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 2009 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 2009 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 5 series.
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2009 Smithsonian Folklife Festival forms part of the
Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 2009 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.
The twentieth century saw an unprecedented, worldwide acceleration of social change. Often, such rapid evolution outpaced time-honored values and practices, eroding their currency, overwhelming cultural self-determination and displacing the local with the foreign. In a time-span as short as a single generation, entire languages, musical traditions, and other expressive cultural systems were abandoned in favor of cultural trappings invented by others. The 43rd annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 2009 told another version of this story, inviting visitors to explore the process of cultural evolution from the other side of the equation. Festival audiences were able to experience the creativity, resilience, and fortitude of people, institutions, and cultures that follow their own path amid a torrent of contrarian voices.
The 2009 Festival took place for two five-day weeks (June 24-28 and July 1-5) between Madison Drive and Jefferson Drive and between 9th Street and 14th Street, south of the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of Natural History (see site plan). It featured three programs and the Rinzler Concert.
The 2009 Program Book included schedules and participant lists for each program; keynote essays (or, for Wales, a set of short essays) provided background on each of the programs.
The Festival was co-presented by the Smithsonian Institution and National Park Service and organized by the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
Daniel Sheehy, Acting Director;
Kurt Dewhurst (chair), J. Scott Raecker (vice chair), Michael Asch (ex officio), Mounir Bouchenaki, G. Wayne Clough (ex officio), Anthony Gittens, Mickey Hart, John Herzog, Debora Kodish, Richard Kurin (ex officio), Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, Libby O'Connell, Robert Santelli, Cathy Sulzberger
Michael Asch (chair), Patricia Campbell, Hal Cannon, Don De Vito, Sandra Gibson, Suni Paz, Anthony Seeger, Fred Silber
Daniel N. Wenk, Acting Director; Peggy O'Dell, Regional Director; Lis Mendelson-Ielmini, Acting Superintendent, National Mall and Memorial Parks
The Festival was supported by federally appropriated funds; Smithsonian trust funds; contributions from governments, businesses, foundations, and individuals; in-kind assistance; and food, recording, and craft sales. General support for this year's Festival came from the Music Performance Fund, with in-kind support provided by WAMU-88.5 FM and WashingtonPost.com.
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
2009 Smithsonian Folklife Festival Program Book
2009 Smithsonian Folklife Festival site map
James Deutsch was Editor of the 2009 Program Book and Arlene Reiniger was Program Specialist. Krystyn MacGregor was Art Director; Joan Erdesky was Production Manager; and Josué Castilleja was Graphic Designer.
2009 marked the final year of the Festival series
Three fundamental principles shaped the overall Nuestra Música project and guided its final installment at the 2009 Festival. First is the notion that a musical tradition is larger than any one artist or ensemble. When accomplished traditional musicians perform, they embody knowledge, values, and practices that are grounded in and express a "cultural territory" of shared life experience, past and present. This territory is also an environment which, like our natural environment, may need to be consciously cared for and actively conserved. Second is the idea that traditional music's power comes from its relationship to the community. Music has meaning because people give it meaning, and in turn it awakens familiar feelings that move us and holds connotations that give us purpose. Many musicians consider their music to be an expression of cultural and social identity precisely because it carries the weight of many participants and contributors over time. And the third principle is that tradition always changes, either in its sound or in its meaning, for those who take part in it. Tradition may reflect societal change or be an agent of cultural change or social resistance.
Olivia Cadaval and Daniel Sheehy were Co-Curators and Cristina Díaz-Carrera was Program Coordinator. Patricia Abdelnour, Alejandra de la Paz, Vásquez Espinosa, Mónica Fernández de Soto, Dayana Frontado, Pedro Gabriel, María Reynoso León, Roberto Vásquez, and Denisse Yanovich served as Country Coordinators.
The program was produced with major support from the Smithsonian Latino Initiatives Pool, administered by the Smithsonian Latino Center. Donors included the Government of the Republic of Colombia, the Chevron Corporation, and the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela in the United States. The Embassy of Mexico, Government of the State of Veracruz, Government of the State of San Luis Potosí, the Mexican Cultural Institute, the National Ministry of Culture of the Dominican Republic, the National Ministry of Tourism of the Dominican Republic, Mariachi Chula Vista, and Fondo Cultural del Estado de Paraguay were contributors.
