National Folk Festival Destination: Bangor, Maine The city’s can-do attitude was a factor in choosing Bangor

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John Rohman, the mayor of Bangor, arrived in East Lansing, Mich., last week just in time to see preparations for the city’s final year of hosting the National Folk Festival. Staging was erected. Chairs were neatly organized into rows. The aromas of food from Finland, Spain, Ethiopia, India, Poland and the Americas wafted through the streets of the fairgrounds. Ice – 32,000 pounds of it – was being distributed to stands selling homemade lemonade and root beer. Sixty portapotties had arrived and were being dropped off at sites around the downtown area, where the festival also took place the last two Augusts.

Mayor Rohman and a team of six other Bangorians watched vigilantly, taking notes, asking questions. As the mayor surveyed the activities, his entire face spread into a smile because, after East Lansing, the National Folk Festival has a new destination: Bangor, Maine. It was a bruising competition drawing applications from 10 other municipalities around the country. Vancouver, Wash., Macon, Ga., Denver, Colo., and Milwaukee were also serious contenders. But the Queen City won the prize as host for the 64th, 65th and 66th National Folk Festival.

Every three years, the National Folk Festival moves to a new host city and sets up camp for a weekend each August, when an extravaganza of folk activities takes place. The centerpiece is always music, but food, crafts, games, storytelling and local culture make up a unique community adventure. In East Lansing, five performing stages set up throughout the downtown neighborhood would soon be filled with the diverse sounds of New Orleans zydeco, Texas honky-tonk, Chicago blues, Tibetan chants, South African mbaqanga, Detroit gospel, Appalachian bluegrass, Dominican merengue, Cajun guitar. And that’s just a small sampling. Booths were being set up for Amish furniture, Chinese cord jewelry, braided rugs, handspun yarns, and Ukrainian embroidery.

The event, which drew more than 120,000 participants to East Lansing last year, was coming together smoothly as Mayor Rohman and his entourage strolled through the streets. By evening, the city would be ready for the festivities that are said to generate more than $1 million a day for the local economy, according to East Lansing city officials.

It was clear Rohman was thinking of the national honor and the outrageous coup for Bangor, the smallest community ever to host the festival, when he uttered two telling words, “Pinch me.”

That the National Folk Festival is coming to Bangor for 2002, 2003, and 2004 is no dream. It is, however, a dream come true for city planners. In the last five years, downtown Bangor has undergone noticeable changes despite a small population base of about 32,000 – a number that has remained relatively stable for many years. The Maine Shakespeare Festival, now in its eighth year on the Bangor waterfront, the Maine Discovery Museum, a spate of new shops in the heart of the city, and a restoration of historical statues have all given Bangor a face lift.

But the city remains more of a gateway to other tourist attractions than a destination spot. The festival, say organizers, is an attempt at changing that.

“Bangor is a community that suffers from a lack of identity,” said Donna Fichtner, executive director of the Bangor Convention and Visitors Bureau, which markets the city both inside and outside the state. “Our cultural heritage and the arts, that’s what can revitalize our city. Bangor is the center of our regional culture and, for years, the mayors have wanted a defining event. My feeling is that this festival is that event.”

Fichtner wrote the application that attracted the attention of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, the festival’s producing organization located in Silver Spring, Md. She was one of seven Bangor representatives the city sent to Michigan last weekend to meet with officials and study the infrastructure of the festival. Over the course of several days, the Maine team learned that its biggest challenge will be raising upwards of $1.5 million to finance the festival over three years, but that smaller challenges – organizing a 400-person volunteer corps, readying the waterfront to accommodate a projected 60,000-70,000 visitors, collecting regional crafts, and helping to choose performers – will make hosting the National, as it is called, one of the biggest community-based events to take place in Bangor in recent history.

The National began in 1934 in St. Louis, and did a long stint at Wolftrap Farm Park for the Performing Arts in Virginia before adopting a “moveable feast” approach. Since the early 1980s, it has traveled to Cuyahoga Valley National Park in Ohio, to New York City, Lowell, Mass., Johnstown, Pa., Chattanooga, Tenn., Dayton, Ohio, and East Lansing. Along the way, the festival has launched the careers of many folk artists, including the dancer Michael Flatley and the Cajun group BeauSoleil.

