Artists

The Richmond Folk Festival has grown to become one of Virginia’s largest and most anticipated events of the year. The Festival strives to present the very finest traditional artists from across the nation. In making its selections, a local Programming Committee is guided by the Folk and Traditional Arts definition, which is the guide for the National Council for Traditional Arts and the National Folk Festival, as well as the National Endowment for the Arts.

Festival in Schools

The Richmond Folk Festival fills auditoriums and classrooms at Richmond-area schools with performances and presentations of deeply rooted cultural expressions, shared by some of the country’s finest traditional artists. Read more about this amazing outreach program.

Applications for the 2025 Festival are Now open!

2025 Richmond Folk Festival artist applications are now open. Programming discussions take place from December to May with most decisions complete by June 1st in preparation for the annual festival. All artists must follow the same process, and those interested in applying should see How to be a performer at the Richmond Folk Festival for more details.

artists performing in 2024

Featured
Albert Lee
Albert Lee

rockabilly
Malibu, California

Albert Lee’s is a unique story—British by birth and upbringing, he gained acclaim in the 1960s as one of the UK’s top R&B players, and since the 1970s has been recognized as one of the top rockabilly guitarists in the world. In England, Albert Lee is a household name, and in Nashville and Los Angeles, he’s long been one of the most in-demand session guitarists. Nicknamed “Mr. Telecaster,” he is a musician’s musician, noted for his fingerstyle and hybrid picking technique, his lightning speed, and his melodic sensibilities. Vince Gill described him as “One of the finest guitar players who ever walked this earth ….”

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Bombino
Bombino

Tuareg guitar
Agadez, Niger

Tuareg guitar has exploded across the international cultural landscape in the two decades since the pyrotechnics of these guitar slingers, often veterans from the front lines of the Tuareg’s intermittent uprisings, first captured the imagination of music fans worldwide. Proclaimed variously as “the Sultan of Shred” (New York Times), the “World’s Best Guitarist” (Noisey), and “utterly, utterly fantastic” (BBC World Service), the Niger-born guitarist Bombino is arguably the leading exponent of this rhythmic, trance-like, and sonically captivating sound. Bombino was a crowd favorite at the 2019 Richmond Folk Festival, and is returning to celebrate the festival’s 20th anniversary.

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Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino
Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino

Southern Italian pizzica tarantata
Salento, Italy

In southern Italy, the region of Salento has a distinctive music called pizzica tarantata, which accompanies the trance-like dance associated with tarantism, the belief in ritual possession arising from the bite of a local spider. This music nearly vanished before becoming the most prominent symbol of a regional resurgence, a revival led by Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino (CGS). Started in 1975 by the musical scholar and activist Rina Durante, along with her cousin, Daniele Durante, this seven-member ensemble from the Salento peninsula of Apulia— “the heel of the boot” of Italy—is now led by Daniele’s son, Mauro, and is the biggest star of Italian traditional music. Canzoniere Grecanico Salentino made their Richmond Folk Festival debut in 2016 and are among the favorites returning to celebrate the festival’s 20th anniversary.

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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. As Richmond-born musician and producer Bill McGee says, she is “Aretha Franklin on piano, Mahalia Jackson with her voice, and Shirley Caesar with her style.” Armstrong has graced Richmond Folk Festival stages a few times over the event’s two decades; it is no surprise this local favorite is returning to celebrate the festival’s 20th anniversary.

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Eddie Cotton Jr.
Eddie Cotton Jr.

soul blues
Clinton, Mississippi

Bluesman Eddie Cotton, Jr.’s music is rooted in the church. His father was a Pentecostal minister, shepherding the Christ Chapel Church of God in Christ that he founded in Clinton, Mississippi, just west of Jackson. While music was central to church services, his family and his congregation shunned secular music. Still, Cotton reflects, “The deepest of the blues I’ve ever played is in church.… The style they play on is nothing but blues.” Eddie Cotton performed at the Richmond Folk Festival in 2017 and is among the favorites returning to celebrate the festival’s 20th anniversary.

