An amazing lineup of musical artists and performers descend on Butte, Montana every July. Stay tuned for updates on the Montana Folk Festival performers right here.
Admission is free to all performances during the three days of the festival. More than 20 groups representing a broad diversity of musical and cultural traditions will perform on the festival’s six stages in Uptown Butte. Get the latest festival info on Facebook.
Rockabilly | Nashville, TN Chuck Mead is one of the founding members of the celebrated alt-country quintet BR5-49. Mead brings together vintage country, rockabilly, and no-frills rock & roll, creating a sound that generates a swing all its own. While he has also made a name for himself as a producer and …
Cape Breton Celtic | Montreal, Quebec Beòlach is one of Cape Breton’s most exciting and innovative traditional bands. Performing a lively mix of Cape Breton, Scottish and Irish tunes, the group features Mairi Rankin (fiddle, step-dance), Wendy MacIsaac (fiddle, piano, step-dance), Mac Morin (piano, accordion, step-dance), and Matt MacIsaac (pipes, …
Mali Balafon Djeli | New York, NY Balla Kouyaté was born into a musical family that goes back over 800 years to Balla Faséké, the first of an unbroken line of djelis in the Kouyaté clan. Djelis are the oral historians, musicians, and performers who keep alive and celebrate the …
Kathak Dance | Menlo Park, CA Farah Yasmeen Shaikh is an internationally acclaimed Kathak performer, choreographer and instructor, and Founder & Artistic Director of Noorani Dance. As a performer, Farah is known for her evocative storytelling, technical precision, delicacy, and grace, with two decades of training from the late Pandit …
Western Swing | Austin, TX In 1994 in New York City, Elana James placed an ad in the music section of the Village Voice looking to join a band, and Whit Smith answered it. Since then the music these two have made has always been a secret brew of energy, …
Hawaiian Hula | Carson, CA Hālau ‘O Lilinoe is one of the foremost halau (hula schools) in the mainland United States, dedicated to presenting hula kahiko (“ancient hula”), the traditional dance and chant of the Hawai’ian Islands. Beloved for its graceful and powerful performances, the school also celebrates hula as a means of preserving …
Tejano Conjunto Fiddle | San Antonio, TX When Texas Folklife and the Festival of Texas Fiddling honored Belen Escobedo with the 2017 Texas Master Fiddler Award, they praised her for “single-handedly keeping alive” the tradition of conjunto fiddle, “a rare and beautiful style of Mexican-American fiddling which has almost disappeared despite …
Gospel | Richmond, VA Gospel artist Cora Harvey Armstrong still lives in her tiny hometown of Newtown in King and Queen County, Virginia. Her father was a deacon at First Mount Olive Baptist Church where Armstrong served as minister of music for four decades. Her mother started the Harvey Family …
Gypsy Jazz and Swing | Montreal, Quebec For two decades, Christine Tassan, an outstanding guitarist, has been steering her ship with boundless enthusiasm and confidence. Blessed with an absolutely contagious dynamism, she is one of the rare female jazz and gypsy jazz guitar soloists; and she stands out for her …
Cajun | Lafayette, LA One of the brightest young talents to emerge in Cajun, Creole, and Zydeco (Louisiana French) music over the last decade, Cedric Watson is a four-time Grammy-nominated fiddler, singer, accordionist & songwriter with seemingly unlimited potential. Originally from San Felipe, TX (population 868), Cedric made his first …
Bomba y Plena | Miami, FL Plena Es has carved a space for Puerto Rican music in South Florida by emphasizing the island’s distinctive bomba y plena musical traditions, percussion-driven sounds that reflect the island’s African heritage. Founded by Pierre Ramos in 2004, the band—featuring percussion, trombones, piano, bass, and …
Bluegrass | Winchester, VA With a powerhouse voice and remarkable range, Linda Lay is, hands down, one of the best singers in grassroots bluegrass and country music. She leads an exceptional ensemble of award-winning musicians in Springfield Exit. The core trio of Linda, her husband David Lay, and multi-instrumentalist David …
