The Mariposa Folk Foundation, which has run Canada's best-known annual traditional music and crafts festival since the early 1960s, may be put to death later this month by some of the people who have loved it most.

A group led by former artistic director Estelle Klein wants the financially troubled organization to self-destruct after its annual general meeting Jan. 29.

Klein was responsible for programming concerts and shaping the Mariposa Folk Festival from 1964 until 1980, when it was considered North America's pre-eminent folk music event and attracted such performers as Bob Dylan, Gordon Lightfoot, Joni Mitchell and James Taylor.

But a hard rain has fallen on folk musicians in general and Mariposa in particular in recent years.

Mariposa has suffered substantial losses since 1980, despite the sponsorship of Molson brewery from 1983-86 and a member-financed debt-retirement program that whittled $30,000 off a $170,000 deficit the past few months.

It lost $20,000 last year during a three-day August festival at Molson Park, Barrie, where 1960s folk queen Joan Baez headlined, Rob Sinclair, a foundation vice-president, confirmed yesterday.

"The self-destruct proposal provides no solutions and is defeatist," Sinclair said. "All major folk festivals in Canada have financial problems."

Klein's group wants Mariposa to die with dignity and seeks support from the foundation's membership.

"The only honest action the Mariposa membership can take is to end the organization now, before it leaves any more bad debts and ill will in the folk and business communities," the group states in a letter distributed recently to 600 Mariposa members.

It was signed by Klein and more than 20 former festival and foundation directors, board members, supporters and performers.

Some musicians and suppliers of goods and services to the festival and other Mariposa-sponsored events haven't been paid since 1982, the letter says. And the foundation has been plagued by mass resignations, musicians' grievances, administrative foul-ups, misleading financial statements and court judgments against it for non-payment of debts.

"Mariposa is effectively dead already," the letter adds.

Artistic policy has changed course through four successive artistic directors during the past five years, Klein told The Star yesterday.

"What we've witnessed is the real erosion of the original Mariposa idea. It's not unusual these days for headliners to be paid large amounts of money and lesser known acts paid nothing.

"When James Taylor first came to Mariposa he was paid $78. A festival organization needs people who can say no to managers and star performers. In a festival environment no one performer is a star. It was the idea of Mariposa that made it work, not the performers."

Joan Baez was paid $10,000 to headline last summer's Mariposa, sources say. John Prine was paid the same amount for a single concert at the 1985 Mariposa, Canadian folksinger John Allan Cameron said yesterday.

"That's unfair to other performers," said Cameron, a supporter of the dissolution proposal and a Mariposa veteran. "I've always loved Mariposa, right from its beginning in the glory days of folk music. But I'd rather see something new start fresh, and with a new name."

Lynn Hurry, recently-elected Mariposa foundation president, said the board of directors has applied to the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture for assistance.

Federal and provincial grants have already helped the foundation hire five office workers. The board also seeks corporate sponsors willing to match government funds and is negotiating a new deal with Molson, Hurry said.

"I'm perplexed by the (Klein group's) letter. It is threatening the existence of folk music in southern Ontario."

A 1987 Maroposa festival is being planned.

But many of Mariposa's longest supporters aren't impressed. "Folk music has an important place in our society and an organization that can make it accessible to people is important," said Ken Whiteley, one of Canada's most popular folk musicians and a former Mariposa artistic director.

"I don't want the foundation to keep meandering and getting deeper in debt. Let it die with dignity rather than be put to death.

"Maybe if the ground lay fallow for a while, something would grow that would meet the needs of the folk community today."

CORRECTION:

The headline on a story in The Star on Jan.21 implied that Estelle Klein was a founder of the Mariposa Folk Festival. She was the festival's artistic director from 1965 to 1980, but was not one of its founders.

The Star regrets the error. (January 28, 1987, page F4)