Created in 1975 by the people of the youth club "De Zon", the first festival showed eight groups on one day with the Albion Morris Men as headliners, and had some 300 visitors.

After a few more years of growth, the festival reached a stable audience of three- to five thousand visitors throughout the 1980s.

From the end of the 1980s on, the festival started programming other genres like world music (with Miriam Makeba in 1989) and singer-songwriters (with Billy Bragg in 1988), and included some more well-known names.

In the wake of the festival, a museum of folk music also opened in Dranouter.

[1] Famous artists who performed in Dranouter over the years include:[2] Sources:[3][4]