No one knew what to expect. Not the performers. Not the locals. Not the food vendors. Not even the National Council for the Traditional Arts.

But when the 64th National Folk Festival rolled into town Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it brought more than 70,000 people to the waterfront and surprised everyone – even the people from Bangor and Washington, D.C., who have been planning the festival for the past two years.

“This is the best first-year festival that I’ve ever seen,” said Julia Olin, associate director of the NCTA, which produces the event. “I think it was great for the audience and great for the artists – all the artists. It’s like a dream come true, you know. The festival exceeded my highest expectations.”

It filled hotels and campgrounds and cleared out food vendors faster than they could cook, which, along with traffic problems, created frustration for festival-goers. But they seemed to forget all that once they heard the music.

“These festivals are always great, but it just seems like Bangor was thirsty for it,” said dieselbilly musician Bill Kirchen, who has played at three National Folk Festivals. “Everybody’s thanking us like we’re the Americans coming to liberate Paris or something. That was such a huge surprise for me.”

It was a surprise to many of the festival-goers as well. People who came to hear Cajun tunes ended up buying CDs of Portuguese fado. One woman was drawn in by the Native American drumming performance and demonstrations, and ended up loving the Hawaiian dancers.

“The Native American art is absolutely the best,” said Ruth Jewell, an Indian Island resident who was chatting with her friend Anita Ellis, a craft vendor at the festival. “I did watch the hula girls do their hulas this morning and that was nice. … But the thing that I enjoy the most about the National Folk Festival is so many of the participants in their own way are doing their own cultural storytelling. It’s indigenous to their own people, rather than trying to mimic someone or something else.”

Storytelling is what it’s all about. When Hula Halau ‘O Lilinoe took the stage, an announcer recounted the traditional Hawaiian legend of a fire goddess who takes the form of a volcano.

Similarly, people who didn’t understand Portuguese could feel the emotion as Ana Vinagre’s voice rang out across the Penobscot River. It was the sound of lost love.

Hip-hop dancers N.B.S. (Nothing But Skill) told a story that resonated with the throngs of young people in the audience, who climbed scaffolding and railroad-crossing signs to get a better view of flips and acrobatics. Their street dancing, to the beat of barrel-drums and Michael Jackson music, appealed not just to teens and twentysomethings. During Saturday’s act, a pair of women in their early 70s fought their way to the front of the crowd.

Surprises came in many forms at The National, from hip-hopping women to eye-popping food lines. But the biggest surprise came when Franco-American fiddler Simon St. Pierre made a triumphant return to the spotlight.

St. Pierre, a 1983 National Heritage Award winner who hasn’t performed in about five years, rarely leaves his home in Smyrna Mills. When he told the audience of about 1,000 at the Fiddle Traditions performance that he was from Aroostook County, the room erupted in applause. Olin told the crowd they were lucky, because she didn’t know whether St. Pierre would come.

“For a while I was not sure,” St. Pierre said after his ovation-inspiring performance. “I still miss it. I’ve not played very much lately. I was nervous.”

Chuck Frechette of Lewiston, who used to play in a fiddle group with St. Pierre, nearly jumped on stage when he saw his old friend.

“He’s no slouch,” Frechette said. “He’s one of the tops.”

Nick Spitzer, host of National Public Radio’s roots-music show “American Routes,” said that while the festival has a national scope, some of the best benefits are felt locally. In this case, it brought together Maine’s Franco-American, Native American, Asian and Finnish populations, to name a few.

“I believe that culture is preserved not by isolating it, not by romanticizing it, but by embracing its position in everyday life,” said Spitzer, a Louisiana resident who ended his vacation in Maine with a stint as a presenter at The National. “It’s important for Mainers to get together, not just within the boundaries of the state, but within their different cultures. I really believe strongly that preservation and continuity of culture is an end in and of itself. … I see this as very, very entertaining and fun, but also serious.”

At its best moments, the festival was all of that. While Aziz Herawi played the dutar, a stringed instrument, against the backdrop of the Penobscot River, members of the audience whispered to one another about his heritage and his life as a former Afghani rebel, and then just as quickly started talking about how beautiful the music and the dancing were.

And while the event tuned festival-goers into cultures from afar, it also showed them what could happen locally.

“I think the real legacy of the festival is not just other folk festivals – which will happen – but how it will work as a cultural catalyst,” said Michael Grillo of Bangor. “You’re going to find a lot of people with musical talents coming together and finding local venues.”

Several festival-goers said they hoped The National would show people there is an audience for something other than rock ‘n’ roll.

“I go down to Rhode Island and Massachusetts because Maine doesn’t have zydeco and Cajun music, and I’d like to see more bands come up here,” said Tanya Pavlick of Biddeford, a zydeco dancer.

Pavlick’s son, 6-year-old Luke Morneau, was backstage during the final performance of Nathan and the Zydeco Cha-Chas on Sunday evening. Luke asked Santa for an accordion when he was 2 years old, and on Sunday, Luke was waiting to perform with the legends.

“This is the next generation,” Williams called out when Luke walked on stage, accordion and washboard in hand, and the crowd cheered.

The sun had already started creeping toward the horizon Sunday when it caught the chrome trim of Nathan Williams’ mother-of-pearl accordion and gleamed, blindingly, for an instant.

The grass around the Railroad Stage was crumpled from three days’ worth of activity and this crowd wasn’t going to give it a rest. People were dancing energetically, almost urgently, like they didn’t want it to end.

And the good news is, it won’t. Bangor still has The National for two more summers. And next time, everyone will know what to expect.

National Folk Festival by the numbers

. Pounds of lobster used in the Riverdrivers Restaurant lobster-roll booth: 400

. Falafel balls cooked at Shivanarth Farm Falafels and Gyros booth: 4,000

. Police officers on duty per day: 30

. Arrests at the festival: 2

. Buckets carried by Bucket Brigade members: 80

. Dollars raised in Bucket Brigade donations: 18,500

. Lost children: 6

. Found children: 6

. Shuttle bus runs from Bass Park: 1,200