The Folklife Festival and the Spectacular Diversity of American Identity

A look back on how one of the Smithsonian’s greatest traditions came to be and a look ahead at what to expect this year.

The first Folklife Festival I ever attended was in 1976. Celebrating the nation’s bicentennial, that three-month-long festival on the National Mall was unlike any before or since, with unique programming from every state and territory. I remember thinking it was the best example I had ever seen of how culturally diverse this country is. There were French-Canadian people from the logging industry in Maine, Navajo code talkers who had helped ensure victory for U.S. troops in both world wars, and groups who shared the incredible heritage of Appalachian clogging.

That festival helped me understand the fluidity of culture; it showed me that the rich diversity of communities on display should not be seen as exotic or foreign but as something central to who we are as Americans.  

The festival first began ten years earlier, when Jim Morris, the Director of Museum Services and later of the Smithsonian’s Division of Performing Arts, pitched the idea to then-Secretary S. Dillon Ripley. The event was intended to bring the Smithsonian’s collections out of the museums and onto the Mall. It was a fascinating time to start piecing together a national cultural event: the youth movement of the sixties saw the rise of festivals as a major expression of culture, from Woodstock to Monterey to Newport.

Morris hired folklorist Henry Glassie and musician Ralph Rinzler (who had been involved with the Newport Folk Festival) to co-curate the event. Rinzler brought the spirit of a burgeoning music festival culture with him, while Morris, who had a Broadway background, brought a theatrical sophistication.

Performers at the 1967 Festival of American Folklife. Courtesy of the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives, Smithsonian Institution

Sabrina Motley, the current director of the Folklife Festival, describes the event as a consistent “push and pull between spectacle and intimacy.” The coexistence of a scrappy music festival ethos and the professional shine of the Smithsonian’s resources and scale gave rise to what has become the largest annual cultural event in the U.S. capital.

From the start, the festival was tied to the Fourth of July—it highlighted cultural and social movements that were rapidly reshaping the country at a time when national identity was a topic of intense debate. In many ways, the Folklife Festival was a product of its time: we were in the midst of the Vietnam war, there were social movements grounded in issues of identity politics, and the notion of creating more space for dissent as an act of patriotism was taking root. It is striking how many of those same threads still hold true today, in the fabric of the nation and in modern iterations of the Folklife Festival.

Without losing that spirit, the 1976 festival marked an undeniable shift: the sheer scale of that event cemented this tradition as a cultural treasure of the Smithsonian and the nation. Thanks to a robust network of folklorists and local folklife programs across the country that operate independently but collaborate with the Smithsonian, each festival endures years beyond the event itself. Perhaps the most powerful component of this tradition is inviting communities to a national stage and in doing so, reinvesting in cultural preservation.

Over the decades, the festival has consistently been guided by a series of questions: Who has a claim to the American promise? Whose voices are missing? What community engagements and expressions would be meaningfully uplifted by being on the National Mall?

When asked about the festival’s relationship to patriotism, Motley points out we should think of it in those terms only if “there’s space in patriotism for dissent and challenge as well as celebration and uplift.” I see the festival as the embodiment of that sentiment. It is an event the entire country should be proud of, a place that shares the nation’s diverse cultural and social movements, even those from communities whose rightful place in the American story has been challenged or outright denied.

In many ways, I’ve spent my career insisting that true patriotism is impossible without recognizing that tension.

Cliff Murphy, Director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, sees it similarly, and defines patriotism as “being proud of who you are and being honest about it,” including confronting the parts of our history that are shameful. “The United States is a beautifully complicated nation, and this festival helps present that complexity and give people the space to engage with one another in a way they don’t often do elsewhere.”

That is certainly true of my experience watching the festival spill across the Mall each summer. There is so much history inherent to the setting: it is where Martin Luther King eloquently and passionately spoke of his American dream; where Native American protestors’ “Trail of Broken Treaties” culminated with their occupation of the Bureau of Indian Affairs; and most recently, where the January 6th insurrection prompted a national reckoning with the fragility of democracy. The Mall has long been a place where people come and demand to be heard, for better or worse. In hosting the festival here—on contested and celebrated land—the Smithsonian recognizes each of these communities’ place in the American experience.  

