The American Folklife Center is excited to announce that we’re bringing our Archive Challenge model to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, both on the National Mall and streaming live on YouTube! Our good friends and colleagues across the Mall have cooked up a great festival on the theme of “Youth and the Future of Culture.” As part of the festivities, we’ve engaged 8 groups of young musicians to learn pieces from the Archive of Folk Culture and play them on the festival’s main stage. Youth Archive Challenge sets will occur on July 2, 4, 5, and 7 and will feature Irish American tunes, Hungarian folk dance, Anglo American traditional ballads, American old-time music, Persian Classical music, multiethnic street songs, Bulgarian folk music, and Caribbean steel pan—with a special appearance by frequent Festival and Homegrown artist Christylez Bacon. Find links to the schedule and the streams, as well as information on the performers, in this post!
Welcome to the latest post in the Homegrown Plus series, featuring Susana Behar, one of the leading voices in Sephardic Song, with a hand-picked ensemble of accompanists. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with Susana, and connections to Library of Congress collections. Susana Behar was born in Havana to a Cuban family with roots in the Sephardic community of Turkey. From an early age, she was immersed in the traditional music of her homeland as well as the evocative kantikas in Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) passed down by her grandparents. In 1965 she emigrated to Venezuela, where she started to explore and perform the music of her adoptive country as well as Latin American and Jewish folk music. She earned a degree in biology from the Universidad Central de Venezuela before moving to Miami, where she has lived and performed ever since. In the concert, she performs Sephardic, Cuban, and Venzuelan songs, joined by Michel Gonzalez on guitar, Adolfo Herrera on percussion, and Saul Vera on mandolin and bandola llana. In the interview, she tells us about her life in Cuba, the trauma of her family’s departure, and her life in Venezuela and the United States, with an emphasis on the intersection of her Latin American and Jewish heritage.
We continue our exploration of Jack tales with a fascinating story recorded in the Bahamas in 1935: "Jack Rescues the Princess from the Tiger." The story was told to Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle by Alexander Finderson and a group of his neighbors in Andros Island. The tale involves a princess who is abducted by a tiger and forced to marry him, until Jack comes along to rescue her. In addition to presenting audio and a transcription of the tale, we'll look at some of this story's connections to other folktales. Interestingly, it seems to have roots in a story that is widespread in India, but also has connections to Bre'r Rabbit tales from South Carolina. The post also presents striking photos of a man we believe might be the storyteller.
The latest post in the Homegrown Plus series features Ensemble Sangineto, one of the most popular groups on the Italian folk scene. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections. The ensemble Sangineto is comprised of three talented singers and instrumentalists. Adriano and Caterina Sangineto are twins -- Adriano plays Celtic harp and Caterina plays bowed psaltery. Jacopo Ventura rounds out the trio on guitar. The group sings in three-part harmony, with Caterina's clear voice taking the lead. The Sanginetos are children of a world-renowned luthier who has spent years crafting instruments for some of the leading folk and early music performers, so their childhood was spent meeting and listening to such musicians as Derek Bell of the Chieftains and Alan Stivell, a foundational artist of the Breton music revival. Ventura is a conservatory trained classical guitarist who has branched out to play many of the stringed instruments common in European and Asian folk music. Their concert takes you on a trip through Italy via a traditional song from each region, with medieval, Celtic, jazz, and contemporary stylings among others, thrown in for good measure.
In the interview, we learn about their lives and the world of Italian folk music.
This post presents several folktales from the Bahamas focusing on the adventures of the tricky, resourceful folktale hero Jack. We’ll see Jack escaping from the giants by charming them with his musical instrument and witness his courtship with the Devil’s daughter, Greenleaf. Like most Bahamian folktales, these stories contain complex wordplay and have songs embedded in the tales. The two tales here are very distinctively part of the Jack tale tradition, which must have been brought to the Bahamas with English settlers, but they also have African and other elements springing from their complex Caribbean roots. They were recorded by Alan Lomax and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle in 1935.
