BANGOR – National Folk Festival organizers have announced the first six of more than 20 performing groups that will be featured in August at the event in Bangor.

They are: Blinky and the Roadmasters, Vishten, Henry Butler and the Game Band, The Birmingham Sunlights, Harmonia and Sheila Kay Adams.

Harmonia, a seven-piece ensemble based in Cleveland, presents both the urban and rural traditional folk music of Eastern Europe. The musicians in the group come from varied backgrounds but in Harmonia find a common musical language.

Henry Butler is the reigning keyboard king of New Orleans. Versatile and gifted, this pianist’s mastery of jazz, funk, R&B, blues and stride piano styles is unrivaled. His vocals are soulful, expressive and musically unerring.

Sheila Kay Adams comes from a small mountain community in western North Carolina. For seven generations, her family has maintained the tradition of passing down the English, Scottish and Irish ballads that came over with her ancestors in the late 1700s. She learned these ballads from her relatives, primarily from her great-aunt, Dellie Chandler Norton.

The Birmingham Sunlights are keepers of a deep American tradition: the art of unaccompanied, four-part gospel harmony singing. This music has a heritage in their home of Jefferson County, Alabama, the heartland of African-American a cappella gospel quartet singing.

Vishten’s music is a hardy mixture of Acadian, Irish and Scottish styles, with fiery fiddling and powerful step dancing taking front and center. Formed in 2000 on their native Prince Edward Island, Vishten is a sextet of young traditional Acadian musicians and dancers whose stage show recalls the joy and energy of the Acadian “kitchen party,” informal community gatherings where all are welcome to sing, play and dance.

Blinky and the Roadmasters, from St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, are led by saxophonist Sylvester “Blinky” McIntosh, renowned island musician and recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship Award in 1987. They play traditional Crucian (from St. Croix) music regularly at quadrille dances, festivals, private parties and nightclubs around the island. This music is sometimes called “scratch,” taking its name from the gourd rasp, or squash, that is a distinctive part of the rhythm in the band.

These are just the first of nearly two dozen groups that will perform on the five stages of the National Folk Festival Aug. 27-29.

For more information about the festival, visit www.nationalfolkfestival.com or contact the National Folk Festival at 30 Main St., Suite 220, Bangor 04401, 207-992-2630.