String your banjos and rosin your bows, because the University of Chicago Folk Festival returns to Mandel Hall next month, February 7 and 8, for two days of folk music the way your grandparents’ grandparents played it.
“We are speaking to the zeitgeist of 100 years ago, but also the zeitgeist of now,” University Folklore Society co-President Lena Birkholz ’25 told the Maroon.
Concerts on Friday and Saturday night will bring acts from across the country to Hyde Park, Birkholz and co-President Charlotte Wallsten ’25 said.
“Accordion virtuoso” Jimmy Keane will join Pat Broaders, player of the part-guitar, part-bouzouki “bouzar” for Irish folk music. Izaki and Sophia Metropoulos will play the music of the Greek islands, and Gabe Carter will come up from the bayou bringing “dark chords” and a “howling voice,” Society co–Vice President Michael Clancy ‘26 said.
And these are just a few of the acts.
From 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, the performers, members of the Folklore Society, and the public will also be welcome to gather in the halls and rooms of Ida Noyes. They will be able to take their pick from jam sessions, workshops, talks, and dances, Birkholz said.
“We’re going to have several dances, including a barn dance, a Cajun dance, a Scandinavian dance, a Balkan dance… also Morris dancing,” Birkholz said. “There’s so many dances.”
“We’ve got two different ethnomusicology talks, we’ve got knitting and quilting,” all free to the public, Wallsten added.
“I’m excited to hopefully get at least 20 fiddles in Ida during workshops, and [have] everybody just going crazy jamming in the staircases,” Birkholz said.
This year marks the festival’s 65th anniversary, but to hear Birkholz and Wallsten tell it, the festival hasn’t lost a drop of its energy or relevance.
“This is the kind of music thing you’re not going to hear anywhere else, especially nowadays, when pretty much every folk festival except for us is corporatized and is playing indie rock,” Birkholz said. “We are tapping into the American soul.”
“In biology, we talk about areas being both cradles and museums of diversity, in that they both have all of these species from a really long time ago, but they also are the place where all these species originate,” Wallsten, a biology major, said.
“And I think that we are both the cradle and museum of folk music, because we show off all of this music that’s really old and it’s been around forever, but we’ve also been the genesis of a lot of the music,” she continued. From the ’60s through today, Mandel Hall remains the biggest stage that many of these folk artists will have the opportunity to play.
The Folk Festival concerts begin at 8 p.m. on Friday, February 7 and 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, February 8 at Mandel Hall. Tickets are $5 for students and $30 for the public, and they are available at the door or at tinyurl.com/folkfest2025.