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Herminia Albarrán Romero Receives National
Heritage Fellowship
Herminia Albarran Romero with
National Endowment for the Arts
Chairman Dana Gioia
Photo credit: Bob Burgess
On Thursday September 22, 2005 National Endowment for the Arts Chairman Dana Gioia presented Herminia Albarrán Romero with a National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship in a ceremony on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C. Herminia Albarrán Romero is a master papel picado (the art of Mexican paper cutting) artist and altarista, a creator of altars and offerings. Originally from San Francisco de Asis, Mexico, Herminia now resides in San Francisco, CA. This month she is offering a series of workshops at San Francisco’s Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts to teach interested participants how to create paper flowers, papel picado, Pan de Muertos (Bread of the Dead), and the art of assembling a traditional altar. Workshops are open to the public and meet Saturday afternoons throughout October. Herminia’s altar will be exhibited in the gallery at Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts from November 2 – November 30, 2005. For more information visit the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts’ website. The workshops are offered with support from ACTA’s Folk and Traditional Arts Mentorship Initiative funded by the Walter and Elise Haas Fund.
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Bay Area Students Study Arab Percussion Music
Mari Pongkhamsing, ACTA
This month the Arab Cultural and Community Center of San Francisco will complete a series of classes designed to introduce the basic rhythms and drumming techniques of Arab percussion music. The classes were offered free of charge over the past year with support from ACTA’s Folk and Traditional Arts Mentorship Initiative funded by the Walter and Elise Haas Fund.
Students learned to play the derbakeh (Arabic tabla) and the frame drum. The derbakeh, one of the most popular percussion instruments in the Middle East, is a goblet-shaped ceramic drum with a fish or goatskin covering. The player can take advantage of the shape of the instrument to create many different sounds using different fingering techniques. Known for its deep tones, the frame drum (sometimes called tar or daff) is an instrument with a long history in the Middle East that can be traced back thousands of years. The Arab Cultural and Community Center chose to start their Music Education classes with these instruments because percussion plays such an essential role in Arab music. Students learned basic rhythms, fingering techniques, and music notation.
Last fall students had the opportunity to study with Mohsen Subhi, a Palestinian composer and master oud (lute) player and percussionist who taught in Berkeley and San Francisco before returning to Palestine. In the spring, Antoine Lammam, an Arabic drummer, composer, and poet from Lebanon, continued to mentor students. In the summer students worked with Vince Delgado, a percussionist and composer specializing in Middle Eastern and North Indian music. Delgado focused his instruction on Egyptian folk music. Students came from many different backgrounds; some Arab American students hoped to learn more about their own culture, while some students were percussionists from outside the community interested in learning a new drumming tradition.
Founded in 1973, The Arab Cultural and Community Center (ACCC) is committed to strengthening the understanding of Arab culture by providing organizations and communities in Northern California with educational programs and cultural events. The center introduces youth to the Arabic language and culture through weekly classes, hosts cultural events such as the Arab Cultural Festival, a daylong gathering celebrating the arts and traditions of the Arab world, and offers many types of social services to support the Arab American community.
For more information about the Arab Culural and Community Center, please visit ACCC’s website.
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The Kurdish Community of Bay Area performs at the San Francisco World Music Festival
Mustafa Kart, a Kurdish poet and community leader
Photo credit: Jim Block
Lily Kharrazi, ACTA
While Kurdistan does not have recognized political borders, 35 million Kurds live in present day Turkey, Iran, and Iraq. Outside of the Middle East, a small but active community of approximately 2,000 people have made the San Francisco Bay Area their home. Recently, they established a non-profit Kurdish-American Cultural Center in San Mateo County. The center is home to a new folkloric dance troupe, a children’s chorus, language classes, and community events. This public face is directly related to the current events in the Middle East which may hold promise for them as a political entity. Yet whatever the outcome may be, the history of the Kurdish people dispersed in many countries attests to the centrality of their cultural assets as a tool for keeping them distinct. To understand the potency of this, consider that it has only been 15 years since the four dialects that are spoken among the Kurds have been alphabetized. Up until this time, oral traditions have been the cultural lifeline. Kurdish music, dance, and oral recitation are very animated and passionate in their delivery.
Some of these forms were performed by Bay Area residents, who made their debut alongside a roster of international artists, at the sixth annual San Francisco World Music Festival on October 2, 2005, in a celebration of the pre-Islamic holiday known as Nowruz. Taking their place in a program that brought together Afghans, Assyrians, Azeris, Iranians, Greeks, Chinese, and Zoroastrians, Mr. Mustafa Kart, a community leader and poet was featured in one segment highlighting Kurdish traditions. Although he writes contemporary poetry, he continues in the tradition of the dengbej, a sung poetry style that is thousands of years old.
Ozcen Oztoprak, a classicaly trained Kurdish vocalist
Photo credit: Jim Block
More Kurdish music can be heard on October 8, 2005, by classically trained vocalist, Ozden Oztoprak, who will sing in both the Kurdish dialect of Zaza and in Turkish. She also will accompany herself on saz, or Turkish lute, in a program dedicated to women’s voices. Ozden also teaches the newly formed Kurdish Children’s Chorus, who will perform folk songs at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum on October 9, 2005, in a Youth Music Showcase. Finally, a lecture demonstration, “A Closer Look at Kurdish Music,” on October 13, 2005, will feature these local treasures in a more in-depth discussion of their unique cultural and political histories.
For a complete listing of these events visit the San Francisco World Music Festival’s website.
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