By Sean Smith, Contributor to BostonIrish
February 1, 2021
Sean Smith, Contributor to BostonIrish
Maggie Holtzberg, manager of the Folk Arts & Heritage Program for state agency Mass Cultural Council, began playing traditional fiddle styles in her teens. I do think that being a musician yourself can be helpful in evaluating and assessing musicians in other traditions. You feel you’re with family, because you have something in common.
Boston-area resident Maggie Holtzberg’s job involves looking after one of Massachusetts’s most prized attributes: its folk traditions.
As manager of the Folk Arts & Heritage Program for the state’s Mass Cultural Council agency, Holtzberg researches and documents the array of ethnic and cultural artistic activities within the Bay State, from Irish dance and Cape Breton fiddle to Wampanoag regalia and Chinese seal carving. And she plays an important role in ensuring these traditions are passed along, notably through helping oversee the a
How would you like to be invited to a party at Adlai Stevensonâs house, with such fellow guests as John McCloy, Archibald MacLeish, Aaron Copeland and Lauren Bacall?
Itâs easy. All you have to do is get yourself a banjo and start practicing up on folk songs.
Well, itâs not really all that easy. Youâve got to nip around the world, spreading good will for the U.S.A., and singing in 27 languages. It also helps to catch dysentery, worms and a touch of hepatitis.
A man who chose this long and devious route to get invited to a party is Bill Crofut, young, upcoming folk-singer who has been visiting in Pittsfield over the holidays. Heâs the brother of Mrs. William A. Whittlesey III of 380 Holmes Road. Crofut comes from Cleveland, Ohio, where his father is president of a medical supply company. Young Crofut started veering away from medical supplies while a student at Putney School in Vermont, where he studied the French horn with a view to becoming a music teacher