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John Doyle & the Irish American Music Masters
John Doyle & the Irish American Music Masters

IRISH
Chicago; Brooklyn; Bristol, Vermont; Asheville, North Carolina; and County Louth, Ireland

The vision of guitarist and bandleader John Doyle, this stellar quintet brings together some of the best Irish musicians in America. It is no exaggeration to call these exceptional artists, all longtime friends and collaborators, a supergroup of Irish American music. Three members of the Irish American Music Masters—John Doyle, Seamus Egan, and John Williams—were founding members of Solás, an ensemble that played a key role in popularizing traditional Irish music in America. Rounding out the group are renowned vocalist Cathie Ryan and uilleann piper Ivan Goff. John is among the group of outstanding artists returning to celebrate the Richmond Folk Festival’s 20th anniversary.

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Junior Sisk Band
Junior Sisk Band

bluegrass
Ferrum, Virginia

One of the festival favorites returning to celebrate the Richmond Folk Festival’s 20th anniversary, Junior Sisk is one of the most beloved bluegrass musicians around. It’s hard to imagine an artist more devoted to bluegrass, or more rooted in Southwest Virginia’s prolific bluegrass community, than Junior Sisk. Coming from Ferrum, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he first gained acclaim for his songwriting, but over the years it’s Junior’s powerful, high-lonesome singing that has earned him the devotion of traditional bluegrass fans. Now Junior has assembled a fresh, hard-driving ensemble of top-notch musicians. Bursting with energy in live performance, and enhanced by the arresting vocals of Heather Berry Mabe, Junior Sisk Band features one of the most heralded names in bluegrass at the top of his game.

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Lonnie Holley
Lonnie Holley

Afro-futuristic jazz, funk, and soul
Atlanta, Georgia

“What I’m working with, man, I’m working with all the way down to the nitty gritty, to the grit of the gritty, to the particles,” says Lonnie Holley. Through his unflinching, granular investigation of his life, Holley has emerged not only as one of the country’s foremost creators of visionary art but also as a musician of ever-increasing renown. Holley’s unique musical creations are colored by traces of jazz, funk, soul, blues, and gospel, combined with his personal experiences and expansive reflections on history and current events. He weaves these raw materials into sonic explorations that transcend and transport his listeners.

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LOS RICOS featuring Sonia & Ismael
LOS RICOS featuring Sonia & Ismael

flamenco
New York, New York

Sonia Olla and Ismael Fernández have been called “the golden couple” of flamenco. Partners in life as well as on stage, they refer to themselves as “los ricos,” a term of endearment between them that celebrates the wealth and treasure they have found in flamenco and in each other. Noted for the depths of their rapport, the pair perfectly transmits the intimacy, grace, power, and emotional intensity of flamenco, with Olla’s precise, lightning-fast steps and the deft swirls of her gorgeous, long-trained bata de cola dress responding to every nuance of Fernández’s evocative voice.

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Peni Candra Rini
Peni Candra Rini

Javanese sindhen
Tulungagung, East Java, Indonesia

Indonesian gamelan music has been beguiling international audiences as far back as 1889, when the first gamelan ensemble performed in Europe, famously catching the ear of composer Claude Debussy. The music’s allure is easy to grasp: haunting and ethereal, hammered out on a battery of metal percussion instruments that sound like nothing else, but difficult to replicate outside of the islands of Bali and Java. Though there are now dedicated gamelan ensembles in cities and universities worldwide, few can fully achieve the sound produced by musicians steeped in the tradition their whole lives. Enter Peni Candra Rini, one of Indonesia’s most celebrated contemporary artists—a singer, composer, and educator dedicated to preserving and sharing the musical traditions of gamelan, while pushing the music into new territory.

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Rancho Aparte
Rancho Aparte

Colombian chirimía music
Quibdó, Colombia

In the far west of Colombia, where the rainforests meet the Pacific, lies the Chocó department, a land set apart from the rest of the nation by the Andes mountains, creating a historic refuge for Afro-Colombians and Indigenous people seeking a safe haven. The region still boasts the largest Afro-Colombian and Afro-Indigenous population in the nation, with a unique musical culture heavily influenced by West African sounds. Though the region’s best-known musical export is champeta music, chirimía is the real mainstay. Brash and full of youthful energy, Rancho Aparte has emerged as one of the most exciting contemporary chirimía ensembles since the septet formed in 2005 in Quibdo, Chocó’s capital city.

