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PAUL:

The National Folk Festival has transformed downtowns across America for 90 years. And now it's Jackson's turn to experience the magic. Hey, it's Paul Wolf with a front row seat to conversations on culture from Jackson, Mississippi. We call our podcast Soul Sessions. It's the people, places and events that make the city with soul shine. On today's show, Blaine Wade, the president and CEO of the National Council for the Traditional Arts, joins us to talk about the National Folk Festival, coming to Jackson for a three-year residency, November 7th, 8th and 9th. Blaine was just a college kid when he started driving down to Mississippi to interview blues musicians in their homes. One of those musicians, Super Chikan, who's performing at this year's festival. He went on to discover that a free three-day music festival could actually revitalize entire downtowns. And he's been making it happen city after city ever since. And so I asked Blaine how he decided this was the path that his career might take.

BLAINE:

I'm a folklorist by training and I grew up actually have some ties to Mississippi and kind of just had a general awareness of I think blues and southern culture growing up and wanted to become a folklorist and started traveling. I was up in Arkansas going to college in Fayetteville at the University of Arkansas. It really appealed to me the idea of going out and talking to musicians in their homes about their craft and what they do. And I started taking trips down to Mississippi to interview blues singers, including Super Chikan, who was performing at the festival this year. I interviewed him when I was 20 years old.

PAUL:

What a full circle moment.

BLAINE:

Yeah, no, it's really, and we get to work with him. He does a lot of our festivals. but so, you know, the first part was becoming interested in being a folklorist. Then I went on to a grad school at UNC Chapel Hill actually to study with Bill Ferris, a great Mississippi folklorist who had just landed at UNC after being at the National Endowment for the Humanities. And it was in one of my, in my public folklore class we had a guest come in and talk about festivals in general, but specifically the National Council for the Traditional Arts and the model of a festival moving into a community for three years and using traditional arts as the driver for downtown investment and downtown renewal and economic development renewal was really inspiring to me. I mean, love what I do. I love being a folklorist, but I thought the NCTA model was really exciting of taking what we're interested in and not working in an echo chamber, but getting out and working with people who come from other sectors and have other interests. And it just seemed like a really cool and exciting way and an inspiring way to work, to not just work with other folklorists, but to work with people coming from different backgrounds.

But also using traditional culture and the things I valued and showing how those things could benefit communities. And I was also really inspired by the vision for downtown revitalization. Downtowns are such important spaces to communities. They really give so much to the look and feel and texture of a place. So I just thought I was really intrigued by the NCTAs way of working. And then one day a job came open about 13 years ago and I applied.

And I've been here ever since and just love the festivals, love how we work in community. It's hard, it's challenging, but even when it's at its most challenging, I think about how lucky I am that in the course of my day, I talk to people from tourism, that I talk to people from planning and development departments with downtown business associations and on and on and on. It's really a special opportunity to get to do those things. And it makes for, I feel lucky to do it.

PAUL:

The National Folk Festival will be in Jackson, Mississippi, November 7th, 8th and 9th for its very first year of a three-year residency here. And when you're trying to explain this festival to people, trying to say, this is what's coming to your city. How do you differentiate it from any other festival that maybe they've been a part of?

BLAINE:

Sure. I mean, think there's a couple of ways. One, it's really important to stress how broad the festival is. It's a really big event and we love to say, and it's true. There's something for everyone and no matter who you are and what you're interested in and what your background is, you're gonna see some aspect of yourself represented on that stage. It is meant to be something that appeals to everyone from the broad range of artistic and cultural traditions and forms of music we present to having a family area, to having an area devoted to, in this case, Mississippi folk life and culture, food and Southern cuisine as well as a craft marketplace. It's just meant to appeal to such a wide range of people. And I think the other thing that's really unique about it is, so we're working with all these amazing artists, but a lot of them are gonna be people the general audience hasn't heard of. And the idea is to show how much excellence is really out there, deeply embedded in communities across the country. So you're not coming to our festival to see headliners, you're coming to learn about and be surprised and amazed at artists you've never heard of.

And so maybe people are going to come to Jackson, the first festival, because they want to see Bobby Rush or they want to see E.U. or they want to see the Sonic Boom or maybe they love Irish music and they want to see Eileen Ivers. She's one of the best Irish fiddlers in the country, but they're going to come away having learned how amazing South Korean percussion is about this really exciting Flamenco duo from New York. They're also going to learn what's going on at the Briarwood Art Center in terms of crump dance in Jackson. So it's really about those experiences to see things you don't know about and to get a really wider lens on all the great artists and forms of artistic expression that are out there in our country.

PAUL:

You mentioned one of your loves is transformation and downtown transformation specifically. You've seen cities like Richmond and Greensboro and Butte, Montana. What patterns do you see in how the festival changes a place and what specifically do you think it might spark here in Jackson?

BLAINE:

I think there's all kinds of different specific ways it happens. But what the festival really does is shows a community what can happen when everybody's pulling together to help with one event. It's not a political event. It's meant for people of widely different backgrounds. And you're all coming together to make something happen that makes your city and your home community look good. So from 800 to a thousand volunteers to representing different local organizations to the different craft marketplace or food vendors and all the stakeholders who have to be at the table. Again, you're talking about, in our case, Visit Jackson and Jackson Redevelopment Authority and Downtown Jackson Partners. And of course, the City government's essential… the state Arts Commission, state tourism, having everybody at the table pulling in the same direction is what really makes this festival special and makes it happen. And what that's where the transformation comes is everybody sees, “look, look what we're capable of if we're all contributing together towards the same goal. And it really creates a much better sense of civic engagement and civic pride.

