A Q&A With Musician Gretchen Gonzales Davidson on Arts and Advocacy
“For all of the art that is consumed by everybody, everywhere, every day, it’s a shame that art is often undervalued”
Elisa Hough is the editor and social media manager at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
“For all of the art that is consumed by everybody, everywhere, every day, it’s a shame that art is often undervalued”
Jonathan WilligerFolk magic goes by many names in the Appalachian Mountains: root work, granny magic, kitchen witchery, Braucherei, witchcraft
Emma CieslikThis year, Folklife Magazine published a sprawling diversity of stories—from Armenian protest movements to young Asian American farmers.
Elisa HoughA viral chant energized the world champions during the tournament in Qatar
Anna FarronayThe celestial beings took a lesson from two frogs in love
Elisa Hough“We need to reintegrate Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and cultural and prescribed burning into our landscape,” Carolyn Smith says.
Emily Buhrow Rogers and Carolyn SmithLiving in Washington, D.C., allows Thalhammer to be close to the political action. It’s important for her to be part of the national conversation. She participates in rallies supporting LGBTQ rights as well as the Women’s March.
Malgorzata MicalAlthough I grew up in the Northern Virginia area, with the third largest Korean American population in the United States, I always felt foreign, even in my own neighborhood. Adults butchered my name “Dahye” until I finally changed it to “Grace,” just to get through morning roll call.
Grace Dahye KwonIn 1793, while Hawai‘i was still an independent republic, British Captain George Vancouver gifted King Kamehameha I a small amount of cattle that quickly multiplied. In the early nineteenth century, several Mexican vaqueros (cowboys) were sent to the islands to teach Hawaiians how to ride horses and maintain the cattle. Roping cattle and riding horses seem fitting in the prairie grasslands of Oklahoma, but the Hawaiian style of cowboy traditions is unique to the landscape.
Kate HarringtonAngel Island Immigration Station was built in 1910 in the San Francisco Bay mainly to process immigrants from China, Japan, and other countries on the Pacific Rim. Its primary mission was to better enforce the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and other anti-Asian laws enacted in subsequent years.
Ying DiaoWhat inspires Acevedo more than anything else are uncelebrated heroes. While pursuing an MFA in creative writing, she realized she wished to dedicate her writing to this idea. She felt somewhat isolated, as the only student in the program of African descent, of an immigrant background, and from a large city.
Monique-Marie CummingsBarbara Dane’s protest music took her to Mississippi Freedom Schools, free speech rallies at UC Berkeley, and in the coffeehouses where active-duty men and women steered clear of military police and regulations forbidding protests on bases.
Theodore S. GonzalvesThe Black Banjo Reclamation Project aims to put banjos into the hands of everyday people.
Paul RutaAdmas draws from and rearranges “golden era” Ethiopian music with then-fairly-new synthesizer and drum-machine rhythms.
Steve KiviatThe Folklife Festival Marketplace offers authentic craftwork created by artisans representing communities from recent Festival programs: Armenia, Peru, Mexico, and Brazil, along with other countries around the globe
Elisa Hough