New Jersey Folk Festival

The New Jersey Folk Festival is an annual folk music and cultural festival held outdoors on the Great Lawn of the Eagleton Institute of Politics on the Douglass Campus at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. It is a free, nonprofit community event held every year on the last Saturday in April from 10am - 6pm, rain or shine. Established in 1975, the New Jersey Folk Festival is the oldest running folk festival in New Jersey. Managed by a small team of Rutgers undergraduate students, the festival attracts over 20,000 people and is one of the City of New Brunswick's largest regularly scheduled events. The mission of the New Jersey Folk Festival is to preserve, protect and promote the music, culture and arts of New Jersey. Therefore, the main focus of this festival is the traditional music, crafts and foods of the diverse ethnic and cultural communities within the state and its surrounding region. The event features four stages of music, dance and workshops, a juried craft market, a children's activities area, a delicious array of food choices that offers everything from hamburgers, vegetarian fare and funnel cake to a wide variety of ethnic foods, a folk marketplace and a heritage area which offers a close-up look at each year's cultural or geographical theme and other appropriate exhibits. Each year, the festival strives for diversity in selecting performers, not only seeking out traditional "American" artists, but also reaching out via fieldwork to the many ethnic communities found within New Jersey. The annual ethnic or regional feature contributes an essential intimate connection to these varied cultural groups represented in the state's population.