Harmonia

Music of Eastern Europe

Friday: 8:30 p.m. Railroad; Saturday: 1 p.m. Heritage, 4 p.m. Railroad; Sunday: noon Heritage

The music and culture of Eastern Europe are having a resurgence – in Cleveland. It’s a city that, until recently, had the largest population of Hungarians outside of Budapest, a city with more Slovenians than any other city in the world. Political and economic woes in the late 19th century created the first wave of immigration from Eastern Europe. Now, 100 years later, similar problems have brought Croats, Serbs, Carpatho-Rusyns, Ukrainians and Slovaks in a second influx to this industrial metropolis. The two generations are joining to create an exciting musical blend that reflects their unique experiences in the American heartland.

Harmonia, a seven-piece ensemble based in Cleveland, presents the traditional folk music of Eastern Europe. A great richness of musical forms exists in the region between the Carpathian Mountains and the Danube and in the Balkans, such as the csardas, halgato, kolomyjka, doina, hora and invirtita. Harmonia’s repertoire reflects the cultures of this region: Hungarian, Slovak, Ukrainian, Romanian and others.

Performed on traditional instruments and styled after turn-of-the-century East European gypsy bands, Harmonia draws from both the urban and rural traditions of Eastern Europe. Its performances evoke the full range of human emotions, interspersing brilliant pyrotechnical virtuosity with soulful melancholy and nostalgic yearning.

Formed in 1992 by Croatian-Hungarian musician Walt Mahovlich, Harmonia boasts musicians from varied East European backgrounds. The members have forged a common musical language. While firmly grounded in tradition, they are composing and performing original material.

Mahovlich (accordion, clarinet, frula, gajde and vocals) grew up listening to the Croatian and Hungarian music of his family. He got his start playing at Croatian and Macedonian weddings at the age of 19 and spent much of his youth performing with village musicians. He has played at traditional events for Eastern European immigrant communities throughout the United States and Canada and toured throughout Europe.

His career has included performances at Smotra Foklora in Zagreb, Croatia, the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife, Jimmy Carter’s inauguration, the rededication of Ellis Island and the bicentennial celebration of the U.S. Constitution in Philadelphia. He has performed in Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center.

Alexander Fedoriouk (cimbalom, nai) began playing the cimbalom at age 7 in his hometown of Kolomyia, Ukraine. Growing up in the Carpathian Mountains, he played at weddings in mountain villages in Ukraine and Moldavia. He studied music at the Kolomyia Music School of Chernivsty Musical College, and he received his bachelor’s degree in music from Kiev State Conservatory. He has performed as a soloist with the Odessa Philharmonic Orchestra, Troisty Muzyky Folk Ensemble, the Manhattan School of Music Symphony Orchestra, the Duquesne University Tamburitzans, and Cheres. He appeared in the Ukrainian musical movies “Pisne Kalynova” and “Namysto Dlia Berehyni.” He received awards on folk instruments at the Ukrainian national competition in 1987 and 1991. Since he has been in the United States, he has been featured as a soloist on a number of recordings. He has recorded with Nigel Pulsford of Bush and legendary jazz flutist Herbie Mann. He performed in Carnegie Hall with John Cale of The Velvet Underground.

The son of a traditional Croatian folk musician, Marko Dreher (violin, kontra, tamburica) grew up steeped in the musical traditions of Eastern Europe. He started classical violin lessons at age 3 and soon began sitting in with his father’s gypsy orchestra. At age 12, he entered the music program at Southern Illinois University and joined the Illinois Symphony Orchestra at age 13. Dreher has won numerous awards for his violin and viola performances and has performed as a soloist with orchestras in the United States and Europe. He performs on tamburica regularly with the Jerry Grcevich Tamburica Orkestar and continues to play violin with his father’s tamburica orchestra, Cigani. In Croatia, he recorded with Sharmeri and has toured with singers such as Zvonko Bogdan and Miro Skoro. He has performed at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Chicago Symphony Hall, Powell Hall in St. Louis, Detroit Symphony Hall, Severance Hall in Cleveland and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1998, Dreher was the youngest recipient of the Tamburitza Association of America’s Founder’s Award. He graduated with a degree in violin and viola performance from Oberlin Conservatory and is working on his master’s degree at the Cleveland Institute of Music.

A graduate of the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Harmonia bassist Adam Good has lived in New York City since 1996. With a foundation in jazz guitar, his interest in the music of Eastern Europe began in 1994, and by the time he joined Tito’s Revenge (electric Balkan music), he was hooked. He plays Macedonian and Bulgarian dance and folk music, as well as the music of Greece, Albania and Turkey, on tambura, cumbus and guitar. His talent has made him a fixture of New York’s Balkan music scene. He also plays regularly with Kolevi 6, the Macedonian Izvorno ensembles 9 Olives and Izgori, and Sideshow, a band dedicated to an improvisatory approach to the music of Charles Ives.

A native of Ukraine, Andrei Pidkivka (nai, sopilka, other ethnic flutes) graduated from the Lviv Conservatory with a degree in folk and classical music. By age 18, he was principal flutist for the Ukrainian folk ensemble Unist. He has performed with several professional ensembles, including Virnist and the Lviv Philharmonic State Symphony Orchestra. In 1992, Pidkivka was featured as a soloist on ethnic flutes with the Ukrainian National Military Orchestra at the Second International Music Festival of Military Bands in Krakow, Poland. His talents have brought him to France, Germany, the Czech Republic and the United States, where he received a master’s degree in flute performance at Youngstown State University. Pidkivka makes ethnic flutes and gives presentations on Eastern European folk music at universities and colleges. He performs at concerts and music festivals, including performances at the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Folk Alliance Conference.

Gheorghe Trambitas (taragot, fluier, caval), a native of Fagaras, Romania, started playing the taragot at an early age. His orchestra played throughout Transylvania, where he was known for his speed and virtuosity on the taragot. Trambitas received his formal musical training at the Conservatory in Brasov, Romania, before coming to the United States in 1990. He has performed extensively in Romania and Europe. In addition to taragot, Trambitas is a master of several other Romanian folk instruments, and he was featured at the National Folk Festival in 1997.

Born in Medzilaborce in Eastern Slovakia, Beata Begeniova Salak (vocals) grew up surrounded by the Slovak and Rusyn folk songs sung by her family. She attended the music high school in Presov and received her music degree from J.P. Safarik University in Slovakia. While a student, she was featured as a soloist on many recordings and radio broadcasts and received numerous awards in folk song competitions. A featured soloist with the professional Rusyn ensemble Dukla in Presov, she toured Europe and North America with Sarisan.

Joe Willie ‘Pinetop’ Perkins

Blues piano

Friday: 7:30 p.m. Railroad; Saturday: 1 p.m. at Kenduskeag with George Kilby Jr., 8 p.m. Kenduskeag

Audiences at this year’s 66th National Folk Festival will have the rare opportunity to hear one of the last great Mississippi bluesmen, Joe Willie “Pinetop” Perkins. His style has inspired three generations of blues pianists, and at age 91, he’s still going strong. Perkins’ home is the Mississippi Delta, one of the 20th century’s most fertile and influential musical regions, a birthplace of the blues. The primal, haunting sound of the Delta is his sound, saturating every note and turn of phrase in his music. While the Mississippi River flowed southward, the blues flowed northward, carried by musicians like Perkins who went up the river to Memphis, St. Louis and Chicago.

