National FOLK Festival.

As a twentysomething connoisseur of contemporary music, I hear the word “folk” and I cringe.

I picture middle-age guys with guitars sitting around a campfire singing “Kumbaya” with nasal perfection.

Now, I consider myself a music fan with diverse tastes and an open mind, but I still can’t see any of my favorite artists doing a camp-time singalong.

The Roots, Guster, Jay-Z, Bjork, Eminem, System of a Down, R.H.C.P., the DMB, John Mayer, the Strokes, Tenacious D and Radiohead, but nothing I’d consider folk.

All this considered, imagine my colossal enthusiasm when I heard Bangor was to host the National Folk Festival. Even though the whole weekend is entirely free, I pictured the NFF as a three-day waterfront gathering of touchy-feely music – minus the campfires. No thanks.

I couldn’t have been more wrong, according to Julia Olin, associate director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts and co-organizer for the NFF.

“This is really going to be a fresh new experience,” Olin said. “People should expect to be wowed and surprised.”

The music is energetic, it gets in your bones and it makes you want to get up and move, Olin said. This is music with feeling, she told me.

“It’s American roots music,” Olin said. “Bluegrass, salsa, polka, hula, Cajun, Gaelic – we’re talking about regional music that has come out of American ethnic communities.”

And don’t forget dieselbilly, zydeco and polka, all of which I knew very little about a week ago.

Then I talked to Bill Kirchen, lead vocalist and guitarist for the trio Too Much Fun. This is the dieselbilly guy and although they have elements of swing, honky-tonk and hillbilly, Kirchen said, they’re basically a rock ‘n’ roll group.

By the way: I dig rock ‘n’ roll.

“We represent some types of music that aren’t as common anymore,” said Kirchen, pointing to hillbilly and honky-tonk. Kirchen said. “It’s dancing music, but we tell some interesting stories – some sideways stuff.”

By “sideways stuff,” Kirchen meant songs about the open road, a persistent theme in his work. He scored the drag-racing hit, “Hot Rod Lincoln,” with Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen in 1972. Three decades later, Kirchen has moved on to “truck-driving epics” about large tires, large engines and watching the world roll by.

“The music we play now is improvisational, it swings and it never comes out the same way twice,” Kirchen said. “It’s the kind of show that works better with an active audience.”

Rest assured, these guys aren’t the Kumbaya types.

“Some things are precious and quiet, but we ain’t,” Kirchen said.

For another musical awakening that’ll kick you in the cha-cha, I’m told zydeco is the real McCoy. Between the accordion and the scrub board, zydeco is about zest, says Nathan Williams, frontman for Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas.

“Zydeco is a like a good gumbo,” Williams said in a thick Cajun accent. “It’s got a little bit of everything you could want: blues, reggae, R & B – it’s the whole variety of flavors.”

Williams has spent the last 17 years spinning tunes on the piano accordion under mentors like Cliff Chenier and Buckwheat Zydeco. Now 39, Williams and the other four cha-chas showcase vivid Louisiana culture by mixing infectious rhythms with subjects like food and everyday living.

“When you’re listening, you don’t want to sit down,” Williams said with a chuckle. “People should bring their dancing shoes, ’cause we gonna sock it to ’em.”

So I’m down with deiselbilly and zydeco. But polka?

“In general, polka music has been ridiculed as hokey, but people should give it a chance before they put their blinders on,” said Brian Marshall of the Tex-Slavik Playboys, a polka band hailing from the thriving Polish region in the eastern part of Texas. “Most people just don’t know what we’re about.” While the European-influenced dance music evokes ideas of oompah bands with tubas and French horns, I was surprised to find contemporary polka is an entirely different from the stereotype.

Introduced to American culture in the 19th century, polka captured the Polish musical heritage through its use of the accordion and the fiddle. Marshall’s six-man crew rounds out the mix with an upright bass, a clarinet, a saxophone, the drums and an electric guitar.

“We’ve got a leg up on the old polka bands because we have the invention of amplifiers,” Marshall said. “The band’s sound is electrified.”

While the music has benefited technological advances, the music’s bare roots are a mix of jazz, Cajun, old world country and a splash of Texas influence.

“Whether you like the music or not, you can’t help but get into the rhythm,” Marshall said. “If your foot’s not tapping, something is up.”

But maybe you need a little visual instruction before those feet start tapping.

In that case, word is the four guys in Nothing But Skill promise to do nothing but thrill you as they work the festival midway.

The drum and dance troupe specializes in eye-popping flips and stunts mixed with fresh hip-hop dance moves. Straight from the streets of New York City, N.B.S. incorporates plastic bucket drumming and rugged style in a nonstop barrage of bodyrock.

“Kids, hold your parents and parents do the same,” N.B.S. frontman Manchild cautions, “cause when we bust loose, it’s gonna get crazy.”

Bust loose? Crazy, huh? Those aren’t words I ever would have used to describe a folk festival.

But then again, I’ve been wrong before.