March 12, 2026: The Beloved Festival

In two weeks the city of Northampton will be flushed with sounds from all over the roots, traditional, and Americana diaspora. The 12th Back Porch Festival returns with a stellar lineup of 60 artists and musicians across a bevvy of 10 venues. We chat with founder, organizer, and host of the Back Porch Radio Show Jim Olsen about some of the highlights you can see all over the city, and the new ways the event is connecting folx with music. Then we turn to a blend of the traditional and the modern with Sonny Singh and his project Sangat who’ll perform at the Parlor Room this coming Monday, March 16. We’ll hear how the combination of Sikh and Muslim devotionals and classical instruments resonates with the sounds of right now in this collaboration with Qais Essar and Sukmani bringing the rebab, tabla, and trumpet together to break boundaries and bring us together.And our weekly chat with Congressman Jim McGovern explore the running calculator of costs for this war, the question of oversight and it’s possibility in this year of midterm elections, the looming disaster of the SAVE act in light of those elections and more.