What is ethnic media and why is it relevant today? In this podcast, several figures active in ethnic media discuss its fundamental importance to societies across the world.

Songs with politically sensitive lyrics are often censored. In this discussion session from the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, panelists discuss how this happens across multiple geographies, and why musicians always find it meaningful to fight back.

While Americans are dressing in costumes and going from house to house asking for candy on October 31, Peruvians will be celebrating their country’s criolla (creole) culture.

Winyo performed throughout the 2014 Folklife Festival, representing the Kenyan benga music scene. At the Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert: Tribute to Pete Seeger, he played his song “Everything Is Okay.”

At the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, musician Qianchun Wu from the Dimen Dong Folk Chorus explains the stringed instruments common in their region of Guizhou Province, China.

Changes occur when ethnic music, which is typically passed down from generation to generation within a family in intimate settings, is institutionalized and commercialized

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.

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

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

The Kenya: Mambo Poa program at the 2014 Smithsonian Folklife Festival invited two bead artists from Kenya: Susana Daniel Chemakwany and Susan Naserian Nketoria.