When the organizers of the NC Folk Festival announced The Roots as headliners at next month’s three-day event, the reactions ranged from frenzied excitement to utter disbelief. The ground-breaking, Grammy-winning, and platinum-selling Philadelphia hip-hop group was an enormous get for a free folk festival in a mid-sized city like Greensboro.
Landing them said as much about the festival as it did the band itself.
“The Roots really met us where we could be,” said Jodee Ruppel, executive director and chief development officer for the festival. “Which is not their usual fee by a long shot. It’s very substantial to us, but not their usual fee. But because they like the fact that our festival is free and it’s accessible, and we’re out there promoting the diversity in the music, they met us there. So we’re very, very thankful for that.”
The festival, held in Greensboro since 2015, has worked hard to expand and explore what folk music is today, making connections to history and tradition while also showcasing what’s next. It has embraced R&B, funk, and hip-hop, from breakdancing competitions to rapturously received performances by Grandmaster Flash, George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic, and Arrested Development. That’s shattered many people’s image of folk as the exclusive realm of acoustic guitars and protest anthems, and attracted both more diverse audiences and acts like The Roots, whose decades-spanning success has seen them draw from many genres and traditions to create something all their own.
We recently caught up with Ruppel and ethnomusicologist Savannah Thorne, the festival’s artistic director, ahead of its return to downtown Greensboro September 18-20. They talked with us about what’s new this year, leaning into what people demanded come back, and how the festival continues to grow.
This is the first of a series of pieces about the festival we’ll be publishing over the next month.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
I want to talk with you two about the entirety of the festival, but I feel like we have to start with The Roots. This is a group that’s been with me since I was a teenager, and I feel like they’ve only gotten bigger, more popular, more recognized. That’s a big get for any festival of any size at this point, I would think.
Thorne: We were really incredibly fortunate to receive a grant from the Greensboro Convention and Visitors Bureau. And they challenged us. They really set forth this challenge to put heads in beds, to bring in people from across the region, and to show them how great Greensboro is. And to do that with somebody that was going to be really attention-grabbing. So that regardless of what your feelings on Greensboro are, or if you ever visited before, or what perceptions might be, you’re coming regardless for that artist.
So we had a long list of people that we were thinking about. And honestly, The Roots felt so unattainable to us too. Through luck and hard work, we were able to get an offer to them, and they were willing to make it work because they like what we’re doing and they’re so community focused.
Ruppel: We’re very, very thankful for that. When we talk about this grant [from the CVB], they have seen kind of the momentum pick up in the last few years as we pivoted to this headliner model. We have 50% of our artists who are from North Carolina or who have North Carolina ties. We are the North Carolina Folk Festival that happens to be in Greensboro. But they saw the momentum we were building, and they were like, ‘Can we give you some money? Go hard on these headliners, and this is going to be the tipping point.’ This is going to be the point when people who are in, like, Richmond, Virginia come, and they’re like, ‘I am not going to miss the whole festival in North Carolina ever again.’
Over the course of the festival’s history, I think we’ve seen bigger headliners but also a broader idea of what folk is, more of an examination of the question, ‘What is folk?’ Mavis Staples of the Staples Singers? That’s difficult for almost anyone to argue. But world music, funk, hip-hop.
Thorne: I think we really saw that last year with Arrested Development. I think something that we’re trying to do is not just to make the argument that folk is so many interesting and nuanced things, and encompasses so many incredible genres. But then to bring in experts in that field who can help demonstrate that, right? So Arrested Development is one of the greatest to ever do it. They’re pioneers in their genre, with roots music and hip-hop.
It’s important for us to bring that in with our headliners. And I think you can say the same thing this year with Molly Tuttle, with St. Paul & The Broken Bones. St. Paul has been gigging in blues and gospel and funk and all of those spaces for so long. So, we’re really trying to demonstrate that by bringing in experts and being intentional about the kinds of people that we’re programming, to show through those headliners that folk is nuanced, folk is interesting. Folk is music of the people, and the people love this music.
A headliner like The Roots puts a lot of eyes on the festival, and hopefully people do discover all of this other music, all of these other acts, dancers, artists from all over North Carolina and all over the world. Talk to me about some of the people we should be looking for at the festival this year, people we may never have heard of but we really should.
Thorne: There are so many. There’s more of an emphasis on dance this year, more of an emphasis on folklife. There are more acts at every stage. We’ve even extended the hours to be a little later on Sunday and a little earlier on Saturday to fit it all in.
We have over 70 acts. I think right now the count is 73, maybe 74. We’re confirming new people.
Ruppel: I’m really stoked to see William Prince in person. He’s indigenous, he’s Canadian, he played at the World Cup opening ceremonies in Toronto when they were there. I think his voice might be a little Chris Stapleton—like the strong, country set. But then sometimes there’s this raspiness of a young Johnny Cash.
Thorne: And he infuses all that with the great First Nations people of Canada’s storytelling tradition. His music is based on this really cool storytelling tradition, but then his genre is very country/western. What a beautiful pairing because country/western is all about sharing stories.
Ruppel: I think Jackie Venson is going to be a sleeper hit. People aren’t going to know who she is. But she’s opening for The Roots. The real music heads may know her. She really shreds on the guitar.
Thorne: She’s one of the coolest female guitarists I’ve ever seen.
Ruppel: Rolling Stone called her one of Austin’s rising stars. I think she’s going to blow people away.
Thorne: Samir LanGus is from Morocco. He plays traditional Gnawa music [the ancient traditional trance tradition of Morocco]. He is one of the most interesting musicians that I think we have on our festival this year.
Another one for me that I’m particularly proud of to have in our programming, that we worked on getting confirmed for eight months, is the Medicine Singers. They are a group of traditional Eastern medicine singers, led by their chief from Massachusetts, who are just incredibly powerful Indigenous and First Nations drummers. And then around them is a really great jam band orchestra with Lee Ranaldo [of Sonic Youth] and Yonatan Gat [of Monotonix]— some of the coolest guitarists on earth.
Lee Ranaldo from Sonic Youth is performing with them? I feel like that’s the whole folk festival right there, bringing those things together.
Thorne: That’s what we’re trying to do!
