It started with a vision and
a love for the arts and diversity. From there, Cityfolk
has turned into Ohio's only full-time, professional
presenter of traditional and ethnic performing arts.
In 1980, Phyllis Brzozowska and
four other residents of Dayton's Five Oaks neighborhood
envisioned the first Cityfolk Folk Arts Series. It was
a five-event series funded by a grant from the Ohio
Arts Council (OAC) and Ohio Humanities Council's Joint
Program in Folk Arts and Culture.
The all-volunteer staff coordinated
an Irish music concert, Greek dance workshop, Appalachian
square dance, African drumming and dance workshop and
the creation of a mural in a neighborhood park. The
grassroots effort attempted to bring together the cauldron
of cultures that call Dayton home to showcase diversity
in the arts.
 The
combination worked, and the organizers realized that
the success of the first year pointed to an important
need existing in the community--the need for the arts
and creative expression of all of Dayton's ethnic and
cultural groups to be displayed in a professional manner.
The years between 1981 and 1984
were busy for the organization. Cityfolk organized and
presented over 70 events, featuring diverse traditions
including Jewish traditional music, Cajun music and
storytelling workshops.
By January 1984, Cityfolk had
grown in scope and complexity to the point where a full-time
staff person was needed if the organization expected
to continue to grow and still maintain standards of
quality, consistency and continuity. That same year,
the OAC added Cityfolk operating support to its existing
project support. This was matched by a grant from the
Dayton Foundation and Cityfolk was able to hire its
first paid staff person. Thus Phyllis Brzozowska became
Cityfolk's first executive director.
1984 also marked the first Cityfolk
Celtic Series, a program of Irish and Scottish traditional
music that has become one of the most popular annual
presentations of Cityfolk. The first concert series
included Stockton's Wing, Boys of the Lough, and Kevin
Burke and Michael O'Domhnaill.
Cityfolk was growing...right
out of Phyllis' house, which had served as Cityfolk
headquarters during its formative years. The organization
moved to 212 Belmonte Park East and began marketing
the Cityfolk events as a season.
In 1986, following the successful
design of the Celtic Series, Cityfolk sponsored "The
Jazz Tradition Series," a three-part concert series
at the Dayton Art Institute that displayed the historical
development of jazz as an important musical legacy.
This project was for Cityfolk not only a broadening
of its definition of "traditional arts," but
a way to provide high quality programming utilizing
minority artists and servicing the African American
community of Dayton. Cityfolk jazz concerts are coordinated
by David Barber and the Cityfolk Jazz Committee.
In February 1988, Cityfolk learned
that the organization had been selected for inclusion
in a book identifying 21 presenting organizations in
the United States exhibiting quality, leadership and
innovation in the presentation of the performing arts.
21 Voices: The Art of Presenting the Performing
Arts by Naomi Rhodes alerted a national audience
to the amazing work those in the Miami Valley were already
enjoying. As Phyllis Brzozowska says in the book, "Many
people who are involved with traditional arts see themselves
as different from the rest of the arts world. But I
always felt differently, partly because the funding
was there, partly because I was seeking legitimacy for
the traditional arts. I always wanted Cityfolk to be
accepted, just like the ballet, the philharmonic, and
the opera. We had every right to be, and that became
a goal to work toward. That's why we set up a sound
structure and a business-like approach to all we did."
That business-like approach included
moving into the Metropolitan Arts Center in September
1991. With a central downtown location, Cityfolk was
looking even more like those "legitimate"
arts organizations. Other tenants of the building included
the Muse Machine and the Human Race Theatre Company.
Area jazz fans have long recognized
Cityfolk's Jazz Series as a local treasure. It received
national recognition in 1993 when selected as one of
20 programs in the nation to receive the Lila Wallace-Reader's
Digest National Jazz Network Award. The grant allowed
Cityfolk to develop artist residency programs at area
schools, coordinate senior citizen programs and co-sponsor
the jazz stage at the 1994 Dayton Black Cultural Festival.
1994 was a big year for Cityfolk.
