I agree with William that the NW Folklife Festival has become uncomfortably commercial, and some of us are trying to pull it away from that. But it's a victim of its own success -- it's expensive to produce an event that big, and the money has to come from someplace. Up to now, there are only a couple of major contributors who don't treat the event as an advertsing medium, often in ways that are contrary to the original spirit of the event.

You may respond to that by saying "it's too big. Save money by scaling it down." But it's a free event, so it's difficult if not impossible to limit attendance. And the expenses are directly related to production, crowd control, logistics and so forth.

As for "real appreciation of musicians," there's still a Saturday Night party, with food, and a performers' hospitality area. The free beer was shut off after a couple of years of abuse -- there were a handful of performers who would camp in the hospitality area all weekend and become progressively more unpleasant (and in some cases, abusive). It was a case of a few people ruining a good thing for everybody. Performers still get free parking.

There are no more rain stages because there are no unused spaces for them -- the Festival schedules performances in every available spot. Would you prefer that they cut down the number of stages and reduce the number of performing slots? Some of us (meaning committed festival volunteers) have been very vocal at the "how should we update Seattle Center?" meetings and to the City of Seattle about making sure the needs of the festival are recognized when they add, move or change things on the Center grounds and in the buildings.

They have taken a commission on cd/record sales since 1979. It's less than any other retailer would take for selling your CDs, and like the festival's share of everything else that's sold at the festival, that mark-up helps cover expenses. And the sales room is open through the whole weekend, so it probably sells more copies than you would sell on your own.

Please understand, I agree that there's a lot about the Folklife Festival that should be fixed. And I encourage you to let the staff and board know about your complaints and suggestions for changes. All those letters and comment forms do get read and discussed, even if there isn't any obvious action. We've all got to keep at it until it has some kind of effect.

As always, these are entirely my own opinions. I'm not speaking for NW Folklife in any way.