“While Bangor had a smaller base than other communities,” said Julia Olin, associate director at NCTA, “there was an enthusiasm that put them in contention. When we visited the community, that really cinched it. Not only were the organizers warm and nice, but they were intelligent and capable. We don’t have a hard-and-fast criteria for host cities. There’s some intuitive work that goes on here. We like the idea of being culturally in the place that Bangor is, its relationship to the rest of the north and to Canada.”

In addition to a can-do spirit that Olin and several other NCTA officials noted during their site visits to Bangor in January and May of this year, Bangor received high marks for having a strong nonprofit partner in its Convention and Visitors Bureau and an ally in Eastern Maine Development Corp., which will serve as an accounting partner for the event. Bangor gained points, too, for already existing ethnic groups, such as French and Indian communities, as well as a major performing arts center on a nearby college campus, a symphony orchestra, ballet company, art galleries, state fair, and Shakespeare festival. All of this, say members of NCTA, indicated the city’s commitment to culture, community life, and regional solidarity.

“Bringing these people together in a relaxed, comfortable, non-competitive environment will enhance their understanding of the importance of working together,” Fichtner wrote in the original application. “By becoming the catalyst around which an event such as this is focused, Bangor and its residents will begin to see themselves in the context of the larger region and as the leading economic engine in northern Maine.”

When East Lansing was named host of the festival three years ago, it had been reeling from national press about sports-related riots that took place at Michigan State University, a land-grant institution at the heart of the city’s history and livelihood. A local pop music festival, generally held in August, had gone bankrupt, and city organizers were looking for a way to recharge community life beyond the campus. The success of the National has spawned next year’s Great Lakes Folk Festival, which organizers hope will capitalize on the ebullience and quality East Lansing residents have come to expect from a large local event.

“The first year, everybody thought it was going to be the Peter, Paul and Mary thing. You know, Arlo Guthrie,” said Judith Taran, director of communications for the city. “But when people realized it wasn’t that, they came. It has been massive. We literally are moving the equivalent of an army on the site, and keeping them here safely until Sunday night.”

While the festival comes with minor civic squabbles – merchants don’t like the fact downtown streets and parking lots are closed several days before the event – residents of all ages gave only positive feedback about the impact on the community. Even the police captain of the extra six officers assigned to patrol the festival said there have been no incidents to report. It is, she said, “a preferred assignment.”

“I don’t think anybody has ever come to this festival and said they didn’t have a good time,” said Linda Dufelmeier, whose contemporary crafts store is located at the festival’s epicenter. “It’s getting back to what we think culture should be about. It’s not X-rated. Because it’s a free event, people don’t come downtown to go shopping. But we get a lot of traffic, which is good for the image of the town, and that’s good for business.”

Over the weekend, hotels were fully booked, restaurants were full, and the sidewalks teemed with young couples, families, teens, and senior citizens – all out to hear music in the streets.

For volunteers who had come from out of state or from more than 100 miles away, the festival is an annual working vacation. Some had traveled from as far away as the Lowell Folk Festival in Massachusetts to offer their services and celebrate traditional arts. The Lowell event, which started as the National 18 years ago, had a one-day attendance this year of more than 170,000 and has become the model for the power of folk art to transform a community.

Robert Libbey, recently appointed director of the National in Bangor and a native of the city, spoke confidently about similar goals, albeit in more modest numbers, for not only the next three years, but for the time beyond that. His hope, as well as one of the goals of the National, is that an annual event will take root on the waterfront.

“Bangor has a real ability to come together to do big things,” said Libbey, who spent nearly a week in East Lansing and also attended the Lowell festival earlier this summer. “Once people find out just how exciting this is, they’ll pull together. It’s challenging, but the rewards are immeasurable and all the other communities that have done this confirm that. I think this will transform Bangor.”

One of the clear outcomes of the festival is that it motivates people to become joiners in their neighborhood. For the Maine event, Sen. Susan Collins and Maine humorist Tim Sample have already jumped onboard as honorary co-chairs. The mayor’s wife, Lynda Rohman, director of volunteer services at Eastern Maine Medical Center and part of the contingent in East Lansing last weekend, will co-chair the committee of local volunteers whose multifarious jobs include transporting artists, giving out information, and running a “Bucket Brigade” for which they cheerfully walk through the crowds collecting cash donations from participants.

The point is, said Libbey, it “takes an entire community to pull this off.” And the folk arts, he added, have the power to bring out the best and most generous in people.

