| Folkfestival Dranouter | |
|---|---|
 Stilt walker at Folk Dranouter 2007 | |
| Genre | Folk, pop, world music |
| Dates | Early August |
| Location(s) | Dranouter, Belgium |
| Years active | 1975–present |
| Website | http://www.folkdranouter.be/ |
Folk Dranouter is a yearly folk festival spanning four days at the beginning of August in the Belgian village of Dranouter. Since 2005, a second, smaller festival, Dranouter aan zee (Dranouter at sea) is organised in De Panne on the beach near the end of April.
Created in 1975 by the people of the youth club "De Zon", the first festival showed eight groups on one day with the Albion Morris Men as headliners, and had some 300 visitors. By 1977, the festival had specialized in folk music and got some 1,000 visitors. After a few more years of growth, the festival reached a stable audience of three- to five thousand visitors throughout the 1980s.
From the end of the 1980s on, the festival started programming other genres like world music (with Miriam Makeba in 1989) and singer-songwriters (with Billy Bragg in 1988), and included some more well-known names. The audience increased to some 45,000 people in 1995 and 65,000 in 1997.
In 1997 and 1998, Dranouter won the ZAMU award for best musical event.
In the wake of the festival, a museum of folk music also opened in Dranouter. [1]
Famous artists who performed in Dranouter over the years include: [2]
"World music" is an English phrase for styles of music from non-Western countries, including quasi-traditional, intercultural, and traditional music. World music's broad nature and elasticity as a musical category pose obstacles to a universal definition, but its ethic of interest in the culturally exotic is encapsulated in Roots magazine's description of the genre as "local music from out there".
Ryland Peter Cooder is an American musician, songwriter, film score composer, record producer, and writer. He is a multi-instrumentalist but is best known for his slide guitar work, his interest in traditional music, and his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.
Michael McGoldrick is a folk musician who plays Irish flute, uilleann pipes, low whistle and bodhran. He also plays other instruments such as acoustic guitar, cittern, and mandolin.
Värttinä is a Finnish folk music band that started as a project by Sari and Mari Kaasinen in 1983 in the village of Rääkkylä, in Karelia, the southeastern region of Finland. Many transformations have taken place in the band since then. Värttinä shot into fame with the release of their 1991 album Oi Dai. As of 2009, the band consists of three lead female vocalists supported by three acoustic musicians. The vocalists sing in the Karelian dialect of the Finnish language.
Joe Boyd is an American record producer and writer. He formerly owned Hannibal Records. Boyd has worked on recordings of Pink Floyd, Fairport Convention, Sandy Denny, Richard Thompson, Nick Drake, The Incredible String Band, R.E.M., Vashti Bunyan, John and Beverley Martyn, Maria Muldaur, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Billy Bragg, James Booker, 10,000 Maniacs, and Muzsikás. He was also one of the founders of the highly influential nightclub venue UFO.
Loudon Snowden Wainwright III is an American singer-songwriter and occasional actor. He has released twenty-six studio albums, four live albums, and six compilations. Some of his best-known songs include "The Swimming Song", "Motel Blues", "The Man Who Couldn't Cry", "Dead Skunk", and "Lullaby". In 2007, he collaborated with musician Joe Henry to create the soundtrack for Judd Apatow's film Knocked Up. In addition to music, he has acted in small roles in at least eighteen television programs and feature films, including three episodes in the third season of the series M*A*S*H.
Kate McGarrigle was a Canadian folk music singer-songwriter, who wrote and performed as a duo with her sister Anna McGarrigle.
Anna McGarrigle, CM is a Canadian folk music singer and songwriter who recorded and performed with her late sister Kate McGarrigle.
Kate McGarrigle and Anna McGarrigle were a duo of Canadian singer-songwriters from Quebec, who performed until Kate McGarrigle's death on January 18, 2010.
Aly Bain MBE is a Scottish fiddler who learned his instrument from the old-time master Tom Anderson. The former First Minister of Scotland Jack McConnell called Bain a "Scottish icon."
Davy Spillane is an Irish musician, songwriter and a player of uilleann pipes and low whistle.
David Perry Lindley was an American musician who founded the rock band El Rayo-X and worked with many other performers including Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Warren Zevon, Curtis Mayfield and Dolly Parton. He mastered such a wide variety of instruments that Acoustic Guitar magazine referred to him not as a multi-instrumentalist but instead as a "maxi-instrumentalist." On stage, Lindley was known for wearing garishly colored polyester shirts with clashing pants, gaining the nickname the Prince of Polyester.
Dan Ar Braz (Breton pronunciation:[ˈdãːnːarˈbrɑːs]; Daniel Le Bras was born on January 15, 1949, in Quimper France. He is a Breton guitarist-singer-composer and the founder of L'Héritage des Celtes, a 50-piece Pan-Celt band. As a leading guitarist in Celtic music band, he recorded as a soloist and with Celtic harp player Alan Stivell. He also represented France in the Eurovision Song Contest 1996.
Tony Furtado is an American singer-songwriter, banjoist, and guitarist.
Joel Zifkin is a Canadian musician and songwriter. His primary instrument is the electric violin and he is best known as a session musician and live performer.
John McCusker is a Scottish folk musician, record producer, and composer. He had a long association as a member of Battlefield Band beginning in the 1990s and was later a band member and producer for folk singer Kate Rusby. He has served as producer and arranger for various artists. He has also released several solo albums.
The Celtic Connections festival started in 1994 in Glasgow, Scotland, and has since been held every January. Featuring over 300 concerts, ceilidhs, talks, free events, late night sessions and workshops, the festival focuses on the roots of traditional Scottish music and also features international folk, roots and world music artists. The festival is produced and promoted by Glasgow Life. Donald Shaw, a founding member of Capercaillie, was appointed Celtic Connections Artistic Director in 2006.
Jack Nissenson was a member of the Mountain City Four, a Canadian folk music group, based in Montreal and active in the 1960s. In addition to Nissenson, the group consisted of Peter Weldon, Kate McGarrigle and Anna McGarrigle.
Shrewsbury Folk Festival is an annual festival of folk and world music and traditional dance held in the town of Shrewsbury in Shropshire, England.
Declan Masterson is an Irish uilleann piper, traditional musician, composer and arranger. In addition to pursuing a solo career and playing with Moving Hearts and Patrick Street, Masterson was one of the Riverdance musicians.
