The Folk Arts Society is hosting a Friends of the Festival concert tomorrow night to help raise funds for a possible NL Folk Festival.

It’s hoped that this year’s festival can be salvaged with a pared-down event for its 50th anniversary, but they need to raise funds to get it off the ground.

This weekend’s concert will feature both seasoned performers and newer acts.

Among the highlights is a reunion of Figgy Duff – a band that emerged at a time when traditional music was seeing a global resurgence, and who were at the forefront of a Newfoundland cultural renaissance in the 1970s.

Dave Panting, Kelly Russell and Pamela Morgan, who were there in the early days of the folk festival, are reuniting on stage Sunday at the Mary Brown’s Centre.

Morgan says the thing that stayed with her over the years was having the privilege of learning traditional songs first-hand.

She says in the early days of the folk festival, there were a lot of traditional singers and performers who would come in from around the bay.

“We were putting those traditional songs on stage accompanied, and the big thrill was the few times when there was somebody in the audience from whom we had learned the songs. I’m thinking in particular now of Gerald Campbell and ‘The Girl Who Slighted Me.’ Those were magical moments.”

The Friends of the Festival Concert takes place 7:00 to 10:00 Sunday night.