National Council for the Traditional Arts

Founded in 1933, The National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) is the oldest folk arts organization in the nation. Its programs celebrate and honor arts that are deeply rooted cultural expressions - music, crafts, stories and dance passed down through time by families, communities, tribal, ethnic and occupational groups.

The NCTA stresses quality and authenticity in presenting traditional artists to the public in festivals, national and international tours, concerts, radio and television programs, films, recordings and other programs.

In the 1930’s the NCTA broke ground by inventing the multi-ethnic folk festival, a radical innovation for presenting the arts of many nations in one event. NCTA’s work has grown to include a nationwide touring program, the creation and programming of large-scale festivals and special events, the planning of cultural programs in National Parks, and numerous other activities.

In the past five years, the NCTA has presented 15 major multi-day festivals, 53 traditional arts concerts and 10 national tours with 356 performances, reaching 36 states, and produced 24 nationally distributed compact disc recordings. Combined live attendance was 2,215,000 people with an additional national audience of 27,000,000 served through radio, television, films and recordings. While it emphasizes the presentation of live events, NCTA also produces national radio and television programming, CD recordings and maintains an audio archive of original traditional music recordings.