Tian Yali brought this dish to the 2014 Folklife Festival from Tongchuan City in Yijun County, Shaanxi Province.

In 1909, President Theodore Roosevelt’s African expedition collected thousands of plant and animal specimens, along with important cultural artifacts.

During the Festival, I worked closely with Pan Yuzhen 潘玉珍 and her daughter Zhang Hongying 张红英, embroiderers who are Miao, an ethnic minority.

At the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, musician Qianchun Wu from the Dimen Dong Folk Chorus explains the stringed instruments common in their region of Guizhou Province, China.

The vegetable medley called mukimo is common in Nairobi as a side for meals such as roasted chicken.

Jiànzi, which was offered in the People’s Park area of the Festival, is a jingling, feathered Chinese shuttlecock that is played like American hacky-sack

This year marks the hundred and fifth anniversary of the twenty-sixth president’s expedition to Kenya and eastern Africa, where he traveled and hunted big game with three Smithsonian scientists and his son Kermit Roosevelt

Changes occur when ethnic music, which is typically passed down from generation to generation within a family in intimate settings, is institutionalized and commercialized

Visitors flocked to stare in awe as Kenyan participants Malika Badiribu and Salma Maro constructed a traditional Pokomo hut onsite, using natural materials that had been shipped from Kenya.

During the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Wu Man performed an original composition on the pipa entitled “Night Thoughts,” based on a work by Chinese poet Li Bo.