FYI: This summer's Smithsonian Folklife Festival "The Silk Road"

Tue Apr 2 16:51:01 UTC 2002

>>From today's WASHINGTON POST  -- note the reference to AmerIndian
cultures in the fourth paragraph from the end.

 Date: Tuesday, April 2, 2002 9:52 AM
From: register at washingtonpost.com

>To view the entire article, go to
>http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49130-2002Apr1.html
>
>The Silk Road Comes to Town
>
>By Jacqueline Trescott
>
>
>
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>For the first time in its 36 years, the Smithsonian Folklife
>Festival will be dedicated to a single subject: an exploration
>of the ancient Silk Road, the trade route that linked Asia and
>Europe, and its influence of its cultures on American life
>today.
>
>>From June 26 to 30 and July 3 to 7, visitors to the National
>Mall can tour a  range of exhibits focused on the cultures that
>flourished along the road from the time of Alexander the Great
>until the 14th century A.D. At the Capitol end of the Mall will
>be a pavilion built to look like the Nara Gate of Japan, and at
>the Washington Monument end will be a likeness of the Venice
>Piazza.
>
>The annual Smithsonian festival, which last year drew 1 million
>visitors, generally focuses on two states as well as a
>particular craft -- woodworking, pottery or the like. But this
>year it will break tradition with the help of a very
>distinguished consultant, the cellist Yo-Yo Ma.
>
>In 1998 Ma organized the Silk Road Project, a collaboration of
>artists who are telling the vast region's story through
>concerts and cultural festivals.
>
>"What this festival can do is create an experience that is
>personal," Ma said. Familiarity with the Silk Road is not
>necessary. "You can come with a lot or a little, but the
>question is: What do you leave with?"
>
>Ma, along with his Smithsonian partners and various curators,
>does not want the festival to become an instant classroom.
>
>"It's not: Do you know the capital of Kazakhstan and can you
>spell Kazakhstan? I want you to know what it feels like to live
>someplace else. It's getting to know a world, the humanity of
>it all. People have always been smart and creative. Also we
>want to capture that sense of adventure, and what has motivated
>that sense of adventure," Ma said.
>
>The details of the Folklife Festival, called "The Silk Road:
>Connecting Cultures, Creating Trust," and the unusual
>approaches will be announced at a news conference today.
>
>The event has attracted three principal sponsors, which  are
>also underwriting Ma's project: the Aga Khan Trust for Culture,
>Ford Motor Co. and Siemens, the German  conglomerate.  At a
>possible cost of  $6 million, the bill would be about double
>the usual for a Folklife Festival.
>
> Contributing to the complexity of organizing the festival is
>the participation of a dozen countries, including several
>former Soviet republics.
>
>"This is much more complicated than a program on New
>Hampshire," said Richard Kennedy, the festival co-curator and
>an expert on South Asian and Southeast Asian culture. Five
>years ago Theodore Levine, a professor at Dartmouth who had
>worked with the festival, suggested the Silk Road concept. "I
>thought it was logistically overwhelming and we couldn't get
>funding," Kennedy said.
>
>When Levine returned three years ago -- with Ma -- Kennedy was
>ready to move ahead. "Still for us to commit the whole program
>was a leap," he said. What worried him was the unfamiliarity
>many Americans had about the area's geography, history and
>culture. But since Sept. 11, Kennedy said,  "I think we have an
>interest in the region and a beginning of understanding."
>
>In addition to the evocations of Japan and Italy, the
>festival's main pavilions will represent "Istanbul Crossroads,"
>Samarkand Square in Uzbekistan, and the Xi'an Tower of China.
>
>The Smithsonian's approach is cultural, pulling together
>musicians, storytellers, cooks, potters, Sufi dervishes,
>embroiderers, fashion designers, stone carvers, puppetmakers,
>calligraphers, glass blowers and weavers from 20 countries:
>Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, China, India, Italy, Iran,
>Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Nepal, Pakistan,
>Russia, South Korea, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan
>and Uzbekistan. "Most of our artists, 80 to 90 percent of them,
>have never been out of their countries before," Kennedy said.
>
> The festival will spotlight about 350 artists, another record
>for the event. Ma said consultants in the region  "have
>identified some fabulous people. At meetings we would actually
>feel sad that we couldn't bring everybody."
>
>Ma hopes a visitor who is a potter will watch another potter,
>and  "the next time the visitor picks up a newspaper and reads
>about information about the potter's country, they will have
>something to connect," Ma said.
>
> Kennedy said the festival would emphasize artistic links among
>diverse cultures.  "We will put together a Navajo weaver and a
>Turkish weaver, and look at how the Navajo learned to work with
>wool from the Spanish, and the design motifs that the Spaniards
>got from the Turks," he said.  Artisans from the United States,
>representing one-third of the participants, will show how these
>traditions are kept alive, and modified.
>
> Other themes will be the development of martial arts,
>papermaking, truck and bus decoration in Pakistan,  Syrian silk
>brocade weavers, the wandering minstrels known as Kushtia
>Bauls, and throat singing. The countries along the route
>introduced Chinese silk to the Mediterranean, and gunpowder,
>mathematics and ceramics to the West.
>
>Music is another essential element of each Folklife Festival.
>With Ma sitting in from time to time, the concerts should be
>remarkable. Ma plans to stay the entire two weeks but he said
>he'd take on the character of Waldo, the children's book
>character who gets lost in the crowd but is always there.
>
>"The Silk Road Ensemble will be there and I will join it at
>various times," Ma said. "My main job is trying to make sure
>the experience is good for anybody that comes in, and that they
>are leaving with what starts out as information but turns into
>knowledge and curiosity."
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