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California Mariachi Artist Nati Cano Nominated for a GRAMMY Award

Humboldt County Folklife Project: A Progress Report

 

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A Year in Review: Highlights of 2005

Over the past year, ACTA has had the opportunity to work with many outstanding artists and projects from diverse communities throughout California.  As the year comes to a close, we wanted to share some of the highlights of our work with New Moon readers.

This year ACTA worked with fourteen master artist and apprentice pairs during the fifth annual cycle of our Apprenticeship Program.  The program encourages the continuation of California’s traditional arts and cultures by contracting master artists to train qualified apprentices during a period of intensive learning.  This year’s apprentices studied a wide range of art forms from Western Saddle blanket weaving, to Mexican San Jarocho music, to Okinawan classical dance. The James Irvine Foundation, The San Francisco Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts generously supported this program.

Some of the participants in the Apprenticeship Program shared their struggles and accomplishments as they studied their art form.  Linda Hussa, a poet and rancher working in Cedarville, California, studied saddle blanket weaving with master artist Bonnie Chase.  Linda used the wool from her own Churro sheep to spin yarn and weave blankets for the local ranching community.  She wrote to us about the process of learning to weave:

The ACTA Apprenticeship Program has been one of the most satisfying adventures I have ever taken.  My goal was to learn how to weave a saddle blanket.  First, I had to tame a recalcitrant loom, understand its modes and sense of humor.  Then I learned the tensions of warp against weft so the edges of the blanket would remain straight.  Practice and attention to detail were the means to success.  Quiet evenings in our ranch house were soothed by the shuttle swishing across the strands of wool.  Something beautiful was happening there.  I’ve woven five blankets now.  Each is more of a joy because I let no mistake go uncorrected.  The Navajos leave a spirit line to allow evil to escape the work.  Evil has numerous opportunities to escape my work.  Yet, I’m having an easier time with each blanket.

Lakshmi Iyengar studied South Indian Bharata Natyam Classical Dance with her master artist and mother, Malathi Iyengar.  Already an advanced dancer, Lakshmi had hoped to refine her skills as a dance teacher and Nattuvanar, or dance conductor.  She told us about her experience of learning to teach other students:

 

I had hoped to learn as much as I could about teaching Bharata Natyam.  Therefore I focused a great deal of attention on the relationship between teacher and student.  This was also a personal goal essentially because I never thought I would be a successful teacher, therefore putting myself in that situation certainly helped me to grow and understand the process.  On the other hand, teaching a classical form of art is not easy, not only must the teacher have experience and knowledge, but also he or she must have maturity and wisdom.  At any rate, I found that I accomplished what I had set out to do which was to teach the next generation of dancers from our company, and pass on anything I have learned thus far.

In addition to Apprenticeships, ACTA also supported the artistic and organizational growth of nine individual artists, groups and organizations through the Traditional Arts Development Program.  The San Francisco Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts provide major support for this program. Aziz Faye, artistic director of the Senegalese dance and music company Khaley Nguewel, used the Traditional Arts Development contract to bring two master dancers from the East Coast to Los Angeles to give community workshops.  Here he shares the importance of the project:

ACTA’s contracting of master artists was very significant in the organization’s growth and visibility.  By producing this project, the Los Angeles West African dance community is gradually being recognized as a viable, though small, center for quality work.

The Folk and Traditional Arts Mentorship Initiative offered grants to ten Bay Area non-profit organizations for folk and traditional artistic and organizational mentorships with support from the Walter & Elise Haas Fund. This pilot program aimed to deepen understanding and foster appreciation inside and between cultural communities, as well as develop and strengthen folk and traditional arts organizations.  One of the participating mentors, Yair Dalal, shared how it felt to introduce his art form to new communities and to connect with audiences who shared a deep appreciation for his music.  Dalal, an Israeli musician who performs Iraqi-Jewish music, spent a month in the Bay Area as an artist-in-residence with the 20th Annual Jewish Music Festival.  He wrote about his experiences giving workshops and performances at a variety of local venues:

For me, the most touching experiences of this residency were in the schools, especially in West Oakland and Longfellow Middle School in Berkeley – meeting young people who never heard about you, your music, or where you come from.  At the middle school, a boy, a trumpet player, came up to me and said, ‘Can I hug you?’  A girl, whose parents are Iranian, wished her parents could hear my music, so I gave her a CD, something she wouldn’t be able to buy.  The kids in West Oakland were great – they didn’t try to impress me.  They treated me like I was one of them, calling me Mr. Violin.  The lecture at San Francisco Public Library was unique.  An Iraqi man originally from Basra started to cry during the lecture.  At the end, he hugged me and said ‘This is for my father.’  My own father went to school in Basra.

This year ACTA also added the Living Cultures Grants Program, in partnership with The Fund for Folk Culture, The Walter and Elise Haas Fund, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and The James Irvine Foundation. Living Cultures makes grants to California non-profit organizations for exemplary projects in the traditional arts.  Last month ACTA awarded grants to thirty outstanding projects.  We look forward to working with these artists and organizations throughout the coming year.

