Great Lakes Folk Festival -2013

Juan Sebastián Rojas is a Colombian percussionist, ethnomusicologist, and producer with over ten years of experience working with Afro-Colombian traditional music, as well as other musical styles, such as Balkan folkloric music, West African percussion, Caribbean popular music rhythms... Read More →

Dena El Saffar, who plays the viola, violin, joza and oud, is an Iraqi-American, born and raised in Chicago. She began learning the violin at 6, and at 17, began to shift her focus towards music of the Middle East. In 1993, while obtaining a degree in classical music from Indiana... Read More →

Katarina Topalov sings traditional music from the Balkans performing in Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian, Romanian, Vlach, Hungarian, Macedonian, and more recently Hebrew, Yiddish, and Ladino. She comes from Voivodina, the northern province of Serbia, a melting pot of ethnicities and... Read More →

Svetla Vladeva was born in Kazanlak, Bulgaria and was introduced to Balkan folk music at an early age by her aunt and uncle. At 8, she began playing piano accordion and at the start of her university studies, took a self-learning program on the bayan (chromatic button accordion... Read More →