NATCHITOCHES – The Louisiana Folklife Center at Northwestern State University has been approved for an $11,000 Grants for Arts Project award from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). The award will support the 43rd annual Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival, to be held on July 22 in air-conditioned Prather Coliseum on the Northwestern State campus in Natchitoches. The Louisiana Folklife Center’s project is among 1,130 projects across the country, totaling more than $31 million, that were selected during this second round of Grants for Arts Projects fiscal year 2023 funding. 

“The National Endowment for the Arts is pleased to support a wide range of projects, including the 2023 Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival, demonstrating the many ways the arts enrich our lives and contribute to healthy and thriving communities,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “These organizations play an important role in advancing the creative vitality of our nation and helping to ensure that all people can benefit from arts, culture, and design.” 

“We are deeply honored that the festival has received an award from the National Endowment for the Arts,” said Dr. Shane Rasmussen, director of the Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival. “This year’s festival will be a fun filled, educational event that will highlight some of the finest folk music, food, crafts and cultural traditions in Louisiana.” 

The 2023 festival theme is “Celebrating Louisiana’s Cultural Gumbo.” The festival will include a wide variety of traditional crafts, folk foods, Kidfest, a gumbo cookoff, three stages of live music, narrative sessions, music informances and a harmonica workshop taught by bluesman Ed Huey, which will be free for Festival attendees. Also free will be Cajun and zydeco dance lessons taught by the Cajun French Music Association Dance Troupe. In addition, the annual Louisiana State Fiddle Championship will be held in the Magale Recital Hall on the afternoon of July 22. 

The 2023 festival will include performances by bluesman Jimmy “Duck” Holmes, Rusty Metoyer and the Zydeco Krush, the Jambalaya Cajun Band, Gal Holiday and the Honky Tonk Revue, , the Broussard Family Juré, the Louisiana Czech Heritage Dancers, los Rancheritos de la Sierra, the Cajun Stompers, the Russell Welch Hot Quartet with special guest Aurora Nealand, traditional Native American songs and dances with the Rising Sun Youth Choctaw-Apache of Ebarb Dance Group, and a Hank Williams, Sr. tribute by Hugh Harris and the Drifting Cowboys. 

“The festival audience will be greatly edified, enlightened and entertained at the 2023 Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival,” Rasmussen said. For more information contact folklife@nsula.edu, call (318) 357-4332, or check out the Louisiana Folklife Center on Facebook. 

The Louisiana Folklife Center was established at Northwestern State to identify, document, and present Louisiana’s cultural and folk traditions and to provide public access to this material via the Natchitoches-NSU Folk Festival. 

For more information on other projects included in the NEA grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news. 

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Photo of the Jambalaya Cajun Band by David Simpson