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GREAT FESTIVAL, GREAT THANKS!
The Michigan State University Museum would like to take a moment to send a hearty thanks to all the artists, volunteers, sponsors and friends who helped make the Great Lakes Folk Festival a memorable celebration of culture, tradition and community. Despite a few rain drops, the crowds were especially strong, supportive and high-spirited!
CHECK OUT THESE LINKS from the Lansing State Journal and YouTube and more -- including Western swinger Wylie Gustafson singing about East Lansing:
MSU Museum's Patrick T. Power's Facebook gallery:
http://www.new.facebook.com/album.php?aid=145885&id=756490223&ref=mf
You have to sign into Facebook to view these photos
LSJ's Mike Hughes' Entertainment blog:
http://noise.typepad.com/mike_hughes/
LSJ's photo gallery by Robert Killips:
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=A3&Dato=20080810&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=808100801&Ref=PH
LSJ's Kevin Fowler's photos:
http://www.lansingstatejournal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=A3&Dato=20080808&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=808090801&Ref=PH
Jim Fordyce, WILS Radio and MI entertainment TV reporter:
http://www.mientertainment.biz/GLFOLK08.html
YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsWlBPlepak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klk1_hMsg3c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcsWhOmR-5A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1q7ulSnI4g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wzl9oVoHlM
Send us your photos, online galleries and links and we'll add them to our GLFF web page and MSU Museum Facebook page. Contact: pr@museum.msu.edu
MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR GLFF 2009!
The festival continues to be widely recognized as one of the state's premiere arts and culture events. Be sure to save the date for the 2009 festival - Aug. 7-9, 2008 - and tell your friends, family and coworkers too!
MSU Museum curators and planners will begin work soon for next year's event. Check the GLFF web site for updates: http://www.greatlakesfolkfest.net .
Of course, you can always make a donation and help support the MSU Museum's efforts in producing the folk festival. Click: http://www.greatlakesfolkfest.net/FriendsoftheFestival/
VISIT THE MSU MUSEUM!
Before the next folk festival, make the MSU Museum a destination, in the historic heart of north campus, just steps off Grand River Avenue in East Lansing.
The MSU Museum is Michigan's natural history and culture museum and the state's first Smithsonian Institution affiliate. The MSU Museum is proud to host a trio of timely political exhibitions during this election season, as well as being the last stop on the national tour of the Smithsonian's special exhibition, "Our Journeys, Our Stories: Portraits of Latino Achievement." Learn more at http://museum.msu.edu .
Interdisciplinary research, programs and activities are in partnership with the College of Arts & Letters, College of Natural Science, College of Social Science, MSU Extension, and University Outreach and Engagement. Additional support comes from the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs to encourage, develop and promote an enriched environment of artistic, creative and cultural activity in Michigan.
The MSU Museum features three floors of special collections and changing exhibits and is open seven days a week free of charge (donations are encouraged). The museum is located on West Circle Drive next to Beaumont Tower on the MSU campus in East Lansing and is accessible to persons with disabilities. Hours are Monday - Friday, 9 a.m. - 5 p.m.; Saturday, 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.; and Sunday, 1-5 p.m. For more information, call (517) 355-2370. Note that the MSU Museum is closed for Labor Day Weekend, including Monday.
A WORLD OF ARTS AND CULTURE AT MSU
If you like what you experienced at GLFF, there's a world of arts and culture at MSU too. Explore your world through the vibrant cultural community that is Michigan State University. Discover the hundreds of performances, exhibitions, and special programs that enrich lives on campus, in the community, and throughout the world.
Arts and culture at MSU play a critical role in nurturing the human spirit while contributing to a richer quality of life. Museums, galleries, and gardens along with libraries, historic sites, and performance spaces provide a catalyst for cultural exchange of diverse ideas and inspirations. At the same time, audiences on campus and around the world take advantage of academic and research outreach programs such as public broadcasting, online resources, and publications.
Join us in exploring a world of arts and culture at Michigan State University. Learn more at http://artsandculture.msu.edu.
posted Aug 29, 2008
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TRADITIONS SHOWCASES SET
An audience favorite in the GLFF music lineup is the Traditions Showcase. Musicians from different groups take the stage to share and compare instruments, influences, techniques and traditions. What results is always insightful, delightful and spontaneous storytelling and musicianship.
This year, Traditions Showcases include:
FIDDLE TRADITIONS -- SATURDAY, 12 NOON, CITY HALL STAGE
April Verch
Peter Knupfer (Detour)
Pascal Miousse (Vishten)
Eddie Bond (Bogtrotters/Crooked Road)
Richard Forest (Reveillons!)
