When something becomes an institution, it’s hard to imagine it never existing.
The Richmond Folk Festival, about to celebrate its 20th year, draws well over 200,000 attendees every year and is woven into the fabric of the city’s cultural life. So one of the most surprising and entertaining aspects of the new VPM-produced documentary, “The Sounds of Culture: 20 Years of the Richmond Folk Festival,” is the palpable feeling that the festival very nearly never happened.
“Yeah, it almost fell apart multiple times,” says Steve Humble, chief content officer at VPM and one of the executive producers of “Sounds of Culture” [disclosure: VPM owns Style Weekly].
Indeed, just over 12 minutes into the hour-long documentary, Jack Berry, the former director of Venture Richmond, recounts being yelled at by the chairman of the board of the National Council of Traditional Arts (NCTA) back in 2004. “He said, ‘You guys haven’t gotten anything organized, you haven’t raised any money; we’re going to take it to another city if you don’t get your act together,’” Berry recalls.
Since the mid-1980s, the NCTA has partnered with local communities that agree to host the National Folk Festival for three years. After those three years, the host city can choose to continue its own festival as a locally produced event. Venture Richmond took the lead in 2004 and continues to manage the festival today.
“Sounds of Culture” follows the trajectory of an event that almost didn’t happen to one now considered a successful model for how other festivals should operate. “I heard multiple people from the NCTA say that Richmond’s is the best run folk festival in the country,” says Humble. “When they talk to other cities about doing one, they have them come to Richmond so that they can experience the best.”
More than a dozen people who were, or still are, instrumental in the success of the folk festival are interviewed, including Jim Ukrop, who lent pivotal financial support early on. After laying out how the festival started, the documentary spends the bulk of its running time peering behind the scenes, providing fascinating glimpses of the monumental effort that goes into making it a success.
“I learned so much just as a speculator to the process,” says Humble. “We watched as this professional crew and 1,600 volunteers came together to make it all work. There are people that have been with the festival for the full 20 years, folks that are so committed, and it’s just wonderful to see.”
Of course, the effort to document such a complicated event involved its own logistical challenges.
“Even though I’ve been to [the festival] many times, when it comes to filming it, how do you start?” asks Mason Mills, the other executive producer on the film. “How do you know what to cover?”
Most of the footage is from the 2023 event and Mills, Humble and the documentary’s director, Paul Tait Roberts, pulled together seven crews to film every aspect of last year’s festival.
“Some crews had the job of following specific people, like Jim Bland,” says Mills. Bland is the founder of Plan 9 Music and oversees CD and vinyl sales at the festival. “Then we had to coordinate when a certain band was going to perform and all of the crews would converge to get a multi-camera view of them,” continues Mills. “We really had to map it all out.”
In order to highlight what happens on stage, the documentary sometimes puts storytelling on hold, sits back and just lets a band play. Viewers are treated to energizing performances by Melody Angel, Bio Ritmo and others.
“It’s something that’s really important to the doc,” says Mills. “It gives you a moment to really absorb what happens at the festival.”
Like with so many artistic endeavors, some of the best moments are the result of happy accidents. A scene captured by a drone camera of people walking across the Potterfield Bridge is punctuated by a picturesque flock of ducks flying through the shot.
“It’s one of those moments you almost think it’s CGI,” says Mills.
“It’s like someone said, ‘cue the birds,” laughs Humble. 6
“The Sounds of Culture” will premiere on VPM PBS Tuesday, Sept. 17 at 8 p.m. and then repeat on Sunday, Sept. 22 at 5 p.m. and Thursday, Sept. 26 at 8 p.m. More details can be found at https://www.vpm.org/.
