‘A big, live mixtape’: A preview of the Brooklyn Folk Festival

By Anna Rahmanan

At first glance, the decision to host the Brooklyn Folk Festival inside St. Ann & the Holy Trinity Church in Brooklyn Heights might seem like an odd one. Musical extravaganzas can be hedonistic affairs, after all. Attendees, often psychologically altered, might be inclined to dance free of the confines of, say, pews … ideally enjoying impeccable sound.

Paradoxically, that is exactly why the founders have settled on the church — where the event has been taking place since 2015 — as the perfect space to host more than 30 artists from November 10 to 12.

“It’s a gorgeous place to see and hear music with beautiful acoustics,” says Eli Smith, the festival’s 41-year-old founder and producer. “It can accommodate a large audience while preserving an intimate, listening atmosphere. And there’s space for dancing!”

The origins of the genre — North American folk, at least, emerged as European settlers and enslaved Africans brought their own traditions over and gradually combined them — also make Brooklyn, a hub of diversity and creativity, just the right place to host the 15th annual event.

“The goal of our festival is to present a celebration of the people and the many diverse immigrant communities that are here and the music that comes out of them,” says Smith, who points to the Ukrainian Village Voices, Ba Ban Chinese Music Society and Mamady Kouyate and his Mandingo Ambassadors as some of the acts scheduled to perform this year. “We’re currently in the third or fourth wave of the American folk revival and it’s now centered in New York, at the Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn, so it’s important that we’re here.”

Musician Ali Dineen, scheduled to take the festival stage on Sunday, echoes the sentiment.

“What is folk music? It’s music that folks play together, songs that are usually passed down generations,” she says. “There is something anti-capitalist about it because it’s focused on the communal over the commercial.”

Highlights of the weekend include performances by Brooklyn-born Ramblin’ Jack Elliott — the 92-year-old former sidekick of Woody Guthrie — 88-year-old Peggy Seeger, who will be beaming in with an exclusive video performance and younger artists like Jerron Paxton and teenage banjo sensation Nora Brown.

“It just feels like a really special community event because a lot of local musicians come by but people from out of town also cross over,” says Dineen. “I love it very much.”

According to festival insiders, about half of attendees are usually locals, with another 25 percent coming from the wider tri-state area and the remaining 30 percent comprising out-of-towners.

Other exciting acts include New York Dolls frontman David Johansen, Wolf van Elfmand, Sandy Rogers and Larry & Joe. There will also be a number of panels and talks focusing on various aspects of the musical genre.

“We play about 300 songs” over the course of the weekend, says Smith. “It’s basically a big, live mixtape.”

In addition to the live sets and panels, locals and out-of-towners look forward to the festival’s annual banjo tossing contest, a cutely absurd proposition that will take place by the Gowanus Canal on Sunday.

It’s exactly what it sounds like: Whoever can throw the musical instrument farthest into the body of water will win free banjo classes at the Jalopy School of Music.

Banjo toss! (Courtesy Brooklyn Folk Festival)

Auspicious anniversaries
This year in particular is an auspicious one for the festival: 2023 is the 75th anniversary of Folkways Records, what effectively became the national folk record archive of the United States when the Smithsonian purchased it in 1987. It would also have been the 100th birthday of record collector and artist Harry Smith, who compiled the legendary compendium of weird, old Americana “Anthology of American Folk Music” for Folkways in 1952. (The retrospective “Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith” will be on display at the Whitney Museum of American Art through January 28, 2024)

Folkways approached the festival to partner with them to celebrate the anniversary, says Smith. “So we’re thrilled to be presenting a number of artists from across the many years of the label, from older, historical ones to artists that have recently signed with them.”

Of course, although heavy on the traditional, the festival operates in the here and now, a fact that the organizers certainly don’t take for granted.

“Things like social media and cell phones have absolutely revolutionized what folk music is,” notes Smith. “It has changed the nature of people’s ability to express themselves and broadcast themselves.”

Take 28-year-old “Afrofuturist folklore” artist Jake Blount: folks catching his act will immediately recognize his looping percussion techniques and unique modern-leaning sound.

Going forward, Smith is hopeful that the festival can keep expanding in new directions as the music itself does the same.

“The Brooklyn Folk Festival could continue to grow and even become an outdoor festival some day,” he says. “I see it as a continued home for folk and traditional music — especially since other outlets for the genre are rather scarce.”