August 27th, 2025

Gather ’round for the Campfire Festival at Club Passim

Banner Arts & Culture Sponsored by Cruz Companies

What do you call four days of live music, with dozens of acts, taking place in an intimate club in Harvard Square? It’s the annual Campfire Festival, in its 25th year, with about 60 musicians performing in short sets at Club Passim. Scheduled for Labor Day weekend, from Aug. 29 through Sept. 1, the festival is meant to be a somewhat urban version of what it can be like to gather around a campfire in a rural setting with friends, new and old, to listen to music that inspires connections among varying communities.

“Many of the performances are songwriters in-the-round, so it can have the feel of folks playing for each other around a campfire,” Matt Smith, the club’s managing director, told the Banner.

Being at Club Passim is a genuine cultural experience. The venue, going back to its years as Club 47 (1958-1968) and up to today, serves as a hub for folk, popular and so-called indy music. The music at the club is often intended to inspire social activism and create bonds that utilize art to establish political impact.

The Campfire Festival encapsulates Club Passim’s legacy as well as its future. The musicians offer genre-fluid performances within many contexts of musical traditions. 

“Neat little genre boxes are so limiting,” said Smith. “There was a time when you’d hear a whole host of different genres on one radio program. It is a good thing to be open to many kinds of music, and it keeps the ears fresh. The festival is all about new discoveries.”

Along with familiar voices, Smith said that many acts are “brand new to the club,” noting, Zara Sargsyan, Allison Strong, Aimee Okotie and Nightjar.

Nightjar describes itself as “a trio of multi-instrumentalists who weave together folk, soul and indie, drawing from the nature found both around us and within us.”

Zara Sargsyan, an indie jazz singer-songwriter, is a senior majoring in vocal performance at Berklee College of Music.

Over the four days, the musical adventure evokes a global campfire, with Nicolás Emden, a “distinctive South Americana indie folk rock sounds;” Elizabeth Burke, “a guitar strumming soulful singer-songwriter and an old-time, bluesy improvising fiddle player;” Louie Lou Louis, who has “a unique blend of folk, jazz, and global music;” banjo player Carolyn Shapiro; the “folk Americana” duo The Honey Badgers; the band Kouchera, which has “the richness of soul, the emotive storytelling of rhythm & blues and the rhythms of Haitian konpa;” and much more.

Is it global music? Jazz? Folk? Ambient? Caribbean? Who knows? After four days of homing in on sounds new and familiar, audiences will be privy to a music festival that crosses boundaries and adheres to little that is conformist.

It’s a decades-old throwback to when Harvard Square was a febrile place of creativity where organizers created opportunities to include musicians who may have been excluded due to normalized contexts of race, class and gender that narrowly defined aesthetics.

The lengthy schedule of music is by design a collection of disparate themes with, as Smith described it, “occasional rounds with themes, but often those things happen organically in the moment.”

Among the festival’s final day of performances will be Kenya Hall, a Portland, Maine-based musician. Hall, who describes herself as a soul and funk vocalist, said, “The audience can expect to feel like they’ve just come home, like they ate their favorite comfort food, like they hugged a long-lost friend, like they heard a message they didn’t know they needed.”

Asked how her music reflected its position in the festival, which may be perceived as folk given Club Passim’s origins, she said, “Because folk music is simply music of the people, and people are not all one way. Messages, feelings, vibes, positivity, comfort and validation come in all shapes, sizes and dimensions. Just like people.”

Tickets for the festival are $15 for one day and $30 for the entire four days and are available at www.passim.org. Free admission tickets are available to students in person with a valid student ID. (Offer not valid in advance.)

Club Passim is located at 47 Palmer Street in Cambridge, and easily accessible by the Red Line.

Campfire Festival, Club Passim, Harvard Square