Pinetop Perkins was born into a farming family in Belzoni, Miss., in 1913. His first musical instrument was the “diddly bow,” a piece of wire stretched between two nails driven into a wall and fretted with a bottle. He took up the guitar, learning from local musicians and recordings by blues legends Robert Johnson, Leroy Carr and Pinetop Smith. At age 10, he began to play guitar at dances and house parties around Paines-Deadman Plantation in Honey Island, where he grew up.

Around age 12 he took up the piano, and as a young man, began playing in Delta clubs and jukes. One of his favorite pieces was Pinetop Smith’s “Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie.” “They used to call me ‘Pinetop’ because I played that song,” he says. In 1943, Perkins’ reputation spread through his regular appearances on two influential live radio shows broadcast from Helena, Ark.: the “Mother’s Best Flour/Bright Star Flour” show and “The King Biscuit Time” show. He began to perform more widely, touring to Florida, East St. Louis and other points in the Midwest, and made his first recording in 1950. He resettled in Chicago in the 1960s and in 1969 joined Muddy Waters’ band, touring worldwide during the next 11 years. Upon leaving Muddy Waters in 1980, he became a main figure in the Legendary Blues Band.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Perkins recorded numerous albums and won seven W.C. Handy Awards for Instrumentalist of the Year. Blues Review publisher Bob Vorel describes his significance from today’s perspective: “Joe Willie ‘Pinetop’ Perkins is a member of that elite group of blues musicians – First Generation – who were directly responsible for laying the foundation of the musical genre we call ‘the blues.’ Pinetop’s lifelong accomplishments and musical partners reads like a ‘who, what and where’ of the blues world. From the ‘King Biscuit Hour’ radio show to [the] Muddy Waters band, Pinetop has played all of the great venues and with every historical figure … and he continues to play as solidly today as he ever has.” The long list of musicians with whom he has played includes B.B. King, Sonny Boy Williamson, Bobby “Blue” Bland, John Lee Hooker, Eric Clapton, Howlin’ Wolf, the Rolling Stones and many others. Perkins was featured in Clint Eastwood’s “Piano Blues” documentary, part of Martin Scorcese’s series on the blues that recently aired on public television. In 2000, Perkins was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, the highest honor our nation bestows upon its traditional artists.

Joining Perkins for his performance at the National Folk Festival is George Kilby Jr. and his band, the Downtown Poker Club. Kilby has performed everywhere from the roadhouses of the Southeast to the major music festivals of Europe. Kilby was born in Alabama and resides in New York. His band is considered one of the best bands of its kind in the Northeast. Kilby and Perkins have collaborated for more than 15 years and enjoy a deep and enduring camaraderie. Kilby produced Perkins’ album “Portrait of a Delta Bluesman” (Omega), which won the W.C. Handy Award for Blues Album of the Year ’93.

Yuqin Wang and Zhengli Xu

Chinese rod puppetry

Saturday: noon Children’s Area, 3 p.m. Children’s Area; Sunday: 2 p.m. Children’s Area, 3:30 p.m. Children’s Area

For more than 2,500 years, master puppeteers in China have entertained and instructed audiences with their strikingly lifelike rod puppets. The traditional puppet stories, which feature both animals and humans, often include social or moral lessons about kindness, hard work, bravery and patience, much like Aesop’s fables. Other tales, such as the popular “clever monkey” stories, have similarities to trickster tales told around the world.

While the messages related in traditional rod puppetry performances have been embraced by enthralled audiences worldwide, the tradition in which they are told is uniquely Chinese. In China, puppetry is a respected art form that can be dated back to 581 B.C. The puppets, which can weigh up to 10 pounds and stand 2 or 3 feet tall, are capable of subtle and highly realistic movement. Each is mounted on a central rod that allows the puppet to be held high above the puppeteer. Thinner rods allow the master to manipulate the character’s limbs. Puppet makers in China often spend time watching animals in their natural habitat or in the zoo to understand the animal and its movements completely before building a puppet.

Before coming to America, Yuqin Wang and her husband and fellow performer, Zhengli “Rocky” Xu, both were leading puppeteers with the famous Beijing Puppet Theater. Wang’s training began in the Beijing Opera School when she was 10 years old.

When Wang was 19, the government decided to transfer her to the Puppet Theater. At first, because she was accustomed to performing onstage, working behind the puppeteers’ curtain frustrated her. Soon, however, she came to appreciate the expressiveness of the puppets and their ability to express the real and the fantastic. Wang brought new excitement to the puppetry by weaving in traditional opera techniques, and her artistry earned her numerous awards during her 30-year career in China, a career that continues to great acclaim in the United States.

Xu started to study puppetry in second grade. By age 15, his talents earned him a spot in the Beijing troupe. At that time, in 1960, the troupe was allowed to perform only stories that had been approved by the communist government. On his own, Xu traveled to villages where he learned the traditional puppet plays. Over time, the Beijing troupe was allowed to add some of these stories to its repertoire, and Xu became widely respected as a puppeteer and a puppet maker.

Master puppeteer Wang founded her own puppetry troupe when she came to Oregon from China in 1996. In its first year, the group performed at the Atlanta Summer Olympics. Now it shares the beauty and excitement of Chinese rod puppetry with audiences throughout the country. Wang and Xu have been named 2004 National Heritage Fellows, this nation’s highest honor for folk and traditional artists.

Chinese guzheng performer Grace Chang will provide musical accompaniment to the puppetry shows.

The Larry Gillis Band

Bluegrass

Sunday: noon at Railroad with The Birmingham Sunlights, 4:30 p.m. Heritage

Together for more than 20 years, Larry Gillis and his brother John established a reputation for soulful, hard-driving bluegrass and vocals evocative of The Stanley Brothers. While John has retired from the road, Larry and his band are carrying on the brothers’ distinctive sound.

Larry Gillis, on banjo and lead vocals, grew up in south Georgia. He absorbed the music of this region and was especially influenced by his father. He developed a style on the banjo reminiscent of Ralph Stanley, but with an originality that can only be tagged the “Gillis sound.”

Scott Holstein, on guitar, mandolin and lead vocals, has a vocal style that made him a natural to step in when John decided to stay home. Holstein’s vocals contribute to the wonderful brother-style harmony for which the band is famous. Rounding out the group are fiddler Shirley Seim of Seattle and bass player and vocalist Ray Wheatley of Chapmanville, W.Va.

The Larry Gillis Band offers up a powerful, gritty style of bluegrass that sets the band apart. Audiences at the National Folk Festival will thrill to the raw, high, lonesome sound associated with the Gillis name.

Solas

Irish music and song

Saturday: 4:30 p.m. Penobscot, 9:30 p.m. Railroad; Sunday: 3 p.m. Penobscot, 5 p.m. Railroad. All appearances include champion Irish step dancers Donny Golden, Cara Butler, Joe Dwyer and Sinead Lawler.

