By including a Finnish-American component in this year's Festival, the Smithsonian Institution Folklife Program reaffirms its commitment to plans specially developed for the 1976 Bicentennial Festival. The program, called "Old Ways in the New World," was intended to dispel much of the "melting pot" notion of American culture by showing that many traditions brought from the Old World have tenaciously survived and developed in their new setting.

When immigrant groups arrived here, the "Old Ways" of cooking, singing, dancing, building, and playing they brought with them were often their only means of maintaining cultural identity. Eventually the