"Living Cultures of the Americas"
 
by Olivia Cadaval, Ph.D.
 
in The New World (Spring/Summer 1991, No. 2, p. 6)
 
     The Smithsonian's Office of Folklife Programs has embarked on
a series of projects for the Quincentenary that explores the
significance of complexes of historical development for vernacular
cultures (tribal, ethnic and occupational): (1) the persistence of
indigenous cultures of the Americas; and (2) the creation and
development of new cultures--among peoples from all continents--in
the context of the new world.
     At the center of programmatic concern is how cultural
practices are understood by scholars and local practitioners, and
through this mechanism the projects address the critical issues of
cultural endurance and adaptation, ethical understanding and
aesthetic creativity.  These issues are embodied in scholarly
symposia, printed collections of essays, living cultural
exhibitions and published collections of recorded sound.
 
Living Exhibitions
     Folklife's attention to the formation of vernacular cultures
in the Western Hemisphere has been directed to the Caribbean, whose
practices and historical development were the focus of living
exhibitions at the 1989 and 1990 Festivals of American Folklife,
held on the National Mall between the Washington Monument and the
U.S. Capitol building.  The program in 1989 was titled "The
Caribbean: Cultural Encounters in the New World," and it traced the
creative integration and synthesis of Caribbean traditions from
elements of diverse cultural origins.  Traditional musicians and
dancers, ritual practitioners and cooks from Haiti, Jamaica, Cuba
and Puerto Rico presented music, ritual performances and foodways
demonstrations.  These presentations effectively illustrated the
persistence of indigenous, African or European culture traits in
the Caribbean, and their transformation into a fresh cultural
amalgam that forms the basis for an emergent identity.
     Recreated cultural settings enhanced the cultural
presentations, while dramatically transforming the National Mall
for the two weeks of the Festival.  In a traditional Caribbean "big
yard" setting, Jamaican cooks processed and prepared cassava root,t
he Maroons roasted jerked pig, and a Puerto Rican herbalist
demonstrated medicinal preparations.  Jamaican members of the
Kumina religion, Maroons and Rastafarians presented their ritual
ceremonies in a "dancing booth" (a traditional shelter for social
and ceremonial events), while Haitians presented Vodoun ceremonies
in a hounfor (a ceremonial center), and the group Afro Cuba from
Matanzas presented Santeria, Abakua, Arara and Palo Monte
ceremonies in a solar (a house patio).  Members of the public
danced to Cuban son and Puerto Rican jibaro, bomba and plena music.
     The 1990 Virgin Island Festival Program continued this
examination of the wealth of cultures that have evolved over
centuries of complex, turbulent and profound interactions among
indigenous peoples in the area, Europeans, peoples from West Africa
and indentured servants from India and East Asia.  In this program,
the "big yard," the marketplace, the "dance hall" and the
celebration of carnival served as contextualizing, interpretive
devices for representing continuity in the folklife of the islands;
they also provided backdrops for presenting traditions and
exploring contemporary cultural issues of concern to the Islanders. 
A special celebration of carnival with bands, mocko jumbi stilt
walkers and costumed troupes of paraders highlighted the community
spirit of the Virgin Islands.
     The 1991 festival program, "Knowledge and Power: Land in
Native American Cultures," will present native American knowledge
and practice of land and resource use.  Oriented both by global
attention focused on the meaning of the Quincentenary and by the
Smithsonian's overall concern for conservation, this program will
be an opportunity for a large public to hear voices of members of
societies that have persevered these past 500 years and have
preserved both their care for the earth and the continuity of their
cultures.  The program will include peoples from a broad range of
distinct ecological systems in the Americas: rainforest, highland,
valley, desert and coast.
     The concluding 1992 Quincentenary program will examine the
emergence and development of new cultures and their forms of
expression in the new world.  The program will focus on the
contemporary encounter of cultures which affect the societies of
the Americas today as profoundly as did the first encounter of
Europeans with the new world five centuries ago.
 
Recordings and Other Projects
     Musical performances at the festival have been recorded for
future albums on the Smithsonian's Folkways label.  Current
recording projects include Puerto Rican and Cuban music performed
in 1989, and the music of the U.S. Virgin Islands featured in 1990. 
Video documentaries about the programs have been produced as well,
including several short ones on the Caribbean program.
     In collaboration with several institutions in the U.S. and
Latin America, Smithsonian-Folkways records will produce a multi-
volume Quincentenary Music Collection in 1992.
 
Reprint permission granted by publisher.
 
CADAVAL1 ART