Festival infused with the power of the divine Participants present various religions through art, food, music and more

God swept through the National Folk Festival in forms both familiar and unknown. From the moment the event opened Friday evening until it shut down Sunday night, the divine was present along the Bangor riverfront. No matter the name – Yahweh, Lord, Jesus, Buddha, Great Spirit, The Goddess – something holy infused the festival from the art to the music to the food.

Lorin Sklamberg, founding member of The Klezmatics, opened the band’s Saturday afternoon set singing “Good Shabbus” and welcoming concertgoers to the Heritage Stage on the Jewish Sabbath.

The six-member New York-based band’s intent is to celebrate the ecstatic nature of Yiddish music with works that are by turns wild, spiritual, provocative, reflective and danceable.

Yet the Klezmatics’ message this weekend was, at times, more political than spiritual. The lyrics to “I Ain’t Afraid” brought a small cheer from the crowd, but the lyrics “I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh, I ain’t afraid of your Allah, I ain’t afraid of your Jesus. I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your God” seemed to oversimplify a complex political situation that has more to do with governmental leaders than godheads.

Also, the band was consistently late setting up and getting started. That not only cut its own sets short, but also delayed the start of the following performance. Less politics, more music and a little wisdom from the Torah would have improved their impact tremendously.

Two Gospel groups – the Bronx New Heaven Shout Band and Robert Turner and the Silver Hearts Gospel Singers of Indianapolis – performed a bona fide miracle each time they performed. The African-American troupes brought a mostly white crowd of staid New Englanders to its feet. The saved, the sinners and the unwashed put their hands in the air and praised the Lord like born-again evangelicals.

The joyful music performed in black churches throughout the country was a revelation to a majority of festivalgoers. At the festival, however, the sins of everyone who experienced the bold brass band and soaring voices of the choir were surely washed away by this powerful Gospel music.

On Friday evening, members of the King James Bible Baptist Church of Bangor handed out an illustrated treatise titled “The First Jaws,” that recounts the story of Jonah and the whale.

Food vendors included Bangor-based Seventh Day Adventists and St. George Greek Orthodox Church. Kiowas and Comanches honored their gods in music and dance while members of the Wabanaki tribes, made up of the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet and Micmac tribes, shared their traditional arts and music in the demonstration area.

All Souls Congregational Church scheduled a juried art show titled Truth in the Inward Being – Wisdom in the Secret Heart to run in conjunction with the festival. The exhibit included 62 works by 39 Maine artists.

No matter the name used to summon the divine, God made more than one appearance in Bangor this weekend.