90th Annual Mountain Dance & Folk Festival to be held at A-B Tech’s new A-B Tech/Mission Health Conference Center

ASHEVILLE, NC (March 20, 2017)…The 90th Annual Mountain Dance & Folk Festival will be held for the first time at A-B Tech’s Asheville campus in the new A-B Tech/Mission Health Conference Center. The three-day event will be held August 3-5, 2017 from 7-10pm. The new location will allow for ample free parking and an unparalleled ease of access for concertgoers. The venue has room for over 500 enthusiastic patrons per night enjoying the region’s best music for this the 90th season. Tickets are on sale now at www.mdff.eventbrite.com in prices ranging from $12-$22 for single night tickets and $60 for all three nights.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford founded the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival as a means for people to share and understand the beauty and dignity of the Southern Appalachian music and dance traditions that have been handed down through generations in western North Carolina. He saw the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival grow to be the oldest gathering of its kind in the nation and it continues in this way, a platform for the talented of the high country lying between the Great Smoky and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

Since 1928, the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival has served a crucial role in raising awareness and understanding of the vitality and importance of Southern Appalachian culture throughout the region, nation and world. Bascom Lunsford’s mission was to present the finest of the Appalachian ballad singers, string bands and square dance teams for education and entertainment. The songs and dances shared at this event echo centuries of Scottish, English, Irish, Cherokee and African heritage found in the valleys and coves between the Great Smokies and the Blue Ridge Mountains. Lunsford’s was the first dubbed a folk festival, and he later consulted with many communities across the country interested in organizing similar festivals.

Shindig on the Green and the Mountain Dance and Folk Festival are annual summer events presented by Asheville’s Folk Heritage Committee. Both events rely on the generosity and shared talent of the region’s finest old-time musicians and mountain dancers, as well as the all-volunteer Folk Heritage Committee and corporate and individual donors.