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Sheryl Cormier & Cajun Sounds
Sheryl Cormier & Cajun Sounds

Cajun
Carencro, Louisiana

Known as the “Queen of the Cajun Accordion” and “La Reine de Musique Cadjine,” Sheryl Cormier is still packing the dance floors of Southwest Louisiana at 79 years old. “The reason I’m still doing that is, I love people,” she declares. “If I can entertain, I’m in my element.” With her band Cajun Sounds, Cormier plays the traditional way, with Francophone singing rising over the accordion- and fiddle-driven two steps and waltzes that connect listeners—and dancers—to the heart of Cajun culture.

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Stepping Back
Stepping Back

step team competition
central Virginia

Among the most vital and captivating manifestations of long-practiced traditions on college campuses are the step shows organized by African American sororities and fraternities, known as Black Greek-Letter Organizations (BGLOs). Whether informal displays of pride and skill “on the yard,” or formalized competitions before thousands of fans, stepping celebrates African American culture, and vividly demonstrates the contributions that BGLOs make to campus and community life. For its 20th anniversary, the Richmond Folk Festival is thrilled to bring back another competitive step show, featuring six fraternities and sororities from the Richmond region, and hosted by Mecca Marsh. Who will come with the show-stopping, winning routine?

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Supaman
Supaman

Native American hip hop
Crow Reservation, near Billings, Montana

Returning to the Richmond Folk Festival to celebrate the festival’s 20th anniversary is Christian Takes Gun Parrish, who performs under the name of Supaman. While the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana appears to be as far removed from the city streets of the Bronx as possible, Supaman speaks to the shared social struggles of both communities, combining hip hop beats with Native American music and dance. The hybrid sound and image he creates, which he has termed Crow Hop, demands an audience’s rapt attention when they first see this enigmatic, rhythmic, and striking collage. He is, simultaneously, a Fancy Dancer, a hip hop artist, a beatboxer, a DJ, and an ambassador for the Crow Nation.

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Tremé Brass Band
Tremé Brass Band

New Orleans brass band
New Orleans, Louisiana

Central to the musical traditions of New Orleans are the African American brass bands that play for traditional funerals and street parades. Among the most beloved of these is the Tremé Brass Band from the venerable and storied Tremé neighborhood. The group is led by a New Orleans institution, drummer Benny Jones, Sr., who has been parading for over 60 years. As with most of New Orleans’s brass bands, the membership in Tremé is fluid, a mixture of old masters with the ‘rat-tat-tat’ born in their blood and young innovators adding more contemporary sounds. Last in Richmond during the National Folk Festival’s residency, the iconic Tremé Brass Band is back to celebrate the event’s 20th anniversary.

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Trouble Funk
Trouble Funk

go-go
Washington, D.C

For nearly 50 years, Trouble Funk has helped spread Washington D.C.’s funky go-go sound from all-night dance parties in the DMV to audiences worldwide. One of the leading bands during go-go’s golden era in the 1980s, Trouble Funk’s intensified percussion and innovative use of electro-funk and early rap lyrics produced a brand of go-go that fit more squarely within African American urban musical expression up and down the East Coast, and earned them a loyal and passionate following that continues growing today. It is no surprise Trouble Funk is among the group of artists returning to celebrate the Richmond Folk Festival’s 20th anniversary.

