performers 2018

Bounxeung Synanonh

Bounxeung Synanonh

Laotian khaen
Fresno, California

For Laotian-born Bounxeung Synanonh, captivating an audience is as simple as drawing a few quick breaths of air. He is a master performer on the khaen, an ancient, free-reed mouth organ made from 16 lengths of bamboo. Recognizing its vital place in daily family and social life, UNESCO has inscribed khaen music of the Lao people on its list of Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Bounxeung is revered as a keeper of the khaen tradition for the Laotian American community.

Brianna Thomas

Brianna Thomas

jazz
New York, New York

Growing up with a jazz musician father, Brianna Thomas was exposed to the recordings of Ella Fitzgerald singing the Great American Songbook at a young age. Besides hearing the jazz legend’s famous improvised scat singing, Thomas quickly fell in love with the way Fitzgerald’s songs told a story. “I’d write down all the lyrics over and over again—they were on these scraps of paper all over my room,” she remembers. That devotion to getting behind the meaning of lyrics has served Thomas well, making her the toast of today’s New York jazz scene.

Cora Harvey Armstrong

Cora Harvey Armstrong

gospel
Richmond, Virginia

Gospel artist Cora Harvey Armstrong hasn’t always lived the life she sings about. While she’s been singing and playing piano in churches on Sundays for most of her life, she spent decades drinking, partying, and living a “hellacious life” the other six days a week. Health problems and an abusive relationship compounded her struggle. When her father passed away in 1999, Armstrong rededicated herself to her faith and her music, and has started to earn the recognition that her talent as a singer, songwriter, and pianist deserves.

Farah Yasmeen Shaikh

Farah Yasmeen Shaikh

Kathak dance
San Francisco, California

Farah Yasmeen Shaikh carries on the revered tradition of Kathak dance, earning accolades for her expressive dancing and historically rooted choreography. She is also a bridge-builder, using Kathak to, as she says, “help shift perspectives and perceptions of the world today—in a way that both challenges and enlightens us alongside our audiences.”

Jeff Little Trio

Jeff Little Trio

Blue Ridge piano trio
Boone, North Carolina

Jeff Little continues an often hidden, yet fascinating tradition of piano playing in the Blue Ridge Mountains. With few exceptions, the piano does not play a prominent part in Appalachian music, and is rarely the lead instrument. But Jeff Little is an exception—and a remarkable one. His distinctive two-handed style, much influenced by mountain flatpicked-guitar tradition, is breathtaking in its speed, precision, and clarity.

Josh Goforth

Josh Goforth

Storyteller, ballad singer, and multi-instrumentalist Josh Goforth is a native of Madison County in western North Carolina. Situated deep in the Blue Ridge Mountains, this area is known for its keeping of unbroken ballad and storytelling traditions brought by early Scots-Irish and English settlers in the mid-17th century. It was also fertile ground for the rise of American string band music played on fiddle, banjo, and guitar. Proud to share his Appalachian heritage with audiences near and far, Josh Goforth draws from each of these wellsprings.

Larry Bland & the Volunteer Choir

Larry Bland & the Volunteer Choir

gospel choir
​​​​​​​Richmond, Virginia

Larry Bland & the Volunteer Choir helped us launch the Richmond Folk Festival in 2008, when they were celebrating their 40th anniversary. Now they are back to celebrate their 50th anniversary.

Larry Bland & the Volunteer Choir, based at the Second Baptist Church, are a Richmond institution. In a region rich in gospel tradition, this remarkable ensemble—now celebrating its 50th anniversary at the Richmond Folk Festival­—has attained a unique status. Recognized as a trailblazer in gospel music presentation, Bland combined elegant and powerful renditions of traditional gospel songs with costuming and precision choreography to create the “show choir,” an innovation that has brought him national recognition.

Leroy Thomas & the Zydeco Roadrunners

Leroy Thomas & the Zydeco Roadrunners

zydeco
Elton, Louisiana

A throwback to first-generation zydeco masters, Leroy Thomas plays what he calls “old school zydeco.” That’s no surprise, given he was born into a zydeco family: his father has inspired countless zydeco drummers, while cousins Geno Delafose and Keith Frank are some of the leading zydeco performers today. A giant on the zydeco scene for over 20 years, Leroy wears out the “zydeco corridor” traveling between Lafayette, Louisiana and Houston, Texas.