Once, introducing an instrumental medley, Solas leader Seamus Egan jokingly called the one tune he couldn’t name “extratraditional.” The term could be applied to Solas as well. This Irish-American band has been widely heralded for its virtuosity, fresh approach to Irish folk music and skill at maintaining its traditional roots while exploring its own ideas and expanding the boundaries.

Solas (Gaelic for “light”) showcases Egan’s skills on a variety of instruments. He plays flute, tin whistle, mandolin and tenor banjo – he’s an All-Ireland champion on each – and he also demonstrates virtuosity with the low whistle, nylon-string guitar, bodhran and uilleann pipes.

The founder of Solas, Egan was born in Philadelphia and raised for a time in County Mayo, Ireland. In addition to producing all of the band’s albums, he has recorded three solo albums and scored the film “The Brothers McMullen.” From that movie, his song “I Will Remember You” became a hit for singer Sarah McLachlan. He also performed on the soundtrack for the movie “Dead Man Walking” and wrote the score for the Irish stage show “Dancing on Dangerous Ground.”

Fiddler Winifred Horan is a native New Yorker who studied Irish fiddle during her childhood and won a Junior All-Ireland Championship on that instrument. Horan’s violin skills also later won her a scholarship to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. She is a former member of the Sharon Shannon Band and Cherish the Ladies, with whom she recorded two albums. In 2002, her solo album “Just One Wish” was released on Shanachie Records, and she recorded “Winifred Horan and Friends” for the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Heritage Music Collection.

Button accordionist Mick McAuley was born in Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland. His first musical lessons were from famed piper Tommy Keane, but by age 9 he had switched to button accordion. At 18, he moved to London, where he trained as an aircraft engineer and joined The Bucks, an acclaimed but short-lived group. In 1995, McAuley moved back to Ireland and worked and recorded with a number of musicians, including singers Niamh Parsons and Karan Casey. Considered one of Ireland’s finest box players, McAuley joined Solas in 1997, where, besides his accordion playing, he contributes his skills on vocals, concertina and low whistles.

Singer Deirdre Scanlan of Tipperary was introduced to Irish music through Irish dancing, and her earliest lessons were on flute and fiddle. She took up guitar at age 15 and followed with a course of voice training in Limerick, where her repertoire included traditional material. She has released a solo album in Ireland, where she is considered one of the best of a new generation of Irish singers.

Eamon McElholm, who joined Solas in 2002, was born and raised in County Tyrone in the north of Ireland. A multi-instrumentalist, singer and composer, McElholm is a recipient of the prestigious Performing Rights Society-John Lennon Songwriters Award. He was heavily involved with the well-known Irish band Stockton’s Wing as a singer, songwriter and guitarist. McElholm plays guitar, keyboards and cello.

Donny Golden and Cara Butler with Sinead Lawler and Joe Dwyer

Champion Irish step dancers (appearing with Solas)

Saturday: 4:30 p.m. Penobscot, 9:30 p.m. Railroad; Sunday: 3 p.m. Penobscot, 5 p.m. Railroad

The highly intense, athletic and complex form of dance called step dancing is the most visible traditional Irish performing art in the United States. PBS broadcasts, videos and compact discs of hit dance troupes Riverdance and Lord of the Dance have brought traditional Irish dance into nearly every household in America. Rooted in 18th century Ireland, this tradition of dance came to the United States with the nearly 10 million Irish immigrants who arrived over the past century and a half.

Named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts at a White House ceremony in 1995, Donny Golden may be the most respected and influential teacher of Irish step dancing America has ever produced. Born in 1953, he was raised in Brooklyn. His Irish-born parents encouraged him to learn step dancing, and, at age 7, he began studying with master teacher Jerry Mulvihill in the Bronx. He then studied with legendary dancer Jimmy Erwin in Brooklyn. He became the first Irish-American medal winner in both the Oireachtas Rince na hEireann (All-Ireland Dance Championship) and the Oireachtas Rince na Cruinne (All-World Dance Championship), placing second and third, respectively, in 1970. In 1973, at age 16, he won a first-place title in the North American Irish Dance championship.

Raised in Mineola, N.Y., by her County Mayo-born mother and father, Cara Butler couldn’t wait to slip her feet into a pair of jig shoes. She started dance lessons with Golden at age 7 and soon after began entering regional, national and world competitions. She now holds six regional titles, six national titles and five world medals. She works often with Golden and they tour frequently with The Chieftains across North America and Asia. She also has toured with the all-female ensemble Cherish the Ladies, appearing at festivals in North America and Europe.

Joining Donny and Cara are two of their colleagues, Irish step dancers Joe Dwyer and Sinead Lawler.

Phong Nguyen Trio

Traditional Vietnamese music

Saturday: 12:45 p.m. Two Rivers, Musical Traditions of Vietnam at 3:15 p.m. Two Rivers; Sunday: noon Penobscot

Having left his native land in 1973, only one year before the fall of Saigon, Phong Nguyen is recognized around the world as one of the leading performers and scholars of Vietnamese music. His performances of the instrumental music and songs of Vietnam – where work and entertainment songs are beloved for their reflection of daily life – have delighted audiences around the world.

Nguyen brings a rare and extraordinary combination of talents to his work. He is a traditionally trained musician who studied with a village master from age 5. He was a Buddhist novice for 10 years, learning the chant and instrumental accompaniment of nhac le (ritual music) tradition. At age 13, he took up Vietnamese theater music and went on to perform both the cai luong (reformed theater) and hat boi (court musical theater) styles professionally. He sings a large repertoire of dan ca (folk songs from informal, rural life settings) and at the same time is a master of the complex modal system (called dieu) of nhac tai tu music, a more formal entertainment musical tradition still active in the United States. He also studied with mountain tribal musicians and learned the klong put (bamboo tubes) and t’rung (bamboo xylophone). While he is competent on many Vietnamese instruments, he often focuses on the 17-string dan tranh zither and the two-string dan nguyet (long-necked “moon” lute).

Nguyen points out that because the separation in social classes is minimal in Vietnamese culture, folk music and art music share many traits and are more similar than in Western societies. “The folk music is principally vocal,” he says, explaining their differences. “Meanwhile, in art music, there’s vocal and instrumental music together. Folk songs are sung without accompaniment. They’re chanted in the fields while people are working. They don’t bring instruments with them.”

Wedged between the powerful civilizations of China and India, Vietnamese musical culture is complex and dynamic. The ebb and flow of conflict and cultural influence for more than 1,000 years has left strong marks on Vietnamese music – notions of scale and mode, instrument types and ornamented vocal style. While Vietnamese musicians continually adapted foreign elements, their music maintained its own cultural character, an identity defined by repertoire, special modes and stylistic nuances, categories of music, and other traits.

Recent wartime destruction, dislocation and the powerful attraction of Western popular music have challenged once again the distinctiveness of the Vietnamese musical tradition, and few leaders have met that challenge. In the United States, Phong Nguyen (Nguyen Thuyet Phong, in Vietnamese) – musician, scholar and cultural advocate – has been the principal voice of his musical tradition.

