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Elisa Hough

Elisa Hough is the editor and social media manager at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

Stories from this author

A woman with long dark hair and dark outfit plays a white electric guitar on a dimly blue lit stage. She and her guitar are slightly blurry.

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”

Wooden shelves and counter filled with jars are lit by two oil lamps.

In Appalachia, Women Carry Traditions in Folk Magic and 'Granny Witchcraft'

Folk magic goes by many names in the Appalachian Mountains: root work, granny magic, kitchen witchery, Braucherei, witchcraft

A dining table set with more than a dozen dishes of food, including white rice, meat on skewers, stewed vegetables, and sliced cucumbers.

Top 5 Folklife Stories from 2023

This year, Folklife Magazine published a sprawling diversity of stories—from Armenian protest movements to young Asian American farmers.

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The History Behind Argentina’s Unofficial Anthem for the 2022 World Cup

A viral chant energized the world champions during the tournament in Qatar

Two men with long hair, one older and one younger, perform with eyes closed on stage. They each hold a painted rattle, and the older man in the foreground also holds a microphone.

A Kumeyaay Folktale Illuminates Why the Sun and Moon Shine at Different Times

The celestial beings took a lesson from two frogs in love

Carolyn Smith collecting beargrass in Klamath National Forest, 2015. For beargrass to be supple enough for weavers to use in their baskets, it needs to be burned annually. Ideally, it is burned in an intentionally set cultural fire, where only the tops are burned, leaving the roots intact. Prescribed fires in the Klamath National Forest are few and far between, so weavers “follow the smoke” and gather, when they can, after wildfires sweep through the landscape. (Photo courtesy of Carolyn Smith)

How Indigenous Ecological Knowledge Offers Solutions to California’s Wildfires

“We need to reintegrate Indigenous traditional ecological knowledge and cultural and prescribed burning into our landscape,” Carolyn Smith says.

Lisa Marie Thalhammer holds her original LOVE poster with her mural in the background. (Photo by Grant Langford)

This D.C. Muralist Finds Pride and Power in Public Art

Living 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.

인삼주 Insam-ju is a ginseng liquor made by preserving ginseng in alcohol above thirty proof. Korean people often make insam-ju at home and take a shot daily for its health benefits. It is also shared with special guests and is often paired with samgyetang (ginseng chicken soup). (Photo by Grace Dahye Kwon)

How Ginseng Connects Me to the Roots of My Korean American Community

Although 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.

(Photo courtesy of Masatsu “Masa” Kawamoto collection, Division of Work and Industry, Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History)

Cowboys in the Tropics: A History of the Hawaiian Paniolo

In 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.

Chinese poetry carved on the wall of the Angel Island Immigration Station in the San Francisco Bay. (Text from Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island, 1910-1940)

The Chinese Poetry Left at Angel Island, the “Ellis Island of the West”

Angel 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.

Elizabeth Acevedo (Photo by Jonathan B. Tucker)

How Poet Elizabeth Acevedo Brings Sacred Monsters to Life

What 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.

Barbara Dane with the Chambers Brothers at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. (Photo by Diana Davies, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives)

How Barbara Dane Carries a Proud Tradition of Singing Truth to Power

Barbara 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.

Black Banjo Reclamation Project founders Hannah Mayree and Carlton “Seemore Love” Dorsey, with banjos made by Brooks Masten of Brooks Banjos in Portland, Oregon. (Photo by Avé-Ameenah Long)

A Quest to Return the Banjo to Its African Roots

The Black Banjo Reclamation Project aims to put banjos into the hands of everyday people.

Admas. From left, clockwise: Abegasu Shiota, Henock Temesgen, Tewodros Aklilu, and Yousef Tesfaye. (Photo courtesy of Frederiksberg Records)

Sons of Ethiopia: A Snapshot of Admas and D.C. Music in the 1980s

Admas draws from and rearranges “golden era” Ethiopian music with then-fairly-new synthesizer and drum-machine rhythms.

Zapotec weaver Porfirio Gutiérrez at work in his studio. (Photo courtesy of the artist)

How We Can Travel the World and Share Culture through Craft

The 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