The Dayton Stories Project was started with the awarding
of a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Partner's Grant. That
same year, Dayton also realized it would receive a special
honor when the National Council for the Traditional
Arts selected Cityfolk to co-produce the National Folk
Festival in Dayton for 1996-1998. The Festival brought
together a partnership between city and county governments,
corporate partners, private foundations and more than
900 individual volunteers. The Festival was a success,
drawing an increasing crowd to downtown Dayton each
year: 75,000 in 1996, 100,000 in 1997, and 110,000 in
1998. In the first two years alone, the Festival brought
almost $13 million in economic benefit to the region.
The greatest success of the National
Folk Festival in Dayton is the continuation of the festival
as the Cityfolk Festival. Because of the sponsorship
and volunteer base accumulated over the years, Dayton
continues to celebrate cultural diversity each summer.
The Cityfolk Festival includes top-quality performers
and artists from throughout the nation in a fun, safe
downtown setting. The Festival is accessible to all:
families, seniors and people with disabilities. Our
commitment to accessibility earned the 1996 Festival
an award from Dayton’s Access Center for Independent
Living.
The National Folk Festival signaled
a return to Cityfolk’s roots in participatory
folk arts. In 1996, Cityfolk built upon the success
of the Festival’s dance pavilion and started a
series of contra dances. These dances provide people
of all ages with the chance to take part in a tradition
that goes back to the kitchens of our pioneer forefathers:
contra and square dancing to live music. They also provide
an outlet for Cityfolk to showcase the talent of area
old-time musicians and callers.
In 1999, Cityfolk won a major
honor by being one of a select group of organizations
to be JazzNet recipients. JazzNet is funded by the Doris
Duke Charitable Foundation and the National Endowment
for the Arts. Through a grant award and an endowment
fund, Cityfolk grew its jazz educational programming,
increased the number of jazz concert offerings, increased
the visibility of jazz at the Cityfolk Festival and
created partnerships, all to bring jazz closer to the
Miami Valley community. One part of the program included
the summer 2000 "Jazz Across the Curriculum"
summer teacher institute, through Antioch College and
in conjunction with the Muse Machine. Jazz artists-in-residence
have included trumpeter Terell Stafford, pianist Mulgrew
Miller, saxophonist and flautist Steve Wilson and trumpter
and Latin Jazz innovator Ray Vega.
On April 14, 2002, Cityfolk hosted
a special 20th anniversary concert featuring the best
bluegrass players in the world in "Earl Scruggs:
Family & Friends." This all-star concert than
included over three hours of music by Earl Scruggs and
his band, Rhonda Vincent and the Rage and some of bluegrass
and country music's finest musicians. The evening ended
with an encore of "Foggy Mountain Breakdown"
including multiple banjo solos by the night's performers,
punctuated by Earl's amazing technique and versatility.
The day started out with a sold-out banjo workshop and
ended with almost 3,000 audience members on their feet.
In the fall of 2003, Cityfolk
joined forces with the University of Dayton’s
Arts Series to start the World Music Series. This collaboration
allows both organizations to share the wealth of traditions
from around the world with the Dayton community through
concerts and educational activities. The inaugural series
included Malian kora player Mamadou Diabate,
French gypsy band Les Yeux Noirs and Chinese pipa
player Gao Hong.
Cityfolk's season of events has
grown into a concert season that includes Celtic, jazz
and world music/dance, plus a folk festival, educational
workshops, films, dance parties and cultural partnerships.
With each season, Cityfolk strives to include broad
cultural diversity performed by artists of the highest
caliber in their tradition.
Over twenty years ago, Cityfolk's
founders saw that there were very few opportunities
in Dayton, Ohio for the general public to experience
and come to learn about traditional arts. In addition,
ethnic communities faced an ongoing and accelerated
danger of losing elements of their cultural heritage
if they allowed traditional artistic skills to fall
by the wayside.
Today, concerts draw increasing
audiences locally and from outside the Miami Valley.
Cityfolk members and local concert-goers -- as well
as those who attend concerts from Cincinnati, Columbus
and beyond -- realize that Cityfolk offers a tie to
the varied cultures that keep the differences among
us vibrant and exciting for all.
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