The annual festival takes years to plan—but curators say the 'incredible spark' of its crossover moments can't be choreographed.
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival takes years to research and plan, but its magic lies in the “beautiful happenstance” of serendipitous crossover moments, says festival director Sabrina Motley. One example: Last year, Motley says, a Bedouin weaver and a a Fijian weaver compared notes.
The other program, “Creative Encounters: Living Religions in the US,” focuses on creativity and artistic expression inspired by faith and spirituality. The festival defines those categories expansively, making room for a Southern quilter, Buddhist temple dancers, a Chicago house DJ, and Mennonite choral singers, among many others whose art is influenced by spiritual or religious devotion.
They had help from Missouri State University’s Ozarks Studies Institute, but curator Cristina Diaz-Carrera also had to strike out on her own to make connections with a newer community in the mountains: immigrants from the Marshall Islands. This kind of travel was nothing new to Diaz-Carrera, who has been a curator for the festival for nearly 20 years. To research programs that highlighted Mexico, Colombia, and Peru, she took multiple 10- to 20-day trips, often venturing to remote regions to meet with musicians and artists.
This year’s Living Religion program was funded by a gift from the Lilly Endowment, which stipulated that the programming be focused on faith . The curators took that requirement and ran with it. As Motley points out, many of the festival’s most memorable participants over the years, from gospel singers toOfelia Esparza is a sixth-generation Chicana altar-maker. Photo courtesy of Esparza family via the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
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