Archives: Folk Festival

Folk Festival documentary series

As if three days of music weren’t enough, the Richmond Folk Festival has also arranged for a series of films showcasing some of the cultures, traditions, and communities represented in this year’s festival to be shown at the Civil War Visitors Center throughout the weekend.

Folk festival transportation and parking

Not sure of the best way to get to the Richmond Folk Festival (or where to park once you get there)? Have no fear, we’ve got the details.

Virginia Folklife performers and craftspeople announced

Stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to the Appalachian Mountains, Virginia could be called one of the most culturally rich and diverse states in the country. The Richmond Folk Festival plans to highlight that richness once again with its Virginia Folklife Area, featuring performers and craftspeople representing all our state has to offer.

Chesapeake Bay Crab Pots: Marc Bershaw

The Chesapeake Bay is famous for its blue crabs, which are harvested by using a trap known as a “crab pot.” Invented by Benjamin F. Lewis in the 1920s, patented in 1928, and perfected ten years later, the crab pot forever changed the way hard crabs are harvested on the Chesapeake Bay.

Drew Sturgis

Drew Sturgis’s family can be traced back more than ten generations on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. At only twenty-one years of age, Drew is already regarded as one of the most gifted trappers on the Shore.

Latell Sailmakers: Lance Barton and Melanie Tennant

Jerry Latell of Latell Sailmakers and his partners Lance Barton and Melanie Tennant in Deltaville have revived the local sailmaking tradition in the Middle Peninsula and Northern Neck. Latell owns and operates the only sail loft in Deltaville, once considered the wooden boatbuilding capital of the Chesapeake Bay.

Ray Rogers

Ray Rogers Virginia grew up in nearby Hacks Neck, on a waterfront farm where his family worked the land and the Chesapeake Bay. Ray became a Menhaden fisherman after his service in World War II, and soon became a boat captain.

Danny Bowden

Danny Bowden can trace his family back to the 1600s on Chincoteague and neighboring Assateague Island. Like many of his ancestors, Danny follows the seasons, gill netting for rockfish in the spring and fall, crabbing in the spring and summer, and guiding waterfowl hunters in the fall and winter, “taking whatever Mother Nature has to offer.”

Deborah Pratt

Deborah Pratt’s parents first met while working in one of the many small oyster houses that dotted the Northern Neck coastline, and she has been shucking since 1976 when her sister Clementine Macon taught her.

Dudley Biddlecomb

Dudley has been in the oyster business for his entire life, and still lives beside his family’s oyster beds on the farm where he was born.

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