It’s unmistakable, the percussion that stirs downtown during the Tucson Meet Yourself Planet Djembe and Mamaxe dancer performances. Sinde Rubiner, a founding member of Planet Djembe, reflects on the traditions of these West African rhythms and the powerful experiences conveyed during Tucson Meet Yourself, over the past five years of the group’s …
Archives for December 2014
A Maestro’s Gift: Banderolas Tradition
When Tucson’s cultural quilt comes to town, there’s one Pima County Courthouse Folk Arts Courtyard demonstration table that fills up with joyful children eager to learn the decorative art of Mexican papel picado. Master artisan María de Jesús Robles has demonstrated the traditional chisel-cut art for most of the four-plus decades of TMY, and her …
Heritage and Dance Connect Community
by Nic Hartmann Folklife Initiatives Fellow College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Arizona When I first met native Swede and VASA dance leader Ami Kinnison last October, we were standing behind the VASA Lodge booth at Tucson Meet Yourself, where she had been helping to sell meatballs and saft during the festival. I had been …
Savor Tasty Treasures
It’s all about giving something from the heart, and then having fun watching people enjoy their tastings at the TMY fry bread booths. It’s also all about the family cooks who shape the dough balls into sweet or savory traditional delights. Fry bread is part of the narrative of Native American history, linked more than a century ago to the Dine …
Field School As Hands-On Culture
The fourth annual Southwest Folklife Alliance's ethnographic field school will convene January 18–24, 2015, in Banámichi, Sonora, Mexico, a week of fun and intensive exploration of cultural documentation and technique. In hands-on practice and small group discussion with local tradition bearers as well as a prestigious faculty, individuals with a …
Aiding the Rio Sonora
The heartland of the Southwest Folklife Alliance's field school -- Banámichi -- paid a price this past year when a 125 year old mine experienced a spill that sprawled into the watershed of the Rio Sonora. Bill Steen, co-founder of The Canelo Project and a member of the Field School faculty, provides this update for BorderLore readers: In August …