After leaving Vietnam, Nguyen stayed in France, where he performed frequently and earned a doctoral degree in music from the Sorbonne in 1982. He then resettled in the United States and taught at Kent State University, the University of Washington and the University of California, Los Angeles. He since has performed and taught extensively throughout this country, reaching Vietnamese-Americans, who have limited access to their musical heritage, and American audiences. He has many recordings on several labels to his credit, including “Traditional Music of Vietnam” on Lyrichord, “Vietnamese Music in France & the United States” on World Music Enterprises and “Song of the Banyan” on Music of the World-World Music Institute. In 1997, Nguyen was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship, this nation’s highest honor for achievement in the traditional arts. In July 2004, he was the recipient of the Ohio Heritage Award.

At this year’s National Folk Festival, he will be joined by his wife, Tuyen Tonnu, on zither and David Badagnani on oboe and percussion. The day after the National Folk Festival ends, Nguyen returns to Vietnam to create that country’s very first ethnomusicology program.

The U.S. Department of State awarded him a Fulbright scholarship to establish the program at the National Conservatory of Music in Hanoi. This work will play a crucial role in the study and perpetuation of Vietnamese traditional music.

The Campbell Brothers

Sacred steel guitar

Friday: 9:15 p.m. Penobscot; Saturday: 2 p.m. Railroad, 4:15 p.m. Two Rivers (Men of Steel with Chuck Campbell and Jerry Douglas), 6:15 p.m. Heritage

The Campbell Brothers presents music from the African-American Holiness-Pentecostal repertoire with a new twist: the growling, wailing, shouting, singing and swinging voice of the steel guitar played as you have never heard it played before. The Campbell Brothers – a family band that consists of brothers Chuck, Phillip and Darick, Phil’s son Carl and their cousin Denise Jackson – is sure to raise the roof in their National Folk Festival debut.

The Campbell Brothers performs music that until recently was heard only in the House of God, Keith Dominion style, in which the electric steel guitar has been a central element of worship services since the late 1930s. The Dominion guitarists, playing pedal and lap steel guitars, have developed distinctive repertoires and playing techniques.

In the late 1930s, brothers Troman and Willie Eason of Philadelphia introduced the electric steel guitar into House of God services. Troman took lessons from a Hawaiian steel guitarist he first heard on the radio and became proficient in the Hawaiian style. Not having the benefit of a teacher, Willie developed his own steel guitar technique that imitated African-American sacred singing. Willie Eason traveled widely to perform street-corner music ministries and to play for worship services, revivals and large House of God assemblies. He became known as “Little Willie and His Talking Guitar.” He also recorded seven 78 rpm records. On two of his recordings, the Soul Stirrers – easily the most popular gospel quartet of the 1960s – provided vocal backup for his singing and steel guitar playing. Largely as a result of Willie Eason’s influence, the steel guitar quickly rose to popularity in the House of God.

The steel guitar is fretless and played with a metal bar that slides and stops over the strings, allowing the player to vary the pitch of notes at will. In fact, the steel guitar takes its name from this metal bar, which usually is made of steel. An accomplished player can employ unrestricted vibrato, execute sustained notes of variable pitch, and add subtle colorings with other techniques not available on a fretted guitar.

For more than 60 years, steel guitarists have provided the driving musical force for spirit-filled church services. The signature sound remains one characterized by single-note passages that uncannily imitate African-American vocal styles.

In services typically lasting three hours or more, the steel guitarist fulfills a variety of musical functions – playing a hymn as a soloist or lead in an instrumental ensemble, providing soulful accompaniment for individual or choral singers or for spontaneous singing from the congregation, adding musical emphasis and punctuation to the preacher’s delivery and improvising swinging, syncopated marches for offertory processions. All the music is focused on a central purpose – to help the congregation become filled with the Holy Spirit.

The Campbell brothers were raised in the “sacred steel” tradition of the House of God, Keith Dominion, in Rush, N.Y., where their father is bishop. Pedal steel guitarist Charles “Chuck” Campbell and his lap steel-playing brother Darick are two of the finest in this tradition.

Chuck began playing steel guitar at age 11 and today is recognized as a great innovator and teacher in the tradition. He developed a unique tuning and setup for the pedal steel that today is emulated by a new generation of steel players. Charles Campbell has been named a 2004 National Heritage Fellow, this nation’s highest honor for achievement in the traditional arts.

Darick Campbell first made his mark in music as a drummer. His choice of the lap steel is a reflection of the influences he has blended to become the most emotional player of The Campbell Brothers musical tour de force.

Musician and songwriter Phillip Campbell began life as a drummer but quickly proceeded to the instrument that is arguably his most accomplished, the bass guitar.

Drummer Carl Campbell is the heartbeat of The Campbell Brothers. Rounding out the band are cousin Denise Jackson’s passionate gospel vocals, which take the ensemble to a level of energy and expression that defies description.

Bobby McMillon

Appalachian ballads, songs and stories

Saturday: noon Two Rivers; Sunday: Song and Ballad Traditions at 1:45 p.m. Two Rivers, 3 p.m. Two Rivers

Born in Lenoir, N.C., in 1951, singer and storyteller Robert Lynn “Bobby” McMillon is a loving keeper of treasured strands of Appalachian culture.

From his father’s family in Cocke County, Tenn., he learned early Baptist hymns and traditional stories and ballads. From his mother’s people in Yancy and Mitchell counties, he heard “booger tales, haint tales,” and legends about the murder of a relative named Charlie Silver.

In Caldwell County, he went to school with relatives of the accused murderer Tom Dula, learned their family stories, and heard ballads, gospel songs and Carter Family recordings.

McMillon always was drawn to old songs and stories, but as a teenager he discovered the Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore in the Lenoir Public Library and learned the historical background and significance of the things he knew. This inspired an enthusiasm for folklore documentation that has made him an invaluable resource to his community.

By age 17, he had begun taping and interviewing family members, neighbors and friends who knew old songs and stories. Even before that, he had begun to develop his skills as a performer. He and his cousins “would get together in the evenings” and “just tell everything in the world that we had heard.”

Because these songs and tales are deeply rooted in his own family and experience, McMillon has a passion for them and for sharing them. His greatest gift is his ability to convey to listeners a feeling for the world from which the stories come. “The real storytelling,” he says, “was so intertwined that a bear tale or a fish tale or a witch tale or a tale of some history that had really happened – a family tale – they were all equally believable.”

When he tells a story, he draws upon deep memories of the people who told it to him. “Paw made the tale come alive for me,” he says. “I can still see him in his chair, knocking ashes from his pipe, and hear his voice conveying pictures in my mind through the melody of his words. And now Paw and his tales live on in the memories and lives of his children, grandchildren and me.”

McMillon has performed throughout his home state as a singer and storyteller. He has appeared at events such as the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife, the A.P. Carter Memorial Festival, national storytelling conferences and the Festival for the Eno. For a decade, he served public schools as part of the Artist in the Schools and Visiting Artist programs. Filmmaker Tom Davenport recently completed a film, “The Ballad of Frankie Silver,” which features McMillon singing the ballad about a woman who murdered her husband and telling stories passed down in his family and community about the murder. In 2000, he received a North Carolina Folk Heritage Award for his lifetime contributions to the state’s traditional culture.

