From the Secretary: Celebrating Cultural Innovations at the Folklife Festival

This summer will mark my third anniversary here at the Smithsonian. I was pleased to arrive in 2008 when the Folklife Festival was in full swing. That year the Festival featured NASA, which was celebrating its 50^th anniversary, the nation of Bhutan and the state of Texas. One of the running jokes was: Who had the best boots? NASA had astronaut boots, everybody from Texas sported western boots, and the Bhutanese wore colorful knee-length, hand-embroidered boots. Informally, the Bhutanese won the competition. One of my favorite moments came from watching as a NASA employee maneuvered a small robot around the grounds and had it playfully interact with Bhutanese Buddhist monks who had never seen one before.

That is what the Folklife Festival does best—it builds an understanding of disparate cultures by bringing them together on the National Mall for visitors to sample, savor and enjoy. The Festival is produced by our colleagues at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, which provides research, educational programs and a world-renowned repository of folk music.

This year’s Festival will live up to the high standards of the past in foot-stomping style, as we celebrate the contributions of rhythm and blues to our nation’s heritage. Having grown up in Georgia, I listened to the music of Georgia-born R&B greats Ray Charles, Otis Redding, and Little Richard. Their music not only gave my generation a new beat, but also transcended race and class distinctions at a time when our society was changing through the Civil Rights Movement. In addition to R&B, this year’s Festival is proud to celebrate the country of Colombia and the 50^th anniversary of the founding of the Peace Corps.

Folklife’s Innovative Beginnings

Our Folklife Festival is the largest annual cultural event in the U.S. capital, attracting more than 1 million visitors annually. Through the years, more than 23,000 musicians, artists, performers, craftspeople, workers, cooks, storytellers and others have traveled to the National Mall to share the skills, knowledge and aesthetics that exemplify their creative, community-based traditions.

The Folklife Festival was the brainchild of Secretary S. Dillon Ripley, who believed in expanding the role of the Smithsonian by providing an event that would appeal to young and old. Dedicated to challenging contemporary ideas of what constituted a museum, he hired Jim Morris as director of Museum Services to “liven up the Smithsonian.” Morris suggested hosting a folk festival on the Mall, and Ralph Rinzler and Henry Glassie were hired to help plan the first Festival in 1967. The Festival has significantly grown in popularity, and has served as an international model of a research-based presentation of cultural traditions—a contemporary living museum without walls.

Rhythm and Blues: ‘Tell It Like It Is’

In partnership with NMAAHC, the Festival will host a special R&B program exploring its rich historical origins, which will include live music and dance performances, workshops and discussions. Most importantly, the program highlights the musical, industry and cultural traditions that have contributed to R&B becoming a cornerstone of America’s musical legacy. R&B has roots in swing band, gospel, vocal quartets, boogie and blues. The term was first used as a music category label in 1949 in the entertainment magazine Billboard. Replacing older categories of “race records” or “race music,” R&B was coined by music journalist Jerry Wexler.

Visitors to the Festival will learn how the history of R&B has influenced today’s music, and Festival performers will include R&B vocalist Shirley Jones, formerly of The Jones Girls. The original group consisted of Shirley and her sisters Brenda and Valerie Jones, who early in their career were back-up singers for artists such as the Four Tops, the Impressions, George Duke, and Diana Ross. Other performers are The Funk Brothers and The Dixie Cups, a three-part female vocal harmony famous for “Chapel of Love,” “People Say” and “Iko Iko.”

The Peace Corps: Fifty Years of Promoting World Peace and Friendship

President John F. Kennedy is credited with establishing the Peace Corps in 1961, although others like Senator Hubert Humphrey were early supporters of the idea. The Peace Corps has worked to “promote world peace and friendship” with a focus on three goals: to help the people of interested countries train workers; to help them better understand Americans; and to help Americans better understand the people in countries we are serving. The Smithsonian is very familiar with the third goal. Throughout our Institution, and especially at the Festival, we strive to be a cultural ambassador and present the diversity of world cultures. We are proud that former Senator and Smithsonian Regent Chris Dodd was one of the early Peace Corps volunteers.

The Peace Corps festival program will highlight current volunteers and participants associated with 16 countries who will share their experiences and how their own lives were changed.

As mentioned in the June issue of Smithsonian magazine, past volunteer Laura Kutner, who served in Granados, Guatemala in 2007, developed an approach that solved both the town’s need for more school classrooms and cleanup of trash in the streets. She built classrooms out of plastic bottles and inorganic trash, using chicken wire and steel rods for reinforcement—a model that has inspired several other Guatemalan communities. At the Festival, visitors will have a chance to build their own wall out of the same materials.

Seeing the need for a simple, affordable way to charge cell phones, 23-year-old Jodie Wu invented a simple and economical technology: a cell charger powered by pedaling a bicycle. Wu’s invention can charge a cell phone in one hour. She also designed a maize sheller, a device that also attaches to a bike, which shells corn 40 times faster than by hand. Originally from Atlanta, GA, she graduated in 2009 from MIT and founded Global Cycle Solutions. Her entrepreneurial approach and dedication to helping people have empowered communities in countries, such as Tanzania and Zambia, have made them more independent and sustainable.

Colombia: The Nature of the Culture

This year, the Festival will highlight Colombia, a country with 45 million inhabitants and more than 12,000 years of human settlement. Its rugged geography has incredibly rich and diverse ecosystems. The program will focus on six ecosystems and three urban environments, representing the arts, crafts, music, cuisine, foodways and rituals of the Andean Highlands, the coffee region, the Momposino Depression, the Pacific rainforest, the southeastern plains, and the Amazon tropical rainforest. Visitors will meet resident artisans from each of these regions, see their work and innovations that have passed through generations, and participate in a variety of activities.

The city life of Colombia will come alive with salsa and tango dancing workshops. A circus troupe will teach visitors to juggle; a silleta flower vendor from Medellín will demonstrate flower-arranging techniques displayed at the Feria de las Flores flower festival; and a Bogotá artist and educator will demonstrate how to work with recycled materials to create art.

If Secretary Ripley were here today, I believe he would be proud of this year’s Folklife Festival. Thanks go to the nearly 100 dedicated staff working on the Festival with considerable help from 300 volunteers. With so many performances, interactive activities, delicious food, dancing and music, I hope you will all have the opportunity to enjoy this year’s exciting Festival.