Darlene Blake stood outside the dance tent at the Great Lakes Folk Festival last weekend in East Lansing, Mich. Le Vent du Nord, a bouncy Quebecois group, was playing fiddle music, and people were learning step dancing from one of the singers. Blake, a retired operating room nurse, planned to spend the day with her family at the festival, which she has attended each year since 1999.

Back then, it was the National Folk Festival, the three-year summer residency produced by the National Council for the Traditional Arts in Washington. The National arrived in East Lansing, a college town in an industrial state, to continue its mission of generating and preserving folk music and other traditional arts, but also to offer a boost to the region’s cultural and economic engines.

When the National moved to Bangor in 2002, the city of East Lansing and Michigan State University Museum, with help from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, created the Great Lakes event to continue the excitement about international music and cultural traditions.

“We were sad to hear the National Folk Festival was moving on, but this one has been fun, too,” said Blake. “We enjoy it so much.”

Blake’s comment is the most important indicator that the Great Lakes Folk Festival is a popular success and could serve as a helpful model as Bangor proceeds with its own spinoff festival. The American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront will kick off in August 2005, when the National takes up its next three-year stint in Richmond, Va.

Of course, there are other calculations of success – an increase in sales at local stores, a heightened awareness of the city as a cultural hub, the cheerfulness with which performers and audiences interact, the effectiveness of logistics, the amount of money that shows up in the coffers of the Bucket Brigade, the intrepid volunteer canvassers who walk through the streets nickling and diming the crowd to raise money for the festival.

In the end, the most important component is the happiness of people at the festival. They learned from the National, which will have its final year in Bangor next weekend, that folk festivals are fun. The challenge for the Great Lakes organizers was carrying that over into a locally produced event.

No one could predict if the spinoff would be a success.

But it is. Despite the fact that the state cut its funding for the event by half this year and that the festival has four performance stages, which is one less than National had, organizers in East Lansing see themselves as continuing and expanding on the work of the NCTA. The festival is smaller, and many of the groups come from Michigan, a state with a rich music history. There is an intense focus on folk arts, fed primarily by the folklorists at the MSU Museum.

Yet to the average festival-goer, the Great Lakes is an exciting, engaging, high-quality and, very importantly, free event.

“The National Folk Festival raised the bar so high compared to any other festival in this area,” said Rootsmon Bird, host of a weekly reggae radio show. “We’re talking eight to 10 years to get to that level. With the Great Lakes Folk Festival, they are making some very strong efforts, and they are learning. In this community, it’s one of the better festivals around.”

Bird announced one of the performers last weekend, and then danced in the crowd, which, after a slow start on Friday, reached 80,000 on Sunday. That’s a third less than the 120,000 that turned out for the last year of the National in East Lansing in 2001. “It’s slower than a football game but a little busier than a normal weekend,” said fire marshal Bob Pratt, standing in the city center as participants danced to zydeco, drank root beer and ate pierogis.

“We’re really pleased with what’s happening at the festival,” said Kurt Dewhurst, co-director of the Michigan State University Museum, which produces the festival. “We have strong traditions in the Great Lakes region. Based on the feedback, the crowds will be what they’ve been and continue to build.”

Advice from the festival-going Midwesterners to Bangorians varied but nearly always came back to four key elements: Keep it free, keep the quality high, hire good leaders and raise a lot of money.

To many, that means retaining the NCTA as the programming partners. Indeed, Bangor has requested that the relationship between the NCTA and the American be retained, though the details of that relationship have not yet been worked out. The only other National spinoff that the NCTA continues to co-produce is the Lowell Folk Festival in Massachusetts, and it is one of the largest and most successful free festivals in the country.

“Our hope is always on the continuation of a festival,” said Julia Olin, associate director at NCTA and primary programmer of the National in Bangor. “We hope what’s best for the event will occur. We don’t have expectations. Is it nice to remain involved? You bet it is. It’s our baby, too. A lot of times we remain involved and then are phased out over time. Because Bangor wants the kind of event that the NCTA wants, we hope to stay involved. We are very like-minded. There’s absolute agreement on what the festival should be – a large, diverse event.”