Rachel LeBlanc, Lucie Ouellette and Jimmy Kelly

Ballad traditions from eastern Canada

Sunday: noon Two Rivers, Song and Ballad Traditions at 1:45 p.m. Two Rivers

Three exceptional singers from eastern Canada and northern Maine will share the ballads of their families and communities, many previously unheard by the public, with audiences at the National Folk Festival.

Rachel LeBlanc and her daughter Lucie Ouellette from the St. John Valley sing the traditional French-language ballads that their family has kept for generations, ballads that go back 300 years. Raised on a farm in Edmundston, New Brunswick, LeBlanc was the youngest of a large family whose father sang ballads for hours after supper every evening. As a child, LeBlanc was enraptured by these songs. By the time she was 11, she was spending her evenings at her father’s knee, noting down the words as he sang. She later recorded the ballads sung by her parents and has released two CDs of this material. Earlier this year, LeBlanc was asked to take part in the Ballad Singing Apprenticeship Project, sponsored by the Maine Arts Commission’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship program. Through this project, she is a mentor to women in her community who want to learn these songs and participate in the revival of this endangered musical tradition.

Jimmy Kelly sings the traditional ballads of his community of Shannon, Quebec, one of a small cluster of mixed French-Irish-Scottish-English rural villages north of Quebec City.

The older community of traditional singers, dancers and musicians who once gathered regularly for house parties in Kelly’s village has all but disappeared. Kelly carries on the tradition of unaccompanied English-language balladry with exemplary skill, having grown up in a singing family and married into one as well.

Jerry Douglas

Dobro guitar

Saturday: 2 p.m. Heritage, 4:15 p.m. Two Rivers (Men of Steel with Chuck Campbell), 8:30 p.m. Railroad; Sunday: 1:30 p.m. Railroad

Jerry Douglas is widely recognized as the greatest innovator on the dobro in the last 40 years – possibly the greatest ever. He has been described as the Jimi Hendrix and the Charlie Parker of acoustic music. The New York Times has called him “dobro’s matchless contemporary master.” He has won eight Grammy Awards, several Grammy acknowledgments and countless specialized awards. Though he got his start in bluegrass, he has made an impact in fields ranging from rock ‘n’ roll to jazz, from blues to Celtic, from mainstream country to contemporary classical.

Douglas’ legacy is multifaceted, from time spent with bands such as Alison Krauss + Union Station, The Whites, J.D. Crowe & The New South, The Country Gentlemen and Strength in Numbers. Having played on more than 1,000 albums, he has defined the sounds of diverse recordings, including releases by Garth Brooks, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Reba McEntire and Ray Charles.

At the producer’s helm, Douglas has used his warm analog sounds for albums by Maura O’Connell, Jesse Winchester, the Nashville Bluegrass Band and the Del McCoury Band, while having a major hand in shaping recordings, including Ricky Skaggs’ “Don’t Get Above Your Raising,” Emmylou Harris’ “Roses in the Snow” and the “O Brother, Where Art Thou?” soundtrack.

In addition, Douglas is a bandleader in his own right and composer and soloist on some of the finest instrumental recordings of the past quarter-century. Those recordings have ranged from sparkling, traditional bluegrass to rule-bending improvisation.

Douglas was born in Warren, Ohio. His father, a steelworker who played bluegrass on the side, took his young son to a Flatt & Scruggs concert in 1963. The younger Douglas was so entranced by the sound of Uncle Josh Graves and Brother Oswald Kirby playing the dobro that he committed himself to the instrument then and there.

The dobro guitar was invented by the San Diego-based Dopera brothers in the 1920s. Inspired by a turn-of-the-century Hawaiian fad, the dobro is a wooden guitar with a high nut at the peg head. This high string action allows the player to fret the strings with a bar held in the left hand, like a lap steel guitar. Another distinctive feature is the built-in steel resonator, a pre-electric attempt to increase volume that found favor with both blues and country players. Eventually, the instrument fell into disuse until the legendary Josh Graves gave it new life in the 1950s with Flatt & Scruggs.

After playing for several years with his dad’s group, the West Virginia Travelers, the 17-year-old Douglas was invited to join the pioneering new-grass band The Country Gentlemen in 1973. The next year, he became a member of J.D. Crowe & The New South and was part of the milestone 1975 bluegrass album, “J.D. Crowe & The New South.” It was during this time that the rich tone of his playing and his lightning-fast style earned him his nickname, “Flux.”

In 1976 Douglas and Ricky Skaggs co-founded Boone Creek (Vince Gill was a member for a brief time), the band that introduced a whole new generation of bluegrass bandleaders. In 1979, Douglas released his debut solo album, “Fluxology,” followed three years later by “Fluxedo.”

In the meantime, Douglas became a full-time member of The Whites, the family band led by mandolin legend Buck White and featuring the sweet harmonies of his daughters, Sharon and Cheryl. Douglas stayed with them from 1979 through 1985 but still found time to play on such landmark albums as Emmylou Harris’ 1980 “Roses in the Snow” and Ricky Skaggs’ 1981 “Don’t Get Above Your Raising.”

Douglas won his first Grammy for Best Country Instrumental for the 1983 track “Fireball” and by the mid-’80s was the No. 1 dobro artist on Nashville recording sessions. He kept his solo career alive with a string of brilliant albums including 1986’s “Under the Wire” and 1992’s “Slide Rule.” He formed the quintet Strength in Numbers with Edgar Meyer, Sam Bush, Bela Fleck and Mark O’Connor, and in 1989 the quintet released its landmark recording, “The Telluride Sessions.”

Douglas formed a trio with Russ Barenberg and Edgar Meyer to record the 1993 album “Skip, Hop & Wobble.” Douglas and Tut Taylor co-produced and performed on the multiartist project “The Great Dobro Sessions” (featuring Josh Graves, the late Oswald Kirby, Mike Auldridge, Rob Ickes and others) in 1994, bringing him a second Grammy for Best Bluegrass Album.

In 1996, Douglas joined Nashville bassist Edgar Meyer and India’s Mohan Vina player Vishwa Mohan Bhatt for the genre-bending experiment “Bourbon & Rosewater.” That same year, he and singer-songwriter Peter Rowan collaborated on the album “Yonder.” Douglas released his next solo album, “Restless on the Farm,” in 1998. That same year, Alison Krauss asked Douglas to fill in on a 1998 tour. That trip went so well that Krauss offered the dobroist a full-time job and Douglas accepted. He has been with Krauss + Union Station ever since.

In 2004, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences handed Douglas, along with Alison Krauss + Union Station, two more Grammys for Bluegrass Album (“Live”) and Country Instrumental Performance (“Cluck Old Hen”). The Nashville Scene Critic’s Poll has named Jerry Douglas 2004’s Best Musician.

