In 2023, during my second season working with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, I made a decision that felt equal parts impractical and inevitable: I followed a lead, found a short-term lease, and moved from the Chicago suburbs to Baltimore, Maryland, sharing a rowhouse with someone I had met exactly once at a party. I didn’t know then that the move would place me in the middle of one of the most vibrant, multi-genre folk communities on the East Coast.

That Baltimore neighborhood was Hampden.

Historically a mill village clustered around textile factories along the Jones Falls, it became home to waves of working-class migrants throughout the twentieth century. From the Great Depression through the 1950s, many families arrived from Appalachia seeking industrial work, bringing with them ballads, fiddle tunes, and church music that folded into the neighborhood’s soundscape.

Among them was Hazel Dickens, a singer, songwriter, and eventual Folkways Records artist and National Heritage Fellow who spent part of her youth in Hampden before becoming a defining voice in bluegrass and protest folk music. Today, that legacy of migrant musical traditions continues in Hampden, where old-time, Irish traditional, and other folk scenes have mingled and cross-pollinated in interesting ways.

It is not at all an odd occurrence to hear a fiddle and banjo blaring an old-time tune on someone’s front porch, or punk rock drums coming from the garage of the house flying a Descendants flag. My roommate was an avid fiddler, pianist, and guitarist, and I quickly fell into that rhythm. I played guitar and mandolin, and after dinner we would settle onto the porch and trade tunes.

Some nights, a man would pass by with a banjo slung across his back, walking with quiet purpose. My roommate would yell a greeting, and he would wave back from a distance. Fifteen minutes later, a sound would rise from the next block over: fiddle and tenor banjo in full voice, cutting through the air and either competing with or answering our own porch session almost note for note.

That man was Richard Hearn, a stellar multi-instrumentalist and a central force in Baltimore’s Irish traditional music community.

After many encounters with him at parties and sessions, I recently took the opportunity to interview him about the upcoming Baltimore Irish Trad Fest, April 9 to 12, one of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s collaborating events in our Culture of, by, and for the People initiative. Hearn serves as executive director of the festival and leads the Baltimore Irish Music School, the organization behind it.

“This idea, this concept of culture of, by, and for the people, is really central to the whole theme of the Trad Fest and to Irish traditional music in general,” Hearn began.

He expanded on that idea by tracing Irish traditional music back to its immigrant roots. When waves of Irish immigrants arrived in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, particularly during and after the Great Famine, he explained, they settled in cities like New York and carried their music, dance, and customs with them. It was working-class communities, in particular, who sustained the traditions by playing together in their new neighborhoods much as they had done at home.

What makes the music powerful, he suggested, is that “unbroken chain of tradition” stretching from Ireland into American cities, passed down vernacularly for generations. In that way, Irish traditional music did not remain solely an Irish inheritance. By moving across the Atlantic, it became not just Irish but, he said, “quintessentially an American tradition as well.”

When I asked about the significance of a festival like this in Baltimore, Hearn pointed to a single name: Billy McComiskey.

McComiskey, he explained, had grown up in Brooklyn, immersed in the music of Irish immigrants who had learned directly from masters in Ireland. He studied with the great East Galway accordion player and was heavily influenced by the playing of Paddy O’Brien of County Tipperary, inheriting what Hearn described as that same “unbroken chain of tradition.”

When McComiskey moved to Baltimore, he didn’t just perform, he taught. He he passed down that style and those settings to players across the United States and Ireland over the years, including to local Baltimore players like Laura Byrne, Joanna Clare, and his sons Pat, Sean, and Mikey McComiskey, connecting a new generation of Baltimore musicians to a lineage stretching back generations.

That, Hearn said, is really what the Baltimore Irish Trad Fest is about. It showcases music made in Baltimore while remaining rooted in a tradition far older and wider than the city itself. The festival invites “proven tradition bearers” from across the country and around the world to perform, to teach, and to participate in an exchange of ideas.

Hearn emphasized that bringing the festival to Baltimore is essential because the city is “one of the centers of Irish traditional music in the U.S.” The local style, he explained, traces back to the East Galway and Sligo-influenced sound that flourished in New York, particularly in the 1950s and ’60s. In Baltimore, that sound has been “kind of frozen in amber,” while also developing its own distinct speed, groove, and repertoire.

The city is known internationally for its world-class Irish traditional musicians, making it a natural home for a major festival. Hosting Trad Fest allows Baltimore to “hold court,” welcoming musicians and visitors from across the country and around the world. For Hearn, the festival is both an honor for the city and a reflection of its stature within the global Irish music community.

The Trad Fest was founded by local flute player Laura Byrne, who attended the Peabody music conservatory in Baltimore. Byrne ran the festival for over a decade and still serves as creative director. What began as a series of classes and workshops at iconic Baltimore venues like the Creative Alliance and J. Patrick’s grew into an annual event that includes venues dear to the city’s Irish music community.

An important feature of this festival, which differs from a typical music festival lineup, is that it highlights more than thirty individual musicians rather than bands. In Irish traditional music, the focus is on players who share a common musical language, grounded in a shared repertoire and style that allows them to perform together in ever-changing configurations. Although there will be concerts by master musicians, the culture of this genre stems more from communal music making than performance.

This structure creates a sense of synergy. Audience members are not just spectators but participants, with ample opportunities to join sessions, attend workshops, take part in the céilí (an Irish social dance). At this festival, you are invited not only to listen, but to learn, play, and actively participate.

As I quickly learned when I arrived in the neighborhood, Hampden is a beacon of folk music, and, fittingly, this year’s festival unfolds right along West 36th Street, the neighborhood’s main street known colloquially as “The Avenue.” Events are centered within easy walking distance of one another, with venues including St. Luke’s Church, The Bluebird, Frazier’s on the Avenue, and ACCE School, all just steps apart along the vibrant corridor.

In Hampden, I came to understand something fundamental about vernacular music traditions: they are not staged into existence. They emerge in an infrastructure and disciplined community that requires involvement, patience, and soul. Irish music here isn’t a program; it’s a practice. For the young musicians of the Baltimore Irish Music School, the weekend offers direct access to master artists and the chance to learn and sit within the tradition. For audiences, it offers something just as compelling: the opportunity to hear exceptional music and to witness how a local culture sustains itself through participation, mentorship, and exchange.

In Hampden, that tradition still travels the old way: one tune at a time, passed from player to player across a neighborhood.

Connor Marks is the administrative technical assistant at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. He is also a musician who studies and performs regional Italian musica popolare as well as other traditional genres.