Music

After a four-year absence, the San Diego Folk Festival returns to San Diego State University this week in time for its 20th birthday.

The annual festival, which began its four-day run Thursday night, features concert appearances by nearly two dozen folk and blues acts from around the world, including Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, a veteran of the Greenwich Village folk revival of the early 1960s, and Scottish fiddle champion Alasdair Fraser.

“We were at San Diego State from the time the festival began in 1968 until three years ago, so this is a real homecoming for us,” said festival chairman Lou Curtis, a founding member of the sponsoring San Diego Friends of Old Time Music.

“The school took away our funding in 1984, so we had to move on to other locations around town,” Curtis said. “But each year we’ve asked them to take us back, and this year they finally did.”

Jay Thomas, manager of SDSU’s Cultural Arts Board, said board members earlier this year voted unanimously to help finance the festival with $5,000 in student funds.

“Before we made our decision, we surveyed students and found a surprising amount of support for bringing back the folk festival, especially on its 20th anniversary,” Thomas said.

“Aside from that, we believe we have a duty to present all types of entertainment on campus. And because the festival’s lineup is so diverse, it is precisely the sort of event we want to promote.”

The festival opened with a blues concert at Monty’s Den by Del Rey and the Blues Gators.

Tonight’s concert, at Montezuma Hall, is headlined by Elliott and Fraser and includes the Red Clay Ramblers, who play old-time country swing; West Coast fiddle duo Hank Bradley and Frannie Leopold, and folk pianist Barbara MacDonald MaGone.

The festival moves to the Backdoor on Saturday with a concert featuring Wayne Brandon and Clarke Powell, who play old Roy Acuff songs on the guitar and dobro; Mexican harp-guitar duo Quetzel, and old-time country fiddle group Hawks and Eagles.

Also appearing at the Backdoor on Saturday will be veteran mandolin and fiddle player Kenny Hall and the Long Haul String Band, folk singers Jim Ringer and Mary McCaslin and Los Alacranes Mujados, who play a mix of Mexican norteno and Tex-Mex music.

The festival ends Sunday with another concert at the Backdoor, this one headlined by children’s folk singer Jon Adams and Appalachian banjo and fiddle player Stu Jamieson, who as a musicologist during the 1930s and ‘40s recorded hundreds of old folk singers for the Library of Congress.

Joining them are local performers from Brigham’s Preservation Band, which plays vintage jazz and swing; talkin’ bluesman Mojo Nixon and his washboard-strummin’ sidekick, Skid Roper; blues singer-guitarist Tom (Cat) Courtney, who played with Lightnin’ Hopkins and Jimmy Reed; folk singers Sam Hinton and Johnny Walker, and country blues singer-guitarist Bonnie Jefferson.

In addition, 32 workshops in everything from children’s songs to sea chanties takes place this weekend at various other campus locations.