Patricia Abdelnour; Benito Irady, Centro de la Diversidad Cultural; Mark Fogelquist; Sydney Hutchinson; Daniel Sheehy
Patricia Abdelnour, Martín Andrade, Eduardo Díaz, James Counts Early, Mónica Fernández de Soto, Quetzal Flores, Mark Fogelquist, Dayana Frontado, León García, Martha González, Michael Mason, Russell Rodríguez, Daniel Sheehy, Monika Ingeri Therrien, Cynthia Vidaurri, Ranald Woodaman, Denisse Yanovich
Festival recordings: Las Americas La Pena: Country Strings Workshop; Globalization Challenges in Music. Side 1 of 2.
Festival recordings: Las Americas La Pena: Country Strings Workshop; Globalization Challenges in Music. Side 2 of 2.
Festival recordings: Las Americas La Pena: Rhythm Workshop; Cultural Conversations: Music and Community; Vocal Styles Workshop; Melodic Improvisation: Music and Song; Accordion Workshop. Side 1 of 2.
Festival recordings: Las Americas La Pena: Rhythm Workshop; Cultural Conversations: Music and Community; Vocal Styles Workshop; Melodic Improvisation: Music and Song; Accordion Workshop. Side 2 of 2.
Festival recordings: Sonoran Music Traditions; Music and Identity; Song Stories. Side 1 of 2.
Festival recordings: Sonoran Music Traditions; Music and Identity; Song Stories. Side 2 of 2.
The 2009 Festival program Giving Voice, presented by the National Museum of African American History and Culture, showcased the many oral traditions and verbal arts that hold a special place in African American folk culture. Giving Voice focused on the word power and word play that shape, define, and transform human experience. These cultural expressions represent a living legacy for black Americans and ultimately for all Americans. Through the deep, rich strains of African American oral traditions, the Festival program explored and displayed the vital connections between the power of words in African American folklife and the attributes of American culture itself.
Giving Voice created a learning experience that provided audiences with a better understanding of the everyday language and expression inherent in African American folklife. For instance, Festival visitors were invited into simulated social sites and gathering places where African Americans traditionally have felt free to talk to one another beyond the gaze and financial control, or below the radar, of racial others. Settings such as restaurants and home kitchens, churches and meeting halls, playgrounds and street corners, barbershops and beauty parlors, community radio stations and the "soapbox" - recreated on the National Mall - provided a living context for demonstrating the power of words to shape the daily experiences of African Americans.
With this Festival program, the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture demonstrated its commitment to documenting and preserving the oral expressions of a people whose voices were muzzled, who were denied the opportunity to read and to write, and whose speeches and oratory often did not survive. A people's culture is inexorably linked to its language, and by helping to raise public awareness of African American linguistic creativity, the Museum highlighted a major aspect of black culture. In the process, the Museum moved closer to its goals of helping all Americans to learn more about African American history and culture, and to understand and appreciate how this history and culture provide a powerful lens for understanding what it truly means to be an American.
James Alexander Robinson was Curator, and Dianne Green was Program Coordinator. Diana Baird N'Diaye and Esther J. Washington were Curatorial Advisors for Children's Culture; John W. Davis II was Curatorial Advisor for Community Radio; Roland Freeman was Curatorial Consultant for Photography; Kenny Carroll was Curatorial Consultant for Poetry; and Tony Smalls was Curatorial Consultant for Drama.
The program was produced in partnership with the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Deborah Asante, Carmen Ashhurst, Jade Banks, Kenny Carroll, Lorne Cress Love, James Counts Early, Anthony Gittens, E. Ethelbert Miller, Bob Sumner, Eleanor Traylor, Esther J. Washington
Ralph Rinzler co-founded the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1967 and a decade later parlayed it into what is now the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The annual Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert showcases and offers tribute to artists who, like Rinzler, have wielded major cultural influence. The 2009 Rinzler Concert saluted Smithsonian Folkways artist Ella Jenkins.
