The Brooklyn Folk Festival presents the best in American and world folk music. Located in downtown Brooklyn, NY the festival is a celebration of down home music, cultural diversity and memory. Each year we draw talent from the New York, the national and the international world of folk, traditional and vernacular music.

The annual festival provides an opportunity for community to come together, enjoy music and take part in workshops, film screenings, contests and jam sessions. The festival is produced each year with the goal of achieving an event that is more than the sum of its parts.

The Brooklyn Folk Festival is presented by the Jalopy Theatre & School of Music, a grassroots community space that is a music venue, music school, instrument store and record label. By growing the Brooklyn Folk Festival since 2009, the Jalopy has created a substantial and unique community event that brings together thousands of music lovers and hundreds of musicians to celebrate the valuable musical traditions of the world's peoples.

The 3-day festival includes 30+ bands, vocal and instrumental workshops, a family-friendly square dance, jam sessions, film screenings, the famous Banjo Toss contest and more!

Schedule of Events

Sunday Afternoon

Main Stage

1:00pm: Banjo Toss! Banjo Throwing Contest in Gowanus
Details can be found here

2:00pm: Hop Along Andrew - country music for children and adults

2:50pm: Vaianos Paisanos - stringband playing antiquated dance hits and melodies of the 20th century with a repertoire of music first recorded by New York's immigrant communities

3:40pm: Roochie Toochie & The Ragtime Shepherd Kings - performing the weirdest songs from the early days of Tin Pan Alley

4:30pm: Down Hill Strugglers - old-time string band playing traditionals and originals

5:20pm: Michael Hurley - legendary freak-folk musician

Workshop Room
7pm: Can-jo Workshop with Perfessor Zeke Leonard - Build your own one string banjo out of a can!

Parish Hall

2:00pm: Open Mic Showcase with Wolf van Elfmand

2:50pm: Square Dance with Ginny's Kitchen

3:40pm: Unholy Modal Rounders Reunion - esoteric, thoroughly unique folk rock act who emerged from New York's Greenwich Village in the 1960s

4:30pm: Trail Papa - original folk music

5:20pm: Fatboy Wilson & Old Viejo Bones - traditional and original folk music

Workshop Room

12pm-2pm: My Name Is New York: Ramblin' Around Woody Guthrie's Town presented by Nora Guthrie

2:15pm-3:15pm: Tex-Mex Workshop with Max Baca

3:25pm-4:25pm: Banjo Workshop with Nora Brown

4:35pm-5:45pm: Democracy Story Circle - Join Arts & Democracy to share stories about the election and beyond

5:50pm: Gina Leslie - spellbinding voice and tender insightful songwriting floating between country and jazz

Sunday Evening

Main Stage

6:15pm: Nikki Giovanni - American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator

6:40pm: Resistance Revival Chorus - a collective of more than 60 women, and non-binary singers, who join together to breathe joy and song into the resistance, and to uplift and center women's voices.

7:30pm: Bill Frisell - legendary American Jazz guitarist and composer

8:20pm: Zahra Alzubaidi - A musical group that pays homage to Iraqi southern music and rhythms from the Arabian peninsula.

9:10pm: Thomas Feng plays The Music of Emahoy Tsege-Mariam Gebru - Emahoy was an Ethiopian composer, pianist and nun who passed away in 2023 at the age of 100, her music will be played by pianist and composer Thomas Feng

Parish Hall

6:30pm: Martha Spencer - singer-songwriter, mountain musician and dancer from the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia

7:30pm: Tamar Korn & Kyle Morgan - close harmonies, country classics, and originals.

Click here to buy tickets