Folk Dranouter is a yearly folk festival spanning four days at the beginning of August in the Belgian village of Dranouter. Since 2005, a second, smaller festival, Dranouter aan zee (Dranouter at sea) is organised in De Panne on the beach near the end of April.

History

Created in 1975 by the people of the youth club "De Zon", the first festival showed eight groups on one day with the Albion Morris Men as headliners, and had some 300 visitors. By 1977, the festival had specialized in folk music and got some 1,000 visitors. After a few more years of growth, the festival reached a stable audience of three- to five thousand visitors throughout the 1980s. From the end of the 1980s on, the festival started programming other genres like world music (with Miriam Makeba in 1989) and singer-songwriters (with Billy Bragg in 1988), and included some more well-known names. The audience increased to some 45,000 people in 1995 and 65,000 in 1997. In 1997 and 1998, Dranouter won the ZAMU award for best musical event.

Folk museum

In the wake of the festival, a museum of folk music also opened in Dranouter.

Artists

Famous artists who performed in Dranouter over the years include:

1975–1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994

1995

Sources:

1996

1997

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010