TARZANA COUPLE TURN FONDNESS FOR FOLK MUSIC INTO FESTIVAL.

Byline: Michael Symes Daily News Staff Writer

Clark and Elaine Weissman never expected the folk music jam sessions they held in their modest Tarzana home to blossom into a festival that each year attracts thousands of musicians.

Encouragement from friends prompted them to hold their first festival in 1980 featuring a mere four workshops. It sold out four months prior to the event, so they doubled the amount of workshops the following year and again it sold out.

``It just kept growing,'' Elaine Weissman said. ``People would come to us and say, `You really should have this' or `You really should have that,' so we would say, `How about you put it together for us?' ''

Beginning today, the Weissmans put on their 16th annual Summer Solstice Folk Music and Dance Festival at Soka University in Calabasas, a festival that attracts more than 5,000 amateur and professional musicians from all over the world for three days of concerts and classes.

In addition to the music, the festival features storytelling, dance and singing workshops, traditional musical instrument demonstrations and workshops on playing techniques and styles of diverse ethnic and cultural traditions including blues, bluegrass, American Indian and Yiddish, among others.

Tickets for most of the events can be purchased at the door for prices ranging between $10 and $20, less for students and seniors. Also, a limited number of loaner instruments will be available for the various workshops.

``We did not have the ability (in 1980) to anticipate that there would be so much enthusiasm in the community,'' Clark said. ``I think the festival has been very successful in changing the face of folk music.''

The Weissmans' connections to the folk music world are longstanding.

Clark met Eddie Pearl in the late 1950s while they were together in a singing group called the Ballad Makers. When Pearl founded the Ashgrove in Santa Monica several years later, Clark helped paint it, put in the first sound system and did some performing there.

Others who have crossed the Weissmans' path over the years include Peggy Seeger, the half-sister of Pete Seeger, and Seamus Egan, who was 14 years old when he came in contact with the Weissmans and went on to compose and perform the music for the film, ``The Brothers McMullen.''

Also, the Weissmans have been instrumental in introducing several acts from overseas that have flourished in the United States, among them Lo Jai, out of France; LaBottine Souriant, out of Quebec; and a Scottish group called Ossain.

In addition to the house concerts and festivals, the Weissmans have actively sought to create organizations to promote the multicultural traditions of folk music and dance.

In 1978, they started a small, amateur folk music club that they incorporated in 1983 as the California Traditional Music Society.

And in 1989, the CTMS put together a meeting of the 130 leaders of similar folk organizations in North America to air concerns and plan strategies to promote awareness of folk traditions.

Out of that conference grew the North American Folk Music and Dance Alliance, which now has more than 2,000 members and holds annual conventions in the United States or Canada.

And through it all, the Weissmans managed to raise six children.

``We believe that family is the core in the structure of our life,'' Elaine said, adding that they did not own a television for many years and that they would get the family together to play music to entertain themselves.

``When we looked at the festival, we knew this had to be for the whole family,'' she said. It is for this reason that children 12 and under are allowed into the festival for free, she added.

After holding the festival at the Graystone Mansion in Beverly Hills for its first five years and moving it to Cal State Northridge for the next five, the Weissmans settled the festival into the Soka campus in Calabasas, where it has been for the past six years.

Soka University is located at 26800 West Mulholland Highway, off the Las Virgenes Road exit of the Ventura Freeway. Parking for day events will cost $3, while there is no parking charged for evening events.

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