Folk Music Festivals

For nearly two weeks around the Canadian Thanksgiving holiday in mid October each year, the towns and villages and crossroads of Cape Breton are alive with music at the Celtic Colours International Festival

Rainforest Aid was a three-day marathon, musical eco-orgy in the middle of an isolated rainy wooded area on the Osa Peninsula, in Costa Rica

Woodford, held on Queensland's Sunshine Coast hinterland one hour north of Brisbane, is now one of the largest folk festivals in the world, hosting more than 2,000 performers and 120,000 visitors from throughout Australia and overseas for six days from December 27 to January 1 each year.

The event is a complex and heady mix of music - folk, blues, tribal and world - oodles of street performers too. This is complemented with literally hundreds of talks, poetry, alto comedy, demonstrations and hands-on craft and arts workshops.