Whare Flat Folk Festival is a music festival held annually over four days each New Year at Waiora Scout Camp in

Whare Flat Whare Flat is a locality some 15 km to the northwest of Dunedin city centre, in the South Island of New Zealand. It is located at a widening of the Silver Stream's valley amid the foothills of the Silverpeaks. Whare Flat is the location of a s ...

, located in the

Silver Stream The Silver Stream (sometimes written Silverstream) is a small river flowing close to the town of Mosgiel in Otago, New Zealand. The Silver Stream, known in Māori as Whakaehu,Place names'' on Kāti Huirapa Runaka ki Puketeraki website, viewed 2 ...

valley some northwest of the city centre of

Dunedin Dunedin ( ; mi, Ōtepoti) is the second-largest city in the South Island of New Zealand (after Christchurch), and the principal city of the Otago region. Its name comes from , the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland. Th ...

in the

South Island The South Island, also officially named , is the larger of the two major islands of New Zealand in surface area, the other being the smaller but more populous North Island. It is bordered to the north by Cook Strait, to the west by the Tasman ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

. It has been held each year since 1975 and usually attracts international musical talent. In addition to professional acts, the Festival offers opportunities for attendees to improve their music and dance skills at workshops, join in with others at late-night sessions, or perform at

open mic An open mic or open mike (shortened from "open microphone") is a live show at a venue such as a coffeehouse, nightclub, comedy club, strip club, or pub, usually taking place at night, in which audience members may perform on stage whether the ...

shows. For the purposes of the Festival, "folk" music is defined broadly to include any

acoustic music Acoustic music is music that solely or primarily uses instruments that produce sound through acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means. While all music was once acoustic, the retronym "acoustic music" appeared after the adven ...

; the programme regularly includes a two-hour slot of

blues Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the Afr ...

on one afternoon. Whare Flat Folk Festival is run entirely by volunteers.

History

The Festival began its life in 1975 as the Whare Flat Folk Camp, a small gathering of local musicians meeting to play music together over a weekend. Thereafter it expanded rapidly; in 1989, for the only time in its history, it was not held at Waiora as organisers relocated to Orokonui north of Dunedin in an attempt to stem the growth of the event, which was creating security risks at the regular New Year's Eve

cèilidh A cèilidh ( , ) or céilí () is a traditional Scottish or Irish social gathering. In its most basic form, it simply means a social visit. In contemporary usage, it usually involves dancing and playing Gaelic folk music, either at a house p ...

dance. Since the 1990s the Festival has grown steadily, with attendance numbers near 700 in 2017 and approaching 1000 in 2020.* In addition to local performers such as Nadia Reid, the Festival has featured international guests as varied as

Eric Bogle Eric Bogle (born 23 September 1944) is a Scottish-born Australian folk singer-songwriter. Born and raised in Scotland, he emigrated to Australia at the age of 25, to settle near Adelaide, South Australia. Bogle's songs have covered a variety of ...

Patsy Seddon Patsy Seddon is a Scottish harpist, violinist and traditional singer in Scots and Gaelic. Biography Seddon was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. She was a member of leading folk band The Poozies from 1990 until 2012, and the duo Sìleas with Mar ...

, and Women in Docs. In January 2000, the fords providing access to Waiora Scout Camp were flooded by heavy rain, trapping festival-goers within the site for an extra day. The same happened again in January 2021; all those trapped were safely evacuated. The 2021–2022 Festival has been cancelled due to uncertainty regarding the status of

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

by the end of December.

References

External links

Whare Flat Folk Festival official website
Folk festivals in New Zealand Music festivals established in 1975 Summer events in New Zealand Tourist attractions in Dunedin {{music-festival-stub