The New England Folk Festival is an annual weekend festival of traditional dance and music. It takes place in the Boston, Massachusetts region each spring. It is conducted by the New England Folk Festival Association. Both the festival and the association are colloquially known by the abbreviation NEFFA. NEFFA is a participatory festival; attendees are encouraged to participate in dancing, singing, musical jam sessions, and other activities. It is run by volunteers and all the performers are volunteers as well.
The festival and the association has introduced thousands of New England and Massachusetts residents to the varied communities of traditional social and folk dance and folk music for more than 60 years, especially celebrating the living traditions of folk music and dance traditional to New England. Numerous New England folk dance callers, leaders and musicians have had formative experiences at the festival, and in turn have inspired and influenced thousands more through their performances, workshops, and enthusiastic participation. The festival has been influential in sustaining and reviving numerous folk dance traditions in New England.
As a social dance festival, it is a community experience, the largest in New England of its kind, with about 5,000 combined admissions in the festival's four session periods. It is the inspiration for other similar traditional dance and music festivals throughout the United States and North America. For contra dance and folk dance leaders from New England and the United States, the festival has been an annual opportunity to perform, share experiences, insights, and further living traditions. The association also conducts weekly and monthly contra dance series near Boston, Massachusetts. The NEFFA festival was founded in 1944, long before several more famous folk festivals, such as the Philadelphia Folk Festival (1962) and the Newport Folk Festival (1959). In recent decades NEFFA has been influential as a model for dance and music festivals in New England, and nationally, including upstate New York's Dance Flurry (founded 1988) and Maine's Down East Country Festival (founded 1991).
Read more about New England Folk Festival: History, The Festival Program and Performers, The NEFFA Association
Famous quotes containing the words england, folk and/or festival:
“The game’s afoot.
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry, “God for Harry! England and Saint George!””
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“In the past, the English tried to impose a system wherever they went. They destroyed the nation’s culture and one of the by- products of their systemisation was that they destroyed their own folk culture.”
—Martin Carthy (b. 1941)
“Three times a year all your males shall appear before the LORD your God at the place that he will choose: at the festival of unleavened bread, at the festival of weeks, and at the festival of booths. They shall not appear before the LORD empty-handed; all shall give as they are able, according to the blessing of the LORD your God that he has given you.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 16:16,17.