Dawayne Gilley has some frustrating moments bringing his vision of a free, jumping Kansas City, Kan., Street Blues Festival into reality.

Raising money and coordinating all the groups can get a guy down.

But there’s one thing he always remembers: “It’s the musicians. They make it easy. They want to make this thing happen.”

And it will happen Friday and Saturday — a genuine, open and free street celebration of the blues and its power to bring people together. Come down to 13th Street and State Avenue in Kansas City, Kan., for more than 20 hours of music, celebrating Kansas City’s deep blues heritage and its jumping present and future.

The setting is unpretentious: The stage is on the side of a Masonic lodge, and the parking lot and the open space around it form a sort of amphitheater.

But the scope of the music is broad.

“The blues umbrella can stretch to white country, soul, funk, even reggae to some extent,” Gilley says. “Every year, we have all the elements Kansas City can offer. We try to go a little beyond a 12-bar shuffle.”

The players and singers assembled by Gilley and his team come from all corners of the Kansas City music scene, and they’ll jam in all kinds of familiar and unexpected groupings. They include blues veterans such as Linda Shell and Millage Gilbert and newer stars such as Lee McBee and Mark Montgomery, from jazz veterans Luqman Hamza and Lucky Wesley to a contingent from Leon Brady’s Kansas City Youth Jazz program. (That’s nowhere near a complete roster. “I had a pool of about 60 artists I didn’t want to tell no,” Gilley says.)

There are some out-of-town artists, too: Singer and guitarist Terry “Harmonica” Bean, from Pontotoc, Miss.; singer and guitarist Marquise Knox from St. Louis, who tore it up at last year’s festival and has just released his first CD while still in his teens; and guitarist and singer Glenn Patrik, who hails from Kansas City, Kan., but has found success backing other blues artists and is building a solo career, too.

The festival, the ninth “almost annual” (it skipped 2007), also takes up the Kansas City blues heritage in a panel discussion led by Jim O’Neal, a founder of Living Blues magazine. The talk will delve into the overlooked music scene along Third and Fifth streets in Kansas City, Kan.

The festival doesn’t ignore the living heritage, either, and one of the peaks is the coronation of a festival queen, Diane “Mama” Ray.

“She’s noted for how many musicians have honed their craft through her jam sessions,” Gilley says. “One musician hosting a jam session for 25 years — I don’t know that there’s been another one like that in Kansas City history.”

The festival remains free. Bring a lawn chair. Bring a cooler. There will be vendors at the site.

And it remains true to the original vision. Gilley says: “In my book this is what Martin Luther King strove for, what people back in the day were striving for. We are the melting pot, at the edge of the black community, at the edge of the white community.”

Not to mention the music and the fun: “We had visitors from Japan and Europe and Australia last year,” Gilley says. “Several people came from Chicago, L.A., Atlanta, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Texas. … Not bad, considering we didn’t advertise. … We’d be dangerous if we had any money.”

Bad news in brief

There’s been enough bad news in this space lately, so we’ll make this quick:

•Jazz venues continue to disappear. Not only is the Majestic Steakhouse downtown closed, the Golden Ox has called off its Friday and Saturday jazz performances. The press release says it’s “due to unforeseen music industry policies.”

•JazzTimes has “temporarily suspended” publication of the magazine and is looking to sell its assets.

•The tree shading Charlie Parker’s grave in Lincoln Cemetery has been cut down.

Noteworthy

•The Blue Room, 1600 E. 18th St., has Afro-Latin jazz from Makuza at 7 tonight; it’s free. Ida McBeth performs at 8:30 p.m. Friday, and bassist James Ward’s band performs at 8:30 p.m. Saturday; cover is $10. The Louis Neal Big Band, featuring some of our town’s best players, appears at 7 p.m. Monday; it’s free.

•Highlights at Jardine’s, 4536 Main St., include the Sons of Brasil at 7 tonight; Tim Whitmer and the KC Express at 6 and 8 p.m. Friday, followed by the eclectic Jerome and the Townspeople at 10:30 p.m.; Ida McBeth, at 6 and 8 p.m. Saturday, followed by Mark Lowrey and Shay Estes at 10:30 p.m.; and the Wild Women, singers Myra Taylor, Geneva Price, Lori Tucker and Millie Edwards, at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, for a $5 cover.

•Pianist Roger Wilder leads his quartet at 8 p.m. Sunday on the alternative-jazz series at the RecordBar, 1020 Westport Road.

•Singer Myra Taylor is also the guest on the July “Spirituality and All That Jazz” concert, at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Unity Temple on the Plaza, 707 W. 47th St. Tickets are $7.