We are now hiring seasonal employees for the 2017 Folklife Festival. Join us in presenting "Circus Arts" and "American Folk" national treasures next summer on the National Mall! Applications are due February 11.
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Our Folklife Festival curators are helping inspire and train the future generation of folklorists by assisting with Cricket Media's annual Global Folklorist Challenge. See the winning projects from this year's contestants and vote for your favorites!
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Happy Jamhuri Day to our friends in Kenya! Today the country celebrates 53 years of independence from the United Kingdom. Explore our "Kenya: Mambo Poa" website to learn more about the music, crafts, and food that shape the nation today.
Here is your weekly roundup of arts and culture stories from around the web!
In this new Festival Blog audio story, three women share their experiences using their voices and bodies to preserve traditions, profess love, and take a stand against marginalization.
In the face of colonization, migration, and other forces that cause people to leave home, those on the move often have few to no belongings to remind them of home. Instead, they must preserve traditions with the body alone. In this way, song, dance, and storytelling become some of the only ways to h
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Want more arts and culture stories? Follow our new weekly Folklife Friday series for related articles, podcasts, and videos from across the web.
Wonder what goes on at the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage when we're not producing the Folklife Festival? As we plan our 50th anniversary in 2017, we are also conducting research and workshops for the My Armenia Program, digitizing collections for public use in the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives, Smithsonian Institution, and promoting a new documentary film by one of our curators.
Learn more about these projects below, and find out how to become a Smithsonian Folkways Recordings member or apply for internships.
Sign up for our monthly newsletter here: www.folklife.si.edu/join
To celebrate its thirtieth anniversary in 2017, Smithsonian Folkways is proud to introduce a membership program that opens up new ways to engage with the label’s vast body of recorded music and sounds, its history, and the people involved along the way. Membership includes a gift of four beautiful l...
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For fifty years, the Folklife Festival has been creating once-in-a-lifetime experiences with our participants and visitors from around the world. Through music, dance, food, crafts, and stories, we learn about other cultures, about each other, about our intriguing differences and surprising similarities.
But we can’t do it alone. We depend on donations to help bring artisans and experts to Washington, to build the tents and the demonstration kitchen, and so much more. This Giving Tuesday, we ask you to pitch in to our $50 for 50 More campaign to help us continue celebrating diversity on the National Mall for the next fifty years. Donate here: http://folklife.si.edu/giving
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This Thanksgiving, take the opportunity to learn the histories of your families and communities. The folklorists and curators in our office have compiled a handy guide to conducting your own oral histories—equipment to use, questions to ask, and ways to preserve your discoveries.
Beautiful landscape, delicious food, and melodious vocals—within this one song, the Biotzetik Basque Choir from Boise, Idaho, encapsulates three of the distinctive features of Basque culture. Performed on the Arts and Industries Stage at the 2016 Folklife Festival, the song “White Dove” tells of the beauty of the white dove flying in the sky but suggests that it may be more beautiful on the dinner table.
When fieldwork for a potential future Folklife Festival turns into an all-day feast all over town.
Last May, I traveled with fellow curator Diana N’Diaye to Armenia to conduct workshops as part of our My Armenia project. Since the initial topic of research was food traditions, we spent quite a bit of time sampling the local cuisine (for further research, of course). I am still carrying around the
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Diversity of people in the United States means a greater diversity of music. Hear tabla virtuoso Salar Nader describe his experience playing Afghan music in America and using it to connect with his neighbors in Hollywood—including hip-hop producer Lil Jon.
Today is America Recycles Day, so we are looking back at one of our favorite recycling projects at the Folklife Festival. In 2014, Isaac Kibe brought his skills from Nani's Kitengela Glass Art to build a small hut from empty beer bottles, broken pottery, shattered mirrors, and other repurposed odds and ends. Learn how you can do it too!
If you visited the 2014 Folklife Festival, you may have noticed a wacky construction in the Kenya program area with beer bottles and other odds and ends sticking out of the sides. This was the work of brothers Isaac and Patrick Kibe, and it was constructed entirely during the duration of the Festiva
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Take some time on this Veterans Day to see the faces and hear the stories of those who served in the armed forces.
In 2004, our festival team produced "Tribute to a Generation: National World War II Reunion" coinciding with the unveiling of the World War II Memorial. This short and moving documentary about the event shares the memories—both the painful and the joyful—that filled the National Mall that weekend. Narrated by Bob Dole, the film features appearances by historian Howard Zinn, journalist Walter Cronkite, singer Patti of the Andrews Sisters, and artist/activist Pete Seeger.
We're off to join the circus!
In preparation for our Circus Arts program at the 2017 Folklife Festival, a few of our staff members took a field trip to the Trapeze School New York (TSNY) Washington DC. We met with their trainers to learn about their unique craft, supportive community, and specific technical requirements so we can create our own circus on the National Mall.
The 50th anniversary of the Folklife Festival will be on the National Mall June 29-July 4 and July 6-10, 2017, featuring Circus Arts and American Folk.
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- This Saturday at the Old Lucketts Schoolhouse in Leesburg, VA. Door...s at 6pm. Show at 7pm.. $15.00 Cash. Lucketts Bluegrass Foundation See More
