Florida Folk Festival Programs

Since 1953, the Florida Folk Festival has been a celebration of traditional music, food and art from all over the state. Even in its early years, the festival featured four days of musical performances on one stage. As the festival grew, organizers added more stages and other activities to the event; by the 1980s there were more than five stages and areas featuring folk demonstrations and other activities. Since 1954, the Florida Folklife Program and its predecessor folklorists have made extensive – but not comprehensive – audio recordings of each festival.

Below are the programs and/or schedules from each Folk Festival. Both types of record speak to the attractions of the festival each year, parts of which have corresponding sound recordings. Early schedules only detailed who was performing and when, but the documents later expanded into programs that contained extra information like photographs, song lyrics and even local advertising. Both the programs and schedules serve as effective guides to the audio recordings made at the festival, which are also available on Florida Memory. They are especially helpful for understanding the flow of the festival across multiple separate audio recordings.