Bookmarks (10)

As part of the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival program Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S., the Jones Family Singers and Riyaaz Qawwali took visitors on a spiritual journey through song. This interfaith collaboration centers two distinct genres: qawwali, a form of Sufi devotional singing from South Asia, and contemporary gospel, which merges traditional Christian hymns with the musical stylings of secular Black music....

Since 1967, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival has taken many shapes. It has traversed the entire length of the National Mall from east to west. It has been as short as two days (following an extended government shutdown) and as long as three months (celebrating the U.S. Bicentennial). While many associate it with the Fourth of July, for four years it marked a long weekend...

On the last day of the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the clouds hang low in the sky, threatening a storm. Our production team calls off outdoor activities and arranges for activities to continue within the Arts and Industries Building and the National Museum of the American Indian. Light rain shakes from the sky and a few winds gust at the tents. But the impending...

Chef Tim Ma took a bite of the Chinese New Year dumpling he made at the demonstration kitchen of the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Despite the summer rainstorm, he made the tent feel homey, telling me about his family and how dumplings were a personal staple during the holiday season. An acclaimed chef who takes pride in the creative twists he gives familiar dishes...

On the final day of the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Venerable Lama Losang Samten faced the U.S. Capitol Building and tossed sand into the air in blessing. Participants returned home with baggies of sand clasped in their hands. To complete the ritual, remaining granules were returned to water. This sand was the medium through which Losang had painted a Tibetan Buddhist mandala over the...

“Y ahora, que he vencido, porque he sido vencida, comprendo vagamente que mi mujer de aire, que mi mujer de agua, será mujer de tierra será mujer de fuego” “And now, that I have vanquished, because I have been vanquished, I vaguely understand that my air woman, that my water woman, will be an earth woman, a fire woman” —Mujer de Aire, Mujer de...

At the 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, The Creek Rocks, composed of married duo Mark Bilyeu and Cindy Woolf, showed how they bring a modern twist to traditional folk music. Taking Ozarks songs found in folk collections from across the region—“not necessarily played completely traditionally,” as Bilyeu says—The Creek Rocks find a way to connect modern audiences to the folk music of the past. For...

Llegiu aquest article en català On August 26, 2023, in the English Yard of Barcelona, the artists of the Catalan Federation of Flower Carpet Organizations gathered to create a flower carpet (catifa) entitled Miró’s Garden at the Caixa Forum. A little before 4 p.m., with the sun shining on buckets of dyed wood shavings, black garden soil, and calcium carbonate, twenty carpet makers (catifaires)...

“Right now, with the disrespect or imbalance of so many things in the world, it’s really key to remember that we’re all connected.” Felicia Montes’s key to connection? Healing plants.  She sat grinning behind a lineup of various herbs on her cart. She was watching someone who, upon reading the words “Botanica del Barrio” painted on the side, ran off exclaiming, “I need to...

For more than 5,000 years, Kazakh nomads worshipped Tengri, an all-encompassing god and a personification of the universe. In a demonstration of Tengrian traditions, textile artist Azhar Altynsaka opened the Soul of Tengri pop-up program with Aqty arnau rituals to cleanse spaces, greet spirits, and protect people and animals from disease.