GUITAR MASTERS -- SATURDAY, 5 P.M., CITY HALL STAGE
Wayne Henderson
Scot Wilburn (Wylie & The Wild West)
John Cephas
Jeff Rose (Detour)
FRENCH CONNECTIONS - SUNDAY, 2 P.M. - CITY HALL STAGE
Player(s) from:
Reveillons!
Vishten
Jeffery Broussard & The Creole Cowboys
ROOTS RUN DEEP (Siblings) - SUNDAY, 3 P.M., CITY HALL STAGE
The Singletons
David & Jean-Fran¨ois Berthiaume (Reveillons!)
Emmanuelle & Pastelle LeBlanc (Vishten)
The schedule may be subject to change; be sure to check the schedules posted by each performance stage.
LOOK, LISTEN FOR GLFF -- AHEAD OF THE EVENT!
The Lansing State Journal will insert the GLFF program book in Saturday's paper. In it you can read in-depth bios and descriptions of the musicians, crafters, and the more than 100 tradition-bearers coming to this popular and acclaimed event.
Listen for festival features on the air as the festival approaches: Sunday night on WKAR-FM's "Folk Tradition," with Bob Blackman, and on WMMQ-FM's "Capital City Blues Cruise," with Scotty Allman on Sunday night; on WDBM-FM's Tuesday night "Progressive Torch and Twang, with Doug Neal and Corrina Van Hamlin; as well as on WLNZ-FM's rich and varied playlist.
You can also catch a half-hour MSU Today-Spartan Podcast about GLFF here: http://spartanpodcast.com/?p=456 and learn about many of the artists coming to the 2008 Great Lakes Folk Festival.
BECOME A GLFF VOLUNTEER
The Michigan State University Museum's Great Lakes Folk Festival still has some slots for a variety of volunteer positions.
More than 400 agile and spirited volunteers help produce the festival, filling three- and four-hour shifts in a variety of areas, including staffing information booths, artist transportation, children's areas, bucket brigades, and site set-up and tear-down. Volunteers get a commemorative T-shirt, entry to a festival artist-staff-volunteer party at the event and other special perks.
For information on volunteering, call (517) 432-GLFF or email glffvolunteer@museum.msu.edu. Or, go to the volunteer page of this web site.
FIND US ON FACEBOOK, INVITE EVERYONE YOU KNOW!
GLFF has started a facebook event page. You can check it out (log-in required), write on the wall, and invite your friends!
http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10222494617
Roots-rhythms-richness
MSU MUSEUM SETS FOLK FESTIVAL MUSIC SCHEDULE
Get ready to swing, fling, jig, reel and revel with the MSU Museum's Great Lakes Folk Festival, Aug. 8-10 in downtown East Lansing. The music schedule has now been set, featuring more than 70 performances on five music and dance stages.
Highlights of the music schedule include:
French connections: a variety of cultures, traditions and communities come together at GLFF with Quebecois and Acadian from French-speaking Canada, and transplanted Zydeco (related to Cajun) from Louisiana.
Old-time Crooked Road Revue: based on a popular theme created by the National Council for the Traditional Arts, Washington, D.C., (which brought the GLFF predecessor, the traveling National Folk Festival, to East Lansing). Musical artists from the Crooked Road region of Virginia will play as a combo, and also in individual sets showcasing vocal and musical mastery.
Cephas & Wiggins: who brought their Piedmont-style blues to the National Folk Festival in East Lansing, will be back for this year's GLFF.
Generations: a number of family connections where traditions flourish, including Lansing's own Singletons gospel group, as well as second-generation emerging artists Cats and the Fiddler from Milford, Mich.
Chinese culture: since GLFF opens the same day as the Beijing Olympics, MSU Museum planners wanted to spotlight traditional Chinese culture with the erhu, sometimes called the Chinese fiddle.
CraftWORKS! crossover: A new feature at this year's event is based on an MSU Museum program where masters and apprentices demonstrate how traditions and artistic expressions are taught and sustained in Michigan -- story-telling, carving, lace-making, weaving and more. Many of these will include musical traditions, with performances and meet-the-artist sessions planned.
Fun fact: whether we realize it or not, virtually everyone has already heard Wylie Gustafson sing. He performed the Yahoo Yodel that was in use a few year back.
In addition, GLFF will present the popular Fiddle Traditions showcase, bringing together fiddlers from many different groups to share and compare traditions, techniques and influences. New this year is a Guitar Masters Showcase.
Music and dance from across America and around the world come together throughout the weekend with the unique mix of bluegrass, blues, gospel, western swing, polka, Zydeco, Mexican, African, Chinese and more. The music program is sponsored by the City of East Lansing.
