Venerable pop singer Linda Ronstadt will bring a different form of folk music, Mexican-American, to this year's MerleFest as the headliner for the four-day festival.
She will be the closing act, performing traditional mariachi songs in Spanish.
Ronstadt will sing on April 26 with the band Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano. Her performance will include selections from her albums Canciones de Mi Padre (Songs of My Father), and Mas Canciones (More Songs), both of which won Grammy Awards.
The 10-piece band collaborated with Ronstadt on those albums, and its members have played mariachi music for nearly 50 years.
Ted Hagaman, the festival's director, said that Ronstadt has been on the MerleFest radar for years because of her work in many musical genres.
Although Ronstadt is perhaps best known for such folk-rock hits as "Different Drum," "Long, Long Time" and "You're No Good," she has devoted her career to a broad spectrum of music, including jazz, country, big band and Broadway.
She has performed the traditional music of her youth -- she grew up in a Mexican-American family in Tucson, Ariz., -- periodically over the past 20 years.
"MerleFest has been famous for many years for bringing unique things to the festival," Hagaman said. Ronstadt's show of traditional Mexican-American folk music, he said, should go over well with the MerleFest audience.
"Our crowd is very open, and they like variety and diversity."
Ronstadt first became widely known in the mid-'60s as the lead singer for the Stone Poneys, a folk-rock group. She later became a solo artist with such successful albums as Heart Like a Wheel and Prisoner in Disguise. She has won 11 Grammys, including awards for Lush Life and What's New, albums of standards recorded with Nelson Riddle, and Trio, a country album recorded with Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris.
She has sold more than 50 million albums and earned more than 30 gold and platinum records.
She will join a lineup of nearly 100 performers, including Harris and Travis Tritt. Doc Watson, whose late son, Merle, was the inspiration for MerleFest, will also perform.
The festival will be April 23-26 on the campus of Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro.
■ Janice Gaston can be reached at 727-7364 or at jgaston@wsjournal.com.
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