Big Sky opens arms in folk fest welcome
MUSIC | Butte, Mont., wins event over 22 others for next 3 years
HELENA, Mont. -- The National Folk Festival comes to Montana this summer, bringing the event's mix of "music, dance and tradition from across America" to historic Butte in Big Sky country.
The three-day festival changes venues every three years. For the past three summers, it was held in Richmond, Va. The National Council for the Traditional Arts chose Butte over 22 other cities that bid to host the multicultural event for the next three summers.
The dates for this year's festival are July 11-13. The 24 acts, which will perform on seven stages, will include Washington's Wylie & the Wild West, a Western music group featuring Yahoo! yodeler Wylie Gustafson; Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas from Louisiana; the Alex Meisner polka band from Pennsylvania; and New York's Yuri Yunakof Ensemble, performing Bulgarian wedding music.
There is no charge for admission to the festival, which features continuous performances, dancing, children's activities, ethnic foods and craft exhibits.
The main stage in Butte will be a 10,000-seat amphitheater at a former mine yard left from the town's heyday as a world leader in the copper industry.
The festival will be centered in Uptown Butte, a picturesque area with a National Historic Landmark District that includes mansions, Victorian homes, boarding houses, miners' cottages and old 100- to 200-foot mining frames, which were used to bring workers in and out of the mines.
Many of the buildings date to the late 19th century, including the 34-room Copper King Mansion at 219 W. Granite St., built in 1888 for mining magnate William Andrews Clark, one of the wealthiest men of his day.
Tucked along the Continental Divide of the Rocky Mountains, Butte for years was known as the "Richest Hill on Earth" because of the city's mineral wealth. Today, copper mining continues on a smaller scale and tourism is growing, strengthened by Butte's location between Glacier National Park and Yellowstone National Park. Glacier's west entrance is 270 miles north of the city. West Yellowstone and its park gate are about 160 miles southeast of Butte.
The Folk Festival will be followed by Evel Knievel Days, the city's annual party (July 24-26) celebrating the late motorcycle daredevil and native son. Butte's An Ri Rah celebration of Irish culture is set for Aug. 8-10.
"We're encouraging people to just hang around" and take in all of them, said George Everett of Mainstreet Uptown Butte, a not-for-profit organization working on festival arrangements.
The private, not-for-profit National Council for the Traditional Arts produces the Folk Festival in cooperation with host communities.
Butte organizers hope to attract at least 100,000 people to the event. Richmond drew a record attendance of 175,000 for the festival in 2007.
AP