Kotchegna Dance Company

Ivorian dance and percussion ensemble

Saturday: noon Penobscot, 2:15 p.m. Children’s Area; Sunday: 1 p.m. Penobscot

The Kotchegna Dance Company is recognized as one of America’s premier African dance and percussion ensembles. It carries the Ivory Coast’s rich and colorful dance, drumming, mime and musical traditions to audiences across the nation.

The word “kotchegna” means “messenger” in Mahou, one of the languages spoken in the West African nation. Renowned dancer, choreographer and drummer Vado Diomande chose this phrase for the name of the dance company, L’Ensemble Kotchegna D’Abidjan, which he founded in his native city of Abidjan in 1989. When he emigrated to New York in 1994, Diomande re-formed his group as the Kotchegna Dance Company.

Diomande was introduced to dance and traditional music by his father, Sogbeti Diomande, a master dancer in the Ivorian village of Toufinga.

He began dancing and drumming early in childhood. Joining the Ivory Coast national ballet at age 14, he mastered more than 60 Ivorian dance and drumming traditions, a task that took many years to complete. He is recognized today as one of the pre-eminent dancers and teachers of West African traditional forms, with students on three continents.

While performing with the Ivory Coast national ballet, Diomande became known for the ritual stilt dance of his village. Gue-Pelou (pronounced geh peh-LOO), a benevolent 9-foot-tall masked figure named after the God of the Sacred Forest, acrobatically dances on stilts and serves as a mediator between the spirit and living worlds, chasing away evil and providing protection. This masked figure brings blessings and protection to important celebrations, including marriages, deaths, initiations and harvests. Diomande explains that the dancer doesn’t “perform.” Gue-Pelou, instead, is “inhabited” by the spirit.

In addition to the dramatic Gue-Pelou ritual, the Kotchegna Dance Company presents a variety of traditional Ivorian dances, including the sacred mask Zaouli (zah-oh-LEE), a female deity displaying animal characteristics and the Bolohi (panther) mask.

Los Fantasmas del Valle

Musica tejana from the Rio Grande Valley

Saturday: noon Kenduskeag, 3:15 p.m. Kenduskeag; Sunday: 3 p.m. Kenduskeag, 5:15 p.m. Heritage

Los Fantasmas del Valle plays la musica tejana, also called Tex-Mex or conjunto (kohn-HOON-toh), a lively style originating in the late 19th century when German, Czech and Polish immigrants introduced the button accordion to Mexican working-class communities in southern Texas.

Before this time, the regional music was a mix of traditional Mexican genres and popular European dances such as the polka, schottische, mazurka and waltz. Over the next 50 years, a new form evolved, combining the accordion sound with this dance music. By the early 1930s, the modern conjunto (group) style had emerged as a vibrant and distinctive Tex-Mex fusion.

A boisterous music performed primarily for dancing, conjunto revolves around the sounds of the accordion and the bajo sexto, a 12-string guitarlike instrument that adds a bass rhythm. Electric bass and drums were added later, beginning in the 1950s.

In 1968, Los Fantasmas del Valle formed in Mercedes, Texas, a city in the Lower Rio Grande Valley. Called by locals simply El Valle, the region is a hotbed of conjunto music. Inspired by the lyrics of its first recorded song, “Mis Pasos Andaran,” about a young man whose ghost haunts the girl he loved, the group adopted the name “Fantasmas” (ghosts).

Since then, Los Fantasmas del Valle has made 40 recordings and performed all over the United States and in Mexico. Founding members Hector Barron (bass) and Julian Figueroa (bajo sexto, vocals) were joined eight years ago by drummer Cruz Gonzalez. The group’s newest member, 20-year-old Rodney Rodriguez (accordion), joined in May 2000. He replaced Mike Gonzalez, who contributed to the success of the group for more than 25 years before leaving for health reasons. In 2002, the group was honored as Conjunto of the Year by the South Texas Conjunto Association.

The “Valley-style” music of Los Fantasmas del Valle is held by many to be the “true” tejano music, “conjunto puro.” The band’s steady, driving rhythms and tight vocal harmonies create a sound that comes from years of working together.

It’s an irresistible music made for celebration and dancing that brings a taste of south Texas to this year’s festival.

Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble

Music from the Middle East

Saturday: 4:15 p.m. Heritage, 5:45 p.m. Penobscot; Sunday: 2 p.m. Penobscot, Arabic Music Traditions at 3:45 p.m. Two Rivers

The Boston-based Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble is an extraordinary collection of virtuoso musicians who perform a variety of Middle Eastern music. Their repertoire ranges from Muwashahat, the ancient poetic songs of Andalusian Spain, to the classical music of the Ottoman Turkish Empire and the vibrant Egyptian popular music of the 20th century, music popularized by singers Muhammad Abdul Wahhab and Umm Kulthoum.

Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble’s director and percussionist, Karim Nagi Mohammed, plays the riqq (a tambourinelike instrument with double cymbal rows and a fish-skin or synthetic head), the tabla (an Egyptian goblet-shaped hand-drum), and performs Arabic folk dances. The ensemble features Jamal Sinnu on qanun (hand-plucked zither), Kareem Roustom on the oud (fretless lute), Alber Agha (vocals and percussion) and Nikolai Ruskin on the nay (reed flute), mizmar (reed pipe) and percussion. The group will be joined at the National Folk Festival by talented dancer Jamileh, who will perform classical Arabic and Egyptian folk dances.

Mohammed is an accomplished musician and a principal figure in Boston’s Arabic music community. A prime mover in organizing Arabic music presentations and educational activities in the Boston area, Mohammed, a native Egyptian living in the United States since the late 1970s, produces Arabesque Mondays, a monthly event of Arabic traditional music held at Cambridge’s Club Passim.

Since its inception four years ago, Arabesque Mondays has grown markedly in popularity, both in the Arab-American community and among Arabic music enthusiasts. The event regularly sells out and has become a community institution.

Mohammed has expanded his musical efforts to educate Americans about Arabic culture, particularly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. With the overarching philosophy that “people should try to learn about other cultures through their arts, not their politics,” he formed the Sharq Arabic Music Ensemble. The group soon had performances at many New England schools, community centers and colleges. He also recently began teaching Arabic percussion at the New England Conservatory of Music.

David Doucet

Cajun guitar and ballads

Saturday: Guitar Traditions at 1 p.m. Penobscot, 2:30 p.m. Two Rivers; Sunday: 1 p.m. at Two Rivers with Scott Fore, Song and Ballad Traditions at 1:45 p.m. Two Rivers

David Doucet is best known as the guitarist for the famous Cajun band BeauSoleil. Only recently has he begun to showcase his talents as a soloist, and in this capacity, Doucet has defined a musical territory all his own.

While the guitar long has been a featured rhythm instrument in Cajun music, Doucet has reinvented it as a compelling solo voice, employing fingerpicking and flat-picking styles identified with folk and blues players such as Doc Watson, John Hurt and John Fahey. The result is Cajun music with an intricacy and subtle beauty that cast traditional songs in a stunning new light.

Doucet was born in 1957 in Lafayette, La. He joined his brother Michael and the BeauSoleil band in 1976 and since has toured the world – from Denmark, France and Switzerland to Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait – and has earned eight Grammy nominations.

