June 25, 2008
DCist Preview: Smithsonian Folklife Festival
The Smithsonian's annual Folk Life Festival begins today on the National Mall. It runs from June 25 to June 29, as well as July 2 to 6. Daytime events are open from 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; special evening events begin at 6 p.m. when scheduled. Below are some of the highlights we've picked out, and we encourage you to check their full online schedule and map.
This year's festival celebrates three themes: Bhutan: Land of the Thunder Dragon, NASA: Fifty Years and Beyond, and Texas: A Celebration of Food, Music and Wine. One might think it's an odd combination, but Festival Director Diana Parker explains that, while this year's themes were selected based on individual merit and logistical feasibility, there are more than a few connections. For example, NASA's Johnson Space Center resides in Texas; a former dean's wife at UT El Paso's love for Buhtanese-style buildings heavily influenced the campus' architecture; Bhutan's postage stamps commemorate America's space program. OK, so it's a reach.
Bhutan: Land of the Thunder Dragon
Read all about the tiny, mountainous country of Bhutan and its culture in this PDF from the Smithsonian. The Bhutan area of the festival will feature more than 100 Bhutanese artists, dancers, craftspeople, cooks, and farmers, demonstrating and discussing their land and culture. Highlights include the demonstration of Bhutan’s Thirteen Traditional Arts (or zorig chusum, pictured left), highly choreographed and symbolic masked dances, incense making, wood carving, archery (Bhutan's national sport), and cooking demonstrations.
NASA: Fifty Years and Beyond
Learn more about NASA, its origins, its present day, and its future, set among some really cool photographs in this PDF from the Smithsonian. In the NASA area of the festival, visitors will be able to meet and mingle with a variety of NASA personnel, so those of you astronaut-fantasizers, take note. Activities include hands-on demonstrations, the telling of oral histories, and exhibits. Highlights include a crew exploration vehicle, a moon buggy, information about future missions, the display of a space shuttle main engine, a robotics station, space food packaging, and menu creation.
Texas: A Celebration of Music, Food, and Wine
Check out the land of all things big, spurred and booted in Smithsonian's PDF, including a surprising number of pages on the accordion (which some controversially claim is the state's instrument). In the festival's Texan section, sip some wine and chow some cow, all while listening to the Lone Star State's blues, swing, conjunto, country and western, gospel, and tejano music. Discussions and demonstrations will range from winemaking to Texas history to some typical and not-so-typical Texan food traditions, including Vietnamese soups, barbeque, crawfish, enchaladas, kolach, and chicken fried steak. What, no Shiner?
The festival opens this Wednesday with an 11 a.m. ceremony on the Texas Dancehall. Evening concerts are scheduled for every day except tonight and Sunday, July 6. Six of nine performances are entirely Texan; one is entirely Bhutan; July 3rd's performance brings together artists from the Bhutan Royal Academy of Performing Arts, the Buddhist Monk Community, and Mariachi Los Arrieros for what sounds like quite a memorable concert. Additionally, on Saturday, June 28, the festival presents the Ralph Rinzler Memorial Concert
in honor of René López, and featuring Grupo Folklorico y Experimental Nuevayorquino.
More information on the 2008 Smithsonian Folklife Festival can be found on their website.
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The Bhutan area is great -- spend time at every exhibit and stage, and don't ignore the singers and musicians just standing by themselves, making music.
The Texas music is wonderful and the cooking is okay if you like such things, but the Texas winemaking seems a bit unlikely.
The NASA area is huge. Not much is folkloric except the oral history stage and perhaps the painter doing some spacey renderings. The kiddies will love the displays. This is your chance to see where the real science data comes from -- unmanned missions. Everything else is engineering and death-defying stunts (manned missions).
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I've made a few Texas Music suggestions.
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I haven't made it as far as the NASA section yet (maybe today) but it seems much smaller than last year's festival.
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So did the food suck or what? There was a blurb on the radio this morning saying the Bhutan food would include such exotic delicacies as noodles, cheese, and tea! Sounds like the year Scotland was exhibiting and they had haggis burgers, which were indistiguishable from the rock-hard s**tcakes we got in gradeschool. Except these were $8.
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And, as usual, the Folklife festival is right on time for the hottest day of the year.
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We from Texas drink the suspect wine mostly to forget what George Bush and his ilk have done to our Texas. Specifically, how they mananged to take the ultimate 'live and let live' mentality there and turned all but an enclave in and around Austin into Taliban West.
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As much as I have been longing to see Bhutan, NASA and Texas combined in single festival, I don't see a drive-thru liquor store on that map. C'mon Smithsonian, where is the authenticity?
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The Smithsonian's recipe for Texas chili is highly suspect. Beans? Perhaps that cinnamon-laced abomination they serve in Ohio requires beans, but no self respecting bowl of Texas Red contains a single bean. About the most you would adulterate you chili with would be a bag of Fritos, for the eponymous "frito pie."
I shudder to think what they're doing to the chicken fried steak. Probably some godawful "heart smart" version fried in EVOO. Yum-o! Hurry up, SCOTUS. Someone please shoot me.
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Oh boy, crafts.
It'd be a lot more fun if they just let a circus set up down there.
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@Hillman - i'm pouring out a mournful hill country zinfandel to that.
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mmm i want Hard Times for lunch
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MSto - exactly what I was thinking. And I'm a sucker for Frito Pie. Dems good eats right there, I tell you what.
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As a born and bred Texan (and recent DC transplant), monkey's comment about the beans is strange. Some people like beans, others don't -- all are allowed to be Texans. I sometimes omit them, but, more often than not, include them, and I frequently add a pinch of cinammon. It is often not even enough to taste, but more just to sense. Also, I load my chili up in a bowl with some good ol' saltines and tons of cheddar, though you can't go wrong with Fritos.
As for Texas wine, some is passable, while some is just not. The climate ranges in the west (Lubbock) and central (Austin, Fredericksburg) are actually suited just fine for cab and merlot. The Texas whites I've had are generally suspect as it just doesn't stay cool enough anywhere for them to really fluorish, even in the Panhandle.
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Monkey, the cheese from Bhutan is made from yak's milk or something, so it's funky cheese. And they put hot peppers in everything, including their breakfast foods. The Post had an article about how many gourmands consider Bhutan's food to be the worst national cuisine, so I'm dying to try it just as a dare.
Mmmmm, funky cheese in the summer sun! Sounds like a good time.
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@Coro: It's hard to be a food purist when you're talking about as big a place is Texas. Point taken.
@Bethesdaist: worst food worldwide?!? go with g0d; and then tell us about it!
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Connie, here is the Post's article about Bhutan's notoriety in the food world. I'm hoping the folklife festival will have more exotic dishes from Bhutan, like fried hornets in tomato soup. Just like Mom used to make!
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everytime i see "NASA" and "Folklife" in the same sentence, i cringe.
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agreed erincarly. i thought it was some sort of massive typo - or an acronym for "nicaraguan association of stately associations." um. or something.