With the announcement of internationally famous headliners like The Roots at next month’s NC Folk Festival, it can be easy to overlook just how many of the festival’s acts still have North Carolina ties.
“As important as it is for us to bring in these great headliners, it’s also important to us that 50 percent of all the acts come from North Carolina or have North Carolina roots,” said Jodee Ruppel, executive director and chief development officer for the festival. “We haven’t done the best job of advertising that. There’s always so much to talk about that can get lost. But it really is the NC Folk Festival.”
The organizers of the festival, held in Greensboro since 2015, are doing their best this year to be sure homegrown talent gets the spotlight it deserves. We recently caught up with Ruppel and ethnomusicologist Savannah Thorne, the festival’s artistic director, to talk about this aspect of the festival ahead of its return to downtown Greensboro September 18-20…