As another September dawns, one staple musical event in Cork is notably conspicuous by its absence. For the past 28 years, the Cork Folk Festival has, whatever the circumstances or financial restrictions, routinely taken place with folk, roots and traditional music filling venues across the city.

This year however, the ever-popular festival is set to take place over four days in early October. Aside from that though it's business as usual one of the country's longest-running and most beloved folk festivals. This week details of the programme were announced at a launch in Beamish & Crawford.

The 2008 festival will take place in over 22 venues in Cork city featuring over 34 acts, 280 musicians and 5,000 dancers as part of this year's Ceili Mor celebrations. This year's highlights will include headliner Damien Demspey, West Kerry's 'Beal Tuinne' featuring Seamus Begley, Rita Conolly, Jim Murray and Shaun Davey. vibrant 11 piece world music fusion band 'Salsa Celtica' from Edinburgh and Frankie Gavin and Martin O'Connor who will perform in the beautiful St Finbarr's Cathedral.

Also performing at this year's festival will be the Michael McGoldrick Trio with John Joe Kelly & Ed Boyd, the 'pride of the west' with John Wynne & John McEvoy, the legendary Beara box player Finbarr Dwyer and Cork's own Conal O Grada.

Throughout the weekend, audiences can sample everything from the very best fiddle, accordion, pipes and flute players in Ireland to a giant open-air Céilí Mór with the Kilfenora Céilí Band. As usual the festival will feature concerts from the Cork Blues, Pipes' and singers' clubs, plus lectures, children's events and a music trail featuring 40 free sessions. For Willie Hammond, the festivals long-running artistic director, the task of putting the whole thing together is a considerable time consuming labour of love. Born and raised in Fermoy, Willie was always likely to be involved in the arts here given that his father, Bill Hammond, was heavily into theatre and also played in a number of bands. This was Willie's first introduction to traditional music and so began a life-long passion.

"I actually played the trumpet and was getting lessons from a number of teachers in Fermoy such as Tom Barry. But I really took an interest in folk, roots and traditional music, particularly John Martyn and Rory Gallagher. Martyn was a real hero of mine. He wrote such beautiful traditional songs but he was also an incredible guitarist. I actually got to meet him when we put him on at the Cork Folk Festival which was a great experience. Around the time I was really getting into traditional and folks music I also began to head to the festivals such as the Lisdoonvarna which were always great experiences."

Willie eventually got involved with the Cork Folk Festival through his associations with Timmy McCarthy, the man affectionately dubbed the Festival's Spiritual Director. "That was back in the 80s when there was still plenty of money around. It was sponsored by Harp at the time so getting someone like Christy Moore to headline was not unusual. Then Harp pulled out and were replaced by Murphy's, who themselves stopped their sponsorship a few years later. The festival took a big hit financially which affected its running."