~festival_si_edu | Bookmarks (9)

The members of Sugar in the Pan play a lot of instruments in a variety of musical styles, but bluegrass on the ukulele was something I didn’t expect. “I teach at a bluegrass camp up in Alaska. It’s one of my favorite examples of cross-cultural music sharing,” explained Grace Martin. “Every year we have Hawaiians come, and they teach ukulele and Hawaiian songs. We...

“Why elevate youth voices?” As a member of Generation X, I feel the need to establish a little youth-adjacent credibility before I can answer this question. I graduated from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., in 1984. With no prospects for the future beyond whatever jobs we could find, my classmate Quique Avilés and I decided that we had something...

To get this session started at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Omar Nassimi got some stereotypes out of the way: that Islam is rigid. That it is thousand-year-old structures. That it is the opposite of freedom, the opposite of creativity. At the 2023 Festival program Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S., a panel of young Muslims from the D.C. region challenged these stereotypes, sharing...

As Mapuche storytellers, Waikil and Ketrafe fuse  their Indigenous backgrounds with their love and passion for contemporary music. At the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, they provided a Mapuche perspective to the Indigenous Voices of the Americas program, representing a South American community comprised of nearly 1.9 million members primarily in Chile. This song “Wetruwe” addresses the Chilean government’s oppression against Mapuche activists and honors...

The Sons of Membertou bookended the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Indigenous Voices of the Americas program, with performances in the opening ceremony as well as the final featured concert in the National Museum of the American Indian’s Potomac Atrium. Austin Christmas, J.R. Isadore, John MacEwan, and Graham Marshall represented the Mi’kmaw musical group at the Festival, joined by dancer Maisyn Sock. It was especially...

The enduring influence of African American gospel music is felt across genres and artists. But gospel music traditions remain rooted in local churches and communities, where music uplifts and energizes singers and congregants alike. In 2023, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival presented the evening concert “Come Let Us Sing: Gospel Music Legacies.” As part of the Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S. program, the...

“We call cedar smg̱a̱n or aam g̱a̱n, ‘the real tree’ or ‘the good tree,’ because we use it for everything.” —Kandi McGilton Red cedar is a distinct and core part of Ts’msyen traditions along the Pacific Northwest coast. It is used for clothes, houses, totem poles, and, importantly, basketry. Across all these uses, its integrity lies in maintaining the overall history and cultural heritage...

Pataxó has no direct translation in English: it is the sound of water against stone as it travels to meet the sea. Once, the Pataxó people of coastal Brazil lived freely in the forests, river lands, and tropical shorelines of southern Bahia and northern Minas Gerais. But more than 500 years ago, Portuguese settlers invaded the region, leaving legacies of trauma, violence, and environmental...

Skateboarding is a way of being in physical dialogue with the space around you, and although you can skate alone, its power is in convening and bringing community together. At the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, we sought to open such a space. So, on the corner of Jefferson Drive SW, in front of the National Museum of the American Indian, we set out a...