Friday marks the first day of this year’s NC Folk Festival—a celebration of music, dance, and folk art from the local to the international.
With more than 80 acts from East Greensboro to West Africa and tens of thousands of people converging on the Gate City, deciding where to start can be a little overwhelming. This year, the folk festival’s organizers have that covered. Using either the website or mobile app, festivalgoers can get suggestions on what and who they should see, create their own festival schedule, and find the best after-parties for their personal vibe.
“There’s a really simple, five-question quiz you can take on our app,” said Savannah Thorne, ethnomusicologist and the festival’s artistic director. “It will offer you in return some suggestions of who we think that you might like. And the questions are really centered around ‘what’s the vibe of music that you tend to go for? It offers back not just headliners you should go see, but people in Folk Life you should go see, people on the Jam Stage you should go see, and then other artists that might be related to the thing that you’re interested in.”
If you tell the app that you’re really into the Afro-Cuban fusion duo OKAN, Thorne said, it will find related acts you may like and things like dance performances from the cultures that influence the group’s music.
“The hope is that this will, in some way, give you a place to start,” Thorne said. “But along with all of that in the app, you can also build your ideal lineup and send it to your homies, send it to all your friends, you can text each other your lineup recommendations, and then create a lineup together that way.”…