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MSU MUSEUM ANNOUNCES '08 FOLK FESTIVAL LINE-UP
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Singing Cowboy Wylie Gustafson |
The roots, the rhythms and the richness of music, dance, arts and culture from across America and around the world come to downtown East Lansing for the Michigan State University Museum's annual Great Lakes Folk Festival, Aug. 8-10.
The MSU Museum announces the preliminary slate of musical performers, sponsored by the City of East Lansing:
Names in rusty red are links to performers web sites
Eddie Bond -- Old-time Banjo -- Fries, Virginia
Jeffrey Broussard & The Creole Cowboys -- Zydeco -- Lawtell, Louisiana
Cephas & Wiggins -- Piedmont Blues -- Washington, D.C.
Crooked Road Revue -- Old-time Revue, featuring Bond, LaPrelle, Henderson and Sutphin -- Crooked Road Region, Virginia
Detour - Bluegrass -- Michigan and Nashville, Tennessee
Mamadou Diabate - Malian Kora -- Durham, North Carolina
George Gao -- Chinese erhu -- Toronto, Ontario
Wayne Henderson -- Finger-style Guitar -- Galax, Virginia
Elizabeth LaPrelle -- Old-time Ballads -- Rural Retreat, Virginia
New Ballard's Branch Bogtrotters -- Old Time -- Galax,Virginia
iRéveillons! - Quebecois -- Montréal, Québec, Canada
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Mamadou Diabete plays the Kora |
The Singletons -- Gospel -- Lansing, Michigan
Sones de México -- Mexican regional -- Chicago, Illinois
Kirk Sutphin -- Old-time Fiddle -- Walkertown, North Carolina
Tuba Dan's Family Band -- Czech polka -- Oshkosh, Wisconsin
April Verch -- Ottawa Valley Fiddle -- Pembroke, Ontario
Vishten - Acadian -- Prince Edward Island, Canada
Wylie & The Wild West -- Cowboy/Western Swing -- Lacrosse, Washington
Beyond the music, the festival program includes
CraftWORKS! (New for 2008) -- Showcasing traditions and mastery in the MSU Museum's Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program with hand-made heritage ranging from decoy duck carving, birch bark canoe making, weaving, basketry, storytelling and saddle making.
2008 Michigan Heritage Award honorees:
Seikichi Iha of Lansing for Okinawan "traditional" martial art of karate-do;
Herb Nehring of Oshtemo for blacksmithing; and
Johnny Sarweh of Fraser for playing the qanun, Middle Eastern zither.
Taste of Traditions authentic and regional and ethnic food, from Native Hawaiian to Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, Jamaican and Polish.
Folk Arts Marketplace, with hand-made goods ranging from quilts and braided rugs to wood carving and Indian henna tattoos.
Children's Folk Activities Area with fresh-air fun and make-and-take crafts.
The half-mile festival site - across the street from the MSU campus -- spans the downtown core of the city, tapping lush park settings and pulsing city crossroads for three days of festival fun.
Admission to the MSU Museum's Great Lakes Folk Festival is free.
This award-winning event has emerged as one of the region's premiere arts programs and a summer-time high note -- and is expected to draw more than 90,000 visitors throughout the weekend to celebrate culture, tradition and community. GLFF was named the state's top public humanities program by the Michigan Humanities Council and the event received an artistic excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to help produce this year's activities.
Festival hours are:
Friday, Aug. 8, 6 - 10:30 p.m.;
Saturday, Aug. 9, 12 noon - 10:30 p.m.;
Sunday, Aug. 10, 12 noon - 6 p.m.
For more information, call the MSU Museum at (517) 432-GLFF (4533) or learn more on Facebook,
A link to the Festival's Facebook page is below- log in is required
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10222494617 .
What is Facebook? Click here for more info.
