After ‘ A Taste of Folk Festival,’ East Lansing considers future folk music events

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Since late 2024, there have been talks of reviving a folk festival in East Lansing.

The city hosted a regional festival celebrating folk music for more than a decade starting in the early aughts but ended the event in 2017.

This past weekend, East Lansing held what was called “A Taste of Folk Festival” to gauge the community’s interest in a full event returning. East Lansing Community Events Specialist Colleen Armitage says there were several hundred people that attended each day of the concert series. She and her team interviewed attendees throughout the event.

“One of my favorite things was people constantly talking to me about what the festival was for them, the memories they had, the people that went with them, you know, what it meant to them,” she said.

She says East Lansing community members are open to a festival that’s more genre-inclusive.

“Their vision for everything is a more, almost an abstract kind of a view on the term “folk.” Almost more Americana, anything that has made America America.”

This weekend festival included acts that performed Latin, blues and country in addition to folk. She says what they’re creating is a whole new folk festival that will still be be “uniquely East Lansing.”

Due to budget constraints, Armitage says it’s not clear when this new event will be able to take place or what it exactly it will entail. She cites the Summer Solstice Jazz Festival and the East Lansing Art Festival as city events that started small and grew to have a larger footprint.

Her goal now is for the city to commit to a fully-fledged one-day folk event.

Armitage is still collecting feedback on what attendees thought of the sampler festival.

Interview Highlights

On the idea for A Taste of Folk Festival

On what attendees said about bringing back a folk festival

On what community members want out of a future event

Interview Transcript

Sophia Saliby: Since late last year, there have been talks of reviving a folk festival in East Lansing.

The city hosted a regional festival celebrating folk music for more than a decade starting in the early aughts but ended the event in 2017.

This past weekend, East Lansing held what was called “A Taste of Folk Festival” to gauge the community’s interest in a full event returning. Colleen Armitage is with the city, and she joins me now. Thanks for being here.

Colleen Armitage: Thank you so much for having me.

Saliby: What was the goal of this smaller festival instead of kind of doing one big event?

Armitage: When you try to bring something back, it’s best to have a little sampling first. The folk festival that was here was incredibly popular. But when you go back and you start something from scratch, obviously, that takes a lot of effort, a lot of money, a lot of time, and we were just trying to gauge, is this something that the community wants back? Because we didn’t want to force anything.

So, we came up with this plan. We came up with a budget and threw some things together. I think that what we did over this last weekend was very successful and a whole lot of fun.

Saliby: How many people attended the concerts this past weekend, if that’s a number you know?

Armitage: Friday and Saturday, we saw about 300 people for each night, which is a very decent crowd for a kind of a last-minute thing. And it was very, very hot this weekend. And then Sunday, with the farmers market, there was also probably about the same.

I went out there with my staff, and we talked to so many wonderful people this last weekend. And that was the point, is getting ourselves out there, talking to the people, getting feedback and history.

And one of my favorite things was people constantly talking to me about what the festival was for them, the memories they had, the people that went with them, what it meant to them. And I think now I have a really good understanding of what the community wants this to be, how they would be supported and how to make this uniquely East Lansing.

Saliby: So, could you give us a little bit of a hint of kind of what you’re envisioning now that you’ve talked to folks?

Armitage: [East Lansing residents’] vision for everything is a more, almost an abstract kind of a view on the term “folk.” It’s almost more Americana, anything that has made America America, all the genres of music. So, we are not a country of just one nationality, one race, things like that. There are so many other things in this country, other nationalities, other races, things that make America is the mix that we have here. So, the vision is to bring all these different genres together.

Thursday night, we had a Latin-based group, and we had salsa workshops beforehand. Friday was blues, and that was a group from Detroit. Then we had more of a traditional folk group which came from West Michigan. And then at the farmers market, we had kind of a pop-rock vibe for the early part, and then for the later part, it was more of a John Denver-kind of a country. So, it’s a whole bunch of mix.

And what I’d like to see for the future is we bring more workshops to the festival that celebrate nationalities, celebrate all the different genres of music, celebrate everybody that is here in a unique way. People really loved the the salsa workshop. People love to dance. So, you know, we could do more dance workshops. We could bring more cultural workshops and games and family events.

Saliby: When do you think the community will hear a next update about a full festival coming back or maybe a series of events coming back?

Armitage: I would like to put things on the book as soon as possible. We are collecting all the data now. I was handing out questionnaires like a crazy person, talking to so many people. I’ve been keeping lists, and I was taking notes, and as long as people this week fill out that questionnaire that I was handing out, I’m hoping to hear soon.

this is something that the city council would really love to see. Sometimes when you’re dealing with the government, even a small government such as East Lansing, sometimes it takes a little time. But the committee that was put in place to start talking about this, they had some really great ideas. They put some things kind of down as to what they’d like to see, some more concrete ideas. Right now, we would need to start compiling, like a budget for everything and a plan to move forward.

Unfortunately, with everything, especially for festivals, a lot of it has to do with, not just the planning and the people involved, but the money. That’s really what it comes down to is if we can get the money for this, we can have a full-fledged festival. If we have to do a smaller scale and kind of build it, then that is what we do. There’s nothing that says that we have to bring this back and have a full three- to four-day festival. We can bring it back and have a one- to two-day festival and grow it. I think when everything is said and done, we can at least bring back a full-fledged day, and it’s going to be amazing.

Saliby: Colleen Armitage is the Community Events Specialist for the city of East Lansing. Thank you for joining me.

Armitage: Oh, thank you so much.

This conversation has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

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