Click here to see the complete GLFF musical schedule. Sound clips are also available for many of the musical artists. Go to the Music and Dance page to hear them. The schedule may be subject to change and festival-goers should check the stage schedules at the event.
The festival also features the Taste of Traditions food court, Folk Arts Marketplace, and Children's Folk Activities Area. Admission is free (donations are welcome and encouraged). For more information, call the MSU Museum at (517) 432-4533 or email pr@museum.msu.edu
Festival hours are:
Friday, Aug. 8, 6 - 10:30 p.m.;
Saturday, Aug. 9, 12 noon - 10:30 p.m.;
and Sunday, Aug. 10, 12 noon - 6 p.m.
Check out the Festival's Facebook page at, http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10222494617 .
( you need to join Facebook to see our page)
Roots-rhythms-richness
MSU MUSEUM ANNOUNCES '08 FOLK FESTIVAL LINE-UP
 |
Singing Cowboy Wylie Gustafson |
The roots, the rhythms and the richness of music, dance, arts and culture from across America and around the world come to downtown East Lansing for the Michigan State University Museum's annual Great Lakes Folk Festival, Aug. 8-10.
The MSU Museum announces the preliminary slate of musical performers, sponsored by the City of East Lansing:
Names in rusty red are links to more information about each performer
Eddie Bond -- Old-time Banjo -- Fries, Virginia
Jeffery Broussard & The Creole Cowboys -- Zydeco -- Lawtell, Louisiana
Cephas & Wiggins -- Piedmont Blues -- Washington, D.C.
Crooked Road Revue -- Old-time Revue, featuring Bond, LaPrelle, Henderson and Sutphin -- Crooked Road Region, Virginia
Detour - Bluegrass -- Michigan and Nashville, Tennessee
Mamadou Diabate - Malian Kora -- Durham, North Carolina
George Gao -- Chinese erhu -- Toronto, Ontario
Wayne Henderson -- Finger-style Guitar -- Galax, Virginia
Elizabeth LaPrelle -- Old-time Ballads -- Rural Retreat, Virginia
New Ballard's Branch Bogtrotters -- Old Time -- Galax,Virginia
iRéveillons! - Quebecois -- Montréal, Québec, Canada
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Mamadou Diabete plays the Kora |
The Singletons -- Gospel -- Lansing, Michigan
Sones de México -- Mexican regional -- Chicago, Illinois
Kirk Sutphin -- Old-time Fiddle -- Walkertown, North Carolina
Tuba Dan's Family Band -- Czech polka -- Oshkosh, Wisconsin
April Verch -- Ottawa Valley Fiddle -- Pembroke, Ontario
Vishten - Acadian -- Prince Edward Island, Canada
Wylie & The Wild West -- Cowboy/Western Swing -- Lacrosse, Washington
Beyond the music, the festival program includes
CraftWORKS! (New for 2008) -- Showcasing traditions and mastery in the MSU Museum's Michigan Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program with hand-made heritage ranging from decoy duck carving, birch bark canoe making, weaving, basketry, storytelling and saddle making.
2008 Michigan Heritage Award honorees:
Seikichi Iha of Lansing for Okinawan "traditional" martial art of karate-do;
Herb Nehring of Oshtemo for blacksmithing; and
Johnny Sarweh of Fraser for playing the qanun, Middle Eastern zither.
Taste of Traditions authentic and regional and ethnic food, from Native Hawaiian to Middle Eastern, Ethiopian, Jamaican and Polish.
Folk Arts Marketplace, with hand-made goods ranging from quilts and braided rugs to wood carving and Indian henna tattoos.
Children's Folk Activities Area with fresh-air fun and make-and-take crafts.
The half-mile festival site - across the street from the MSU campus -- spans the downtown core of the city, tapping lush park settings and pulsing city crossroads for three days of festival fun.
Admission to the MSU Museum's Great Lakes Folk Festival is free.
This award-winning event has emerged as one of the region's premiere arts programs and a summer-time high note -- and is expected to draw more than 90,000 visitors throughout the weekend to celebrate culture, tradition and community. GLFF was named the state's top public humanities program by the Michigan Humanities Council and the event received an artistic excellence grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to help produce this year's activities.
Festival hours are:
Friday, Aug. 8, 6 - 10:30 p.m.;
Saturday, Aug. 9, 12 noon - 10:30 p.m.;
Sunday, Aug. 10, 12 noon - 6 p.m.
For more information, call the MSU Museum at (517) 432-GLFF (4533) or learn more on Facebook,
A link to the Festival's Facebook page is below- log in is required
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=10222494617 .
