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Basque
Posts tagged with Basque
Quick wits, a keen ear, a powerful voice, and a thousand rhymes—these are the instruments of the Basque bertsolari.
“Alright, everybody! Txotx!” With this exclamation, Tim Prendergast (beverage director at ANXO Cidery & Pintxos Bar) flips a lever on a large oak cask
In France, to “sing like a Basque” means you sing “loudly, well, and often,” according to Mark Kurlansky’s Basque History of the World.
“What a beautiful building! As I told you, the world is a curious place.” Bernat Vidal sent me this response after I emailed him a photograph of the Smithsonian Castle, the institution’s iconic red brick building on the National Mall.
The frontón is a centerpiece of Basque community life. A pelota or handball court at its core, these spaces were once sides of village churches and now can be found in parks, community centers, and casinos in Basque Country and around the world.
This recipe for Basque-style meat-stuffed peppers appeared in the 1991 Smithsonian Institution Press publication Smithsonian Folklife Cookbook, compiled by Katherine and Thomas Kirlin.
This month I returned from a fieldwork trip to Basque Country with co-curator Mary Linn to prepare for the 2016 Folklife Festival, and my head is filled with new knowledge and experiences of what it means to be Basque.
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