a multimedia history of the understudied but significant folk festival that took place on the university of california-berkeley campus between 1958 and 1970.
The Berkeley Folk Music Festival & the Folk Revival on the US West Coast—An Introduction, a new digital exhibit, is now published at https://sites.northwestern.edu/bfmf/. It’s a multimedia exploration I curated of an understudied but important folk festival that took place at the University of California, Berkeley between 1958 and 1970. For aficionados and newcomers alike, you can enjoy images, sound, video, and a written historical narrative about the Festival and its significance.
The exhibit consists of 12 sections, a foreword by Northwestern University Libraries archivist Scott Krafft that explains how the Archive wound up at Northwestern, and access to the full 33,500-artifact digital repository.
The Introduction asks “What Was the Berkeley Folk Music Festival?” It provides an overview of the event and its archive, suggests some ways of navigating the exhibit, and frames a few key historical questions.
Room 2 focuses on Barry Olivier, Festival Director, and it probes how Olivier was a key member in Berkeley’s robust 1950s folk music scene leading up to the first Berkeley Folk Music Festival in 1958. Don’t miss the amazing Cisco Houston & the great poster art.
Room 3 takes us into “The Early Years: 1958-1961.” Musicians featured include Pete Seeger, Jesse Fuller, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mance Lipscomb, Alan Lomax, Shirley Collins, New Lost City Ramblers, Jean Ritchie, Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, Marais & Miranda, Sam Hinton, and Jimmie Driftwood.
Room 4 brings us to “The Height of the Folk Revival: 1962-1964.” Musicians featured include: Bessie Jones, Mississippi John Hurt, Doc Watson, J.E. Mainer’s Mountaineers, Almeda Riddle, Bess Lomax Hawes, Alice Stuart, Joan Baez, and many more.
Room 5 brings us to the “Transition Years: 1965-1966.” Singer-songwriters and rock stars come onstage. Musicians include: Tom Paxton, Phil Ochs, the Jefferson Airplane join Fred McDowell, Robert Pete Williams, the Hackberry Ramblers, Los Halcones de Salitrillo, and many more.
Things get more psychedelic in Room 6 for “The Counterculture Years: 1967-1970,” but many continuities persist. Musicians include: Country Joe and the Fish, Kaleidoscope, Red Crayola, John Fahey, the Youngbloods, Joan Baez, various Seegers (Pete, Mike, Peggy, Charles), Rev Gary Davis, and more. Room 6 also shows how the folk revival’s countercultural turn out West included a widening range of sounds and styles, not just a shift to rock. Musicians include: Los Tigres del Norte, Na Rhma Wa Ci American Indian Dancers, Song of Earth Chorale, and the Floating Lotus Magic Opera Company.
Room 7 explores “Other Festivals” and the riches of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive’s holdings beyond the Berkeley Folk Music Festival alone. It examines other folk festivals out West, Monterey Pop, Sky River, and the ill-fated Wild West and Altamont Festivals.
Room 8 offers a few “Conclusions.” What are we to make of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival? How does its story alter our understandings of the folk revival & post-WWII US history? How might its analog artifacts make some good noise in a digital world?
Room 9 uses the Timeline.JS tool to generate a digital timeline as another way of navigating the exhibit.
Want some sound? It is interspersed throughout the exhibit, but Room 10 collects it all for your ears: the limited but rich audio in the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive itself; extant YouTube postings; and Spotify Playlists featuring commercial recordings by Berkeley Folk Music Festival performers.
Room 11 notes “Future Directions” for the project, including a set of multimedia essays, a podcast series, and an in-person gallery exhibition and book in the works.
Want to delve further? Room 12 has got all your “Citations and References” for further reading, research, and investigation, both within the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive’s digital repository and beyond it in books, essays, articles, and on websites, recordings, and more.
Working with the ace folks at Northwestern University Libraries on this project has been a pleasure. The effort has been years in the making, with more to come. Look for multimedia essays, an audio podcast, and an in-person gallery exhibition in the near future.
Many students have also worked on the project over the years, including Olivia Langa at SUNY Brockport; Julia Popham, Jacob Skaggs, and Sarah Bruyere at Northwestern University; and students in classes I’ve taught at Northwestern, Middlebury College, and Brockport. Kudos for your labor on the project! Additionally, I have been greatly aided by Deborah Robins, Alice Stuart, Dev Singh, Barbara Dane, Neil Rosenberg, Ron Cohen, Robert Cantwell, Odette Pollar, Brian Miksis, Jesse Jarnow, Corry Arnold, Sandy Rothman, Chris Strachwitz, and countless others. Most of all big praise to the Big O, Barry Olivier, director of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival. Barry, we hear your baritone voice, joyful laugh, and good organizational energies streaming down the digital river of song from then to now to the future.
To visit the digital exhibit: The Berkeley Folk Music Festival & the Folk Revival on the US West Coast—An Introduction.