of Italian traditional music. Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino made their Richmond Folk Festival debut in 2016 and are among the favorites returning to celebrate the festival’s 20th anniversary.
IRISH
Chicago; Brooklyn; Bristol, Vermont; Asheville, North Carolina; and County Louth, Ireland
The vision of guitarist and bandleader John Doyle, this stellar quintet brings together some of the best Irish musicians in America. It is no exaggeration to call these exceptional artists, all longtime friends and collaborators, a supergroup of Irish American music. Three members of the Irish American Music Masters—John Doyle, Seamus Egan, and John Williams—were founding members of Solás, an ensemble that played a key role in popularizing traditional Irish music in America. Rounding out the group are renowned vocalist Cathie Ryan and uilleann piper Ivan Goff. John is among the group of outstanding artists returning to celebrate the Richmond Folk Festival’s 20th anniversary.
bluegrass
Ferrum, Virginia
One of the festival favorites returning to celebrate the Richmond Folk Festival’s 20th anniversary, Junior Sisk is one of the most beloved bluegrass musicians around. It’s hard to imagine an artist more devoted to bluegrass, or more rooted in Southwest Virginia’s prolific bluegrass community, than Junior Sisk. Coming from Ferrum, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he first gained acclaim for his songwriting, but over the years it’s Junior’s powerful, high-lonesome singing that has earned him the devotion of traditional bluegrass fans. Now Junior has assembled a fresh, hard-driving ensemble of top-notch musicians. Bursting with energy in live performance, and enhanced by the arresting vocals of Heather Berry Mabe, the Junior Sisk Band features one of the most heralded names in bluegrass at the top of his game.
Afro-futuristic jazz, funk, and soul
Atlanta, Georgia
“What I’m working with, man, I’m working with all the way down to the nitty gritty, to the grit of the gritty, to the particles,” says Lonnie Holley. Through his unflinching, granular investigation of his life, Holley has emerged not only as one of the country’s foremost creators of visionary art but also as a musician of ever-increasing renown. Holley’s unique musical creations are colored by traces of jazz, funk, soul, blues, and gospel, combined with his personal experiences and expansive reflections on history and current events. He weaves these raw materials into sonic explorations that transcend and transport his listeners.
Congolese soukous
Toronto, Ontario, CANADA
Toronto has emerged as an unlikely African musical hotbed in recent years. Thanks to Canada’s generous, longstanding immigration and asylum policies, the city has become a multicultural powerhouse, boasting talent from all over Africa and beyond. Congolese-Canadian vocalist Mis Blandine is a perfect example—a modern soukous singer keeping alive the buoyant dance music that exploded out of Kinshasa in the 1970s and ’80s.
Javanese sindhen
Tulungagung, East Java, Indonesia
Indonesian gamelan music has been beguiling international audiences as far back as 1889, when the first gamelan ensemble performed in Europe, famously catching the ear of composer Claude Debussy. The music’s allure is easy to grasp: haunting and ethereal, hammered out on a battery of metal percussion instruments that sound like nothing else, but difficult to replicate outside of the islands of Bali and Java. Though there are now dedicated gamelan ensembles in cities and universities worldwide, few can fully achieve the sound produced by musicians steeped in the tradition their whole lives. Enter Peni Candra Rini, one of Indonesia’s most celebrated contemporary artists—a singer, composer, and educator dedicated to preserving and sharing the musical traditions of gamelan, while pushing the music into new territory.
Colombian chirimía music
Quibdó, Colombia
In the far west of Colombia, where the rainforests meet the Pacific, lies the Chocó department, a land set apart from the rest of the nation by the Andes mountains, creating a historic refuge for Afro-Colombians and Indigenous people seeking a safe haven. The region still boasts the largest Afro-Colombian and Afro-Indigenous population in the nation, with a unique musical culture heavily influenced by West African sounds. Though the region’s best-known musical export is champeta music, chirimía is the real mainstay. Brash and full of youthful energy, Rancho Aparte has emerged as one of the most exciting contemporary chirimía ensembles since the septet formed in 2005 in Quibdo, Chocó’s capital city.
go-go
Washington, D.C
For nearly 50 years, Trouble Funk has helped spread Washington D.C.’s funky go-go sound from all-night dance parties in the DMV to audiences worldwide. One of the leading bands during go-go’s golden era in the 1980s, Trouble Funk’s intensified percussion and innovative use of electro-funk and early rap lyrics produced a brand of go-go that fit more squarely within African American urban musical expression up and down the East Coast, and earned them a loyal and passionate following that continues growing today. It is no surprise Trouble Funk is among the group of artists returning to celebrate the Richmond Folk Festival’s 20th anniversary.