|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Someday you can say you were there when it all started. The Second Annual Boston Folk Festival will set up shop on the UMass Boston campus Saturday, Sept. 25. More than 100 performers will play, sing, and dance on eight stages from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. The featured performance of the day will be by renowned Irish fiddler Eileen Ivers and the Riverdance dancers. Last year about 15,000 people stopped by the two-day festival located at several sites in downtown Boston. This year, organizers changed it to one day and one location.
Many of the performances are free, but to support the festival, some require an all-access button, available from the event's main sponsor, WUMB 91.9 FM, for $10 ($12 on Sept. 25) and at other locations. The button also entitles you to discounts at various organizations after the festival.
Of course there are other ways of supporting the festival. "For us to do this right takes about 200 volunteers," says WUMB General Manager Pat Monteith. "Everyone who wants to can volunteer. Ideally what we'd like is for people to work two to three hours that day."
The uninitiated might not realize that Boston is the hub of folk culture in the U.S. And perhaps one reason for that is that until last year Boston had no folk festival to celebrate one of its best-kept secrets.
"Boston is the folk capital of the world. It's ridiculous for Boston not to have a festival," says Monteith.
If Boston is the folk capital, then WUMB is its current head of state. The station devotes about two-thirds its programming to folk music. Throughout the year it hosts and supports various folk performances and programs. And when it comes to promoting the genre, WUMB is usually in the lead
In 1996, WUMB hosted a "folk town meeting," to discuss ideas for promoting folk music in the area. Out of that meeting grew the idea for the Boston Folk Festival.
Some fortunate timing also paid off in that shortly after that meeting the Massachusetts Cultural Council announced a new round of funding directed at the local economy. The group then wrote a grant proposal to the council emphasizing the use of homegrown musicians in Boston's first folk festival. The Council granted seed money for the festival.
This year, organizers are on their own for the most part. While Monteith hopes for some grant money, it will be nowhere near the level it was last year. About half the expenses are in contracting the performers. The headliners this year, the Riverdance dancers, will be opening up in Boston just a short while later, offering folk festival patrons a preview.
Within a few years though, Monteith expects the festival to be so large that organizers will be at a loss to find a big enough location in the Boston area. Even for September 25, she expects the festival to draw folk fans from all the New England states and outside the region.
But WUMB can't do it alone. As Monteith explains, "We all need each other. The radio station, the coffeehouses, the performers&endash;none of us can do it on our own. We all have to work together." |
