South End Life: How South Enders Shape the Message and Tone of Northwest Folklife Festival

Ben Hunter, the artistic director of Northwest Folklife for five years, believes that art is infused with context and meaning."The meaning behind the lyrics or dance steps, the poetry, or the ingredients in a dish often comes from struggle, pain, and resistance, as well as joy. I want to strike the balance of providing something where people feel comfortable, safe, and celebratory and also are able to experience a sense of regard, reflection, and empathy for what produced the music, dance, and art."

Northwest Folklife produces the annual Northwest Folklife Festival, which occurs Memorial Day weekend, as well as other events and programs throughout the year. The festival is celebrating its 55th year and is the largest ticketless festival in the country. More than 200,000 are expected to visit Seattle Center to attend. Hunter and Reese Tanimura, the organization's managing director (and owner of The Royal Room), sit at the helm of the festival, which features a mind-blowing array of genres, from rap and folk to Bollywood, Balkan, and Oaxacan dance, featuring 4,000 individual artists in over 500 performances. 

The event is more than a music festival; it's a celebration of artistic expression in many forms. There's a fashion showcase, featuring Indigenous designers and modest fashion; a maker's space offering craft demonstrations; resources from nonprofits, like the Duwamish River Community Coalition and Beacon Food Forest; and a new community foodways kitchen showcasing culturally representative foods, with some from South Enders, like Chef Tay from Black & Tan Hall and Harold Fields of Umami Kushi.

Providing the community with a broad range of cultural experiences is not new to Hunter. Born in Lesotho and raised in Zimbabwe and Arizona, he traveled with his mother. Those experiences "opened my eyes to the value of opening our eyes in a world where we tell people to work their butts off and swipe left or right on our phones."

Hunter arrived in southeast Seattle in 2007, and he started Community Arts Create. He was involved in founding the Collaboratory on Rainier Avenue South and South Orcas Street and, later, in the 2016 reopening of Black & Tan Hall. "The South End was my sandbox," said Hunter.

Aside from the annual festival, Northwest Folklife offers year-round programs. Among them is the Cultural and Creative Workforce Development program, which supports paid internships and apprenticeships. About 85 young people have gone through the program. Tanimura described the program as designed for creatives "to get their foot in the door and for them to experience the larger ecosystem of the creative community." 

Tanimura was raised in Hawai‘i in a multigenerational family. Her grandparents were farmers who grew papaya and corn, and they shared their goods with neighbors. She moved to the Midwest in grade school, where band and music became a creative outlet and offered community. "In the spaces I've been in, the arts community has needed to rely on each other to be sufficient — whether that's in a social or economic sense."

Folklife Festival South End Artists and Staffers

Afua Kouyate is the founder and executive director of Adefua Cultural Education Workshop, a Black-led nonprofit that focuses on the study and preservation of traditional, authentic West African song and dance. Adefua includes a music and dance company, a youth and family empowerment program, and the Odunde Festival. The organization is also the fiscal sponsor and administrator for the state-certified Rainier Valley Creative District, which brings together community members from Columbia City to Rainier Beach to amplify, celebrate, and support Black artistic and cultural expression. 

"Folklife is about culture. The 98118 ZIP code is one of the most diverse in the nation, so I look at South Enders as the mothership of culture, the mothership of this festival," said Kouyate. 

During the 1980s, Kouyate performed, taught, and toured with Babatunde Olatunji, a well-known Nigerian drummer, educator, and activist who popularized the Ubuntu concept of unity and interconnectedness. Kouyate says Adefua has been running for over 40 years, and she's working on plans to build an African Cultural Arts Center.

Adefua will open and close the Ubuntu Dance Showcase in the Bagley Wright Theater on Saturday, May 23. Performance begins at 7:15 p.m.

Gus Marshall is a teacher and a musician in the Marshall Family Band, which includes his mom and dad. His parents met at Folklife in 1980, and he was raised in the Rainier Valley. He's played music and performed gigs with them since he was in high school. He grew up listening to rap, jazz, and blues, and he likes to express who he is and where he comes from through music — literally. Marshall has written songs like Southend and Southend Bingo. His mother, Chrissie, wrote the song Light Rail.

"We're very close. Playing music with my parents at a young age stripped down the walls of them being authority figures and created an even playing field, working together for a common goal," said Gus Marshall. 

The Marshall Family Band will play at the festival on Friday, May 22, at 3 p.m. on the Friends of Folklife stage.

Lady Mercedes grew up in Louisiana, singing in church, and she has a knack for blending storytelling with singing. From the late 1990s, she was singing backup for performers like Macklemore and Wynonna Judd, and she sings solo throughout the Pacific Northwest. 

Lady Mercedes has coordinated the Folklife Festival's gospel showcase since 2024. This year's gospel lineup will include Kent's New Beginnings Christian Fellowship ensemble and Songs of Black Folk. Lady Mercedes will close out the festival by singing with her mother, Pastor Julia Neufeld-Abel.

"Gospel is storytelling. That's how we keep our traditions and our history alive," said Lady Mercedes. "If you say it in a song, you can remember it. And if you can remember it, you can embody that."

The Gospel Showcase will run Monday, May 25, from 5:30 to 6:45 p.m. at the Mural Amphitheatre.

Lamont Burns has worked as a technical facilities management lead office worker at Seattle Center for 13 years. That means he oversees the setup of tables and chairs and other items for all the events on the Seattle Center campus. The staff also monitors events they set up, so they can help with any revisions or additional needs. Burns also supports the janitorial team that works the interior spaces of the Armory, Bagley Wright Theatre, and McCaw Hall. This team will watch the bathrooms closely to stock toilet paper, soap, and paper towels, and to keep the spaces clean for the Festival. 

Burns says a lot of people don't realize the work that goes into maintaining the space. The festival will start on Friday, but on Saturday at 6:30 a.m., "you'll have the gardeners out in the flower beds digging out trash from people throwing stuff in there … so it won't even look like we had a major event," Burns said. The festival ends each night at 9 p.m., but janitors stay until 11:30 p.m. cleaning bathrooms. "All the working groups help each other out here to make the space clean and in good condition," said Burns.

The perks of the job? Burns leans in with: "Seeing the happiness on people's faces, little kids' smiles — just family time, you know. People coming out to enjoy the festivals."

The Emerald is also a media sponsor for Bars and Verses Live, an evening of hip-hop blended with spoken word and multimedia storytelling. It features Jua, Ascended Reality, and Czon & Nicco, a father-son hip-hop set, on Sunday, May 25, at 7:45 at the Vera Project.

Got an idea for a South End story you'd like to see us cover? Let me know: Yuko.Kodama@SeattleEmerald.org.