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California Mariachi Artist Nati Cano Nominated for a GRAMMY Award

Nati Cano's Mariachi Los Camperos received a GRAMMY nomination this year for Best Mexican/Mexican-American Album.  ¡Llegaron Los Camperos!: Concert Favorites of Nati Cano's Mariachi Los Camperos (Smithsonian Folkways Recordings) focuses on the concert repertoire of this four-decade mariachi institution, showcasing the group’s concert stage repertoire, skillfully arranged versions of classic mariachi melodies, and styles of traditional music from many regions of Mexico.  Cano is a 1989 National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowship award winner.

To order or learn more about ¡Llegaron Los Camperos!: Concert Favorites of Nati Cano's Mariachi Los Camperos, visit Smithsonian Folkways Recordings’ website.

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Humboldt County Folklife Project: A Progress Report

Andrea Graham, Independent Folklorist

The Ink People Center for the Arts in Eureka is an eclectic community arts organization founded over 25 years ago, with the motto “Weaving the Arts into the Fabric of Community.”  In addition to its own gallery, classes, mural projects, and other arts activities, Ink People serves as an umbrella for community-based groups, which include several that focus on traditional arts, such as the Institute for Native Knowledge and the Hmong Community of the Northcoast.  In 2003, Ink People executive director Libby Maynard saw a need for greater understanding of folk artists and traditional communities in Humboldt County, and was looking for ways to better serve those artists and include them in Ink People’s programs.  With the help of a grant from the Fund for Folk Culture’s California Traditional Arts Advancement Program, she hired folklorist Andrea Graham to conduct a field survey of the county to locate and document artists and communities carrying on traditional practices, and to make recommendations for how Ink People could better serve their needs.

Graham, an independent folklorist based in Idaho with 25 years of public folklore fieldwork, programming, and administrative experience, spent ten days in the county in the fall of 2003, and has returned twice more in 2004 and 2005, with additional funding from the Fund for Folk Culture.  Folklore fieldwork is a kind of detective work, involving a combination of observation, exploring community businesses and meeting places, perusing the yellow pages, reading local histories and newspapers and web sites, asking everyone for leads, and lots of just driving around and talking to people. Graham’s first impressions were that Humboldt County is incredibly diverse geographically, ecologically, and culturally, and also complex and sometimes contentious precisely because of that diversity.  But the people who live there have a strong bond with the place and a sense of belonging, which helps them find common ground.

From her work so far, Graham has found several categories of folk groups that merit further investigation.  The Native American cultures are particularly strong in Northern California, and most tribes are actively maintaining and passing on their traditional stories, crafts, foodways, hunting and fishing skills, and rituals.  Their stewardship of their own traditions has led to a cultural renaissance in Northern California American Indian culture and arts.  Ink People Center for the Arts has had a long and supportive relationship with the Northern California tribes.

Occupational cultures based on natural resources are a major distinctive element in Humboldt County.  These include logging, fishing, ranching, farming, and dairying. Combining several ways of making a living is also quite common, such as ranchers who are also small-scale loggers.  All of these occupations are under a lot of pressure these days, both economically and culturally, and all have a long and rich history of traditional skills, tools, language, and beliefs that most outsiders have no knowledge of. There is also a more recent cadre of back-to-the-landers who practice small-scale and specialty agriculture and participate in the network of farmers’ markets that exists county-wide. These are more than just ways of making a living, they are a way of life for their practitioners, and their families and communities.

Some occupational traditions are also tied to particular ethnic groups, and Humboldt County has a diverse roll call of immigrants who have been arriving since the late 1800s and continue to arrive today.  Swiss, Italian, Portuguese and Danish families are still involved in dairying and farming, and many immigrants have worked in the timber and fishing industries off and on.  Danes, Swedes, Finns, Norwegians, Swiss, Italians, Portuguese, and Yugoslavians all continued to arrive through the first third of the twentieth century, and many established social and fraternal organizations and built lodge halls that are still in use today.  They also celebrate festivals such as Scandinavian Midsommar, the Portuguese Holy Ghost Festival, and Swiss Independence Day.  Recent immigrants include those from Mexico and South America, and southeast Asians, particularly the Hmong, who were resettled after the Vietnam War.  These groups are much less visible in the community, but are gradually becoming part of the county’s cultural life.

Some of the people interviewed as part of this project included boat builder Ken Bates of Eureka, the last maker of fishing boats in the area; Julius Cabalzar of Bayside, who immigrated from Switzerland as an infant in the 1920s and is still active in the Swiss Club; custom fishing rod builder and river guide Alan Borges; Hoopa/Yurok/Quinault basketmaker Deb McConnell; quilters Betty Genzoli and Dorothy Cowan of Ferndale; Seth Griggs, the owner of Custom Crab Pots in Eureka; saddlemaker Ruth Hoke of Carlotta; and rancher and county supervisor Roger Rodoni.

With another year of project funding from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grants Program, Graham and Maynard will be working to create a database of folk artists and cultural resources, and creating a plan for ongoing traditional arts ventures in Humboldt County.

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