Ozarks Today: A Preview of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival 2023

The Ozarks are filled with rich musical traditions and the artists that keep them alive. At the same time, newer musical expressions are thriving as areas like Northwest Arkansas grow and expand.

This concert is presented as a local tie-in event previewing Ozarks: Faces and Facets of a Region, a featured program at this summer’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival. The event features artists from Northwest Arkansas who are performing at the Folklife Festival and celebrates the communities being represented in Washington, D.C. The concert showcases for our own community and conference attendees two musical styles and cultures that will be celebrated this summer on the National Mall. The Ozark Highballers are a string band specializing in time traditions, and Pura Coco is an alternative R&B singer-songwriter known for blending her background steeped in Latin culture with her southern upbringing. Together, the performances create a microcosm of the living traditions—old and new—that makeup the faces and facets of the Ozarks today.

Organized in partnership with The Music Education Initiative, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the University of Arkansas Department of Music, the Pryor Center for Arkansas Oral and Visual History, and Experience Fayetteville.

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