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Annals of the Smithsonian Institution 2000 



and strengthen traditional Tibetan culture was among the 

 first considerations of the government-in-exile, and represen- 

 tatives from those institutions participated in the Festival. 

 Participants came from the United States, India, Nepal, 

 Bhutan, Canada, and Switzerland, and demonstrated a vari- 

 ety of crafts including tbangka painting, paper and mask 

 making, wood and stone carving, weaving and embroidery. 

 Practitioners of Tibetan medicine discussed astrology and 

 healing, and nomadic herders from the Himalayas demon- 

 strated their skills caring for yaks. In the gonpa (monastery), 

 monks performed religious dances, while nearby others cre- 

 ated sand and string mandalas and butter sculptures as 

 offerings. A 25-foot choten (Buddhist monument) ringed 

 by 30 prayer wheels was constructed on the site. Tibetan- 

 American Day brought Tibetans living throughout Notth 

 America together for a first-ever cultural reunion. On July 2 

 the Dalai Lama presided over a Monlam Chenmo (Great 

 Prayer Festival) at which monks and nuns chanted, made rit- 

 ual offerings, and debated religious topics. Produced in 

 collaboration with the Conservancy for Tibetan Art & Cul- 

 ture, the program provided a platform for a number of 

 Tibetans to speak and gave a more complete picture of this 

 refugee culture. 



The Sixth Annual Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert was 

 curated by Peggy Seeger, who encouraged Ralph to learn the 

 banjo. The evening was presented in three parts, represent- 

 ing three phases of her musical and political career: the 

 traditional and classical disciplines with which she grew up; 

 song making and theater disciplines and her collaborations 

 with Ewan McColl; and her feminist and ecological period of 

 political songwriting. She was joined by her children, her 

 brother, her niece, and several friends and collaborators 

 singing her songs and songs of their own. Two other special 

 evening concerts were featured this year. "Piano Traditions" 

 included gospel, Irish, blues, Latino, American traditional, 

 and boogie styles. This program was held in conjunction 

 with the exhibition "Piano 300: Celebrating Thtee Centuries 

 of People and Pianos" at the Smithsonian International 

 Gallery, S. Dillon Ripley Center and was organized by the 

 National Museum of American History. And "Woody 

 Guthrie's Songs for Children" was celebrated with perform- 

 ers Ella Jenkins, Tom Paxton, Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer, 

 and Magpie. This program was presented in conjunction 

 with the exhibition "This Land Is Your Land: The Life and 

 Legacy of Woody Guthrie," which was on view at the Na- 

 tional Museum of American History. 



To extend the work that went into the New Hampshire 

 Festival program from 1999, the state restaged the program 

 in central New Hampshire. Most of the participants from 

 the Smithsonian Festival were reunited to share their skills 

 and knowledge with state audiences. Three of the five days 

 of Festival New Hampshire were dedicated to school groups, 

 with nearly 10,000 students from across the state visiting 

 the festival. Many of the structures that gave character to the 

 New Hampshire program were recreated for the "homecom- 

 ing" event. The post-and-beam sugar house that was erected 

 on the Mall found a permanent home at the restaging site, 

 the Hopkinton Fairgrounds. And the 36— foot covered bridge 



made a "guest appeatance," along with theme gates featuring 

 granite gate posts and a timber-framed entryway, stone walls, 

 wrought iron, brick masonry, and the popular New England 

 front porch stage. 



In out work to study, encourage, and promote cultural 

 democracy, it is also important to preserve the many sounds 

 from the communities whete our work takes us. On July 7 

 President Clinton announced a federal grant from the "Save 

 America's Treasures" program to help save 10,000 of Amer- 

 ica's histotical audio tecotdings at the Smithsonian Institu- 

 tion and the Library of Congress. These treasured sound 

 recordings document in music, song, speech, and poetry 

 some of the most significant experiences of the American 

 people over the past 100 years. Originally recorded on Edison 

 wax cylinder, wire, acetate, and audio and video tape, these 

 American treasures are decaying and in need of restoration, 

 preservation, and digitization in order to make them more 

 widely available to the American public. Among items slated 

 for preservation are those in the Smithsonian's Ralph Rinzler 

 Archives and Collections including Folkways tapes and ac- 

 etates ranging from the songs of Woody Guthtie to the 

 speeches of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Festival narrative 

 sessions and petformances over the course of three decades, 

 and a variety of spoken word, film, and song in the archives 

 of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. 

 The grant marks a major collaboration between the Smith- 

 sonian and the Library. The project will be publicly known as 

 "Save Our Sounds," and a group of high-profile musicians 

 will lend their support to the project. "Save America's Trea- 

 sures" is a public-private initiative between the White House 

 Millennium Council, the National Park Service, and the 

 National Trust for Historic Preservation. 



The Center found itself working closely with the White 

 House Millennium Council on another project to mark the 

 transition to the yeai 2000. "America's Millennium on the 

 Mall," a seties of events held over the New Year's holiday 

 weekend, ushered in the new century by honoring the past 

 and imagining the future. More than three dozen sessions 

 were held rhroughout the Smithsonian and included discus- 

 sions of the history of the blues with B.B. King and Bill 

 Ferris, transformations of bluegrass and country music with 

 Ricky Skaggs and Bill Ivey, making of new American 

 cuisines from old styles with Martin Yan, Raji Jallepalli, and 

 Vertamae Grosvenor, recounting struggles for freedom with 

 Bernice Johnson Reagon, and letters of Frederick Douglass 

 and W.E.B. Du Bois read by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. 

 Basketball legends, MIT scientists, poets, rap artists, actors, 

 lawyers, and astronauts participated in the three-day event. 



Two other projects that exemplify our work with col- 

 leagues and communities are an education kit and a training 

 program. "Discovering Our Delta," a resource kit for Missis- 

 sippi reenagers conducting community-based research, 

 includes a video that follows six teens from several schools as 

 they develop projects in social studies, language arts, science, 

 music, and home economics. At the heart of their work are 

 interviews with tradition-beaters from theit community, 

 most of whom were featured at the 1997 Smithsonian Folk- 

 life Festival program on the Mississippi Delta. The video 



