Spokane Fall Folk Festival celebrates 30 years of music

The Spokane Fall Folk Festival is celebrating its 30th year with traditional music, arts and dance.

The annual event was first held in 1996 at the Unitarian Universalist Church. More than 350 people attended the inaugural one-day event that soon outgrew the location. The festival moved to Glover Middle School before arriving at its current location, Spokane Community College, in 2003. It is here that the folk festival has become a sprawling two-day event that showcases more than 100 performers and draws approximately 6,000 attendees every year.

The festival features an eclectic collection of performers and traditions from a wide array of rich cultural backgrounds, including Japanese taiko drumming, Scottish highland dancing, Hawaiian hula, traditional bluegrass, Americana and more. Across six stages, Saturday will feature nine hours of performances while Sunday will feature six hours worth.

The festival is also completely free. To this day, it remains run by volunteers and every performer is there to share their talents.

This sense of community fostered by the festival is why Ron Marley, a member of the Fall Folk Festival committee, is drawn to the event year after year.

“It’s just a part of the community coming together to share what they have and to appreciate what they’re sharing,” Marley said.

It is not uncommon for a group of musicians to gather just outside the festival and simply jam together, which always piques Marley’s interest.

“It’s even more enticing than the people playing out on the stages sometimes,” Marley said. “It all comes together just with a big sense of community.”

Marley hopes this weekend’s attendees walk away with even a sliver of the sheer energy the performers exude as well as a newfound sense of appreciation for the various folk backgrounds and traditions found within the Inland Northwest.

“They should come out if they enjoy music or dance and if they like seeing the various cultures being represented in the Spokane area,” Marley said. “And they should expect a bit of a crowd, a lot of different types of music and just an experience that is hard to find anywhere else.”

An earlier version of this story misstated the Spokane Fall Folk Festival’s location.