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Ustad Noor Bakhsh
Ustad Noor Bakhsh

benju master
Pasni, Balochistan, Pakistan

Pakistan’s Ustad Noor Bakhsh was one of the most unlikely internet sensations of the post-pandemic era. Born into a nomadic family of herders, and taught music by his father, Noor Bakhsh has been playing since he was a child. Though he’s worked professionally as the accompanist of singer Sabzal Sami for decades, he only came to the world’s attention as a soloist in 2022, at the age of 77—thanks to Pakistani anthropologist Daniyal Ahmed, who tracked Bakhsh down after watching him perform online. Part of what caught the world’s attention was Ustad Noor Bakhsh’s unusual instrument. He’s a master of the electric benju, a rare, five-stringed, keyed zither that’s unique to the Balochistan region of Pakistan. Bakhsh’s debut solo album, Jingul, came out just in 2022, which Pitchfork praised as “the kind of music that leaves you grasping for the spiritual and indefinable, that burrows into your soul and glows there.”

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Wayne Henderson & Friends
Wayne Henderson & Friends

Appalachian finger-picked guitar
Rugby, Virginia

Wayne Henderson is the Appalachian guitarist the Nashville pickers talk about, the one who lives in a very remote area of the Blue Ridge and makes those acoustic guitars with the amazing tone, the ones that are so hard to get. Using a thumbpick and fingerpicks, his playing sounds like flatpicking, with amazing speed and fluidity, transforming fiddle and banjo pieces and even the occasional jazz standard into stunning guitar solos. A returning favorite for the 20th anniversary for the Richmond Folk Festival, Wayne will be joined by Randy Greer on mandolin, Josh Scott on bass, and Herb Key on rhythm guitar.

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ARTISTS ON THE CENTER FOR CULTURAL VIBRANCY STAGE

Featured
Africa to Appalachia featuring Cheick Hamala Diabate, Riley Baugus, and Danny Knicely
Africa to Appalachia featuring Cheick Hamala Diabate, Riley Baugus, and Danny Knicely

African/Appalachian Fusion
Greater Washington, DC

The history of the five-string banjo, among the very first truly American-born instruments, provides a revelatory lens through which to view the immense contributions of African cultural traditions to the development of American popular music and culture. The instrument we now know as the banjo was derived from lutes enslaved Africans brought to the New World, most notably the West African n’goni and kora. The European violin (fiddle) and the African-derived banjo likely comprised the “first duet” in the New World, providing the cornerstone of American musical forms for centuries to come.

Anya Hinkle and the Billy Sea featuring John Doyle
Anya Hinkle and the Billy Sea featuring John Doyle

Ashville, NC
Americana

Anya Hinkle is a distinguished American singer-songwriter whose music captivates with its blend of Appalachian roots and contemporary folk influences. Known for her soul-stirring voice and evocative songwriting, Anya has carved out a significant niche in the Americana and folk music scenes. With a career that spans more than a decade, her artistry reflects a deep appreciation for tradition while pushing the boundaries of the genre.

Evans Smith May.jpeg
Bill Evans, Steve Smith & Tim May

Bluegrass
Staunton, Virginia

Bill Evans is an internationally recognized five-string banjo life force. He is a recipient of the Steve Martin Banjo Prize and a 2024 American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame inductee. As a performer, teacher, writer and composer, he brings a deep knowledge, intense virtuosity and contagious passion to all things banjo, with thousands of music fans and banjo students from all over the world in a music career that now spans more than 35 years. Bill’s banjo artistry is best experienced in live performance and on his recordings Fine Times at Fletcher’s House with Fletcher Bright (2013), In Good Company (2012), Let’s Do Something with Megan Lynch (2009), Bill Evans Plays Banjo (2001), and Native and Fine (1995).

Danny Knicely, Bakaari Wilder and John Previti
Danny Knicely, Bakaari Wilder and John Previti

Appalachian, Jazz and Tap
Loudoun County, Virginia

If there’s one thing you can count on at the Center for Cultural Vibrancy Stage, it is the presence of multi-instrumentalist and musical genius Danny Knicely. You can also be sure he’ll be up to something new. Danny has the uncanny ability to thrive in and elevate most any musical situation, and often melds the Appalachian folk music of his youth with the expansive types of music he has encountered in the diverse cultural communities of the U.S. and the world. He has shared his music and collaborated with musicians in four continents, including U.S. State Department tours in Russia, Tunisia, Morocco and Cabo Verde, as well as participated in the celebrated Mountain Music Project with traditional musicians from Mongolia.

