The Barnstormers & the RockCandy Cloggers
The Barnstormers & the RockCandy Cloggers, featuring multi-instrumentalists Slim Harrison and Tom Jolin with flatfoot dancers Rock Howland and Candy Ranlet, are keepers of Appalachian old-time music and dance traditions in western Maryland. When not on stage, they’re often found playing and calling community barn dances. Howland, who received a 2020 Maryland Heritage Award from the Maryland State Arts Council,...
Los Hijo ‘e Plena
The high-energy, percussion-driven sounds of Puerto Rican bomba y plena are alive and well in Maryland thanks to Los Hijo ‘e Plena, the performance ensemble of Cultura Plenera, a nonprofit organization dedicated to spreading awareness of these distinctive musical traditions. These closely related forms reflect the island’s African heritage and provide a touchstone for Puerto Rican identity. Bomba has roots...
Zuni Olla Maidens
When the dancers of the Zuni Olla Maidens enter a performance space, balancing intricately decorated ceramic vessels called olla on their heads, they transform their foremothers’ essential, life-giving work of carrying water from the river into an eloquent dance tradition. Each olla is a smaller replica of the water jars their ancestors carried; the cultural weight they hold, however, is...
The Irish American All-Stars
For the 80th National Folk Festival in Salisbury, guitarist and bandleader John Doyle has brought together a stellar quintet of some of the best Irish musicians in America. It would be accurate to call these exceptional artists a supergroup of Irish American music—but it would be just as truthful to describe them as five longtime friends thrilled to perform together...
Springfield Exit
With a powerhouse voice and remarkable range, Linda Lay is, hands down, one of the best singers in grassroots bluegrass and country music. She leads an exceptional ensemble of award-winning musicians in Springfield Exit. The core trio of Linda, her husband David Lay, and multi-instrumentalist David McLaughlin formed nearly two decades ago, joining their varied experiences and creating a feel...
Spencer Taylor & the Highway QC’s
For over 70 years, the Highway QC’s have been one of the top gospel groups in the classic “quartet” tradition. Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls, and Johnnie Taylor began their careers in the QC’s, each taking their turn as bandleader, before crossing over to become R&B stars. But under the direction of their fourth and current leader, Spencer Taylor, Jr., the...
Panfilo’s Güera
When Texas Folklife and the Festival of Texas Fiddling honored Belen Escobedo with the 2017 Texas Master Fiddler Award, they praised her for “single handedly keeping alive” the tradition of conjunto fiddle, “a rare and beautiful style of Mexican-American fiddling which has almost disappeared despite once being very widespread in the borderlands.” Today, Belen Escobedo is the foremost practitioner of...
Héctor Del Curto’s Tango Quartet
The elegant, subtle, and intensely passionate Argentine music and dance called tango could find no higher expression than through the superb artistry of bandoneónist Héctor Del Curto and his ensemble. A virtuoso player of the bandoneón, an accordion of German origin that is the driving force and central instrument in tango orchestras, Del Curto masterfully leads his quartet and dancers...
The Del McCoury Band
At 82, Delano Floyd “Del” McCoury could rest on his laurels, with a 2010 National Heritage Fellowship and membership in the National Bluegrass Hall of Fame and the Grand Ole Opry to prove his bona fides as a revered bluegrass elder. And yet, with regular appearances at the Tennessee-based mega-fest Bonnaroo and over a decade running the celebrated, genre-expanding DelFest...
The Savoy Family Cajun Band
The partnership that eventually led to the formation of Eunice, Louisiana’s Savoy Family Cajun Band began much farther north, at the 1976 National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap. That’s where mutual friends introduced Richmond, Virginia, native Ann Allen to Eunice’s legendary Cajun musician Marc Savoy, who was demonstrating accordion building and playing tunes under the trees with the Balfa Brothers...
