Live At Newport Folk Festival: Jay Sweet

Call & Response

“Americana and roots music has become too complacent. What we need now is to shake ourselves from feeling comfortable and start looking at the world around us.” We’re back for a mid-season special series recorded live at Newport Folk Festival, and in this episode, Adia sits down with Newport’s Director, Jay Sweet to dig into the Black roots of folk music. The two explore how Newport can serve as a platform for uncomfortable conversations so that it can grow and evolve with the expanding landscape of folk music, and what the festival’s return means for the artists and audiences it calls family.

/ Show Notes /

Jay Sweet is the Director of the Newport Folk Festival.

Adia references the 1963 performance at Newport by the Freedom Singers, a group formed by the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).

Jay brings up the song “Ohio,” originally performed by Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, inspired by the 1968 killings that took place at Kent State University in Ohio.

/ Credits /

Call & Response is a Sonos show produced by work x work: Scott Newman, Jemma Rose Brown, Adia Victoria, Babette Thomas and Emily Shaw. Our engineers are Sam Bair and Tom Tierney.