Music fans flock to Fort Adams, in Newport, yesterday for the Newport Folk Festival. Heavy rains prompted some concert-goers to leave early, but others weathered the storm to see their favorite acts.

The Providence Journal / Ruben W. Perez

NEWPORT — There are a few ways to react to rainy weather, and yesterday at the Newport Folk Festival, at Fort Adams, a few of them were on display at the same time.

While Stephen and Damian Marley were defying the midafternoon deluge with roots and dancehall reggae straight from their native, sunny Jamaica, including some of the best-known songs of their legendary father, Bob, on the main stage, Jim James, of My Morning Jacket, was headlong into a solo set of plaintive, pretty melodies (with heavy echo on his voice) and shimmering acoustic guitar that evoked staring out the window at a storm on the second stage.

Meanwhile, The Felice Brothers weren’t letting a power failure keep them from their Newport debut on the third stage. The acoustic old-time band played completely unplugged in front of the stage, and that added to the feeling of shared adversity with the crowd jammed underneath the tent.

“I got two hands,” the band shouted during one of their breakneck hillbilly gospel stomps; “I’m gonna clap my hands together.”

“That’s folk,” said an onlooker.

So what is folk? This festival may have stretched the definition, with The Black Crowes and Cat Power headlining the two biggest stages, but, honestly, it’s one of those questions that eventually becomes as pointless as “What is punk?” or “What is jazz?” And yesterday’s bill may have helped nudge that process along.

The Crowes nodded to the Newport heritage, as the rock band (usually one of the loudest out there) started off quietly with acoustic versions of “Girl of the North Country” and “He was a Friend of Mine” and a muted “Whoa Mule” before slowly working their way into full-throated versions of “Poor Elijah” and, near the end, “Jealous Again.” As is their wont, they channeled the best of Southern rock and dueling-guitar groups such as The Allman Brothers as frontman Chris Robinson shouted and preached.

Meanwhile, Cat Power (the pseudonym of singer Chan Marshall) was getting spookier by the minute, with a sparse, psychologically taut style that used echoed guitar and occasional Weill-style piano to back Marshall’s tip-of-the-iceberg vocal style. The reworking of Fleetwood Mac’s “Dreams” was compelling, but by the end, the kick in tempo that “Do You Do You Do You” provided was most welcome.

There were plenty of post-rock singer-songwriters on all the stages, and results were mixed. A rare solo acoustic appearance by Trey Anastasio found the former Phish guitarist in singer-songwriter mode, having a sweet way with melody, particularly on the earnestly romantic “Peggy.”

But if most of the people were, by weight of sheer physics, at the main stage, most of the heat was on the second stage, where there were overflow crowds all day, even during the rain. Steve Earle mixed the political (“Christmas in Washington”) and the romantic (“Sparkle and Shine” and “The Days Aren’t Long Enough,” the latter a lovely duet with his wife, Allison Moorer). It wasn’t all generational, though; leave it to the 55-year-old Earle to use what might well have been Newport’s first scratching and mixing DJ.

The sensation of the early going was Young@Heart, the Massachusetts-based senior citizens’ choir (and subjects of a recent documentary) that not only sings rock but songs by the likes of Radiohead, The Ramones and The Flaming Lips. “Forever Young” was an obvious encore, but the Lips’ “All We Have is Now,” sung by elderly people, some in wheelchairs or with canes, cut to the bone. The second-stage crowd went wild, and choir leader Bob Cilman was impressed. “Putting old people in front of young people — it’s very important,” he said afterward.

The whole thing started as a vintage-music sing-along group at the meal site where Cilman works, but one day a woman sang “Let It Be” half in English and half in Polish. “It was kind of like a dagger,” Cilman said. “People who didn’t know the music and took it someplace else.”

Teaching rock to his charges could be “a challenge,” he added, but at the same time “it’s amazing how important the words are to these guys.”

Jakob Dylan continued what feels like the kickoff of his solo career in earnest with a folk-rock set of songs mixing acoustic and electric guitars; the gentle, country-esque rollick of “Shy of the Moon” in particular was reminiscent of you-know-who. (Richie Havens covered “Maggie’s Farm” on the main stage while Jakob Dylan was playing.) And along with Jim James and Cat Power, She & Him, with M. Ward and Zooey Deschanel, also packed them in (a mix of solid pop with tinges of country, but cloying vocals on Deschanel’s part).

Indeed, if the point was to pass a torch on to a new generation of singer-songwriters, those who grew up with punk rock instead of Peter, Paul and Mary, it seemed to be working. Kellen Sutherland, 27, of Cambridge, said he was at his first Newport festival because he most wanted to see Anastasio, She & Him and Jim James, but he was digging Richie Havens when he said it, and added that “the combination of all the artists” of different generations produced “a good mix of experiences.”

John Fimbel, 58, of New Jersey had been to several festivals in the late ’60s and early ’70s as a URI student, and was attending for only the second time since 1972. He’d been shuttling among the three stages “listening to all the groups. … I think it’s great.”

Singer-songwriter Jesca Hoop, in the meantime, wowed them on the third stage with two glorious harmony singers to toe the line between celestial and gossamer.

And then it rained.

“I’m not going anywhere,” said Judy Davis, of Glocester, during the height of the downpour. She was waiting for the Marleys while The American Babies, who had already played on the third stage, were filling time on behalf of the delayed brothers (while the wind and rain played havoc with their sound). Davis was looking forward to, and had enjoyed, the younger acts on the bill, though she didn’t have much first-hand knowledge of them. She wouldn’t give her age, other than to say, “I was at Woodstock, and it rained there, too. And for three days, not just for one day.”

As for the Babies, their stormy main stage performance came as a surprise, as festival co-producer Jay Sweet alerted them to be ready for anything. It came through, and the Brooklyn-based group, which mixed Americana rock with a bit of a jam-band aesthetic, played to a much larger, much wetter crowd than anticipated — on the Marleys’ gear. “My first child is now Jay Sweet Hamilton,” said the group’s Tom Hamilton, feeling the post-show excitement.

While the rain drove off plenty of people in the announced crowd of 7,500, those who remained reached a literal saturation point, where it became clear they couldn’t get any wetter, so they might as well dance. And while the roof of the stage was lowered to protect them from the wind and the rain, it still produced “a pleasant spray at all times,” cracked the group’s Scott Metzger. “I enjoyed it totally.”

The festival concludes today at Fort Adams.

rmassimo@projo.com