So sure, there are elements of economic impact, tens of millions of dollars in terms of restaurants and hotels and long-term economic benefits, new investments in downtowns. And we've seen that across cities. I mean, where I'm at right now, the Richmond Folk Festival has the downtown riverfront is completely transformed due to the festival. There's a Live Nation venue. CoStar has put in their international headquarters here in Richmond. There's all kinds of new restaurants and developments going on down by the riverfront. So those impacts are real.

But it all falls for me under the larger idea of the pride people take. So here in Richmond, they say it's the best thing they've ever done. Butte, Montana is a story of tourism, which I think can happen in Mississippi through all the cultural heritage sites and cultural heritage tourism being such an important thing. And so people go to Butte and they go to visit all the national parks out there to experience the Rocky Mountain West. Greensboro was looking for a signature arts event, and that's what they got out of it. Lowell, Massachusetts, it completely revitalized the downtown core of a city that at one point was really the heart of the textile industry in the country and had gone through deindustrialization. So you see all of these things play out, but the common thread across all of them is the pride people take and what they've achieved.

PAUL:

I think you've kind of answered some of this already, but what makes a successful partnership between the National Council for Traditional Arts and a city? Like, what do you look for in a community? What excites you about working with Jackson and with Thabi Moyo, the festival director, and her team?

BLAINE:

Sure. I mean, what we're looking for when we start, it's an open process. We send out a request for proposals, cities apply. And what you're really looking for is having all the key stakeholders at the table, having broad based buy-in. We need one central contractual partner. You need a place for the festival to live and you need somebody who really drives it and has a vision for it. But for the festival to work, you need all of those stakeholders I've talked about a little already. And so the magic really happens when all of those different entities come together and are contributing what it is they do. So in the case of Visit Jackson, marketing, then destination marketing efforts and promotion in terms of downtown business associations and economic development, aiming the festival towards those goals and achieving those goals. The arts and culture sector, bringing that expertise and knowing who in the community needs to be involved. So we're looking for that. We're looking for a community that needs a signature event. Now, of course, the Mississippi Book Festival is a wonderful event. I was lucky enough to go last year, great experience. And so Jackson has that, but what Jackson didn't have and hasn't had since Jubilee Jam ended. And boy, I've heard a lot about Jubilee Jam over the last two years.

PAUL:

I bet you have.

BLAINE:

It's a signature music event. It's the birthplace of America's music. And the state capital needs a music event it deserves. And so you're looking for a community as well that has that need, that has the thirst for that. And we could tell that when we came on the site visit. And so you're looking for all of those things, excitement, buy-in, somebody who has a real vision for what this can achieve and having all the stakeholders at the community. That's when the magic can really happen. And then you need to bring people like Thabi who has experience doing events, who know the community, who have relationships. This isn't about an entity from outside the host community coming in to build something and leaving. This is about building something for the community long-term that will stay in last. And so we need to build up a local team who can own it. That's what's so key about having that local team there is having the local voice and the local relationships and the local knowledge that they can build from there and become the foundation for the festival that continues after the National Folk Festival's three-year residency.

PAUL:

Yeah, we have the chance to continue that on here in Jackson and keep building on the momentum that is created here. November 7th, 8th and 9th in downtown Jackson for the national folk festival. Blaine, finally, what are you most looking forward to when that big weekend comes here to town?

BLAINE:

I think seeing it start, I think seeing the sonic boom, they're going to do the kickoff parade going down Capitol Street. I've been so fortunate. Actually made one day when we were landing, I counted 21 trips to Jackson over the last basically 23 months.

PAUL:

Wow.

BLAINE:

But I've met so many great people. I've had great food. I'm a big coffee drinker. I found a lot of coffee places I like, and it's just been a real pleasure to get to know people. And I think seeing it all come together in that moment when it starts and knowing all the hard work people have put into it, it's going to be a really rewarding moment. And I've thought about it a lot. And I'm looking forward to that. And I'm looking forward to people really finally seeing what this is about, because I don't think you can really describe it till you see it. But knowing that you go for free and you get to see everything from Trio, Romantico music from Texas to, again, Flamenco, South Korean percussion. We're going to have Wiley in the wild west. Wiley is literally the guy who does the “yahoo!” on Yahoo! commercials. And he's a rancher in Conrad, Montana.

But to see people finally go like, this is what it's all about and look at all these amazing people and look at this family-friendly event because the family activities area is really strong. I'm really proud of how the Folklife area came together. The Mississippi Arts Commission did a great job curating it. And I just don't think people are going to they're going to realize they haven't experienced anything like it. And it's going to be really eye-opening, and they're going to go, “Wow, we get to do this for two more years.”

PAUL:

That's Blaine Wade, the executive director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts. You know, when Blaine talked about that moment as a 20-year-old sitting down with Blues legends in Mississippi, I don't think he could have imagined he'd one day be bringing a festival back here that would feature one of those very same artists. But that's the thing about the National Folk Festival. It's all about these full-circle moments, about us showing the artists and traditions that have been here all along, just waiting to be celebrated. November 7th, 8th and 9th Jackson gets to be part of that story. And honestly, I can't wait to see what happens when the city comes together around it. We'll have links in our show notes at visitjackson.com/soulsessions. And if you'd like to volunteer, they need you. We'll have a way for you to sign up there too.

This podcast is produced by Visit Jackson, the destination organization for Mississippi's capital city. Our executive producers are Jonathan Pettus and Dr. Ricky Thigpen, and I'm our managing editor. Do you want to know more about all of the great things happening in Jackson, Mississippi? And believe me, there's a lot of good stuff going on. You can find it at visitjackson.com.

I'm Paul Wolf and you've been listening to Soul Sessions.

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