Festival Blog

This recipe for Basque-style meat-stuffed peppers appeared in the 1991 Smithsonian Institution Press publication Smithsonian Folklife Cookbook, compiled by Katherine and Thomas Kirlin.

This month I returned from a fieldwork trip to Basque Country with co-curator Mary Linn to prepare for the 2016 Folklife Festival, and my head is filled with new knowledge and experiences of what it means to be Basque.

Long before the Perú: Pachamama artisans flew thousands of miles to grace the National Mall, Spanish colonists sailed thousands of miles to find indigenous communities inhabiting what would become the country of Peru.

Members of the Afro-Peruvian group Tutuma use traditional songs and zapateo dance to continue the work of their father, Amador Ballumbrosio (the “godfather of Afro-Peruvian music”).

There I was, standing in front of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival main stage, with a circling sway of skirts and handkerchiefs. I was speechless. It was my second day in Washington, D.C., but for a fleeting instant I felt at home.

At the 2015 Festival, Nilda Callañaupa Alvarez represented the textile artisans from Chinchero in Cusco, Peru.

Every day of the 2015 Folklife Festival, the very traditional sounds of Peruvian mandolinas and charangos were often overpowered by the electric guitars of Los Wembler’s de Iquitos.

During an evening concert at the 2015 Folklife Festival, renowned percussionist Alex Acuña showed his native Peruvian musical influence in a jazz fusion flurry.

Matteo Valderrama Piminchumo shares his Peruvian communities' tradition of woven reed rafts called caballitos de totora.