Ten years ago, over the Fourth of July weekend, the Smithsonian somewhat tentatively held its first Festival of American Folklife on the Mall in front of the Museum of History and Technology. Inside, the tools, the craft products, the musical instruments and other folk artifacts reposed in their cases, caught in beautifully petrified isolation. Outdoors, for the space of a few hours, they came alive in the hands of specialists from all over America.

In the summer of the Bicentennial, the festival reached its apogee: in duration, for it went on all summer; in meaning, for the folk arts it celebrated have come to be an accepted part of life; ...