Emmylou Harris, Rufus Wainwright, and More: Legendary Acts Shine at the Winnipeg Folk Festival

By Mike Macaraeg

The 48th edition of the Winnipeg Folk Festival emanated from Birds Hill Park from July 6 to 9 with some rare, cool weather crossing the festival grounds, but that wouldn’t stop the warm hearts of the performers and crowd of 74,500 from making memories.

With a wide array of musicians, the Winnipeg Folk Festival provided audiences with another year of a variety of choices to listen to, including local talents, FONTINE, as well as Juno Award-winning performers William Prince and Adrina Turenne. Performers hailing from all across the globe descended on the festival, including Iceland’s folk musician Arny Margret, Mexico’s Buenrostro, South Korea’s Dongyang Gozupa,

France’s Ko Shin Moon, Ireland’s Susan O’Neill, and Australia’s Vance Joy who brought his energy-filled folk pop production to the Main Stage on the final night of the festival.

The Main Stage provides more well-known entertainment each evening, sprinkled with tweeners that also had their own niche following. Music legends such as Emmylou Harris and Rufus Wainwright graced the stage on Friday evening, while KT Tunstall, Fleet Foxes, and The War on Drugs provided closing entertainment on some of the other evenings.

For more family-oriented content, the Winnipeg Folk Festival has a veritable plethora of activities from musicians like British Columbian artists Ginalina and RupLoops, as well as facepainting, and arts and crafts activities in their Chickadee Big Top tent. One of the more unique aspects of the festival is the STINGRAY Young Performers Program, which aligns some of the festival performers as mentors to young artists to aid in crafting their songs, followed by a performance on the second day of the festival. Young Performers are aged 14-24 and spend a day workshopping with their mentors for an incredible learning experience. This year, Filipino Winnipegger Maria Aragon, known from her viral cover of Lady Gaga’s song Born This Way, had the opportunity to learn from the aforementioned Irish day music experience that provides entertainment for all ages, with some festival-goers who attend annually in upwards of 50 years! Next year’s Winnipeg Folk Festival runs from July 11-14, 2024.

Susan O’Neill.