Musicians, dancers share talents at Spokane Folklore Society’s Fall Folk Festival

Although fall seems to have made a swift exit from the Inland Northwest, the Spokane Folklore Society will do its best to cultivate that autumnal feeling through music and dance at the 22nd annual Fall Folk Festival.

The Spokane staple, which celebrates the cultural diversity of the region, will take place Saturday and Sunday at Spokane Community College.

Every year, more than 100 performers from in and around the Inland Northwest fill the college campus.

This year, Celtic folk-rock band Free Whiskey, cowboy poet Dick Warwick, men’s a capella harmony chorus Pages of Harmony, Brazilian choro musician Alma Brasileira, Middle Eastern belly dance troupe Tribe Sahara, folklorist and singer LaVona Reeves, the Silver Spurs Youth Folk Dancers and many more are scheduled to perform.

“Our mission is to preserve and promote cultural, ethnic, traditional and international music around the region,” festival director Sylvia Gobel said. “Basically anyone that is a folk performer or some sort of international group or cultural or ethnic group, we look for.”

Gobel also keeps her eyes and ears out for new performers.

This year, the Fall Folk Festival welcomes folk singer-songwriter Kori Ailene, folk-punk songwriter Olivia Awbrey, the Spokane Bulgarian Community Dance Group, Spokane Irish Dance, singer-songwriter Gabriella Rose, the United Methodist Marimba Band, bluegrass band Mighty Dreadful and several others for the first time.

“Every year new performers that we didn’t know existed find out about us,” Gobel said. “If I see someone performing in the area or I hear about it, I make an effort to contact them so I can send them applications for the festival.”

The festival also features music and dance workshops throughout the weekend and a variety of family activities, including stories from the Spokane Storytelling League and Lucy D. Ford, folk songs for children from Richard Clarkson, family dance, music from Jenny Edgren, and magic and comedy from Dick Frost.

There are also a number of young performers at this year’s festival including the Coeur d’Alene Youth Marimbas, a string band called King Trouble and the Cherry Pickers, the Otis Orchard Malleteers and the Grant School Drummers and Dancers, from Grant Elementary School.

For a complete schedule of events, visit spokanefolkfestival.org.

Gobel called is a Herculean task scheduling more than 100 performers in such a way that two performances in the same genre or two workshops aren’t happening at the same time, but after 15 years as festival director, it’s nothing she can’t handle.

As a member of several international folk dance performance groups, Gobel began attending the Northwest Folklife Festival in Seattle in 1980.

Over the years as the festival grew, so did the amount of applicants, which made it harder and harder for performers to get selected.

In 1996, Vicki Ball, Carla Carnegie, Dave Noble and Leone Peterson decided to bring the Northwest Folklife Festival experience to Spokane and founded the Fall Folk Festival.

Gobel volunteered at the inaugural festival and soon after took over the programming side of the event.

The first few festivals were held at the Unitarian Universalist Church before the event got too big for the space and moved to Glover Middle School.

Gobel took over as festival director in 2002, and the Fall Folk Festival has been at Spokane Community College since 2003.

Though Gobel usually has to turn down a few applicants each year due to lack of space, she said the festival has yet to seriously consider expanding to a bigger venue.

It might happen down the road, but for now she calls the college the perfect host.

“We love where we are,” she said. “There’s parking, the staff and everything at SCC are so helpful and so nice.”

Over the years, as the festival has grown, Gobel has noticed the audience has diversified too.

The 40- to 60-year-old crowd has also made up a big part of the audience, but in recent years Gobel has noticed more and more high school- and college-aged folk fans attending.

She recommends folk fans of all ages check out the festival, as she is often met with surprise from attendees at the amount of talent in the area.

“They’re just amazed that all these people pretty much live in Spokane or are from around our region,” Gobel said. “People are so surprised at the variety and the diversity and the talent of people that are from around here.

“We are not a cultural desert. Come to the Fall Folk Festival and find out why.”