At 14, Brooks E. Robertson is not the youngest performer at this weekend’s 66th National Folk Festival on the Bangor waterfront. But it’s likely he’s the one with the least amount of experience. At 12, he had never played guitar, let alone heard of the fingerpicking technique for which he is now known. Earlier this year, the Oregonian won the Prairie Home Companion Talent from Twelve to Twenty contest on radio and appeared at the Montreal Jazz Festival.

Not bad for only two years in the business.

After studying with Buster B. Jones, with whom he is appearing this weekend, Robertson says he is more than simply an upstart talent. A CD he and his teacher plan to release will be called “Links in a Chain,” and the title expresses the role the freshman in high school sees himself playing in the folk world.

“I play music that has been carried down,” he said in a recent phone conversation. “I’m the next link.”

This year’s festival features a handful of young performers who are links, as well as innovators, in the folk traditions they exemplify. In addition to performing on all five stages, several of the younger performers will appear at demonstration sessions including “Music Masters and Star Students” 12:15 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 29, at the Children’s Area and “Young Hot Shots” 2:30 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 29, at the Railroad Stage.

“Passing down the traditions is something I think about, and it is an underlying reason for having young folks in the festival,” said Julia Olin, associate director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, which produces the festival. “It helps everyone to understand that just because we call it folk art, it isn’t a sitting in a jar of formaldehyde. It’s in a continual state of change, embraced by a new generation of players who approach these arts with the same affection and feeling toward things carried on in communities and homes.”

Grace Quebe, an 18-year-old fiddler, will tell you that her parents aren’t musicians. Nor did they push their three daughters – known collectively as The Quebe Sisters – to play musical instruments. The girls were at a fiddling contest six years ago and heard Western swing. The music inspired them to take up fiddle playing, and they have gone on to win fiddle contests as well as appear at the Grand Ole Opry and with Alison Kraus and T. Bone Burnett’s Great High Mountain Tour.

Whether playing three-part fiddle tunes or solo songs, the Quebes – Sophia is 16, and Hulda, at 13, is probably the youngest performer at the festival – reach back in time for their music. “Just a Closer Walk,” “Don’t Let the Deal Go Down,” “Bonnie Kate’s Reel,” “Red River Valley” and “Mansion on a Hill” are some of their standards typically backed up by their teachers Joey and Sherry McKenzie, who also will be at the Folk Festival.

It may not be what most teens are playing, but it’s fun, said the Quebes.

“We heard fiddle playing and right there decided that’s what we wanted to do,” said Grace, who has been fiddling for only six years. “We’re having a blast. Maybe it’s not as mainstream as other styles, but it’s just as neat. I know a lot of kids who play fiddle, and they think it’s cool.”

Four year ago when Hector Barron, the 60-year-old bass player for the Tex-Mex band Los Fantasmas del Valle, lost his colleague of 25 years to health issues, he struggled to find another accordion player who could bring the depth of experience as his old friend.

“I never thought I would get somebody to play like him,” said Barron. “But we got lucky.”

Luck came in the form of Rodney Rodriguez, who is 20, but was only 16 when he joined the band four years ago.

“And Rodney got lucky, too, because he won’t have to play in bars the way we used to,” added Barron. “He got us thinking. And we got him older right away. He’s a young kid but he thinks in an older way. A lot of kids go into other kinds of music. Our kind of music was fading away. It feels good that we got somebody who will keep on going after we’re gone.”

“For me, it’s important to listen to the elders even if you don’t end up doing what they are doing,” said Heidi Andrade, a fiddler and singer with Reeltime Travelers.

At 34, Andrade is on the older side of young, but she has been playing music since she was a girl and had classical training in college. She has heard some people refer to old-time string music as less than cool, but she has also noticed that interest among young people has increased in recent years.

“This music is dance music. It’s primal. And I think that’s what attracts young people,” she said.

Vishten, a 20something Acadian group from Canada, takes the beat from the kitchen – or family – milieu. In both music and dance, the performers use their youthful talent to energize traditional styles built into their upbringing on Prince Edward Island.

Emmanuelle LeBlanc is 24 and plays the bodhran, tin whistle, fiddle and piano for Vishten. Her twin sister Pastelle plays accordion and piano. They were in France on tour when Emmanuelle spoke by phone about her attraction and zeal for a musical career that was bolstered by family and community rather than MTV.

“It was always a passion,” she said. “But when we were growing up, our friends didn’t understand why we wanted to do this type of music. It wasn’t cool. Some people said: ‘Why do you play such square music?’ They are the ones who are missing out.”

Emmanuelle said that while the music is based on traditional tunes, the group members listen to a variety of styles, some of which influence their renditions of roots music. She also added that in her parents’ and grandparents’ generations, women were not as prominent — and indeed at times not allowed – as performers. That has changed, and with the introduction of fine female players such as Natalie MacMaster, Eileen Ivers and Sharon Shannon, more young women are seeing traditional music as a career option.

It’s clear the younger generation is driven both to excel and preserve the music that has propelled it into the spotlight. But the payoff, for young and old alike, is a sense of connection to something deep, collective and ongoing.

“When I watch or hear these young people play, it’s like watching a young gymnast,” said Olin, who does the programming for the Bangor event. “It’s glorious. There’s something reassuring about young people carrying something over, that everything we have brought with us is going to have a life and not be all technology. It’s going to be something you put your hands on, practice and share. No matter how advanced we become, it feels good to put your hands in that dough and make bread.”

Grace Quebe put another way: “I love this music. I hope I can keep fiddling for the rest of my life.”

For information about the National Folk Festival, which will take place Aug. 27-29 on the waterfront in Bangor, visit www.nationalfolkfestival.com or call 992-2630.