To some, the words "folk music" bring to mind acoustic guitars, protest singers, flowing dresses, peace signs and other images repeated ad nauseam in documentaries about the 1960s.
According to Lora Helou, the communications director for the Great Lakes Folk Festival, these things are elements of folk, but the term actually applies to a much wider scope of music.
"It's really a broad term that refers to music that comes out of a culture, a region or an ethnic group," she said. "It's music that's really handed down with authenticity."
The 2006 Great Lakes Folk Festival takes place Aug. 11-13 in downtown East Lansing. Seventeen different groups, playing in genres that range from klezmer to polka, bluegrass to Celtic, and zydeco to Tejano, will play the festival's five stages.
"Just by bringing so many different types of genres or so many kinds of music here, it creates kind of a really special chemistry," Helou said.
This year's festival will showcase the cultures and traditions of Louisiana, in light of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.
"When we were brainstorming way back in the fall when this whole process started, Hurricane Katrina was certainly in the forefront of our minds — as it was with lots of people around the country — so we wanted to do something that kind of honored the cultural heritage of that area," Helou said. "So we looked to book Cajun and creole and zydeco music, and in addition to some really great music, also draw out some stories of the performers and learn about their culture and their traditions and what life is like for them."
The artists representing Louisiana will play back-to-back Saturday afternoon on the festival's Valley Court stage. Lil' Nathan (of Lil' Nathan & the Zydeco Big-Timers), Cedric Watson, Eddie Bo and members of the group Feufollet will then share their experiences in a "storytelling" session Sunday afternoon on the Legacy stage.
"We try to create a platform, a space, at our festival that allows the musicians themselves to tell their own stories, to play their own music," said Marsha Macdowell, curator of folk arts at the MSU Museum, which helps put the festival together.
For Macdowell, the Great Lakes Folk Festival is about providing a venue for artists to express themselves and for visitors to be exposed to an authentic presentation of the artists' varied cultures, communities and traditions.
"We're not into producing really slick, commercialized musical forms; we leave that to others," she said. "What we're trying to do is present things that have real authentic and high-quality roots."
The festival is free and will take place in downtown East Lansing. For the performance schedule and more information, visit www.greatlakesfolkfest.net.
