Welcome to Bangor and the premiere of The American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront. We are pleased to share with you this extraordinary collection of performing and traditional artists from the Americas and the world.

For the last three years, the National Folk Festival has been the annual event on Bangor’s waterfront. Inspired and energized by that success, American Folk Festival organizers have sought to spark the same spirit and ensure the same quality of folk artists featured in previous festivals.

We encourage you to be a part of this unique experience in eastern Maine, which has a rich history and traditions of its own. Immigrants hailing from Italy to Ireland and Greece to Pakistan have enriched this region with their music and other folkways. From the logging and shipbuilding days of the 1800s to the creative economy of the 21st century, Bangor enjoys a unique lifestyle we call our own. In addition, recreational opportunities abound throughout Maine. To hike Mount Katahdin, fly-fish a stream or paddle the rocky Maine coast, this is “Vacationland” for some; for many others it is home.

The sponsors of the festival, along with many friends, businesses and generous supporters, have provided this free public event to you. Prepare yourself to be immersed in the tastes, sights and sounds of talented performers and artisans of the first American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront. Enjoy!

Brad Ryder

Chairman, Board of Directors, The American Folk Festival

Welcome to Bangor, our historic waterfront and the first American Folk Festival.

After hosting the National Folk Festival for the last three years, 2005 marks the debut of The American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront. While the name is new, the festival will feature the same astounding variety of performers, cultural exhibits and local artisans. It will allow all of us to sample not only our regional traditions, but also the cultures and music of the world.

In today’s world, art and cultural activities are essential elements of any community – both as an amenity for its residents and as a vibrant part of its economy. As a city, we welcome our own residents to the festival and share with them the pride that it brings to Bangor and our region. We also welcome visitors from throughout Maine, the nation and the world. The sounds, tastes and smells of many cultures are the main fare for this weekend, but they are only a part of what we offer.

The Bangor region has a growing arts and cultural community. From Penobscot Theatre, the Maine Discovery Museum and the Bangor Symphony Orchestra to the Maine Center for the Arts and the University of Maine Museum of Art, we offer a wide and exciting range of cultural and artistic opportunities for residents and visitors – all in the context of a small urban community where everyone knows your name.

Whether you are in Bangor for a day, a week, or a lifetime, we urge you to sample what we offer.

We are proud and excited to welcome you to The American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront. Enjoy the music. Dance into the evening. Share the joy of discovery.

Frank J. Farrington

Mayor, City of Bangor

We practice our ancient traditions,” the Eskimo headman told Knud Rasmussen, “so that the universe may be preserved.”

Those who organize The American Folk Festival are fans and followers of that ancient keeper of truth and beauty who welcomed the famous Arctic explorer to his world and helped him understand it.

Like him, we believe in the preservation of living culture. We are not opposed to the saving of the dry bones and artifacts of older culture, but we prefer the living.

We find the living arts of our nation and the world endlessly fascinating. So while you are here, we are eager for you to glimpse beauty from distant places, but we are also concerned with matters that are both American and “other.”

New Orleans bandleader and musician Don Vappie performs in a Creole jazz tradition kept by family and small community in the Crescent City. The music has survived as a Creole thing, and Don is eager for you to understand it, but he speaks with music, not words. He preserves his universe with cool.

Paul Dahlin is from the Twin Cities, but his violin music is from a remote corner of Sweden. His grandpa brought it over in the 1920s, when the sound was remote and pure. A scourge of uplifters got hold of the music, and the Swedes classicized it. Paul’s grandpa was fiddling away in St. Paul, and didn’t notice. He taught Paul, and now Paul is recognized in Sweden as a keeper of something ancient and good, a person preserving the universe.

Quebec music is often hyperactive, and frequently funny, and among the finest keepers of the great kitchen music of that special place is Le Vent du Nord. Kitchen music? Yes, much of this music is from long winter nights and Quebec kitchen parties, and these lads are brilliant in preserving a part of that universe.

Michael and David Doucet are from the Acadian part of Louisiana and for 30 years have carried the music of the Louisiana French to the world. They may speak of Dennis and Canray, ancient musicians whose wild sounds they have taken all over the earth, preserving a small universe by enlarging it.

Tony Ellis is from the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I think he may have been the person who invented tone. I can tell you that he is preserving his grandma’s music and that he also preserves his part of the musical universe by writing new tunes as good as the old ones.

There are many others here preserving the universe, and I hope you will join us, preserve as much as you can handle, and be especially happy this weekend.

Joe Wilson

Chairman

National Council for the Traditional Arts