The Festival of American Folklife, held annually since 1967 on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., was renamed the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1998.
The 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival was produced by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and cosponsored by the National Park Service.
For more information, see
This collection documents the planning, production, and execution of the 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Materials may include photographs, audio recordings, motion picture film and video recordings, notes, production drawings, contracts, memoranda, correspondence, informational materials, publications, and ephemera. Such materials were created during the Festival on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., as well as in the featured communities, before or after the Festival itself.
Arranged in 2 series.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival forms part of the
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections, Smithsonian Institution.
Within the Rinzler Archives, related materials may be found in various collections such as the Ralph Rinzler papers and recordings, the Lily Spandorf drawings, the Diana Davies photographs, the Robert Yellin photographs, and the Curatorial Research, Programs, and Projects collection. Additional relevant materials may also be found in the Smithsonian Institution Archives concerning the Division of Performing Arts (1966-1983), Folklife Program (1977-1980), Office of Folklife Programs (1980-1991), Center for Folklife Programs and Cultural Studies (1991-1999), Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (1999-present), and collaborating Smithsonian units, as well as in the administrative papers of key figures such as the Secretary and respective deputies. Users are encouraged to consult relevant finding aids and to contact Archives staff for further information.
Access to the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections is by appointment only. Visit our
Permission to publish materials from the collection must be requested from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections. Please visit our
The Rinzler Archives is continually engaged in digitization of archival materials to facilitate preservation and ready access by users. However, given the diversity of legacy formats of the originals, some older materials may not be available. Notably, certain older audio recordings cannot be played because of deterioration of the tape stock, and the Archives has no playback equipment for EIAJ-1 videoreels (1/2 inch) or multi-track audio recordings. Where listening or viewing copies are available, this is generally indicated for each item. Users are encouraged to contact Archives staff to verify that the materials of interest to them are already accessible, or to determine if they can be digitized as needed.
For ten days in the summer of 2002, the great geographical and cultural distance that lies between the heart of Europe and the far reaches of Asia was reduced to the length of a leisurely afternoon stroll on the National Mall. For the first time in its 36-year history, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival had a single - and remarkably ambitious - theme: the Silk Road. The name denotes the network of trade routes, over both land and sea, along which merchants and travelers began to move across Asia and Europe from the first millennium B.C.E. The most famous east-west component of the Silk Road began in Xi'an, the ancient capital of China, broke north and south of China's Takla Makan Desert, and traversed a vast stretch of Central and Western Asia on its way to the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Along those staggering distances lay a wealth of cultures and traditions. They are still there; during the Folklife Festival, they came to life in the heart of Washington as well.
Merchants took to the Silk Road for commercial gain. But their movement also brought riches of another kind: the cultural traditions that were transported along the Silk Road. The ingenious, distinctive emblems of peoples - their science, technology, religions, customs, crafts, music, food, architecture, fashions - made the journey, too, and the dazzling variety of the world that commerce opened was diffused, welcomed, and adapted.
That's the tale that was told in the 2002 Folklife Festival, The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust. Produced in association with the Silk Road Project, Inc., an organization founded by the cellist Yo-Yo Ma, supported in large part by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and featuring exhibits designed by Rajeev Sethi, the Festival turned the National Mall into a mammoth visual representation of the Silk Road, with the Great Gate in Nara, Japan, at the eastern end, toward the Capitol, and St. Mark's Square in Venice at the western end, in the shadow of the Washington Monument. And between the two, visitors could wander Eurasia, through Istanbul, Samarkand, and Xi'an. On the way they moved among hundreds of musicians, artists, dancers, crafts workers, and chefs from some two dozen nations of the Silk Road, working side by side with Americans who trace their origins to the region or have been culturally influenced by its traditions.
An especially valuable aspect of the event was its focus on Central Asia, a region to which Americans were all too indifferent before events of the preceding year. We now know the names of the nations in that part of the world, but the Festival gave the people of those nations and their traditions a human face. Visitors who made the journey across the Festival site could immerse themselves in the energy and larger educational purpose of the Festival; they had an opportunity to travel across continents, centuries, and cultures. They could meet with a diversity of artists who, through their demonstrations of skill - with silk, jewelry, ceramics, carpets, paintings, paper, calligraphy, food, and, not least, music - did more than merely affirm their cultural traditions. They embodied them. The 2002 Folklife Festival, like every other, celebrated humanity and breathed a spirit of human engagement. On a great green stretch of this nation's capital, people from many different societies were brought together face to face. And those chance, transient encounters might affect the way they think about the world.
The 2002 Festival took place during two five-day weeks (June 26-30 and July 3-7) between Madison Drive and Jefferson Drive and between 10th Street and 14th Street, south of the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of Natural History (see site plan).
The Program Book provided information on the history and culture of the Silk Road and included a schedule and participant information.
The Silk Road: Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival was a partnership of the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage and the Silk Road Project, Inc. The Festival site was designed by Rajeev Sethi Scenographers and produced in cooperation with the Asian Heritage Foundation. The Festival was co-sponsored by the National Park Service.