Amid his success with BeauSoleil, he has developed a unique perspective on the guitar in Cajun music. In 1990, he released his first solo recording, “Quand J’ai Parti,” showcasing the acoustic guitar as a lead instrument. On his second recording, “1957: Solo Cajun Guitar” (1999), he refined a style that combines the instincts of a cultural insider with a masterful technique and creativity.

With his rendering of traditional tunes and original compositions, he captures the essence of traditional Cajun fiddle and accordion music and with his warm, vibrant voice explores the almost forgotten realm of the Cajun balladeer.

The Sean Mencher Combo

Vintage rock ‘n’ roll

Saturday: 1 p.m. Penobscot (Guitar Traditions with Sean Mencher), 3 p.m. at Railroad with Al Hawkes, 4:30 p.m. at Kenduskeag with Al Hawkes; Sunday: 1:45 p.m. Ken-duskeag, 3:30 p.m. Heritage

Maine’s Sean Mencher Combo performs classic, all-American music – vintage rock ‘n’ roll and spiced-up country, with Western swing, boogie, bluegrass, jazz and blues.

Sean Mencher toured and performed around the world with his former Austin, Texas-based group, High Noon, throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Now, with his New England-based lineup, Mencher leads with his unique thumb-picking guitar style of boogie and swing. His combo features Shane Kiel on upright string bass, Mark Cousins on drums, Jay Termini on acoustic rhythm guitar and Zach Ovington on fiddle. Their music has taken them from Carnegie Hall to Lincoln Center to an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s “Late Night” show.

In recent years, The Sean Mencher Combo has performed in Maine on the TV show “Good Morning Portland,” for the governor at the Blaine House in Augusta, the Maine Festival, the Rockland Lobster Festival, New Year’s Portland, the Governor’s Conference for a Creative Economy and the Fryeburg Fair.

Joining The Sean Mencher Combo as a special guest on Saturday only is guitarist Al Hawkes, founder of Event Records in Westbrook, Maine. Allerton Hawkes was born in Rhode Island on Dec. 25, 1930. He started playing when he was 14. He was originally a solo artist but later teamed up with the girl across the street as Dot and Tex. His next group was the Eddie Must Trio, which played country and novelty pop numbers. From 1946 to 1948, while still in high school, Hawkes played school functions and events for organizations in the Portland area. Ingenious with equipment as well as music, he built his own electric pickup and amplifier.

From 1949 to 1951, the Allerton-Alton Hawkes show was broadcast on a five-station network throughout the state of Maine. Upon discharge from the service in 1954, Hawkes formed a group known as Al Hawkes and the Cumberland Ridge Runners.

The group served as the warm-up band and backup band for many acts from radio station WWVA in Wheeling, W.Va. In 1952, Hawkes and Charlie Bailey of the Bailey Brothers, then also on WWVA, formed Event Records, an influential recording company in New England that has been instrumental in making Maine’s roots scene as well-known and popular as it is today. Hawkes still continues this business and has recorded many of the top New England artists, including Maine’s Dick Curless, who made his first commercial recording on the Event label.

Hawkes’ talent is recognized far beyond the boundaries of New England. He was voted the Country Music Association’s 1991 Instrumentalist of the Year.

Anah Highlanders

Scottish pipe and drum band

Saturday: 7 p.m. parade from Heritage Stage to Railroad Stage

The Anah Shrine Highlanders Pipe and Drum Band was formed in 1976 as a musical and marching unit. The band made its first appearance at the June Ceremonial in Presque Isle in 1977 and has since performed in parades and concerts in every New England state, the Maritime Provinces, Quebec and Ontario.

Based in Bangor, the Anah Highlanders have performed escort duties for dignitaries, including governors and the president of the United States. The Highlanders played at the opening of the Citadel in Nova Scotia and the College of Piping in Prince Edward Island and have competed and won four Northeast Shrine Pipe and Drum Championships. They are led by pipe major Paul Hazard and drum major Tom Sawyer.

As its full-dress uniform, the band wears the traditional British Army Highland Regimental uniform and has adopted the MacIntosh Tartan in honor of past Potentate Hershel MacIntosh from Houlton, who was instrumental in the formation of the unit.

Members of the Anah Highlanders help to keep the Scottish performing arts alive while serving the community. The band also provides instruction on the great Highland bagpipes, the smallpipes and the Highland drums.

One of the band’s most cherished goals, however, is helping those in need. Funds raised by the unit from non-Shrine parades and other projects help support and create awareness for the Shrine hospitals for children.

The Quebe Sisters

Texas fiddling

Saturday: Fiddle Traditions at 2:15 p.m. Penobscot, 6:15 p.m. Two Rivers; Sunday: 12:15 p.m.at Children’s Area with Brooks E. Robertson and Buster B. Jones, Young Hot Shots with Brooks E. Robertson and Buster B. Jones at 2:30 p.m. Railroad, 4:15 p.m. Penobscot

Three talented young fiddling sisters from Burleson, Texas, are creating quite a stir. Grace Quebe, 18, Sophia, 16, and Hulda, 13, who play Western swing, vintage country and traditional Texas fiddle tunes, often in three-part harmony, make their National Folk Festival debut at this year’s festival.

Six years ago, the sisters went to a fiddle contest near their hometown and fell in love with music. “I don’t know why we do it,” Grace says. “No one ever made us play together. And we all started at the same time so we’re all at the same level.” Now they are dedicated to playing the fiddle and learning about old-time music.

The Quebe sisters have all been Texas State Champion fiddlers, and each has won titles at the National Old-Time Fiddlers Contest. Hulda won the title of National Junior-Junior Champion, and Grace and Sophia took first and second place, respectively, in the National Junior Championships.

Red Steagall was quoted in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as saying: “I think they’re some of the most talented young people I’ve ever heard. Their tone is so true – they play so well together, it’s almost like they’re singing. People just stand around in awe when they play.” Ricky Skaggs was impressed enough to invite them to join him onstage at Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth and featured them on his Texas tour dates. The highlight of the girls’ young careers to date was an invitation by Skaggs to perform as his guests at the 78th birthday celebration of the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. They also were showcased several times on WSM Radio in Nashville and performed on the Ernest Tubb Midnite Jamboree.

The Quebe sisters often are accompanied on guitar by their accomplished fiddle teachers, Joey and Sherry McKenzie, and bass player Mark Abbott. By the time Joey McKenzie was 12, he was accompanying fiddlers and playing old-time music, jazz and swing tunes on several different instruments. Over the years, Joey McKenzie, a three-time World Champion Fiddler, has been one of the most successful competition musicians in the United States, having won well over 100 fiddle contests and dozens of awards. Sherry McKenzie also has won numerous titles in state and national fiddle contests, including World Champion Fiddler. She is the only woman since the 1930s to have won that championship.

“They’re born to be fiddle players,” Joey McKenzie said of the Quebe sisters in the Star-Telegram article. “They have a natural understanding of how things are supposed to be, sometimes even before I’d say it. They’re just happy about music. They want to play, whether they make a dime or not, and they want other traditional musicians to respect them.”

