Calgary Folk Music Festival Songwriting Contest

Calgary Folk Music Festival
Calgary Folk Fest 2017
Genre	Music festival
Dates	July 27–30, 2017
Location(s)	Prince's Island Park,  Calgary,  Alberta,  Canada
Years active	38
Founded	1980
Attendance	50,000 (2009)
Website
Calgary Folk Fest

The Calgary Folk Music Festival (also known as "Calgary Folk Fest") is held in late July each year at Prince's Island Park, Calgary, Alberta, Canada. July 21–24, 2016 is the Festival’s 37th edition. The four-day Calgary Folk Music Festival annually features over 68 icons and upstarts from 16 countries on 11 stages in over 100 distinct concert and collaborative programming performances to a 52,000+ audience the 4th weekend of July at Prince’s Island Park. A genre-bending affair, it features roots, funk, country, old-time, world and indie icons and upstarts from around the globe. Ever-evolving programming brings on-the-fly collaborations where musical arranged marriages spark one-time works of art.

Some of the artists the Festival has programmed in recent years include: Father John Misty, kd lang, Decemberists, The Avett Brothers, Iron & Wine, Bonnie “Prince” Billy, Billy Bragg, Corb Lund, Neko Case, The Felice Brothers, Kris Kristofferson, David Byrne, Gillian Welch, Elvis Costello, Alison Krauss and Union Station, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Lucinda Williams, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Great Big Sea, Calexico, Feist, Rufus Wainwright, Hawksley Workman, Ani DiFranco, and Andrew Bird. The success of the festival is based largely on the commitment and enthusiasm of its nearly 1800 volunteers.

A popular feature of the Calgary Folk Music Festival is the inclusion of workshops into its programming. Workshops take place throughout the day on Saturday and Sunday across the six side stages. The workshops, also known as "jams" or "sessions" involve four to five festival artists playing together on the same stage. Often centered around a theme, some workshops feature acts of similar style, while others may feature artists of different genres. Artists generally take turns playing on each other's songs, or improvising in a "jam" format.

In addition to the main festival on Prince's Island Park, the Calgary Folk Music Festival runs a series of three-day intensive workshops at the National Music Centre, taught by festival artists in such areas as songwriting, arranging, vocal techniques and guitar. The three-day sessions allow the instructor and participants to develop their skills and receive constructive feedback from the instructor and peers.

Folk Boot Camp is geared towards musicians that have a basic grasp of their craft and want to supplement their own studies with guidance from some of the world's finest musicians.

The Calgary Folk Music Festival also holds an annual songwriting context prior to the festival. The contest awards $20,000 of prizes in 5 songwriting categories to budding Alberta artists and many large and small concerts in venues around the city. 2016's Songwriting contest will be hosted exclusively by the Ship and Anchor pub.