Folk is Joan Baez in Harvard Square in 1960. And Robert Johnson at the crossroads in 1932. And Portuguese fado singer Sara Correia at the Lowell Folk Festival next week.
Folk is the biggest, strangest and most diverse genre in the world. Probably because it isn’t a single genre but a million crisscrossing styles, inventions and reinventions. The Lowell Folk Festival brings a couple dozen of these styles to Mill City July 28-30 (for free!).
Don’t know where to start? Start here or here or here or…
Funk is folk. And Fred Thomas is funk. The bassist cut his teeth, grew more, and cut them again holding down the low end for James Brown for over three decades. That’s Thomas on “The Payback” and “Make It Funky” and a score more ’70s staples. Now leading his own seven-piece band, Thomas will make you feel good, so good, so good.
Somewhere between Django Reinhardt’s gypsy swing and Bob Wills’ Texas swing, this trio thrives. Come for Whit Smith’s hot licks, stay for Elana James barn burning fiddle, stick around even longer and fall in love with the band’s originals – 2002 album “Ghost Train” is brilliant, and a brilliant place to start
Sara Correia’s voice is like manteiga (that’s butter for you non-Portuguese speakers). One of the greatest singers of her generation, Lisbon’s Correia champions modern fado – Portugal’s centuries-old music decided to lost loves, lost homes and lost histories. Go spin new single “Bocas Do Mundo” and try not to fall for her voice.
For generations, only men could play the kora – a stringed instrument central to the Manding people of western Africa. Part of a family that carried on the Manding’s musical traditions, Jobarteh has advanced those traditions as a trailblazing female kora virtuoso. She has now become a leading teacher of the instrument and has spent the past decade building the Gambian Academy of Music and Culture in The Gambia.
Tap is dance as music, and dance as art, and dance as cultural expression. And Jason Samuels Smith gets all this. At age 23, he won an Emmy and the American Choreography Award for a tribute to the great Gregory Hines. Of course, 23 counts as late in his career. At age nine, he appeared on “Sesame Street.” At age 16, he won a spot as a principal dancer in “Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk.”
You don’t need to be a native of the South Side to be Chicago blues champ, but it doesn’t hurt. While Melody Angel (real name!) has picked up plenty of tricks from her hometown’s sonic legacy, she also pulls from Prince, old school r&b, and political rock. Let her shock your soul with her purple Strat and blow your mind with her lyrics.
For details, visit lowellfolkfestival.org
