LOWELL — Peniel Guerrier has spent his life promoting Haitian culture through the beat of a drum and traditional dances from his home country.
He was born in 1971 in St. Marc, a small town in Haiti where Guerrier grew up around the religion and culture of Haitian Voudou, of which percussion, singing and dancing are foundational tenets. Guerrier has since moved to the U.S., became a citizen and now runs two companies out of New York City: Tamboula d’Haiti and Kriye Bode. In 2025 he was a recipient of the National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellowship stemming from his lifelong mission of passing along his knowledge of Haitian Voudou drumming and dance traditions.
Guerrier has brought that tradition all over the country and the world, but this weekend he will perform in the Lowell Folk Festival for his very first time.
“This is what we do. You have to go and you have to share your culture,” Guerrier said in a phone call with The Sun Tuesday afternoon.
It will be the 39th annual iteration of the iconic festival in Lowell, which got its start in 1987 as the National Folk Festival before rebranding to be named after its home city in 1990. Guerrier will have multiple performances throughout the weekend, starting at 1 p.m. Saturday at the Boarding House Park stage, and again on Sunday with a 3:15 p.m. show at the Richard K. and Nancy L. Donahue Stage at St. Anne’s followed by a 5 p.m. performance at the Saab Family Foundation Stage on Market Street.
Guerrier will be one of many performances found within the free festival in Lowell this weekend, with each one bringing their unique cultures from the world over to the five stages spread across the festival grounds. Bluegrass, polka, Tuvan throat singing, traditional Sicilian music, African American a cappella gospel and many more are among the genres that can be found.
The festivities run Friday evening to Sunday evening, starting at 6:15 p.m. Friday with the annual Parade of Flags through Downtown Lowell to Boarding House Park, which will be led by the Middlesex County Volunteers Fife and Drums. The parade will be followed by a kickoff ceremony, and the first musical act will begin in short order with Puerto Rican cuatrista Fabiola Mendez taking the Boarding House Park stage at 7 p.m., and other artists performing at the Rockland Trust Bank Dance Pavilion on Arcand Drive soon after.
The last act Friday is scheduled to end at 10:15 p.m., and things will get started right back up again at noon Saturday with performances at all five stages until the final act concludes at 10 p.m. Festivities will start up again Sunday at noon, with the final act of the festival scheduled to end at 6 p.m.
Among those performers kicking off the Saturday festivities at 12:30 p.m. at the Rockland Trust Bank Pavilion will be the Eastern Sound Orchestra, a polka group based in New Hampshire which has been performing together for 50 years. John Sobczak is a founding member of the group, and he told The Sun Friday that this will be their third time performing at the Lowell Folk Festival, though they do perform at the Dom Polski Club at least once a year.
“Polka music is happy music. We like to get everybody out and dancing, and we are going to do just that at this festival,” said Sobczak.
“Especially today,” he said later. “Generally, we need some happiness in the world. We don’t do it for the money, we do it for the people and their enjoyment.”
Sobczak urged anyone coming to their shows to “join in and sing along,” which he said happens to also be the title of their opening number. Eastern Sound Orchestra will have a second show Saturday at the Market Street stage at 3:20 p.m., and then again on Sunday at the Rockland Trust Bank Dance Pavilion at 2:35 p.m.
The Lowell Folk Festival serves as a venue for sharing cultures not just through music, but also famously through food. Each year local organizations sell food representative of their various cultures throughout the festival grounds. Dishes from Nigeria, The Phillipines, Brazil, Laos and many other countries and cultures will be served, with the proceeds from food sales serving as a major annual fundraiser for each organization.
Among the offerings will be Greek food, which will be served by the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church at JFK Plaza and the associated Hellenic American Academy at Boarding House Park. Theodora Stathopoulos told The Sun Monday that the church has been participating in the festival for about as long as the festival has existed, while the Hellenic American Academy, which is under the umbrella of the church, joined them with their own booth more than 20 years ago.
Stathopoulos described the church’s menu, which will feature chicken and lamb gyro, souvlaki, kebabs, Greek salad, spinach pie, baklava and koulourakia, which is a braided butter cookie.
“We’re basically presenting our most recognizable and popular dishes,” said Stathopoulos.
The money raised from the church’s food sales at the festival benefits the parish itself as well as the ministries the parish supports. For the academy, PTA President Georgia Agganis said the funds raised benefit the students, particularly by paying for some of their extracurricular activities.
“Field trips, enrichment, sports programs, all that money goes to those things,” said Agganis.
The Hellenic American Academy will have a similar menu to the church with gyros, souvlaki, meat skewers and baklava, but it will also include the popular baklava sundae, Agganis said, which will feature the Greek pastry with vanilla ice cream, hot fudge and whipped cream.
Over on Market Street one can get a taste of Armenian food from the Armenian Relief Society, which Sossy Jeknavorian said has been selling food at the festival for just about its entire run.
“One thing we can brag about is our Armenian losh kebab, an Armenian-style hamburger we serve every year, and people love it,” Jeknavorian said in a phone call Tuesday.
The losh kebab can also be eaten as a dinner plate, and alongside it one can try the spinach pita, stuffed grape leaves and lahmejoon, which is an Armenian meat pie. The organization will also sell a number of bakery items such as boorma, gadaif, paklava and Armenian coffee rolls.
With the funds they raise, Jeknavorian said the Armenian Relief Society donates to local charities like the Merrimack Valley Food Bank, local homeless shelters, Salvation Army, Dwelling House of Hope, Alternative House and youth camps in the U.S. and Armenia.
“And if there is anything left, we try to sponsor a few orphans in Armenia,” said Jeknavorian, citing the impact on the Armenian population from the recent war the country fought against neighboring Azerbaijan.
Organizing the festival every year is a massive effort requiring a number of people to make it happen. At the top of it all is Lowell Festival Foundation Executive Director Lee Viliesis, who described the whirlwind effort to make it all happen every year in a July 16 call with The Sun.
“I was up until 2 a.m. doing banners yesterday,” said Viliesis. “It is one of those things where everything comes together at the last minute.”
As a lead organizer, Viliesis said she seldom gets time to enjoy the many performances the festival hosts, but she does make sure to take breaks to at least enjoy some of the food. She couldn’t pick a favorite dish at the festival, as it would be like choosing a favorite child, but she said there are some dishes she goes out of her way to get every year.
“If I don’t get my Armenian burger on a pita, I will hysterically sob,” Viliesis said with a laugh.
As she walks the festival grounds each year too, she said some of the women running the food tents go out of their way to make sure she has eaten as she passes them.
“These are women that, in many cases, I don’t actually remember their names, but they are just the sweetest people on the planet,” said Viliesis.
As with any largely outdoor event, watching the weather becomes more important in the leadup, though the festival goes on rain or shine.
“Knock on wood that it is going to be really great weather. When there is good weather it is such a great festival. It is so much fun. It doesn’t even matter who the bands are, it is always cool. Come see Super Chikan make cool guitars out of hub caps. Come see Alash do what Alash does,” said Viliesis, referring to the Tuvan throat singing group.
The festival costs about $1 million to run each year. The majority of that is typically raised through donations, many of which are given during the festival to the Bucket Brigade volunteers who will be walking the festival grounds. A small portion of the funding comes from a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts each year. Last year Viliesis was told before the festival that the grant was being pulled amid a slew of federal funding cuts led by the Trump administration, but it was reinstated after the festival had taken place. This year, Viliesis said the grant was received without any hiccups.
The full performance schedule and food menus can be viewed at lowellfolkfestival.org, and check out The Sun’s festival special section in Thursday’s edition.
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