The Winnipeg Folk Festival is honoured to announce that Oscar
Brand, one of the hosts at the inaugural Winnipeg Folk Festival in 1974, is coming back to grace the stage this year. Oscar is a folk music legend, engaging storyteller, and – at 90 years young – an all
around remarkable and enduring man with a fascinating career.
LIFE-LONG LOVE OF FOLK MUSIC
In the early 1960s, Oscar Brand was known for his Canadian television show Let’s Sing Out. For the past 36 years he has hosted more folk festivals than he cares to count, and for 65 years he has hosted Folksong Festival – a radio show boasting a longer life than any other like it. He is a prolific singer-songwriter with dozens of albums to his credit, an Emmy Award-winning television producer, and avid traveler. Even with everything he’s done, he still fondly recalls that first Winnipeg Folk Festival as the start of something truly special.
““I had just come from the Newport festival and, for a few seconds, I thought that Winnipeg was going to be a great Canadian gala,” says Brand, remembering that moment of coming back to the
prairie city where he was born in 1920. “And then I recognized it... it was Manitoba, and I was coming home. Newport was a big deal, but Winnipeg was bigger.”
Q & A SESSION
Mitch Podolak, one of the founders of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, will conduct a special interview with Oscar Brand on Friday July 9. This sure-to-be memorable event takes place from 1:00pm to
2:15pm at the Folk School.
TAKING THE STAGE
Oscar Brand and his nephew Josh White Jr. (a folk legend himself) will perform together on Snowberry stage on Friday afternoon from 4:00pm to 5:30pm, and again on Bur Oak stage on Saturday from 11:00am to 12:15pm.