Introduction

As the twentieth century neared its end, the entertainment industry dominated popular views of culture. Cultural enterprises including movies, television, theme parks, recordings, and video stores constitute one of the world's largest industries. Nevertheless, there is another world of culture created and sustained in homes, communities, places of work and worship. Our lullabies and hymns, liturgical chants and celebratory songs, songs of work, struggle, and mourning, are rarely heard in music stores or on radio stations. Yet it is those traditions and the cultures they represent that are highlighted at the annual Festival of American Folklife.

The 1997 Festival featured three major programs, complemented by the third annual Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert. Sacred Sounds brought together people from a variety of religious communities, from around the nation, Jerusalem, and from South Africa. Their songs expressed spiritual feelings and convictions connecting their lives to tradition. At the Festival, audiences could hear some of the ways in which music flows from the spirit of a diverse humanity to express its highest aspirations.

A second program, African Immigrant Folklife, illustrated the many traditions of recent immigrants to the United States from Africa. These immigrants participate in a changing culture, as people, families, and communities find their place in American society. Festival visitors could celebrate the enterprise and vitality of recent immigrants to the United States from Africa, who have brought their cultures across the Atlantic Ocean to the Washington metropolitan area.

The Mississippi Delta, the subject of the third Festival program, is a culturally rich region of the United States that gave birth to blues, jazz, rockabilly and rock 'n' roll, honky tonk, distinctive forms of gospel, oratory, marvelous stories, folk and visionary art, and an encyclopedia of river lore - not to mention barbecue and fish fries. Native, Spanish, African, French, and American people all merged along the Mississippi, just as many tributaries flow into one river. Beginning even before the arrival of Europeans, the Mississippi has been a source of food and irrigation, a highway for commerce, a strategic center for political power, a source of inspiration for song and spirit. The region's cultural expressions, continually shaped by the daily experience - the work, worship, home life, and recreation - of the people who live there, were shared with Festival visitors on the National Mall.

The 1997 Festival took place during two five-day weeks (June 25-29 and July 2-6) between Madison Drive and Jefferson Drive and between 9th Street and 13th Street, south of the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of Natural History (see site plan). It featured three programs, with special events that included the Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert.

The 1997 Program Book included schedules and participant lists for each program; essays provided background on the Festival and 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 Programs & Cultural Studies.

Richard Kurin, Director; Richard Kennedy, Deputy Director; Diana Parker, Festival Director; Anthony Seeger, Director, Smithsonian Folkways Recordngs; James Early, Director, Cultural Studies & Communications; Thomas Vennum, Jr., Senior Ethnomusicologist; Olivia Cadaval, Chair, Research & Education; Betty J. Belanus, Marjorie Hunt, Diana Baird N'Diaye, Peter Seitel, Curators, Folklorists, Education and Cultural Specialists; Carla M. Borden, Program/Publications Manager; John W. Franklin, Program Manager; Cynthia Vidaurri, Coordinator, Latino Cultural Resource Network; Jeffrey Place, Archivist; Stephanie Smith, Assistant Archivist; Arlene L. Reiniger, Program Specialist; Charlie Weber, Media Specialist; Brenda Danet, Nadia Abu El-Haj, Roland Freeman, Ivan Karp, Alan Lomax, Worth Long, Kate Rinzler, Luise White, Fellows, Research Associates & Collaborators

Roger Abrahams, Jacinto Arias, Michael Asch, Jane Beck, Don DeVito, Pat Jasper, Ella Jenkins, Jon Kertzer, Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, John Nixdorf, Bernice Johnson Reagon, John Roberts, Carol Robertson, Gilbert Sprauve, Jack Tchen, Ricardo Trimillos, Carlos Vélez-Ibáñez

Terry Carlstrom, Acting Director, National Capital Region

Shared Stewardship of Collections

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 https://folklife.si.edu/archives#shared-stewardship.