Folkmoot USA had a $9.2 million impact on Western North Carolina in 2013, according to an economic impact study conducted by Tom Tveidt of SYNEVA Economics.

The study included the Western North Carolina region but focused on Haywood County, showing that Folkmoot’s overnight visitors spent $6.6 million during their visit. Outside day-trippers spent an additional $89,000 in Haywood County.

Only overnight and outside day-trip visitors were included in Folkmoot’s study.

For Joe Ahuna, it’s about one word — “ohana.”

“Ohana means family,” he said. “[We want people] inspired to go home and strengthen their own families.”

True story. My wife Lori and I were enjoying a delicious, refreshing IPA at the Wedge Brewery on Sunday afternoon, rewarding ourselves after a brutal trail run in the mid-day heat at Bent Creek (brutal, at least, by my estimation; Lori and our dog, Django, were just loping along the entire time, well ahead of me). The brewery in the Asheville River Arts District was relatively crowded and the sun was blazing, so we shared a shaded table with a couple about our age who invited us to sit after making friends with Django.

We soon found out they were from the Charleston area, he an engineer with Boeing and she a public school secretary. More interesting, however, is why they decided to come to the mountains for a long weekend: beer.

An old elementary school in Waynesville that serves as a giant bunkhouse for troupes of international performers during the signature Folkmoot festival each summer is being relinquished by the Haywood County school system and turned over to Folkmoot for good. 

It was a phone call Rolf Kaufman will never forget.

The year was 1983, and on the other end of the line was the voice of Dr. Clinton Border, a Waynesville surgeon and Kaufman’s neighbor.

The house is silent, but soon, it will be overflowing with voices, faces, words and languages known and unknown. Awaiting her guests, Jay MacDonald stands in the kitchen of her home in downtown Waynesville.

A whirlwind of global cultures, languages, costumes, music and dance has landed in WNC this week. The annual arrival of the Folkmoot international music and dance festival is a welcome respite from the mid-summer doldrums. 

It all started with an email. 

Last July, I was at a crossroads. Being a freelance writer for a few years, my usual summer work dried up before the warm weather even arrived. The publications I was contributing to in Upstate New York were losing money, rapidly, with their freelance budgets being the first casualty of a haphazard newspaper industry.

By Garret K. Woodward • Staff Writer

If Norman Rockwell ever ventured out of New England, as the crow flies, he may have found himself in downtown Waynesville.

And if Rockwell had packed a blank canvas and a rusty toolbox of untouched acrylics into his vintage station wagon, he may have painted the scene that unraveled in front of the courthouse last Friday evening.

By Garret K. Woodward • Staff writer

I had just finished my third steamed carrot when the yelling began.

It was a group of men, with faces of power and a seemingly euphoric rage. With backs to each other, their bodies pointed in every direction, chests being pounded to the point red hand marks emerged. Tongues stick out furiously in a unique and precise tribal fashion that would make even Gene Simmons question if he was doing it correctly when he was onstage.