Bookmarks (9)

When young Black musicians gaze upon the orchestra stage, they are unlikely to see themselves reflected. In the orchestral field, only 2.1 percent of players are Black. The Alliance of Black Orchestral Percussionists, or ABOP, seeks to change this. CEO Raynor Carroll formed ABOP in 2021, alongside six of his colleagues—Timothy Adams, Jr., Douglas Cardwell, Michael Crusoe, Jauvon Gilliam, Joshua Jones, and Johnny Lee...

Ayisha Knight-Shaw chuckled when I asked how she found herself working in accessibility. “I’ve always been in the field of accessibility, to be honest!” she signed. We sat face to face, swathed in the amber light filtering through the branches above us, and boxed in by the tents of the Indigenous Voices of the Americas program at the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Sitting next...

The members of Sugar in the Pan play a lot of instruments in a variety of musical styles, but bluegrass on the ukulele was something I didn’t expect. “I teach at a bluegrass camp up in Alaska. It’s one of my favorite examples of cross-cultural music sharing,” explained Grace Martin. “Every year we have Hawaiians come, and they teach ukulele and Hawaiian songs. We...

“Why elevate youth voices?” As a member of Generation X, I feel the need to establish a little youth-adjacent credibility before I can answer this question. I graduated from the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., in 1984. With no prospects for the future beyond whatever jobs we could find, my classmate Quique Avilés and I decided that we had something...

To get this session started at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Omar Nassimi got some stereotypes out of the way: that Islam is rigid. That it is thousand-year-old structures. That it is the opposite of freedom, the opposite of creativity. At the 2023 Festival program Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S., a panel of young Muslims from the D.C. region challenged these stereotypes, sharing...

As Mapuche storytellers, Waikil and Ketrafe fuse  their Indigenous backgrounds with their love and passion for contemporary music. At the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, they provided a Mapuche perspective to the Indigenous Voices of the Americas program, representing a South American community comprised of nearly 1.9 million members primarily in Chile. This song “Wetruwe” addresses the Chilean government’s oppression against Mapuche activists and honors...

The Sons of Membertou bookended the 2024 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Indigenous Voices of the Americas program, with performances in the opening ceremony as well as the final featured concert in the National Museum of the American Indian’s Potomac Atrium. Austin Christmas, J.R. Isadore, John MacEwan, and Graham Marshall represented the Mi’kmaw musical group at the Festival, joined by dancer Maisyn Sock. It was especially...

The enduring influence of African American gospel music is felt across genres and artists. But gospel music traditions remain rooted in local churches and communities, where music uplifts and energizes singers and congregants alike. In 2023, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival presented the evening concert “Come Let Us Sing: Gospel Music Legacies.” As part of the Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S. program, the...

“We call cedar smg̱a̱n or aam g̱a̱n, ‘the real tree’ or ‘the good tree,’ because we use it for everything.” —Kandi McGilton Red cedar is a distinct and core part of Ts’msyen traditions along the Pacific Northwest coast. It is used for clothes, houses, totem poles, and, importantly, basketry. Across all these uses, its integrity lies in maintaining the overall history and cultural heritage...