This year's National Folk Festival over Easter has a major innovation - fair pay for musicians.
One of the artistic directors said he was determined that this year's 39th festival should be "sustainable" and that, he said, meant sustainable financially for performers.
"We are trying to pay everyone fairly," Chris Stone said.
The music industry is notorious for short-changing the actual talent but he is determined that it won't happen for the 900 performers at Exhibition Park for the five days from March 28 to April 1.
He went through a thousand applications by performers, watching videos and reading written pitches.
The aim was to get diversity - diversity of music types, diversity of styles, diversity of gender.
He said he hadn't monitored statistics to make sure there was a 50:50 male-female split but just "kept an eye on it".
When they applied to play, musicians were also asked whether they would be willing to join other musicians to create interesting new sounds in an innovative fusion.
There will be other innovations. All the music accompanying the dance will be live. In the past, some of it has been recorded but this year, it will be played by human beings as the dancers dance.
But this is a folk festival. It is about tradition - so there will be Morris Dancers.
There will be dance workshops where visitors can learn the steps and then perform on stage. Music tuition in instruments will happen in other workshops with the same conclusion - on stage.
And there will be the backroom stars - the people who make the instruments that make the sounds that make people happy.
But above all, there will be a wide variety of music, across the gamut of the broad sounds called "folk" - from a to z: AJ & Jenny (ukulele and cello) to the ZoJ duo (voice, Persian Kamancheh (a bowed string instrument) and drum).
Artists come from across Australia and beyond. A thousand volunteers will join the festival, coming from around the country and from across the Tasman Sea.
The first festival was a small affair in 1967, known then as the "Port Phillip District Folk Music Festival" and organised by the Victorian Folk Music Club and the Monash Traditional Music Society.
From 1969, it travelled around the country but 31 years ago, the organisers decided to plump for one venue - the EPIC showgrounds in Canberra.
Since then, it has grown and grown into one of Canberra's big crowd-pullers.
"This is a beautiful festival," its managing director Heidi Pritchard said. "It's inclusive, kind and fun.
"Your kids will be safe. You will be welcome. Come and join us."
The National Folk Festival runs from March 28 to April 1, at Canberra's EPIC Showgrounds.
This article first appeared in the Canberra Times.
Steve Evans
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
Steve Evans is a reporter on The Canberra Times. He's been a BBC correspondent in New York, London, Berlin and Seoul and the sole reporter/photographer/paper deliverer on The Glen Innes Examiner in country New South Wales. "All the jobs have been fascinating - and so it continues."
