The latest in a series of features flagging some of the talent coming to the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this weekend.

EDMONTON - Since folk music has become indefinable, the genre can be explained by the shared qualities of its supporters. They are intelligent and critical people. They care more about the song than the artist, more about poetry than platitudes, and eschew mainstream radio for braver sounds. Folk music fans never download music. They would never steal. Or so Dar Williams thought.

"When it started, my take was that toppling the big record label people wouldn't affect me," she says, from her new home up the river from New York City. "Go ahead, download all you want. Then I thought: shit. I can see it on my royalty statements. Kids actually ask me to sign discs full of songs they've downloaded. It just makes me cringe."

Williams opens tonight's entertainment at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival, sharing the stage with Ricky Skaggs, Taj Mahal, Norah Jones and Solomon Burke. Taken together, this may be one of the best nights of music in the history of the event. It is a typically diverse list of names, bound only by critical success and fan loyalty. Dar Williams may be the least known of these artists, but with the brisk sales of her melodic and atmospheric seventh album, The Beauty of the Rain, her folk niche status may be threatened by mainstream acceptance.

"With this album, some people think I'm chomping at some sort of bit to leave folk music," she says. "I do feel like I have the divine right to be myself, but I actually think this is a quieter, less pop-sounding album than The Green World. It's a classic paradox. It's either 'This isn't our Dar' or 'It's just the same old Dar.' "

With a song referencing Falstaff, another about a dream concerning Cliff Eberhardt, and a third song about a Canadian riot grrl magazine with a photograph of someone named Kira's vagina on Williams' The Beauty of the Rain, the singer seems to bridge the world between folk and pop without compromising herself. This is a positive thing, even if it does mean more of her songs are downloaded.

"Folk people are goodhearted and adventurous people who often have socio-political reasons for finding music off the beaten track," Williams says. "Its an audience that's proven itself to be very resilient. They took me on when I was green and they've stayed with me as I've become a better songwriter, a better singer and a better guitar player."

tbabiak@thejournal.canwest.com

Dar Williams performs on the mainstage tonight at 6