Johnny Williams and the Crooked Road Revival featuring Stevie Barr, Josh Pickett, Ryan Blevins, Jacob Eller, and Jeanette WIlliams
Johnny Williams and the Crooked Road Revival featuring Stevie Barr, Josh Pickett, Ryan Blevins, Jacob Eller, and Jeanette WIlliams

Bluegrass
Galax, Virginia

Johnny Williams grew up in Fries, Virginia, a small community nestled alongside the New River in Grayson County, an area that has long been steeped in bluegrass and old-time music. Johnny soaked up the musical culture around him at fiddler’s conventions, local performances and jam sessions and eventually moved with his family to Danville, on Virginia’s Southside, a region home to diverse musical styles. Johnny became a powerful singer and songwriter and, after stints with soul and blues bands, returned to his bluegrass roots. At a local Opry production, Johnny met Jeanette Finney of Eden, North Carolina, a sought-after singer who joined Johnny’s band Clearwater. They married two years later. Jeanette has performed with Ralph Stanley, Alison Krauss, Larry Sparks, among many others. Johnny and Jeanette often perform and write songs independently; each has won the prestigious Chris Austin Songwriting Contest at MerleFest, in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, as well as collaborated with distinguished songwriters Dixie and Tom T. Hall.

Justin-Golden-with-Devils-Coattails.jpg
Justin Golden & Devil’s Coattails

Traditional Acoustic Blues
Richmond, Virginia 

Justin Golden's origins are deeply vested in the blues, with roots in the Mississippi Delta, Chicago and the Piedmont of Virginia. Picking up the guitar as a teenager, Justin did what came naturally and let the music flow through him. Fascinatingly, the Piedmont Blues style first came to him in a dream, which he later shared with the late harmonica great Phil Wiggins, who told him that he’d been unconsciously playing this deeply rooted style all along, and in fact he had written several songs in the Piedmont style before he had ever heard of the style. While perhaps not as well-known as the Mississippi Delta style, the Piedmont Blues has a deep history in Virginia, and is home to some of its greatest practitioners, including John Jackson and John Cephas.

Kadencia.jpg
Kadencia

Bomba y Plena
Richmond, VA 

Kadencia is a band led by the father-son duo of Maurice Sanabria-Ortiz and Maurice “Tito” Sanabria. The band is dedicated to playing, promoting, and preserving Afro-Puerto Rican music. Kadencia was founded in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico in 2007. Since 2018, Kadencia calls Richmond, Virginia home. Kadencia's music and sounds pay homage and follow the traditions of bomba and plena from western Puerto Rico. The lyrics of its songs are narrative and describe various aspects of Puerto Rican society, culture, and traditions. Kadencia utilizes bomba and plena's long-rooted storytelling traditions to vividly capture multiple aspects of the Puerto Rican experience on the U.S. territory and on the U.S. mainland. 

Kily Vializ
Kily Vializ

Plena and Bomba
Mayagüez, Puerto Rico

 Erick Miguel Vializ Montalvo, better known as Kily Vializ, grew up on Cantera Street in the Broadway barrio (neighborhood or community) of Mayagüez, on the central west coast of Puerto Rico. Raised in a family of performers, he began singing and playing plena and aquinaldos traditional music as a child. “Plena is my life. Both my mom and dad played plena,” he explains, “My mom sang and wrote music. When she was pregnant with me, she took guitar lessons.

Kinney Rorrer and the New North Carolina Ramblers.jpg
Kinney Rorrer and the New North Carolina Ramblers

Charlie Poole Style Banjo
Danville, Virginia

The New North Carolina Ramblers perform old-time string band music in the tradition of such legendary artists as Charlie Poole, The Carter Family and The Floyd County Ramblers. The band was founded and is still led by Kinney Rorrer on banjo. The great nephew of Charlie Poole and Posey Rorer, Kinney has written numerous liner notes and magazine articles on old-time music, in addition to his biography of Charlie Poole. For decades Kinny co-hosted a seminal radio program of traditional rural music called Back to the Blue Ridge on WFVT-FM, Southwest Virginia’s NPR affiliate

Maurice “Tito” Sanabria
Maurice “Tito” Sanabria

Plena
Richmond, VA 

Plena is a narrative, energetic, and percussive musical genre created in the early 1900s by working-class Puerto Ricans along the island’s southern coastal towns. Mayagüez, western Puerto Rico’s largest city, has a long and rich tradition of Plena dating back to the genre’s origin, and has produced leading practitioners that wrote, performed, and recorded some of Plena’s most emblematic songs.

