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Sponsors | |||||||
The
New
Jersey
Folk Festival gratefully acknowledges its Sponsors,
Donors, Friends, and the many special people whose support we count on.
Special Thanks to the following for their efforts on behalf of the New Jersey Folk Festival: Rowena Cosico Gillespie, Dianne Gravatt, Barry Bailey, Walter Zieser, Tony Sgro, Anthony Rago, Rona Lehtonen, Daniel Grynberg, Daniel Torisi, Jeff Byrnes, Pia Yasay, Maruxa McDonald, Charlene M. Glascock, Donna M. Piazza, Rachel Ambar, Daniel Dermer, John Reissner, Dan Boyle, Ben Sifuentes, Michael Rockland, Cindy O’ Connor, James Deutsch, Dan O’Dea, Lightspeed Research, Juan Ruiz, Bruce Johnson, Tom Stadthous, John Weingart, Joe Wills, Herb Sudzin, Chuck Bianco, Richard Skelly, Randy Bailey, Geoffrey Pape, Jack Wright, Jim McGuiness, Pat Bongiovi, Mike Soga, Evergreen Printing Company, Elena Rossi, Jack Ellery, Michael Ferris, Mark Corso, Professors in the Department of American Studies, friends and family of the NJFF Staff and especially all of our volunteers.
Sponsors help us bring all of this to you! Established in 1975, the New Jersey Folk Festival is an annual, FREE, nonprofit family event, the oldest continuously run folk festival in the state. Managed by undergraduate students at Rutgers, The State University, in New Brunswick, the festival is held on the grounds of the Eagleton Institute on the Douglass campus, always on the last Saturday of April, rain or shine. Each year the festival attracts more than 15,000 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, defend and protect the music, culture and arts of New Jersey. Therefore, the primary focus of the New Jersey Folk Festival is on the traditional indigenous music, crafts and foods of the diverse ethnic and cultural communities within New Jersey and its surrounding region. Typically, 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 who offer everything from hamburgers, vegetarian fare and funnel cake to a wide variety of ethnic foods, a folk music marketplace and a Heritage area which offers a close-up look at each year's ethnic or geographical theme or other appropriate exhibit. Each year the festival strives for diversity in selecting performers, not only seeking out traditional "American" artists, but also reaching out via field work 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. The New Jersey Folk Festival is professionally supervised by its founder and executive director, Angus Kress Gillespie, professor of American Studies at Rutgers. |