Festival Blog

Visitors flocked to stare in awe as Kenyan participants Malika Badiribu and Salma Maro constructed a traditional Pokomo hut onsite, using natural materials that had been shipped from Kenya.

During the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, Wu Man performed an original composition on the pipa entitled “Night Thoughts,” based on a work by Chinese poet Li Bo.

Lian Xiaoyin is a performer with the Leishan Miao Music and Dance Group and a student of the ancient art of batik dyeing.

There are many different kinds of the small Chinese dumpling called shumai. The variety featured in this recipe is called “jade” shumai because both the filling and wrapper are a pale green color when cooked.

Cooking, by nature, is a deeply personal experience. Each ingredient is a cultural attribute, each method a piece of cultural knowledge, and each meal a social experience.

This summer, twenty-four Smithsonian museums and centers are competing to find the one object that best represents the Smithsonian—and you can help choose!

During one of the “Songs of Struggle” discussion sessions at the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival’s Kenya program, musicians Peter Akwabi and John Nzenze performed a song that Nzenze originally wrote in 1963

“I have to go show the flip-flop guys! They’re going to be so proud, right?” It was day five of the Festival, and an eight-year-old boy, beaming and sweaty, was proudly presenting to me the result of his labors in the Kenya Family Activities tent

China program coordinator Jing Li visited Songpan County in Sichuan Province to talk with Zewang Renqing and Geluo Zhaxi, the artists and brothers who performed Qiang polyphonic singing at this year’s Folklife Festival