Recently, in response to frequent requests, the sisters recorded their first compact disc, “Texas Fiddlers.” Skaggs listed their CD for sale on his Web site. “I just really want to help these girls in whatever way I can,” he said. “They’re so young and talented and as sweet as can be … so I want to make their CD available on my Web site to give them a little more visibility.”

Besides the Grand Ole Opry and Bass Performance Hall, The Quebe Sisters have performed at Texas Christian University in Fort Worth before the Duchess of York, on T-Bone Burnett’s Great High Mountain Tour with Alison Krauss, and at the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.

Henry Butler and the Game Band

New Orleans piano professor

Friday: 8 p.m. Kenduskeag; Saturday: 2 p.m. Kenduskeag, 7:30 p.m. Railroad; Sunday: 4:15 p.m. Railroad (Henry Butler solo performance)

Henry Butler is the Crescent City’s reigning keyboard king. In a city with as rich a musical heritage as New Orleans, and especially one with legions of legendary pianists, that’s no small feat. Versatile and gifted, this brilliant pianist has a mastery of jazz, funk, R&B, blues and stride-piano styles that is unrivaled. His vocals are nearly as impressive – soulful, expressive and musically unerring. “Once I sit at the keyboard, it’s right there,” says Butler. “I have an instrument on which I can express anything I want.” Critics rave about this virtuoso pianist, who mixes soul with brains.

Born in New Orleans and blind since infancy, Butler manifested an interest in music at an early age. By age 7 he had joined the glee club at the Louisiana School for the Blind, where he already was studying piano. He was performing professionally by age 14 and went on to study voice in high school. Butler attended Southern University in Baton Rouge, where he fell under the spell of jazz giant Alvin Batiste, who became his mentor. Batiste taught Butler the importance of playing what’s in the mind’s eye to improvise.

After graduating from college, Butler went on to earn a master’s degree from Michigan State University before returning to New Orleans in 1974. While teaching at the New Orleans Center for the Creative Arts, he spent some intense afternoons in the living room of the legendary Professor Longhair, learning his shuffle patterns, trills and parallel thirds and sixths. “Fess showed me how he approached the piano and mainly taught by demonstrating,” recalls Butler. “I listened and tried to emulate what he had shown me.”

Butler moved in 1980 to Los Angeles, where he played music and worked as a talent development consultant for Motown Records and the Stevie Wonder organization. After he sat in on a jam session with bassist Charlie Haden, his musical fortunes changed.

He recorded his first album, “Fivin’ Around for MCA/Impulse!” in 1986. After a second release, “The Village,” Butler’s growing reputation as an important force in the jazz world began earning him hordes of new fans and rave reviews. He recorded two albums for Windham Hill, “Orleans Improvisations” (1990) and “Blues and More” (1992). In 1996, “For All Seasons” was released on Atlantic Jazz, again to critical acclaim. That year, the pianist shifted gears, heading back to New Orleans and traditional New Orleans piano music.

“I decided, after listening to much of the jazz music that was coming out on all the labels, that something wasn’t right,” Butler said in an interview with Down Beat magazine in January 1999. “I believe that jazz, generally speaking, is going into a tank. … I think I have a chance in my life right now to push the envelope in the blues arena. I was starting not to have as much fun [in jazz], not because I could not play but because I was feeling the whole thing was more limiting. I just wanted to have fun and gig.”

His transition back to blues seems to be working. Butler won the 1998 Best of the Beat award from OffBeat magazine for Best New Orleans Piano Player and continues to impress critics, fans and fellow musicians with his talents. He has been nominated for the fourth straight year for the W.C. Handy Awards (best instrumentalist, piano).

“Homeland,” his latest release, is squarely in the New Orleans rhythm and blues tradition and features an all-star quartet that Butler will lead at the festival this summer (Butler, piano and vocals, Vasti Jackson, guitars, Nick Daniels III, bass, and Raymond Weber, drums).

As Dr. John says: “The pride of New Orleans and visionistical down-home cat and hellified piano plunker to boot.”

Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca

African/Cuban ensemble

Friday: 9:30 p.m. Railroad; Saturday: 5 p.m. Railroad, 9 p.m. Kenduskeag

Makina Loca is word play in two languages; it means “crazy machine” in Spanish and “dancing in a trance” in Kikongo. After seeing a performance, you’ll experience both firsthand.

Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca’s infectious fusion of Latin and African music has been hailed as “the future of salsa.” Lemvo grew up in the cosmopolitan African metropolis of Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) during the Cold War years of the 1950s and 1960s. It was a period when Cuban influence on the continent was strong, and Cuban music had taken Africa by storm. The Congolese often could be heard singing in Spanish the Cuban songs they loved. When Lemvo first heard this music, he did not understand the lyrics, but as he states, “the rhythms, the melody, and the spirit of the music touched me deeply. In their songs I heard the drums and voices of Africa.” He was overcome with emotion when he recognized that this was the music his enslaved ancestors took with them to the Americas. When Cuban music traveled back to Africa, it instantly was recognized and embraced. The African musical diaspora had come full circle.

Lemvo describes the buoyant sound of Congolese rumba as a cross between the quintessential Cuban orchestral dance genre son montuno, itself a blend of African and Spanish elements, and calypso. Soukous, a related dance style, has a faster, merenguelike beat, although all Congolese dance music, including rumba, often is referred to as soukous today. The Africans’ incorporation of the Latin beat was actually a reclamation of their own thumb piano rhythms, which a century before had been integrated by tres players in Cuba’s Oriente province to create son.

Lemvo founded Makina Loca in 1990, combining the two schools of music he loved: Congolese rumba and Cuban son montuno. Though others had combined African and Cuban music, such as Tabu Ley and Grand Kalle & African Jazz, Lemvo wanted to “Africanize” the soul of Cuban music. He introduced the Congolese guitar and decided to sing in a variety of languages – Kikongo, Lingala and Spanish among them. Makina Loca’s music is colorful and diverse, consisting of an irresistible fusion of Afro-Cuban rhythms spanning everything from Lemvo’s native Congolese soukous and rumba to salsa, Cuban son, Puerto Rican bomba and Dominican merengue.

Makina Loca is a 10-member musical powerhouse. These musicians include a Grammy Award winner, several conservatory graduates and one of Africa’s best guitarists. The group includes Serge Kasimoff on piano, Dante Pascuzzo on bass, John Roberts on trombone, multi-instrumentalist and arranger Nino Jesus, Stephen Giraldo on trumpet and vocals, Raul Pineda on drums, Arturo Solar on trumpet, Huit Kilo on soukous guitar, and Fran Martinez on congas.

Since forming Makina Loca, Lemvo has refined his craft and vision, inspiring audiences throughout the United States, Europe, the Americas and Australia to dance to his life-celebrating music. His songs have been performed and recorded by such Latin luminaries as Colombia’s Joe Arroyo and Orquesta Reve from Cuba. In film, Ricardo Lemvo & Makina Loca appeared in the 1998 movie “Dance With Me” starring Vanessa Williams and Chayanne.