PREVIEW : Dulcimer Fans to Run 9th Folk Music Festival

Ten years ago, Elaine and Clark Weissman were two frustrated dulcimer fans in search of a festival. This week, Elaine is organizing the final details for the 9th annual Summer Solstice Folk Music and Dance Festival, an event that has grown from a one-day teaching workshop for dulcimer players to a three-day folk music and dance extravaganza that is 27 mini-festivals in one.

“There was a huge need for a festival like this,” Elaine said. “Most of the dulcimer players we knew 10 years ago were learning from books. And we all were looking for an opportunity to meet the musicians we’d heard and liked on the radio.”

Instead of waiting for someone else to start a festival for students of the flat, stringed instrument played on the lap, the Weissmans gathered 20 of the country’s best dulcimer players for a teaching festival at Graystone Park in Beverly Hills. (Clark had contacts in the folk music world from his days helping Ed Pearl create L.A.’s legendary folk music club, the Ashgrove.)

“The park had limited that first festival’s capacity to 1,000 people; we thought, no problem,” Elaine said. “But it sold out nine weeks ahead of time.”

The festival has grown increasingly larger, and Elaine found herself with a full-time job as executive director of the California Traditional Music Society. Clark, a supervisor for Unisys Defense Systems, hosts several of the society’s concerts and helps co-direct the festival in his free time.

This year’s festival begins tonight at Cal State Northridge with an American folk dance party and a concert hosted by KPFK’s international folk music radio host, Mario Casetta.

Tomorrow and Sunday, there will be continuous entertainment on five different stages and more than 300 workshops in progress. There will be fiddling and clogging and plenty of dulcimer music for traditionalists, and mask-making, belly-dancing, Sambas and bird-song singing by Cahuilla Indians.

The Summer Solstice Folk Music and Dance Festival runs tonight through Sunday at the CSUN Student Union Center. Tonight’s concert, $5, dance, $5; $16 per day for Saturday and Sunday workshops and concerts (9:30 a.m.-6:30 p.m.); extra $12 charge for Saturday night concert. For complete schedule of events and general information, call (818) 342-7664 today; (818) 885-2251 Saturday and Sunday.