Cora Harvey Armstrong
Gospel artist Cora Harvey Armstrong hasn’t always lived the life she sings about. While she’s been singing and playing piano in churches on Sundays for most of her life, she spent decades drinking, partying, and living a “hellacious life” the other six days a week. Health problems and an abusive relationship compounded her struggle. When her father passed away in...
Boukman Eksperyans
Founded in 1978, Boukman Eksperyans is one of Haiti’s most beloved bands. After the group’s charismatic leader, Theodore “Lòlò” Beaubrun, Jr., saw Bob Marley perform, he was inspired by Marley’s example to similarly uplift and amplify Haiti’s traditional music and its spiritual message. In the decades since, Lòlò and his wife Mimerose, better known as Manzè, pioneered a vibrant cultural...
Tamburaški Sastav Ponoć
Tamburaški Sastav Ponoć represents a new generation of brilliant players of tamburitza music, the traditional string band music of the Balkans. Tamburitza has flourished for over a century in ethnic communities across the industrial Mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest, where Eastern European immigrants found work in the region’s factories and mines. Until recently, it has had limited exposure beyond these communities....
Sheila Kay Adams
Seventh-generation ballad singer, storyteller, and musician Sheila Kay Adams is a national treasure. She performs the old mountain ballads, stories, and songs with a sense of conviction, honesty, and dignity that reveals a deep respect for tradition, and demonstrates the emotional intensity of the unadorned human voice. Adams hails from Sodom Laurel, a rural Blue Ridge mountain community in Madison...
Rare Essence with special guest DJ Kool
Dubbed “the wickedest band alive,” by old-school rap hero Doug E. Fresh, the legendary go-go band Rare Essence has honed its sound to near perfection. Together since the late 1970s, the group has performed thousands of times. According to Christopher Richards of the Washington Post, no matter which show you experience, “it’s easy to believe you’re seeing the best one.”...
Kahulanui
In the 1930s, Hawaiian hotel ballrooms were full of dancers doing the lindy and jitterbug to island swing bands. Hawaiian orchestras took the swing of Glenn Miller, added the Hawaiian ukulele and steel guitar, and created an infectious sound that became popular across America. Like on the mainland, Hawaiian big bands disappeared as tastes changed. Now the music has reemerged...
Yamini Kalluri & the Carnatic Ensemble
As cultural traditions take root in diaspora communities, new connections between generations and cultures are both necessary and revitalizing. In New York City in 2019, acclaimed young dancer Yamini Kalluri, a master of the Kuchipudi dance of her Telugu forbearers, began a collaboration with the Carnatic Ensemble, an intergenerational trio of outstanding musicians of Tamil heritage. Their performance at the...
Jones Benally Family Dancers
World Champion hoop dancer and traditional healer Jones Benally, his daughter Jeneda, son Clayson, and two young grandchildren form the Jones Benally Family Dancers. These three generations together bring the beauty and healing power of Navajo (Diné) culture to educate and uplift audiences around the globe. The Benally Family will give the National Folk Festival an unparalleled introduction to Navajo...
Jerry Douglas Trio
Jerry Douglas is widely recognized as the greatest innovator on the Dobro in the last half century—possibly the greatest ever. He’s been described as the Jimi Hendrix and the Charlie Parker of acoustic music. The New York Times has called him “Dobro’s matchless contemporary master.” He has won 14 Grammy® Awards, three Country Music Association Musician of the Year citations,...
Hot Club of Cowtown
As its name implies, the Hot Club of Cowtown pays homage to two legendary groups from the 1930s: the swinging guitar and violin of Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli’s Hot Club of Paris, decamped from the “City of Lights” to the territory of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Now celebrating over 20 years together, the Hot Club of Cowtown...
