Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall

The Smithsonian Folklife Festival, organized by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, has been presented annually on the National Mall since 1967 and frequently features extensive live music programming. The festival showcases traditional, vernacular, and contemporary music from U.S. regions and around the world, often including workshops and archival documentation. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors and has produced recordings and field documentation used in folklore and music history research.