By Greg Ellison, Staff Writer

(Nov. 23, 2017) After the Julia A. Purnell Museum received recognition for its 75th anniversary, Executive Director Dr. Cindy Byrd outlined for the Snow Hill mayor and council last Tuesday an event whose history traces back even further.

Mayor Charlie Dorman read aloud a citation from the Maryland General Assembly signed by Delegates Charles Otto (R-38A) and Mary Beth Carozza (R-38C that was presented during the museum’s birthday party in late October.

Following this, Byrd announced the museum has been invited to consult in planning the National Folk Festival, which comes to Salisbury in September 2018, as a member of its Maryland Traditions Folk Life Committee.

Since 1934, the National Council for the Traditional Arts has produced the folk festival, which is now the largest and longest running celebration of arts, culture and heritage in the U.S.

“We’ve never had in it Maryland before,” she said. “From the perspective of somebody that does cultural traditions for a living, this is an enormous honor and it says a lot about the cultural heritage of Maryland’s Eastern Shore to have them come here.”

Festival organizers select host cities for three-year engagements of the annual three-day, no-cost event, with the understanding each locale will continue the tradition after the National Folk Festival ventures elsewhere.

“They select a city that has exceptional local cultural heritage to share on a national stage,” she said. “For people that do what we do, this is like the Olympics of cultural historical heritage coming to the Eastern Shore.”

Earlier that same day, Byrd attended an initial folk festival committee meeting to begin planning for next year’s event in Salisbury from Sept. 7-9. She said the festival will likely draw increasingly larger crowds during its three-year residency on the Eastern Shore.

“In the first year, their typical numbers are 60,000-80,000 visitors [and] by the third year they generally have 150,000 visitors,” she said.

Byrd said Salisbury was selected from more than 30 cities vying to host the festival. Organizers estimate the event has an economic impact in the tens of millions of dollars.

“The most recent one was in Greensboro, North Carolina and they had those kind of numbers there … which is similar in size to what we’ve got here,” she said. “This is a huge opportunity for Snow Hill [and] a huge opportunity for Purnell Museum to get our visibility out there.”

In addition to seven stages with continuous performances all weekend, Byrd said the festival features a crafts exhibition area, artisan marketplace, dance pavilion, storytelling, parades, and regional cuisine.

“There are opportunities for traditional food vendors [and] artists,” she said. “There’s an application process I can put everybody in touch with.”

Byrd said over the last 80-plus years the National Folk Festival has exposed wider audiences to burgeoning musical genres, such as Cajun and hip-hop.

“Tex-Mex [Tejano] music was presented for the first time on a national stage at the National Folk Life Festival and the first appearance of W.C. Handy [widely regarded as the father of the blues] on a desegregated stage,” she said. “Folk life is living cultural traditions … rooted in history that are still alive today.”

Byrd is hopeful the museum’s participation in planning the large undertaking will be economically beneficial for Snow Hill.

“I’ll be going to these meetings, consulting, and doing everything I can to bring those 150,000 to Snow Hill,” she said.