Smithsonian Folklife Festival
S Miskoe
anything written about the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I was one of the
participants and would like to share my experience with others. It was truly a
wonderful trip.
A Brief Account of the Festival
It was an honor, a thrill and an experience. In March, I received the long
hoped for invitation to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. I had no idea of
the scope of the Festival, only that I would be part of the musical
presentations, playing Scottish and contra dance music. The music was a small
portion; the Festival celebrated New Hampshire life, traditions, cultures and
environment. There were about 45 musicians and over 100 other participants.
Since space does not permit me to describe everything, I will recount the
musical experience.
The Festival is an annual event on the Mall in Washington, DC. It features
one state and two countries. This year's celebrants were New Hampshire,
Romania, and South Africa. New Hampshire musicians were selected on the basis
of interviews and on one's participation and long term contribution to their
musical genre.
The musical genres included New England contra and square dances,
Franco-American song and fiddle, Polish, African-American Gospel, Mexican,
Klezmer, Irish and Scottish. We played in the 'town hall' which was used for
dancing, and on the 'front porch', a small intimate stage built like a front
porch. Programs were 45 minutes long with each program featuring one musical
genre, but including all the musicians from that genre.
In between our presentations we were free to visit the other parts of the
Festival, watch their music and dance programs, sample their food, see their
crafts. The So African beadwork, the sculptures made from junk wire, and the
energetic dancing to addictive drums and police whistles are three memories.
The Romanians built an Eastern Rite Catholic church, danced in the lunch tent,
and stayed up half the night dancing and jamming with everyone at the hotel.
They had a brass band whose repertoire included The Anniversary Waltz.
We could walk to any of the museums along the Mall for wonderful exhibits and
air conditioned relief. I saw the Hope Diamond, visited the Freer Gallery and
its Peacock Room painted by Whistler, viewed an exhibit on microbes and
disease, and learned how a cotton gin works. One morning I took a cab to the
Roosevelt Memorial, which opened two years ago.
Back at the hotel, after a swim and buffet supper, we would gather in the
dining area and play music. What did we play? It depended on who was there.
Usually it would be the New Hampshire musicians beginning with contra, square
and French Canadian tunes, next the Klezmer band would arrive, then the
Romanians would come by. We danced to everything.
I cannot isolate one instance that was more memorable than any other, but here
is a sampling of good memories:
· Dancing to the Klezmer band at the Smithsonian Castle during the New
Hampshire reception.
· Sitting on the town hall stage, all by myself, playing my Scottish tunes and
having the sound man say, afterwards, "I'd forgotten what a lovely tune Maggie
Brown is."
· Being part of a cross cultural forum about instruments and how they relate to
our particular music.
· Making a cameo appearance with the French Soiree to play the late Omer
Marcoux' Beatrice Reel.
· Sitting on the Front Porch stage with three other accordionists and realizing
that here were three generations of musical inspiration, and I was the
youngest.
· Playing for the impromptu but scheduled barn raising with the other contra
dance musicians and then meeting the NH Commissioner for the Arts who gave me a
big hug and said he was proud of me.
I was honored to be invited and proud to be from New Hampshire.
Joddw
great that you got a chance to participate, but also that you used this forum
(newsgroup) to tell people about it. I'd like to hear more about this and
other events like this as part of this newsgroup. Thanks - Jody from Memphis
Jacqueline Laufman
participate for two weeks in the 1999 Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the
mall in Washington, DC. Sylvia has covered much of the highlights...first
class treatment at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel, the great abundance of
good food, the pool, the parties. We were down there to bring people the
experience of the old time social dances of central New Hampshire...barn
dances if you will...Virginia Reels, Portland Fancy, Paul Jones and the
like. We were fortunate to have four youngsters under the age of 15 join us
playing music. We played every day at the Summer Camp stage as well as at
the Town Hall, with smaller shows on the Front Porch.
Last winter, a neighbor of ours got out some logs from his woods, had them
milled in town, built a sugar house at his place, then took it down and
trucked it to DC where they rebuilt it for the festival. They also brought
with them several barrels of black strap maple syrup to thin down and boil
so as to have the smell of a sugar house in March. Another neighbor
brought his team of hosses down for the second week to keep in the barn that
was raised the first week. The morning newsprogram, Today, even had some of
us play for them live, but the hosses got to be front and center when the
New Hampshire musicians were playng.
In our free time we visited museums, went canoeing on the Potomac, hiking on
Roosevelt (Ted) Island and telling jokes with folks from the north country.
On one of the free days we visited the Library of Congress. I had persuaded
them to bring up an uncataloged collection of some New Hampshire musicians
from the '30's. Lo & behold, there was a picture of Arthur Hanson, the man
whose fiddle (and gold watch) I now own. Blew me away. I had forgotten
that he had been documented in the collection.
The Romanian fiddlers and dancers were a treat for me. The dancers were not
professional stage performers. Mostly farmers, construction workers,
homemakers, they danced, in costume, the dances of their villages. The
musicians were professionals, but only because they were gypsies and that is
what they did for a living...played music. They were untrained. The fiddler
from Oas used a re-constructed fiddle...the bridge being 1/2 inch from the
finger board. I don't know about the tuning, I think it was standard, but
the fiddle was lifted into a higher pitch to accompany the singing,
shrieking they call it. The bridge was flat and he played on all the
strings at once. What a sound. There was a viola player from another
region who had only three strings, and they were made of heavy black gut.
When one broke, he tied it back together, and was playing again in a jiffy.
His bow was held together with a bit of gut at one end. His bridge was
flat. He sort of held the viola upright, and bowed a bass beat.
We treasured our time at the Smithsonian Festival. Even the heat. Fact,
when we got home we were treated to a heat wave that surpassed that of DC.
But maybe that was because we had become used to the air conditioning.
Dudley & Jacqueline Laufman, Canterbury, NH