César Castro is a young master of son jarocho, a music genre that originated over 250 years ago in Veracruz, Mexico, combining Indigenous Mexican, African, Spanish, and Arabic influences
We recently heard from Sean Harris, one of the animators in the 2009 Wales Smithsonian Cymru program.
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.
We presented a related precursor Sounds of California event at the Oakland Museum of California on December 6, celebrating the power of music to express community identity, migration experiences, and cultural resilience.
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.
Long before the Perú: Pachamama artisans flew thousands of miles to grace the National Mall, Spanish colonists sailed thousands of miles to find indigenous communities inhabiting what would become the country of Peru.
Members of the Afro-Peruvian group Tutuma use traditional songs and zapateo dance to continue the work of their father, Amador Ballumbrosio (the “godfather of Afro-Peruvian music”).
There I was, standing in front of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival main stage, with a circling sway of skirts and handkerchiefs. I was speechless. It was my second day in Washington, D.C., but for a fleeting instant I felt at home.
At the 2015 Festival, Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez represented the textile artisans from Chinchero in Cusco, Peru.