Minnush
Minnush

Contemporary Sephardic
Charlottesville and Northern Virginia 

Minnush, a fresh and innovative ensemble dedicated to playing contemporary Sephardic music, pays homage to the life and legacy of the late Flory Jagoda, the National Heritage Award-winning Sephardic singer and composer. When the Sephardic Jews were forced into exile from Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century, many settled in other Mediterranean countries but preserved their native language, Ladino, and their oral culture. Flory Jagoda was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, a member of the Sephardic Jewish community. Through her “nona,” her mother’s mother, Flory learned songs that had been passed down among the Sephardi for generations, as well as absorbed the Balkan region’s cultural traditions. Flory escaped the destruction of Sarajevo’s Jewish community, eventually arriving in the United States after World War II.

Riley Baugus
Riley Baugus

Old Time and Mountain Ballads
Walkertown, NC

Riley Baugus, a North Carolina native who lives in Walkertown, began singing and playing music at an early age. Raised in a household where recordings of old-time music were often played, he developed a love and appreciation for traditional southern Appalachian music. He and his family attended a Regular Baptist church, where unaccompanied hymn singing was a long-standing tradition.

The Legendary Ingramettes
The Legendary Ingramettes

Gospel
Richmond, Virginia

Richmond, Virginia, has long been celebrated as a “Gospel town” for its legacy of vibrant Black gospel groups and choirs. Among the city’s generations of countless groups, the Legendary Ingramettes have become widely considered the city’s “First Family of Gospel,” uplifting audiences for more than six decades while becoming beloved cultural icons in the community. Music is one of many forms of ministry they have practiced, and the one they are most famous for. The storied group was originally formed by evangelist “Mama” Maggie Ingram, a single mother who steadfastly taught her five small children to accompany her as her “Ingramettes.” To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Richmond Folk Festival, all five of Maggie’s children, the original Ingramettes, will perform on the CCV stage: Almeta, Tina, John, Luke and Thomas.

Willie Marschner
Willie Marschner

Fairfax, VA
Old-Time Fiddle

Willie Marschner remembers falling asleep to the sounds of his family and their friends making music, and he began playing the fiddle himself when he was just six years old. Now a multi-instrumentalist, Willie worked with fellow mandolin-guitar-fiddle player Danny Knicely in the Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program to develop his skills in improvisation and in furthering his personal style on traditional tunes.

Virginia Folklife ‘Textile Origin Stories’ artists

Featured
Andrew Alli
Andrew Alli

Blues Harmonica
Richmond, VA

Andrew Alli has forged his path within the world of blues harmonica. He stumbled across the instrument by hearing a street busker, and the harmonica completely changed Alli’s life trajectory. Over the years, Alli has developed a unique sound which strikes a balance of traditional styles with fresh approaches thanks to his swing, tone, and heart.

Corey Harris
Corey Harris

Blues performer and scholar
Charlottesville, VA 

Corey Harris is a guitarist, vocalist, songwriter and band leader who has carved out his own niche in blues. A powerful singer and accomplished guitarist, he has appeared at venues throughout the North America, Europe, Brazil, The Caribbean, East and West Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Elegba Folklore Society Djembe Ensemble featuring Amadou Kouyate
Elegba Folklore Society Djembe Ensemble featuring Amadou Kouyate

No matter your age or background, the spirit and the openness of the Elegba Folklore Society will enchant you. In a way that perhaps you will expect or in a way that is totally spontaneous, your energy will blend beautifully with ours, closing the gap between performer and audience.  Participants find themselves swept up in a universal cultural energy that links them with the global significance of this timeless art form.