Richmond Folk Festival devotees can thank their lucky stars for Blaine Waide’s Rolodex.

Waide, associate director for the National Council For the Traditional Arts (NCTA) is the guy most responsible for planning the musical events at the annual three day Richmond Folk Festival. The 2022 edition of the RFF runs this weekend, Oct. 7-9, along the downtown waterfront.

Serving as Florida’s State Folklorist from 2011 to 2013, the former managing editor of “Sing Out! Magazine” says he’s proud of this year’s schedule, which consists of mostly new additions to his global address book. “No matter your musical taste,” he says. “I think you’ll be exposed to music that you love by the end of the festival.”

Waide talked to Style Weekly about the NCTA’s sponsorship of folk festivals across the country — including the National Folk Festival, which it has produced since 1934 (the Richmond Folk Festival spun off from the National in 2008) — and highlighted some of the stellar performers that he thinks you shouldn’t miss at this year’s annual folk extravaganza.

Style: What is the National Council For the Traditional Arts?

Blaine Waide: The NCTA is the nation’s oldest presenting and producing folk and traditional arts organization. We are committed to live events that share the nation’s finest traditional artists with audiences, much like in Richmond, at large, multicultural, free-to-the-public festivals.

Besides the National Folk Festival, what other fests across the country does the NCTA currently produce?

Chronologically, there’s the Montana Folk Festival in Butte, Montana in mid-July….that’s actually where the National Folk Festival went after it left Richmond. At the end of July, we do the Lowell Folk Festival, we’ve been working there for over 35 years. We just wrapped up the National Folk Festival in Salisbury, MD, which had been the host city since 2018. And now they will be hosting their own Maryland Folk Festival next year. And then we end with Richmond, which is our biggest festival of the year.

Really? The biggest one?

In terms of annual attendance numbers, Richmond always gets the biggest draw of all of our festivals. We really haven’t seen much change in that since it became its own locally produced festival in 2008 [Richmond served as host city of the National from 2005-2007]. It’s still on the scale and scope of the National Folk Festival. It’s impressive.

To plan the Richmond Folk Festival, you collaborate with Venture Richmond and others, including a local programming committee. That’s true in each city, right? You work with community partners.

It’s a really unique approach to doing events, that we as an organization, based outside of Washington D.C., go into a new community and try to build a festival locally. And for it to then be a locally produced event. What’s essential is to have local buy-in and a sense of local ownership of the event. It can’t just be like we’re coming in from outside and doing this. It has to be something the local community owns and feels pride and investment and engagement in.

Do the same musical artists play all of the NCTA festivals?

We try to make sure we’re presenting as many different artists throughout the course of the year [but] if you wanted to identify a theme this year, far and away the majority of the artists are artists who have never performed at an NCTA event before. They are all new to us, so it’s really exciting to see so many different and fresh performers.

I know that one of those new artists is Fran Grace, the incredible ‘sacred steel’ performer from Ohio.

Sacred steel is one of the most exciting and interesting traditions coming out of African-American Pentecostal churches. And Fran is somebody who has never done a festival before, so she represents that deeply grass roots element of what we’re after, an artist deeply rooted in her community and really exemplary in that community but who may not have gotten more widespread attention.

Her music is pure gospel but it sounds like boogie-woogie.

The term steel comes from the steel bar used to play the lap steel or the pedal steel, and by sliding the bar over the strings it was originally meant to replicate the human voice. It’s drawing from all kinds of African-American influences, the relationship between blues, R&B and gospel is close anyway. So the stylings of the music do draw heavily on those other influences. and especially in Fran’s playing you can really hear a lot of that boogie drive, that rhythm.

What other performers should people watch out for?

One group that I’m really excited about, and one that the festival has never presented before, is the Korean Performing Arts Institute of Chicago. They perform pungmul, a really dramatic mix of very loud and driving percussion with dance and movement. It’s a Korean tradition, with roots that go way back in the early agricultural traditions in Korea. I think a lot of people will come to the festival not familiar with it at all and be absolutely captivated. It’s colorful too, what they’re wearing. It’s an experience for all of the senses.

You mentioned Fran Grace, a deeply grass roots artist, but we also have [bluesman] Cedric Burnside, R.L. Burnside’s grandson. He won a Grammy this year. We’ve been trying to work with him for some time. There’s also Son Rompe Pera, three brothers who learned the marimba from their father. They bring in this very youthful energy drawing on Cumbian sounds, and even garage punk and other influences. An absolute crowd favorite.

Bluegrass fans will love seeing Sideline, a group that hasn’t had a lot of exposure but their vocal harmonies are just wonderful. And we’ve got Jesse Daniel, who is coming out of the Bakersfield honky-tonk tradition of California, the sound that people leaving Oklahoma during the Depression took with them. He’s carrying that forward. He’s another new artist for us.

There are also prominent Richmond performers, like the Art of Noise deejaying collective.

That’s another nice piece of it, to finally work with DJ Lonnie B. and Skillz and Kelli Lemon and DJ Marc and [to feature] the really great programming that Lonnie has developed over the years with his live mix sets, which are all about audience engagement. It was something we’ve talked about a lot with the programming committee and, at long last, Art of Noise will be playing that locally famous Saturday night set on the Dance stage.

Speaking of Richmond, I’m excited that the Ingrammettes will get a prime time slot this year.

The legendary Ingramettes have always been a crowd favorite at the Virginia Folklife Stage, but this year they will have a special Saturday afternoon performance on the Altria Stage, the big outdoor venue, and that’s meant to call attention to the fact that this summer, they were announced as 2022 recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship Award from the National Council For the Arts, the highest honor the Federal government gives to folk and traditional artists. Much deserved.

Anything else visitors should know about the 2022 festival?

To keep the festival free and to keep bringing these wonderful performers and have this incredible weekend every year, it’s important to contribute a few dollars and support the bucket brigade.

The 2022 Richmond Folk Festival runs Oct. 7-9. For more information, and the complete schedule, go to richmondfolkfestival.org.

Full disclosure: Don Harrison is a member of the Richmond Folk Festival’s local programming committee.