Music, craftspeople to highlight Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival

More than 30 craftspeople have been invited to exhibit and sell traditional crafts at the 31st annual Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival July 16-17 in Prather Coliseum on the Northwestern State University campus.

The Festival theme is “Traditional Remedies: Folklife During Times of Adversity.” The theme will focus on ingenious folk solutions people find when times are tough. From singing to putting tobacco on bee stings, Louisiana culture is rich with age-old folk remedies. The Natchitoches - NSU Folk Festival will celebrate the remedies and cures used to get by during hard times.

Tickets are $11 for a two-day pass, $5 for either Friday or Saturday evening only and $8 for all day Saturday. Those 12 and under are admitted free.

Craftspeople will have on display and for sale items such as walking sticks, file’, baskets, carvings, hide tanning, necklaces, quilts and bonnets, piñatas, rosaries, dolls, garfish jewelry, duck decoys and crosses, flint knapping, chair weaving, soap making and wood burning, weaving and spinning, gourds, blowing horns, whittling and needle work, beekeeping, bowls, fiddle making and repair and Pysanky Eggs.

The Festival is supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism: Division of the Arts: Shreveport Regional Arts Council, the Natchitoches Area Convention and Visitors Bureau and the Natchitoches Historic District Development Commission and Paragon Casino Resort.

This year’s Festival will feature music, crafts, exhibits and a variety of narrative sessions. The Louisiana State Fiddle Championship will be held on July 17 from 8:30 a.m. until 11:30 a.m. in the Prather Coliseum Arena.

Among the featured musical groups will be The Jambalaya Cajun Band, a tribute to Hank Williams by The Hugh Harris Band, old time Cajun music by Brandon Moreau avec la Bande Pain Perdu, bluesman extraordinaire Hezekiah Early and his band the Houserockers, Creole songs by Goldman Thibodeaux and the Lawtell Playboys, legendary Cajun musician D.L. Menard, Hadley Castille and the Sharecroppers Band with Sarah Jayde Williams, festival favorites the Back Porch Band, and Southland Bluegrass with the Hillbilly Goddess Alecia Nugent.

Planned narrative sessions will discuss aspects of the Festival theme including music, canning and preserving, folk medicine, crafts, food, carving, trapping and skinning and handmade toys.

For more information, contact the Louisiana Folklife Center at (318) 357-4332 or go to www.nsula.edu/folklife.