2022 Virginia Folklife Stage and Area

For the first time, the Virginia Folklife Area is produced as a partnership between the Virginia Folklife Program of Virginia Humanities and the newly formed Center for Cultural Vibrancy. Along with this newly formed partnership, this year provides many reasons to celebrate. 2022 marks the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, which supports the continuation of living traditions by giving direct support and a public platform to artists. In addition to an interactive exhibit to celebrate this milestone, there will be an Instrument Makers Workshop spotlighting several current and previous apprenticeship artists. Eleven luthiers who build and repair guitars, banjos, mandolins, violins, dulcimers and more will travel from across the state to showcase the many skills required to build stringed instruments. In addition to their craft demonstrations, there will be an Instrument Makers Jam on the Virginia Folklife Stage along with a special one-time-only performance uniting Tata Cepeda, one of Puerto Rico’s finest bomba dancers, with the Fredericksburg non-profit Semilla Cultural, led by Isha M Renta Lopez. Lopez and Cepeda are current Virginia Folklife Program apprenticeship artists.

The Traditional Crafts Area is produced by the Virginia Folklife Program at Virginia Humanities, the state center for the documentation, presentation, support and celebration of Virginia’s rich cultural heritage. For more than thirty years, the program has documented the Commonwealth’s music and material traditions and shared those histories through hands-on workshops, performances, exhibitions, audio and video recordings, and apprenticeships across Virginia. For more information, visit VirginiaFolklife.org.

This year the Center for Cultural Vibrancy Virginia Folklife Stage is produced, curated, and sponsored by the Center for Cultural Vibrancy (CCV), a non-profit organization founded in 2021 by former Virginia State Folklorist, Jon Lohman. The Center for Cultural Vibrancy creates and cultivates opportunities for cultural connections to support living traditions and energize communities. CCV contributes to a more empathetic world—one where people respect and celebrate one another’s cultural expressions—through sharing traditional arts, customs, and lore that promote cultural exchange, understanding, and honor artistic mastery. Learn more about CCV.

The Virginia Folklife Stage will further this mission by bringing together numerous cross-cultural collaborations, including Richmond Folk Festival regular Danny Knicely with Bolivian master musicians Mario and Jose Oretea and their band Ouros, and a powerful duet between Venezuelan Llanera musician Larry BellorÍn and multi-instrumentalist and social activist Joe Troop.

Performing for the first time at the Richmond Folk Festival are: Trinidadian steel drum master Josanne Francis, Richmond-based gospel quartet Ken Heath and the True Disciples, Northern Virginia-based Carnatic violin virtuoso Kamalakirin Vinjamuri, Richmond’s own acoustic blues duo Andrew Alli and Josh Small, and Scott Miller, one of Virginia’s finest songwriters and performers. 

Finally, we will honor and celebrate our beloved oyster shucking sisters who have brought us so much joy over the years, Deborah Pratt and Clementine Macon Boyd. And of course, it wouldn’t be the Virginia Folklife Stage without our Sunday closing set by Richmond’s first family of gospel, the Legendary Ingramettes, who will be celebrating their recent honor of receiving the NEA’s 2022 National Heritage Fellowship, the highest honor that the United States bestows on traditional artists.