Richard Kurin, Director; Richard Kennedy, Deputy Director;
Kurt Dewhurst, Anthony Gittens, Pat Jasper, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Enrique Lamadrid, David Maybury-Lewis, Judy Mitoma, J. Scott Raecker, Ricardo Trimillos (Chair)
Michael Asch (Chair), Phyllis Barney, Hal Cannon, Don DeVito, Ella Jenkins, Fred Silber
Yo-Yo Ma, Artistic Director; Jean Davidson, Managing Director; Theodore Levin, Project Director
Rajeev Sethi, Founder Trustee
Fran P. Mainella, Director; Terry R. Carlstrom, Director, National Capital Region
The Festival was supported by federally appropriated funds, Smithsonian trust funds, contributions from governments, businesses, foundations, and individuals, in-kind assistance, volunteers, food and craft sales, and Friends of the Festival. The 2002 Festival was made possible through the following generous sponsors and donors to the Silk Road Project, Inc.:
and by the following supporters of the Smithsonian Institution:
The Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage acknowledges and respects the right of artists, performers, Folklife Festival participants, community-based scholars, and knowledge-keepers to collaboratively steward representations of themselves and their intangible cultural heritage in media produced, curated, and distributed by the Center. Making this collection accessible to the public is an ongoing process grounded in the Center's commitment to connecting living people and cultures to the materials this collection represents. To view the Center's full shared stewardship policy, which defines our protocols for addressing collections-related inquiries and concerns, please visit
2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival Program Book
2002 Smithsonian Folklife Festival site plan
Carla M. Borden was Editor of the 2002 Program Book and Peter Seitel was Associate Editor. Kristin Fernekes was Director of Design; Caroline Brownell was Graphic Designer; and Rachele Riley was Design Assistant. The Festival site was designed by Rajeev Sethi Scenographers.
The Silk Road defines an exchange of products, both material and intellectual, across Eurasia from China to the Mediterranean, traditionally from the 2nd century B.C.E. through the first twelve centuries of the Common Era. People who know something of the Silk Road think first of the transport of silk to Rome or the expansion of Buddhism from India to China, although certainly it is much more. But why silk, and why a road to describe this exchange? Silk provides the example of a mysterious luxury product for which people throughout the region were willing to pay high prices and even jeopardize lives. And the "road" refers to the exchange of those material products that traveled by land, although this literal meaning must be extended to include cultural and spiritual exchanges that would be part of a metaphorical Silk Road. Beyond these definitions the idea of the Silk Road is still available for new interpretations. And in the political environment prevailing in 2002, the idea was particularly evocative.
Visitors to the Festival were greeted by five "sentinels of arrival," landmarks along the ancient Silk Road: St. Mark's Square in Venice, Hagia Sophia (Ayasofya) mosque/church/museum in Istanbul, Registan Square in Samarkand, the Xi'an bell tower, and the great gate to Todaiji Temple in Nara. Each housed a stage that reflected a different performance tradition. The performing arts selected for the Festival were grouped into spiritual activities, courtly entertainment, local celebrations and entertainments, nomadic presentations, and new musics that draw from tradition. Spiritual music, for example, provided the program an opportunity to present the stories of the expansion of religion - Buddhism, Islam, and Christianity - along the Silk Road. Buddhist monks from Tibet and Sufi Muslim devotees from Turkey and Bangladesh highlighted the central role that religion played in Silk Road trade.
Existing examples of ancient silk, pottery, carpets, and glass all tell very specific stories of travel and exchange and remind us of the extent to which people across the region have been connected throughout history. What may be surprising to some, however, is how many such objects are still made today. The curatorial staff chose to feature ceramics, silk and cotton textiles, carpets, paper, and stone and metal products, including glass. Each was in a different compound - the Paper Garden, the Ceramics Courtyard, the Silk Grove, the Family Oasis, and the Jewel Garden - and told a story from a different period along the Silk Road, including, in some cases, a chapter from life in the United States. Paper, for example, was invented in China and remained a secret of the region for centuries; along with written language, writing materials were thought to possess magical qualities. Religious texts as well as commercial bills were written out and transported along a route that, through such communication, could more easily function. Each region added its own distinctive features of paper art including Turkish marbling and Italian watermarks. Similar elaborations have been made in the art of calligraphy, which, particularly in Islamic and Chinese cultures, has become highly refined and stylistically differentiated as to school and usage. Representatives of these schools still train new generations of artists along the Silk Road and in the United States.
The movement of religious traditions around the world has arguably been one of the most important forces throughout world history. Both Islam and Buddhism were introduced to millions of new adherents along the Silk Road, and these conversions continue to alter the face of our world. These religions, along with all of the above exchange goods, have also altered the face of the United States. Many Americans drink tea in fine china, buy "Oriental" carpets, and certainly wear garments of cotton, wool, and silk. They are likely familiar with Asian martial arts and may attend an Islamic mosque. The Silk Road has extended to the United States and, since the tragic events of September 11, 2001, understanding that connection clearly has become more important. The 2002 Festival offered its million visitors the opportunity to learn more about the roots of this vital connection and to celebrate the long-standing relationships that have existed between East and West and North and South. The Festival provided a rare opportunity to connect with other cultures as well as with one's own and in doing so, in a small way, to build trust between and within cultures of the global Silk Road.