Native groups and diasporic communities hold claim to American identity simultaneously and harmoniously; it is a rare moment when the diversity of our nation becomes proximate enough that it is impossible to ignore. This Fourth of July event is unlike any other, and I hope those of you in the D.C. region in the coming week can experience this year’s iteration of one of the Smithsonian’s greatest traditions.

For decades, the festival has been organized thematically: it’s impossible to meaningfully reflect the full diversity of a nation in a mere ten days. Instead, each year focuses on a select few communities and cultures. The 2023 festival features two distinct sets of programming: The Ozarks: Faces and Facets of a Region and Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the U.S.

The first explores the diversity of a region: the Ozarks include much of Arkansas and Missouri and portions of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Illinois. The exact boundaries of the region are debated, and to clarify where those lines ought to be drawn, Smithsonian staff drove the approximate perimeter of the area and spoke to residents about how they defined the stretch of the country they call home.

In addition to a map detailing that process, there is programming pertaining to the culture and community that has thrived in the region over the course of centuries: what began as a space defined by early American pioneers and German and Irish immigrants in the 19th century has been dramatically reshaped by immigrant communities and Native Americans who called the land home long before the vernacular of the Ozarks came into being.

The present-day communities are wide-ranging: for instance, Springdale, Arkansas is now home to the largest Marshallese community outside the Marshall Islands. It is a diaspora caused in large part by the U.S. nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands during the Cold War, which rendered much of the area uninhabitable. In the decades since, Marshallese immigrants have built a vibrant community in the Ozarks, which offered affordable housing and factory jobs open to new immigrants.

Latinx immigrants settled in the region, too; many of them drawn to employers known for their reliance on undocumented labor and the abuses that come along with that. Several First Nations call this land home; there will be significant representation from the Cherokee Nation at this summer’s festival. Black people—and Black queer people in particular—have faced immense discrimination in this part of the country, and yet small, resilient communities remain anchored there.  

There will be representatives from each of these and other groups, all to tell stories of what home means to them through music, dance, quilting, gardening, mountain biking, basket weaving, and far more.

Creative Encounters invites an exploration of several different religious traditions, with a focus on the creativity that emerges from spiritual experience. Michelle Banks, the lead curator, recognizes that there is a hesitation about bringing spirituality into the public square, when religious experience can be so intensely personal: what is considered sacred is far from universally defined. But that is the beauty of the festival—it is up to each participant to take from it what they will.

In Banks’ words, the team “recognizes storytelling as its own spiritual practice” that both connects us to our past and builds toward our future; it is the currency of community. In addition to the rich representation of religious tradition—which spans from Hawaiian hula practitioners to the Legendary Ingramettes (National Heritage Fellows and Richmond, Virginia’s “first family of gospel”) —the festival will also host facilitated story circles that give visitors an opportunity to record their spiritual autobiography. These circles, led by Kiran Singh Sirah, the President of the International Storytelling Center (a Smithsonian Institution affiliate), invite onlookers to become participants. 

This is only the second in-person festival since the pandemic, and regardless of each person’s relationship to spirituality, the team recognized a need for collective mourning. There will be a remembrance space that invites people to memorialize those they have lost in whatever way feels right to them. The Esparza family is traveling from LA to showcase their handmade ofrendas – altars that are traditional to the Day of the Dead, where visitors are permitted to leave photographs and other mementos to loved ones. There will also be an installation where people can tie a ribbon with the same intent—it’s not a space tied to a specific religious tradition but rather a place to grieve in community.

There are certainly joyful rituals here, too: there will be food, music, and dance from a great diversity of traditions that straddle the secular and the sacred. Ultimately, the program (and the festival writ large) aims to create encounters between people and groups who might never otherwise cross paths. What emerges from that encounter is up to each person to decide for themselves.

This post was originally published by Smithsonian magazine. Copyright 2023 Smithsonian Institution. Reprinted with permission from Smithsonian Enterprises. All rights reserved. Reproduction in any medium is strictly prohibited without permission from Smithsonian Institution.

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