The event is produced by the Michigan State University Museum, Michigan's first Smithsonian affiliate. The festival is produced by the MSU Museum's Michigan Traditional Arts Program, which researches, documents, preserves, and presents our shared heritage and cultural expressions. Primary financial support for GLFF comes from the City of East Lansing, Michigan State University Office of the Provost and University Outreach and Engagement, and Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. In addition, nearly 100 corporations, foundations and organizations also support GLFF annually, as well as individual donors, "Great Friends."
-- MSU MUSEUM: marking 150 years of discovery -- The MSU Museum is Michigan's
natural history and culture museum and the state's first Smithsonian Institution affiliate
posted April 10, 2008
MSU MUSEUM RECEIVES NEA
"ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE" GRANT FOR
GREAT LAKES FOLK FESTIVAL
As planning gets under way for the 2008 Great Lakes Folk Festival, Aug. 8-10 in downtown East Lansing, the MSU Museum has received a significant grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Washington, D.C.
The $35,000 grant is designated for access to artistic excellence in the festival, the region's premiere celebration of culture, tradition and community. The MSU Museum, in partnership with the City of East Lansing and the Center for Great Lakes Culture at MSU, produces this major regional festival showcasing the traditional cultural treasures of the nation's Upper Midwest and also a sampling of the best of traditional artists from around the country and the world.
NEA grants are highly competitive and awarded on a national basis. The MSU Museum has been successful in garnering funding since the Great Lakes Folk Festival's inception in 2002, as well as previous festival productions. In recent years, the MSU Museum has regularly showcased NEA's National Heritage Fellows (musicians and other artists) as well as recipients of the Michigan Heritage Awards and other tradition-bearers.
"We're especially proud to receive this grant, which reflects on the high quality in programming and production we've been able to build and sustain," notes Marsha MacDowell, GLFF artistic and founding director and MSU Museum curator of folk arts.
The MSU Museum's grant was among a more than $19 million in federal funding to nonprofit national, regional, state, and local organizations across the country through the NEA's Access to Artistic Excellence category.
NEA Chairman Dana Gioia said, "This group of NEA grants supports a wide range of artistically excellent projects across the country. Among our grants, NEA funds help dance companies tour, theaters to mount new productions, museums to provide education programs, and small communities to celebrate their local traditions with folk festivals."
Access to Artistic Excellence grants support the creation and presentation of work in dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, media arts, museums, music, musical theater, opera, presenting, theater, and visual arts. This round of funding also supported grants to local arts agencies for service-to-the-field projects that assist artists and arts organizations with improving managerial infrastructures. Projects include commissions, residencies, workshops, performances, exhibitions, publications, festivals, and professional development programs. Through this category, the NEA will fund 866 projects out of 1,312 eligible applications, for a total of $19.189 million.
The NEA is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts -- both new and established -- bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Arts Endowment is the largest national funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. For more information, visit http://www.arts.gov.
Both entertaining and educational, the award-winning Great Lakes Folk Festival promotes a greater understanding and appreciation for the contributions of many cultures to our nation's development and our cultural heritage. The MSU Museum works year-round to research, document and present the many forms of expressive culture showcased at the folk festival. Authentic ethnic food, children's activities, Michigan Heritage Awards, and hand-made crafts are also featured throughout the half-mile festival site in downtown East Lansing.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR GLFF 2008!
The festival continues to be widely recognized as one of the state's premiere arts and culture events. Be sure to save the date for the 2008 festival - Aug. 8-10, 2008 - and tell your friends, family and coworkers too!
MSU Museum curators and planners are hard at work on this year's event. Check back here for updates.
CHECK OUT THESE LSJ PHOTO AND VIDEO GALLERIES:
Reflecting on this year's event, our print media sponsor Lansing State Journal has included two online photo features, with still and video images. See:
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=A3&Dato=20070811&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=708110802&Ref=PH
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070810/VIDEO03/708110340
Also, look for a video of the dance tent action.
Check out Entertainment Editor Mike Hughes' blog:
http://noise.typepad.com/mike_hughes/2007/08/a-sexless-post-.html
Give us your thoughts as well! Or, if you have posted photos at an online gallery, please share those links as well. Send them to pr@museum.msu.edu.
