Making it happen D.C. woman is powerhouse behind folk festival in Bangor

Julia Olin first saw Bangor in the winter. Covered with snow. And icy. But Olin is a woman with vision and was instantly able to imagine the river rumbling along in summer, the trees in immense green fullness, and a cool breeze rolling the water against the shore.

Olin knew instinctively that she was looking at the next setting for the National Folk Festival.

“When we first came up here, we felt an instant rapport with the people,” said Olin, who is associate director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts in Washington, D.C.

The NCTA produces the annual festival and also chooses the locations of the National, which takes up a three-year residency in cities around the country. For the next three years, the festival will take place on the waterfront in Bangor on the weekend before Labor Day. This year, the festival is Aug. 23-25.

Olin again: “We liked the people in Bangor. They were enthusiastic, bright, competent, down-to-earth. They had an openness. We sensed a community that is not intimidated by building a new event. What I see now is that it was all absolutely true.”

Olin is a good judge, too. She has been involved with presenting traditional music and culture for nearly 25 years. She has produced folk festivals and recordings during that time and was a founding member of the Missouri Friends of the Folk Arts in her home state.

She was director of a cultural and educational program in St. Louis when Joseph Wilson, director of NCTA, offered her a job in Washington.

“Julia is terribly bright and wonderfully organized,” said Wilson. “Her deepest, darkest secret is that she is a great fiddler herself. But Julia will only do something if she can do it to a very, very high standard. Since she is so busy, she doesn’t have time to practice. But she has an unerring ear. She’s like a hawk. She can hear a mouse a mile away.”

Before Olin put her management skills to work as an organizer, she played fiddle in an Ozark Mountain band. She also formally studied jazz in college. But these are topics she tends not to discuss. It may be that she has some tender nostalgia for those days, or that her single-mindedness regarding the folk festival keeps her too engaged for much backward glancing.

Better than anyone, Olin understands the work that comes with looking ahead. During regular trips to Bangor, Olin has taken on the role of helping local organizers understand the substantial work and planning involved in pulling off an event that expects to draw upward of 75,000 people to the city. That’s more than twice the population of Bangor.

“People keep saying, ‘I knew this was going to be big, but I didn’t realize how big,'” says Olin with a signature broad smile. “Of all the places we’ve produced the festival, Bangor is the one with the smallest population base. The festival is typically held in places where the entire population of Maine is within easy driving distance. But Bangor is sort of like the little engine that could. Cities much larger than this one have had to work doggone hard to pull it off. I know this is going to be a big event and I know we are going to be high-flving it when we are done.”

In the meantime, local festival director Susan Pierce says Olin is an invaluable resource.

“There are lots of opportunities to organize the festival from all points of view,” said Pierce. “Julia stays focused on the festival as a live event of traditional arts that excite the people who are exposed to them. She and the organizers at the National Council have a great balance between bringing their expertise to a place and sharing it, but allowing a place like Bangor to make the festival its own. This is not a cookie-cutter event.”

While each site for the National comes with uniquely promotable qualities – in Bangor’s case, consider the riverfront, the navigable city streets, American Indian culture and Franco-American culture (both of which will be featured at the festival) – each site also comes with challenges. By and large, it is Olin’s job to address those challenges and smooth out the kinks.

In large part that comes down to two issues for the Bangor event: funding and limited population. Because of the remoteness of Maine, extra attention has been paid to garnering interest from farther afield, such as in Canada and Portland, and even as far south as Boston and New York, which make up a substantial portion of Maine’s summer visitors.

Raising the $1.8 million to fund the festival has been slow in the coming. This, said Olin, may have to do with the smaller resources in Maine, but it may also be the result of a preoccupation with larger issues.

“This festival is occurring at a time when the nation is experiencing a tragedy, so national funding has been challenged,” said Olin. “Maine is not a state that can provide huge funds. But the folks here are meeting that challenge in an extraordinary way. There’s still more to go but they are on their way. While Bangor is a commercial and cultural center, it is not a community that has created an event of this magnitude. All of these challenges are new. So there’s a learning curve. But there always is for the first year of the festival. Part of NCTA’s job here is to share our experience, guide the process and bridge the gaps. It’s a true partnership.”

Now that most of the planning is under way and the festival is only seven weeks away, Olin will do her troubleshooting from Washington – but could show up in Bangor in a moment’s notice. Her work, she said, is to fulfill her motto of “make it happen.” If anyone can be a force behind the scenes, it’s Olin, whose mission is to preserve, protect and promote the traditional arts.

“I’m not feeding starving children or saving a wilderness area,” said Olin. “But when I see people at our events and they say this is what America is all about, I feel good. It’s important to remember who you are and appreciate our connections. A problem of modern life is alienation. At the festival, you can celebrate your own culture with others. You can be joyful and dance. The artists there are humble. They see themselves as part of a continuum of art and life. They come to the festival as ambassadors. There are no walls between the artists and the community, so we can all have ownership.”