What is Facebook? Click here for more info.
The event is produced by the Michigan State University Museum, Michigan's first Smithsonian affiliate. The festival is produced by the MSU Museum's Michigan Traditional Arts Program, which researches, documents, preserves, and presents our shared heritage and cultural expressions. Primary financial support for GLFF comes from the City of East Lansing, Michigan State University Office of the Provost and University Outreach and Engagement, and Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. In addition, nearly 100 corporations, foundations and organizations also support GLFF annually, as well as individual donors, "Great Friends."
-- MSU MUSEUM: marking 150 years of discovery -- The MSU Museum is Michigan's
natural history and culture museum and the state's first Smithsonian Institution affiliate
posted April 10, 2008
MSU MUSEUM RECEIVES NEA
"ARTISTIC EXCELLENCE" GRANT FOR
GREAT LAKES FOLK FESTIVAL
As planning gets under way for the 2008 Great Lakes Folk Festival, Aug. 8-10 in downtown East Lansing, the MSU Museum has received a significant grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), Washington, D.C.
The $35,000 grant is designated for access to artistic excellence in the festival, the region's premiere celebration of culture, tradition and community. The MSU Museum, in partnership with the City of East Lansing and the Center for Great Lakes Culture at MSU, produces this major regional festival showcasing the traditional cultural treasures of the nation's Upper Midwest and also a sampling of the best of traditional artists from around the country and the world.
NEA grants are highly competitive and awarded on a national basis. The MSU Museum has been successful in garnering funding since the Great Lakes Folk Festival's inception in 2002, as well as previous festival productions. In recent years, the MSU Museum has regularly showcased NEA's National Heritage Fellows (musicians and other artists) as well as recipients of the Michigan Heritage Awards and other tradition-bearers.
"We're especially proud to receive this grant, which reflects on the high quality in programming and production we've been able to build and sustain," notes Marsha MacDowell, GLFF artistic and founding director and MSU Museum curator of folk arts.
The MSU Museum's grant was among a more than $19 million in federal funding to nonprofit national, regional, state, and local organizations across the country through the NEA's Access to Artistic Excellence category.
NEA Chairman Dana Gioia said, "This group of NEA grants supports a wide range of artistically excellent projects across the country. Among our grants, NEA funds help dance companies tour, theaters to mount new productions, museums to provide education programs, and small communities to celebrate their local traditions with folk festivals."
Access to Artistic Excellence grants support the creation and presentation of work in dance, design, folk and traditional arts, literature, media arts, museums, music, musical theater, opera, presenting, theater, and visual arts. This round of funding also supported grants to local arts agencies for service-to-the-field projects that assist artists and arts organizations with improving managerial infrastructures. Projects include commissions, residencies, workshops, performances, exhibitions, publications, festivals, and professional development programs. Through this category, the NEA will fund 866 projects out of 1,312 eligible applications, for a total of $19.189 million.
The NEA is a public agency dedicated to supporting excellence in the arts -- both new and established -- bringing the arts to all Americans, and providing leadership in arts education. Established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government, the Arts Endowment is the largest national funder of the arts, bringing great art to all 50 states, including rural areas, inner cities, and military bases. For more information, visit http://www.arts.gov.
Both entertaining and educational, the award-winning Great Lakes Folk Festival promotes a greater understanding and appreciation for the contributions of many cultures to our nation's development and our cultural heritage. The MSU Museum works year-round to research, document and present the many forms of expressive culture showcased at the folk festival. Authentic ethnic food, children's activities, Michigan Heritage Awards, and hand-made crafts are also featured throughout the half-mile festival site in downtown East Lansing.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR FOR GLFF 2008!
The festival continues to be widely recognized as one of the state's premiere arts and culture events. Be sure to save the date for the 2008 festival - Aug. 8-10, 2008 - and tell your friends, family and coworkers too!
MSU Museum curators and planners are hard at work on this year's event. Check back here for updates.
CHECK OUT THESE LSJ PHOTO AND VIDEO GALLERIES:
Reflecting on this year's event, our print media sponsor Lansing State Journal has included two online photo features, with still and video images. See:
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/gallery?Avis=A3&Dato=20070811&Kategori=NEWS&Lopenr=708110802&Ref=PH
http://www.lsj.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070810/VIDEO03/708110340
Also, look for a video of the dance tent action.
Check out Entertainment Editor Mike Hughes' blog:
http://noise.typepad.com/mike_hughes/2007/08/a-sexless-post-.html
Give us your thoughts as well! Or, if you have posted photos at an online gallery, please share those links as well. Send them to pr@museum.msu.edu.