Jenkins earned her reputation as "The First Lady of Children's Music" through her fifty-plus years of creating and performing groundbreaking music for young children. She published the first of her nearly forty albums for children (and parents) in 1957 on the Folkways Records label in New York City. She went on to become the role model and inspiration for most of the renowned leaders of children's music who followed. In 2004, she became the first children's artist to receive the music industry's highest honor, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Lifetime Achievement GRAMMY award. Similarly, the ASCAP Foundation honored her with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 1999, making her the first woman and the first children's artist to be recognized with this national prize. Ella Jenkins has won dozens of other awards. In 2006, Strathmore Hall in Bethesda, Maryland, produced a sold-out tribute concert to Jenkins, featuring marquee-name artists Pete Seeger, Bill Harley, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, Mariachi Los Camperos, and Sweet Honey in the Rock. For the 2009 Rinzler Concert, Ella was joined by Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer.
Daniel Sheehy was Curatorial Advisor and Rebecca Smerling Marcus and Alana Pryor Ackerman were Coordinators.
The small country of Wales sets an example of sustainable culture that links history and tradition to the latest alternative technologies, thereby providing a focus for the 2009 Festival program, Wales Smithsonian Cymru. A spectrum of sustainability stretches throughout the history of Wales and into the future - continuing, preserving, and reviving older environmental practices as well as creating new ones. This continuum connects people within communities, regions, and nations, starting at the local level and radiating out around the globe.
While doing research for the 2009 Festival program, fieldworkers sought four types of sustainability relating to traditional culture in Wales: 1) keeping the best of traditional practices; 2) recycling in the broadest sense; 3) thinking globally, acting locally; and 4) planning for a sustainable future. They documented music and dance; storytelling; occupational skills such as farming and mining; the building arts; industrial heritage; outdoor pursuits; maritime arts; textile, ceramics, and wood crafts; and cooking, gardening, and traditional medicine. The four core sustainability concepts helped the fieldworkers make connections among genres, regions, and the skills and talents of potential participants, informing the program throughout its development.
The results of this collaboration were available for Festival visitors to enjoy on the National Mall.In addition to a rich program of music, dance, and oral traditions, visitors could interact with Welsh tradition-bearers to explore and experience topics such as Welsh genealogy; wood, stone, metal, clay, wool, and basketry crafts; plants and traditional medicine; maritime, sports, and ecotourism; renewable energy and sustainable building workshops (highlighting three sustainable structures); and more.
Betty J. Belanus was Curator; Dorey Butter was Program Coordinator; Beverly Simons was Foodways Coordinator; and Kim Stryker was Family Learning Coordinator. A Curatorial Committee in Wales included: Teri Brewer and Gareth Evans; Peter Finch and colleagues; Eluned Haf; Angharad Pearce Jones, Rocet Arwel Jones, and Rhydian Griffiths; Tecwyn Vaughan Jones; Lesley-Anne Kerr; Dai Lloyd and Andy Williams; Ceri Rhys Matthews; Andy Middleton; Dafydd Roberts; Beth Thomas; Dan Thomas; Siân Thomas; and Moira Vincentelli. The program's Steering Committee comprised: Gary Davies, Ifona Deeley, Nick Capaldi, Keven Higgins, Paul Allen, Linda Tomos, Wynfford James, Paul Islwyn Thomas, Mike Hnyda, Andrew Green, Michael Houlihan, Eirlys Thomas, and Virginia West.
The program was produced in partnership with the Welsh Assembly Government. Donors included Alzeim Ltd., BioPharm, Neal's Yard Remedies, Summit (Wales) Ltd., and Caligo Inks. Additional contributions were provided by the St. David's Welsh-American Society of Washington, D.C., St. David's Society of Racine & Vicinity, the Welsh Society of Philadelphia, the St. David Welsh Society of St. Petersburg and the Suncoast, and Roger W. Hughes.
Maria Teresa Agozzino, Gareth Beech, Teri Brewer, Walter Ariel Brooks, Gareth Evans, Sarah Howells, Angharad Pearce Jones, Ceri Jones, Dylan Jones, Gwenno Jones, Howard Kimberley, Mared McAleavey, Gerallt Nash, Elen Phillips, Stephen Rees, Libby Richards, Siwan Rosser, Aparna Sharma, Siân Thomas, Kath Williams, Sioned Williams
Listening copies available
Listening copies available
Listening copies available