Joseph Wilson, executive director of NCTA and recipient of a National Heritage Fellowship this year, has a similar vision of the folk arts and sees Bangor as a perfect setting for exploring the role of global traditions.

“We think it’s a good place to do a festival because the state has a good sensibility about its folk arts,” said Wilson. “We think the kinds of things we bring to a festival will be good for the city. Great things come to Maine all the time, but we think we can put a slightly different twist on the whole thing. The festival we create in Bangor will be different from any other festivals we’ve ever done. And we’re having more fun than a pig in a puddle.”

A very big puddle for Libbey, who has the task of bringing all the elements together to make the Bangor festival a friendly and smoothly operated spectacle of excellence that has a life beyond the three-year residency of the National.

“East Lansing demonstrated that if an entire community works together, it can be a transforming event for that community,” said Libbey. “Bangor has a long history of arts and culture. And that’s the key. The days when lumber was king are long gone but with this festival we can recapture that vitality.”

On the street at the National Folk Festival in East Lansing

After three days at the National Folk Festival in East Lansing, my feet hurt from walking back and forth between performance stages, food booths, demonstrations, lemonade stands. It was a good hurt, a happy hurt inspired by the toe-tapping riffs of legendary flat-picking guitarist Doc Watson, the hip-shaking rhythms of South Africa’s Mahotella Queens, and head-turning steam of Chicago blues singer Shemekia Copeland. But dancing to Geno Delafose and his zydeco band, French Rockin’ Boogie, was the best. Is Bangor ready for this? Will Bangor dance? My projection is that Bangor won’t be able to NOT dance when the National Folk Festival descends on the waterfront. When the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians led the daily parade through East Lansing over the weekend, Joseph Wilson, executive director at the National Council for the Traditional Arts, introduced them and encouraged the audience this way: “You got a butt you can shake, too.” But don’t take it from us. Here’s what others were saying on the festival grounds. – Alicia Anstead

Mark Meadows, mayor of East Lansing and state district attorney: “I’m going to look back on this as one of the greatest things we’ve ever done as a city government. The festival is a great honor, and it will place a national focus on the city of Bangor and all the things Bangor represents. My wife and I are coming to Bangor, and we hope everyone else here today is, too.”

Gretchen Whitmer, a 30-year-old Michigan state representative: ” I didn’t know what to expect. I wouldn’t label myself as a folk fanatic. But it was a blast and it expanded my horizons.”

Jen Schoon, manager at Beggar’s Banquet, an East Lansing restaurant and bar: “Business during the festival is hit or miss depending on the weather. Last year, we doubled business for a normal Saturday night in summer. But I love the festival. I’m thrilled they chose East Lansing to host it because it brought in acts that wouldn’t otherwise have come here. I hate to see it go.”

Bev Baten, city council member and downtown advocate: “People at the festival can’t believe they’re in a small college town in the Midwest because it brings so much excitement and talent.”

Eugene Dillenburg, volunteer from St. Paul, Minn.: “I work in an office and type all day. I don’t feel like I get anything done. Here, I work for a few hours and I get things done.”

Sarah Erlewine, a 23-year-old student at Michigan State University in East Lansing: “I attended last year and loved it so much that I wanted to work here,” she said. “A lot of people blow off folk arts as passe, something that doesn’t really affect us. But I think it’s anything we as a people create out of love and our attempt to understand ourselves.”

Nick Spitzer, host of “American Routes” on Public Radio International: “Revitalization happens when people start thinking in new ways, when they take into account the old ways around them – not just theirs but everybody’s. When you have a festival like this, you can tell the story of what was, and allow people to look at each other in a positive way through arts and culture that are community based. If you believe art has a benefit, then folk arts have even more of a benefit because they bring people with them. Bangor is not New York or Los Angeles, but it is the right scale to do this, and I love Maine. I’m psyched.”

Dwain Winters, volunteer technical director at the National Council for the Arts and director of the dioxin policy program at the Environmental Protection Agency in Washington: “I was impressed by Bangor’s downtown. There’s a lot of character there. You know, we don’t measure success of the festival by size of the audience. Our efforts are to provide an opportunity for people who are interested to see a broader spectrum. By the end of the three-year cycle, we hope that interest is strong enough that an event will follow after us.”

Robert Libbey, director of the Bangor National Folk Festival 2002-2004: “Free. I like free. If we can make the arts accessible to everyone, it can make a difference in peoples’ lives.”