Linda Gail Lewis

Linda Gail Lewis

rockabilly
Austin, Texas

Watch Linda Gail Lewis pound out rockabilly on the piano and you’ll understand why she couldn’t stay in the background forever. First known as the duet partner of her older brother Jerry Lee Lewis, and more recently as a member of Van Morrison’s band, Lewis has come into her own as the matriarch of a hot family band that is tearing up stages from Austin to Austria.

Mavis Staples

Mavis Staples

gospel, soul, rhythm and blues
Chicago, Illinois

Mavis Staples will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the greatest gospel singers of all time, the breathtaking voice powering one of America’s most celebrated family bands, the Staple Singers. From the traditional gospel music of the 1950s to the 1960s protest songs that underscored some of the decade’s most dramatic social changes, from the self-empowerment anthems of the 1970s to the soulful love tunes and mature roots music of more recent years, Mavis Staples and her family consistently created some of the best and most inspirational music of the past half-century.

Orquesta el Macabeo

Orquesta el Macabeo

salsa
​​​​​​​Trujillo Alto

Combining a “do-it-yourself” ethos with a desire to revitalize a traditional genre beloved by Puerto Ricans, Orquesta el Macabeo is updating the music in the spirit of the classic sounds created by salsa pioneers. As record label Peace & Rhythm declared when reissuing Macabeo’s debut album this spring: “with every passing year their audience and reputation grows, mainly because they have managed to hit a nerve, connect to salseros craving that old-school sound and message, but also something that speaks to their own contemporary experiences in an unadulterated and honest manner.”

Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus

Ras Michael & the Sons of Negus

reggae
Los Angeles, California

For over five decades, singer and percussionist Ras Michael has remained true to the diverse currents out of which reggae emerged, from its roots in nyabinghi drumming to the deep spirituality and sense of justice that inform the music. Nyabinghi is both the heart of Rastafarian religious ceremonies and a precursor of Jamaican reggae, ska, and dancehall. Ras Michael has been one of nyabinghi’s most visible ambassadors since the 1960s through his performances with Bob Marley, his educational and religious leadership, and his roots reggae group, the Sons of Negus.

Ricky B

Ricky B

New Orleans bounce
New Orleans, Louisiana

Want to find your way around the real New Orleans? Put down the guidebook and just follow the lyrics of Ricky B’s ’90s bounce classic “City Streets (Hey Pocky Way),” where he raps that “on Dorgenois, take a right on Louisa / headed on that I-10 chillin’, I'm out of the Nine, I'm on old Gentilly / and now I'm headed Uptown.” That kind of local flavor defines the music of Ricky B, one of the pioneers who created bounce, a distinctively New Orleans hip hop sound that samples the city’s famous brass bands and Mardi Gras Indian chants, and other Big Easy musical sounds.

Sona Jobarteh

Sona Jobarteh

Manding griot
Kartong, The Gambia

Proclaimed by BBC Radio as “a griot for a new generation of West Africans,” Sona Jobarteh is proof that sometimes the most important keepers of a tradition are those who break new ground. She was born into one of the five principal griot families, whose hereditary roles were as praise singers, oral historians, and musicians of the Manden Empire. Taking up a male tradition that stretches back over seven centuries, Jobarteh is the first female kora virtuoso. Today she plays a central role in preserving this ancient art in The Gambia.

Tamburaški Sastav Ponoć

Tamburaški Sastav Ponoć

tamburitza
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Tamburaški Sastav Ponoć represents a new generation of brilliant players of tamburitza music, the traditional string band music of the Balkans. Tamburitza music has flourished for over a century in ethnic communities across the industrial Mid-Atlantic and Upper Midwest where Eastern European immigrants flocked to work in the region’s factories and mines. Until recently, it has had limited exposure beyond these communities. But that is changing as this cadre of virtuosic young musicians bring tamburitza out of neighborhood taverns and community halls and onto concert stages across America and the world.