Tango | New York, NY Latin GRAMMY Award winner bassist and composer Pedro Giraudo is among the most compelling tango artists today. After two decades performing with the most important interpreters of tango, Pedro Giraudo debuted his own Tango Orchestra at Lincoln Center’s Midsummer Night Swing in July 2015 and …
Join us for the 14th Montana Folk Festival in Butte, Montana, July 8-10, 2022. An amazing lineup of musical artists and performers descend on Butte, Montana every July. Stay tuned for updates on the 2022 Montana Folk Festival performers right here. Admission is free to all performances during the three …
Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar | Kaneohe, HI Led Kaapana’s mastery of stringed instruments, particularly slack key guitar, and his extraordinary baritone andleo kiekie (falsetto) voices, have made him a musical legend. He has been thrilling audiences for more than 40 years. With easy-going style and kolohe (rascal) charm, he has built a loyal corps …
Irish Traditional | Philadelphia, PA “No one has succeeded more in taking this once vital part of Irish American culture out of musty archives and moldering dissertations and placing it afresh on CD and concert stage than Mick Moloney.” – Earle Hitchner, The Irish Echo Musician, singer, anthropologist and musical …
Iraqi Oud, Iranian Santour, and American percussion | Albuquerque, NM The Rahim AlHaj Trio features Iraqi oud virtuoso and composer Rahim Alhaj, Iranian santour maestro Sourena Sefati and world percussion master Nicholas Baker. Rahim AlHaj was born in Baghdad, Iraq and began playing the oud (the grandfather of all stringed …
Old Time Fiddle | Wilmette, IL Charlie Walden began playing fiddle at age 14 when inspired by players in a fiddler’s contest at the Boone County Fair in his native Missouri. With the generous help and encouragement of older master fiddlers he went on to be recognized as one the …
Native American Hoop Dancing and Drumming | Riverton, WY Jasmine Bell travels the world performing and teaching the sacred hoop dance. Two-time world champion hoop dancer Jasmine Bell, her native name — Good Road Woman of the Crow Creek Sioux – tells of pictographs of hoop dancers on the walls …
Traditional Yakut Khomus | Yakutsk, Sahka Republic, Russia Yuliyana Krovoshapkina is a virtuoso in the art of the khomus, the national instrument of the Sakha Republic in Russia. It functions much like a mouth harp, but differs in several respects. A conventional mouth harp is limited in range, volume, and …
Hip Hop Beatbox | New York, NY One of the biggest names in beatboxing today, preeminent master Rahzel is redefining the limits of the human voice. Known as “the Godfather of Noyze,” Rahzel was a youngster growing up in Queens when hip hop hit big. Beatboxing is a form of …
South Asian | Kathmandu, Nepal The Boston area is home to a large and growing Nepalese community and the Himalayan Heritage Cultural Academy is at its heart. Founded by master musicians to give Nepali traditional arts and music a formal presence in the community, the Academy is also home to …
Garifuna Traditional | Belize and Guatemala The Garinagu people, whose language and culture is called Garifuna, descend from shipwrecked Africans whose ancestry can be traced back to the Yoruba, Ibo, and Ashanti tribes of Ghana, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone. After making their way to Central America, they intermarried with Carib and Arawak native peoples, and …
Jazz Tap | New York, NY Jason Samuels Smith is one of the most dynamic tap dancers of his time. He is best known for his choreographic flair and keen sense of musicianship including impeccable phrasing and diverse time signatures. He has received accolades as a choreographer, performer and humanitarian. …
Western Swing | Fort Worth, IN From honky tonks in Texas and Tennessee to European concert halls, fans have come to know Carolyn Martin as a vocalist with a unique sense of musical style, a charismatic stage presence and a voice that exudes passion and experience and an elegance that …