The Great Lakes is just that. Nevertheless, East Lansing severed formal ties with the NCTA after the National. Because the city had experience staging festivals and programming folk music at a local coffeehouse and because the MSU Museum wanted to devote a hefty portion of the festival to material folk arts, the organizers felt they should take responsibility for the $750,000 event with only informal input from the NCTA.

“We did a lot of ongoing consulting with the NCTA on an informal basis,” said Lora Helou, publicist for the festival. “We brought back some of the sound people the first year. That gave us a great sense of confidence and continuity. There were a lot of questions that first year. How would this event come off? But we did it. We were really happy that first year but by no means is it a finished product.”

While nearly everyone is patriotic about the Great Lakes Festival, some still feel nostalgic for the inimitable spirit of the National.

“If the National had stayed involved, it would have been better,” said Mike Hughes, entertainment editor for the Lansing State Journal, which contributes more than $25,000 to the event. “There’s no doubt that the quality of the acts for the National Folk Festival was a little higher. Some things don’t work as well now, but I still love the festival. We really enjoy it.”

Bob Blackman, host of “The Folk Tradition,” a weekly radio hour of folk music, and member of the Great Lakes programming committee, said the festival has maintained many of the standards put in place by the National. But budgetary considerations always strain programming.

“The largest difficulty is probably budgetary,” said Blackman, who co-founded the Ten Pound Fiddle Coffeehouse, which presents folk music throughout the year. “Without having as much money as at the National, our ability to get the best-known names has been limited somewhat. But once you have a local audience that knows it’s wonderful and has learned that all the activities are great, then you develop an audience that will come out for the whole event. I would hope after three years of the National, any community would have some sense of what it is. … You want this to be on people’s radar really early. You need to let people know: Save this weekend. Don’t plan your wedding. Don’t go to your cabin. Or you’ll miss this festival.”

Singer Linda Lay and the Appalachian old-time string band Springfield Exit, which performed last year in Bangor, opened the East Lansing festival this year to a thin crowd on Friday night. Lay had this to say to Bangor: “Keep the diversity. Being diverse and having different styles of music, from Irish to Mexican to country and bluegrass, that’s what makes the draw. It’s entertaining. That’s it in a nutshell.”

But diversity takes money, said Ted Staton, city manager for the last 10 years. The city, he said, gives $125,000 to the festival in cash and in-kind donations. About $75,000 of that sum is dedicated specifically to music programming and mirrors the amount the NCTA spends on programming each year for the National.

Each year in East Lansing, the city decides if it can afford the festival, Staton said. He hopes the support will continue to be there, but he couldn’t look any further ahead than next year. Organizers, he added, have been forced to be more resourceful about fund raising. This year, they established “Great Friends,” a membership organization of private and business sponsors.

Still, Staton warned, charging admission to the festival is not an option.

“We want this to be our living room and we don’t want an admission charge to our living room,” said Staton.

On Saturday, the festival wasn’t in David Ladd’s living room, but it was in his work place. A merchant in the town center, Ladd said his jewelry store had its best single day of business in 23 years during last year’s festival. This year, he didn’t like the hip-hop music blaring from the nearby main stage. But sales were strong.

“I’ve been generally very pleased with the festival and thought it held up well compared to the National, which was excellent,” said Ladd. “We were afraid the Great Lakes wouldn’t do as well. But it has helped our business a lot.”

If East Lansing has anything to teach Bangor, it’s to stay connected to the roots laid down by the National. It may have to downsize. It may have to look closer to home for excellent musicians. It surely will have to continue muscular fund-raising efforts. In fact, NCTA’s Olin, who arrives in town this weekend, said Bangor has only one challenge: money.

She emphasized, however, that Bangor has captured the hearts not only of festival lovers in the region but also of the NCTA.

“I think Bangor is an extraordinary community,” she said. “We like everyone so much, and we enjoy all the folks we work with there. It’s positive and fun. We’re really proud of Bangor. Who wouldn’t want to stay involved?”

The National Folk Festival will take place 5:30-10:30 p.m. Aug. 27, noon-10:30 p.m. Aug. 28 and noon-6 p.m. Aug. 29, on the Bangor Waterfront. The American Folk Festival on the Bangor Waterfront will take place Aug. 26-28, 2005. For information, visit www.americanfolkfestival.com or call 992-2630.