Fans of folk music – not just listening to it, but singing and learning about it, too – should have a grand ol’ time at the 48th Annual San Francisco Free Folk Festival on July 13 in Golden Gate Park.
The roots of the festival stretch back to the 1940s, when a group of self-described “idealistic and not very musically gifted high schoolers” formed the San Francisco Folk Music Club. The club staged the first festival in the late 1970s and it has been going strong ever since.
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This year, performers include the Sauce Piquante Cajun-Creole Band, Americana trio Sugar Mountain, acoustic bluesman Blind Lemon Pledge and — from across the ocean — percussion-dance group The Lions of Africa. There are also dozens of workshops with titles like Funny Songs and Jokes, Sea Shanties, Turkish Singing, Climate and Labor Sing Together, Quebecois Tune Jam and Beginning Fingerpicking Guitar.
So come on down to the park and, in the words of the immortal Pete Seegar, learn how to “put songs on people’s lips instead of just in their ears.”
Details: Festival takes place July 13 from noon-6 p.m. at the Golden Gate Park Music Concourse and Bandshell; free, schedule available at sffolkfest.org
