The Whare Flat Folk Festival began as a "camp" created by the then New Edinburgh Folk Club (now the Dunedin Folk Club) to play music together and bring in the new year.
It has now grown to a multi-day camping festival run entirely by volunteers — this year commemorating its 50th year.
Festival director Siobhan Dillon said she had been going to the festivals at Whare Flat "my whole life".
"I was in utero at my first one."
Folk music was continually evolving and was "not just a fad", Mrs Dillon said.
"It is forever speaking to the now and to the past and looking forward to a more positive future, hopefully.
"I think it's really important that we've got to 50 years, but maybe not surprising, I think, because of what it is at its core — it's about people."
A special 50th anniversary concert and celebration panel interview would also be held, along with other workshops and dance events.
Mrs Dillon said the festival generally attracted a couple of hundred attendees, particularly for the New Year’s Eve ceilidh.
It was initially just people performing on the back of a truck in the field, and for a while, in the 1980s, "it got really huge".
"They had to pretend that the festival was cancelled and it was secretly held somewhere else for a year."
She had heard tales of festivals past.
A "battle between the folkies and the Waitati Militia" used to be a feature every year, she said.
Flour bombs would be thrown and folkies dressed up as nurses would give whisky to "the wounded soldiers".
Folk was quite a broad genre, and she had grown up with it described as "the music of the people, by the people and for the people" — more of a working class music, Mrs Dillon said.
"You'll find Celtic music, blues music, Americana, Kiwiana, all of that out there."
The messaging behind the music and what it was protesting still felt very relevant now, Mrs Dillon said.
Folk music, while coming in and out of the spotlight, "never really goes away".
"It is music and dance that is at its heart always speaking to what is currently happening, with a lens of what has happened in the past.
"I just don't think that will change. I don't think that dies and goes away."
The festival will be held at the Waiora Scout Camp, from December 30 to January 3.
