Musicians from across Southeast Alaska will perform at the Alaska Folk Festival in Juneau this week. A Tuesday night event called “Unceded” will highlight artists of color.
On Juneau Afternoon last week, organizer Tripp Crouse said it’s been a long time coming.
“This was really a brainchild from 2017 — my first Folk Fest,” Crouse said. “Being a brown kid from the Midwest in a very white area, I didn’t understand why we weren’t highlighting the Indigenous musicians that were here.”
Crouse shared the idea for a side stage on Facebook in February. Local painter and poet Dita Devi jumped in as a co-organizer. She said the concept resonated with community members of all backgrounds.
“I think it’s something that people have been craving, they just didn’t verbalize it and start to put the movement into it,” she said.
Devi said it’s important to provide a dedicated space for artists of color during Folk Fest.
“There are so many different stages, there are so many side stages,” Devi said. “But often, I think that we are — not overtly — but we are encouraged to take up less space. And I want us to take up a whole lot of space.”
Admission to the event is free, but musicians will still get paid, thanks to support from local businesses.
“We wanted to make that music available to anyone who wanted to participate and listen,” Crouse said.
Qacung is one of the artists performing on Tuesday. He said events like Unceded, along with the Indigenous music festival Aak’w Rock, ensure that artists of color are heard and celebrated on their own terms.
“Creating venues and spaces like this for Indigenous voices, BIPOC voices, it’s rare,” he said. “I’ve been in this business for almost 30 years performing with my band, and we’ve often been that tokenized group. It’s basically a career filled with that. One of the things that became very apparent with my peers in the industry is that we need to just create those spaces ourselves.”
Other performers include Air Jazz, Daniel Firmin, Lisa Puananimōhala’ikalani Denny, Lester Joel Rodriguez, Sunny Porch, Rochelle Kaachgóon Smallwood, RRAINS, Sonia Kumar, Christian Jensen and Nicole Church.
Unceded begins at 8 p.m. at The Alaskan.