Richard Kennedy and Theodore Levin were Co-Curators, assisted by a Curatorial Committee whose members included Milo Beach, Jean During, Henry Glassie, Tom Kessinger, Alma Kunanbay, and Yo-Yo Ma. Cristin Bagnall, Jean Davidson, Catherine Gevers, Richard Kennedy, Richard Kurin, Theodore Levin, Diana Parker, and Esther Won made up the Production Committee. Rajeev Sethi was Festival Scenographer, and James Deutsch, Stephen Kidd, Arlene Reiniger, and Shayna Silverstein were Program Coordinators. Betty Belanus was Family Activities Coordinator; Jane Farmer was Paper Garden Coordinator; Marjorie Hunt was Silk Grove Coordinator; and Diana Baird N'Diaye was Fashion Court Coordinator.
Abduvali Abdurashidov, Mila Ahmedova, Omer Akakça, Bassam AI-Kahouaji, Dinara Amirova, Nahomi Aso, Najmieh Batmanglij, Betty Belanus, Laura Beldiman, Susan Blader, Guanghui Chen, Rta Kapur Chishti, Shafique Rahman Choudhury, Jerome Cler, Ardasher Dekhoti, James Deutsch, Hermine Dreyfuss, Cloe Drieu, Jean During, Jane Farmer, Sasan Fatemi, Walter Feldman, Henry Glassie, Chen Guanghui, Harold Hagopian, Elias Hanna, Rachel Harris, K. David Harrison, Bhagwati Prasad Hatwal, Martha Huang, George Jevremovic, Neslihan Jevremovic, Stephen Jones, Richard Kennedy, Jonathan Mark Kenoyer, Stephen Kidd, Doug Kim, Peg Koetsch, Alma Kunanbay, Gavyn Lavergne, Theodore Levin, Firoz Mahmud, Elshan Mansurov, Peter Marsh, Andranik Michaelian, Nataliya Mussina, Afanassij Myldyk, Olima Nabiva, Eden Naby, Mohammed Nasseripour, Liesbet Nyssen, Susan Pertel-Jain, Aziz Rahman, Marjorie Ransom, Arlene Reiniger, Rajeev Sethi, Pravina Shukla, Razia Sirdibaeva, Atesh Sonneborn, Youssef Summad, Nancy Sweezy, Takashi Takahara, D. Tserenpil, Shu-ni Tsou, Oguzhan Tugral, Mark van Tongeren, Seric Walley, Philippa Watkins, Chris Walter, Toshio Watanabe
Sibel Akad, Omer Akakça, Bassam AI-Kahouaji, Dina Amirova, William Belcher, Susan Blader, Camilla Bryce-Laporte, Sertac Çakim, Charles Camp, Guanghui Chen, Rta Kapur Chishti, Dinara Chochunbaeva, Shafique Rahman Choudhury, Jerome Cler, David d'Heilly, Tenzin Dickyi, Hermine Dreyfuss, Jean During, Jane Farmer, Walter Feldman, Alysia Fischer, Gail Forman, Helen Frederick, Ganbold, Henry Glassie, Harold Hagopian, Rachel Harris, K. David Harrison, Bhagawati Prasad Hatwal, Catherine Hiebert Kerst, Neslihan Jevremovic, Alison Allen Jia, Mark Kenoyer, Dipti Khera, Doug Kim, Benjamin David Koen, Peg Koetsch, Alma Kunanbay, Gavyn Lavergne, Tom Leech, Theodore Levin, Yo-Yo Ma, LaVerne Magarian, Firoz Mahmud, Peter Marsh, Nataliya Mussina, Eden Naby, Joan Nathan, Liesbet Nyssen, Nilgun Peksalli, Susan Pertei-Jain, Steven Prieto, Frank Proschan, Marjorie Ransom, Philip Schuyler, Shubha Sankaran, Pravina Shukla, Robin Ami Silverberg, Madan Gopal Singh, Nancy Sweezy, Takashi Takahara, Geshe Lobsang Tenzin, Oguzhan Tugral, Michael Twitty, Kojiro Umezaki, Mark van Tongeren, Yuriko Yamaguchi, Wang Yousheng, Chris Walter, Philippa Watkins, Jeffrey Werbock
FP-2002-CT-0323
Restrictions on access. Some duplication is allowed. Use of materials needs permission of the Smithsonian Institution.
Recorded in: Washington, D.C, United States, July 7, 2002.
Restrictions on access. SI Permission.
CDR copy
Bezmârâ--Song1--Seven songs; Roksonaki --four songs; Silk road jam with Yo-Yo Ma
FP-2002-CT-0324
CDR copy
Silk Road Jam with Yo-Yo Ma--Throat singing--unk--Star--What is immortal; Hua Family--song--end
Restrictions on access.
Recorded in: Washington, D.C, United States, July 7, 2002.
Listening copies available
Listening copies available