Talk:Newport Folk Festival

Official website?
Festival Networks website looks pretty stale - remove? There's also www.newportfolk.com, apparently, but it's "under construction". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.244.132.210 (talk) 16:49, 14 July 2010 (UTC)

Re: photo of Dylan and Baez
Wouldn't it be better to get a picture of Dylan and Baez actually while they were performing together at Newport, either in '63 or '64? The current picture shows them during the 1963 March on Washington; it doesn't really have anything to do with the Newport Folk Festival. R Lowry 13:32, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

The Myth of Newport
Bruce Jackson, who was a director of the Newport Folk Festival, calls the stories of the audience booing Bob Dylan at Newport '65 "the myth of Newport". Check out his article on the subject at. Bruce was present at the 1965 concert and in 2002 reviewed an audio tape, with a partial transcript at that link. I'll edit the page after giving people a chance to comment. Kevin Hayes 20:54, 2004 Dec 26 (UTC)

The Electric Dylan Controversy
Martin Scorsese's documentary No Direction Home sheds some light on the Electric Dylan controversy. The documentary contains footage of Dylan's performance at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. The footage is extensive but edited; by comparing it to [Bruce Jackson's transcript, it's apparent that parts of the performance has been edited out.

The documentary appears to record the audience booing and cheering from the beginning of Dylan's three-song electric set; certainly, the documentary's subtitles describe the sound as "Mixture of booing and cheering from the audience."

Editing for clarity and length (!) would be quite welcome. -- Caroline Sanford 04:35, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

Peter Yarrow
Peter Yarrow claims, on his self-published website biography, that: Since this page and others report that the festival was founded in 1959 it's hard to understand what Yarrow means. This relates to us because we report the claim in his WP bio. Is anyone familiar enough with the history of the festival to resolve this disparity? ·:· Will Beback ·:· 22:11, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
 * ...he helped launch the Newport Folk Festival in 1962.

The festival was founded in 1959. The "history" section of the PPM page explains that the festival was held in 59 and 60, but not in 61 and 62, and was restarted in 63. Apparently Peter was a member of the committee that worked in 62 to organize the restart in 63. --Eldred (talk) 16:15, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

2008 festival...
I just saw some web advertising for the 2008 festival. The logo, which simply reads "Newport Folk Festival," does not contain the Dunkin' Donuts logo. This, to me at least, suggests that not only is DD no longer a major sponsor, but that there aren't any major sponsors at this year's festival. There might be something else going on as well in terms of the behind the scenes dynamics. However, I don't live in Rhode Island anymore, so any news about that I would have to search for at this point. Any help on that front would be nice.

I have already begun some editing to reflect the changes, will be moving the DD Folk Fest logo to the "In Recent Years" segment. Brokenwit (talk) 06:55, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Need for improvement
The Newport Folk Festival was as significant to the early '60s as Woodstock was to the late '60s, but you wouldn't know it from this article. To highlight the points behind the issues noted in the Improvement template I added:


 * Style/tone: Actually, there isn't much "style" but rather the stringing together of loosely connected thoughts interspersed with POV. Read the openings of the Comeback and Setting sections or the third paragraph of the History section. The writing isn't much better elsewhere.
 * Notability/relevance: The history provides no information on how the festival came together, no flavor of its fabled early years or the context in which it flourished. Just six of the artists who performed back then are named, and none of the artists who were "rediscovered". Beyond the line-ups, it also would have helped to say who Theodore Bikel, Oscar Brand, Pete Seeger and Albert Grossman were and what they meant to the festival's development. Or to account for the 1961-1962 gap. As for descriptions, we're told there are/were (who knows?) three stages, but only one is mentioned (for its picturesque view). We're told there was a Friday night event before the festival, but the event's actual days go unmentioned as do their performances and workshops. We do learn there aren't any evening concerts anymore, but what does that mean?
 * Structure: Though the sections are chronological, there's no cohesion or narrative sense. Everything is a short subject on the same plane; for example, the History, Setting and Sustainability sections are hardly parallel in significance. And why is the NFF Tour a sub-section of Sustainability? Better yet, why is Sustainability a section? (The answer is suggested by its five redlinked subjects.)
 * Sources: Beyond the inline links, a direct quote from a blog and a couple references from periodicals, there are no sources. Not a word from the numerous folk music histories and artist biographies that have recounted the festival. And nothing authoritative on its later development beyond some gratuitous reviews.

By and large, this isn't worth fixing. The best prospect for improvement would be to "crack the books" and re-build the article section by section. Allreet (talk) 06:37, 27 February 2012 (UTC)


 * Ronald Cohen's History of Folk Music Festivals in the United States would be a great source for anyone wanting to tackle filling this article out a little more. I added some artists to the '68 lineup that I happened to notice were missing and used his book for reference. I'd bet it has some useful insights into origins/the '61-'62 gap etc. Alsjakobso (talk) 21:09, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Newport Folk Festival. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110724130530/http://wellroundedradio.net/georgewein to http://wellroundedradio.net/georgewein

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 07:08, 14 December 2017 (UTC)

External links modified (February 2018)
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Newport Folk Festival. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:
 * Added tag to http://www.festivalnetwork.com/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20110615110252/http://www.wellroundedradio.net/httpdocs/episodes/2009/07/folkfestival50.html to http://www.wellroundedradio.net/httpdocs/episodes/2009/07/folkfestival50.html

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

Cheers.— InternetArchiveBot  (Report bug) 23:58, 17 February 2018 (UTC)

Dispute "press release" template
The article no doubt needs improvement (see above comments), but the tone/style and content are far from "promotional." I would appreciate feedback on replacing this with a "needs improvement" template. In fact, even that is probably overkill relative to many other articles. Allreet (talk) 17:09, 7 December 2021 (UTC)