If you’re like Gossip Wolf, the words “folk festival” conjure up earnest imitators of Joan Baez and pre-electric Dylan. Those artists are cool—but “I Gave My Love a Cherry” is for smashing guitars like John Belushi in Animal House. The Maypole Folk Festival solves this problem by booking diverse bills with the likes of Chicago Afrobeat Project, the Golden Horse Ranch Band, and the Golosa Russian Choir. The fourth annual fest, at the Empty Bottle all day Saturday, April 27, includes folkie Sam Amidon, the honky-tonkin’ Western Elstons, Rami Gabriel’s Middle Eastern ensemble Arabic Xhaman, and the Girls of the Golden West—aka Marydee Reynolds, Amalea Tshilds, and Elyse Bergman re-creating the music Reynolds’s great-aunt played in the 1930s.
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