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An Apprenticeship in Persian Percussion

An Apprenticeship in African American Quilting

 

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ACTA Partners with UC Davis on Health and Traditional Arts Study

Sherwood Chen, Associate Director, ACTA

With support from the California Endowment, ACTA is partnering with the UC Davis Center for Reducing Health Disparities (CRHD) to launch an evaluation of ACTA’s programs to assess health impacts associated with traditional arts participation.

The study will examine how participation in traditional arts-focused programs – including ACTA’s Living Cultures Grants and Apprenticeship Programs – may have specific links to improved health outcomes, and how traditional arts can inform innovative vehicles for wellness.

With the goal of sharing findings publicly by Summer 2008, the study spans a diversity of artists, communities, generations, and practices supported by ACTA.  Key issues on traditional arts’ role at community and individual levels – including cultural identity, acculturation and assimilation, intergenerational relations, stress management, faith-based practice, and physical and mental health – will be highlighted, identifying characteristics in traditional arts programs which promote good health.

The study is being steered by ACTA staff, Amy Kitchener and Sherwood Chen; CRHD Assistant Director Dr. Elizabeth Miller, a trained medical anthropologist, pediatrician and internal medicine practitioner; and CRHD Director Sergio Aguilar-Gaxiola, an internationally renowned expert on mental health in ethnic populations.  CRHD seeks to address disparities in health among underserved communities through identifying and evaluating innovative, culturally, and linguistically responsive community-based interventions.

An advisory committee for the study consists of diverse health and arts advocates and artists, including Penina Taesali from Talking Roots Arts Collective, Asian/Pacific Islander Youth Promoting Advocacy & Leadership (Oakland); Paula Pimm Allen of the United Indian Health Services (Arcata); Hugo Morales of Radio Bilingüe (Fresno); Chike Nwoffiah of Oriki Theatre (Mountain View); Charya Burt of Charya Burt Cambodian Dance Company (Windsor); Patricia Rodriguez of the Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts (San Francisco); and Rudy Garcia of Danzantes Unidos.

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An Apprenticeship in Persian Percussion

Mari Pongkhamsing, Special Projects Coordinator, ACTA

Houman Pourmehdi and Bita Sharif recently completed a six month intensive apprenticeship in Persian tonbak percussion as participants in Round 6 of ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program.  The tonbak, a goblet shaped drum carved from a single block of wood and covered with goat skin, is considered the chief Persian percussion instrument.  During the apprenticeship they focused on fingering techniques, musical theory and improvisation to help Bita move to an advanced level of playing.

Houman began learning percussion as a small child.  When he was only three years old he received his first tonbak as a gift from his grandparents, who noticed him playing rhythms on a makeshift box.  His father had also been a percussionist but he gave up music to become an engineer.  He encouraged his son to pursue a career as a doctor or engineer, but Pourmedhi committed himself to studying music, becoming an apprentice to Master Effetah and then Master Morteza Ayan.  Soon after Pourmedhi moved to the United States twenty years ago, he began performing and touring throughout the country.

He co-founded the Lian Ensemble, an innovative Persian musical group with a strong fan base in Los Angeles, the city with the largest community of Iranians outside of Iran.  The Lian Ensemble performs mystical Persian music, often incorporating lyrics by the Sufi poets Rumi or Hafez.  They also collaborate with jazz musicians, to innovate within the tradition.  Pourmedhi explains, “Part of the tradition is to innovate.  My teacher began to play with violinists.  At that time that was an amazing innovation to play with violin and clarinet and even piano.  They played Persian music with a totally different sound.

His apprentice, Bita Sharif also incorporates the Persian classical tradition she is studying into her contemporary multi-media compositions created as a student at Cal Arts.  Bita was born in Iran and moved to the United States when she was very young.  She adopted the American culture but also feels at home in the traditional Persian community.  She explains, “My art is kind of a bridge, and hopefully my art will embrace these different aspects.”

Though they have a shared interest in experimentation, the focus of this apprenticeship has been on giving Bita a solid foundation in traditional Persian percussion because Houman believes every musician must first understand tradition before they can innovate.  He also believes in teaching in a traditional Persian style and explains, “We think art goes through friendship.  We believe in heart to heart teaching and we always try to establish this in our classes. Being in the ambience of the culture, drinking the tea, and sitting and talking together is all a part of it.”

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An Apprenticeship in African American Quilting

Mari Pongkhamsing, Special Projects Coordinator, ACTA

Allyson Allen and her niece Krysta Wright recently completed an intensive seven month apprenticeship in African American quilting and doll making as participants in Round 6 of ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program.  During the apprenticeship Krysta learned several new hand appliqué techniques.  Appliqué involves sewing pieces of fabric onto a foundation fabric to create designs or pictures.  During the apprenticeship Krysta created a wall hanging, spider puppet, and two dolls, based on the African tale of the spider weaver, which describes the origin of Kente cloth in Ghana.  Allyson also created a pictorial quilt about the spider weaver and Allyson and Krysta presented their work at several different venues while telling the tale of the spider weaver and acting it out with the puppets and dolls.

Allyson’s older sister taught her to sew and knit when she was a young child.  Her mother, who was from Jamaica, taught Allyson to make cloth dolls and inspired a love of storytelling.  Allyson learned the art of quilting as an adult from her paternal grandmother.  She wanted to integrate the African American oral tradition with the art of quilting and began making pictorial quilts and giving presentations about African American history.  For many years she has also taught sewing, quilting, and doll making and she is one of the master teachers in the Dolls of Hope Project which sends dolls to HIV/AIDS infected children in Africa.

Allyson prefers to hand sew and specializes in heavy embellishing and hand finishing.  She explains that appliqué is a traditional African American style of quilting, “The pictorial story form is directly related to African heritage.  Slaves would record things in images on quilts before they could read or write.”  Other traditional African American methods of quilting include strip piecing, which uses the entire piece of fabric, cut into pieces, use of bold colors, and asymmetrical patterns.  Allyson noted that African Americans have adopted European methods in their quilts too, such as the use of embroidery.

Allyson started teaching her niece the art of quilting as soon as Krysta was old enough to operate a sewing machine and they have continued to work together on more and more complex projects.  Allyson says that she enjoys having an apprentice because it helps in her own work.  She explains, “I get a different perspective on projects.  The way she looks at creating something is fresher and she brings up ideas that I wasn’t even thinking about.”  Krysta enjoys working with her aunt and she is hoping to use some of the sewing techniques she has learned to start making her own clothing.  She also helps her aunt with doll making workshops.  She adds, “It’s really cool that they take those dolls to Africa.  It makes you feel happy and proud of yourself that you’re doing that for them.”

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The Ihuk Ceremony and Maple Bark Skirts

Sherwood Chen, Associate Director, ACTA

Early springtime, depending on rainfall and seasonal changes, is the ideal time to collect big leaf maple tree bark for use in making maple bark skirts, a tradition practiced amongst Karuk women in their ancestral territory located along the Klamath and Salmon Rivers of Northern California.  Karuk master artist Holly Hensher and Karuk/Yurok apprentice Paula Pimm Allen describe the optimal bark conditions to remove strips measuring up to 10-feet long, as emitting a popping sound as it releases easily from the trunk. As participants in ACTA’s Apprenticeship Program, Holly and Pimm worked together to gather and prepare soap root, bear grass, acorns, basket material, medicinal herbs, and the innermost layer of maple bark, the latter for use in creating maple bark skirts worn by girls and women in tribal ceremonies, most notably the Ihuk Ceremony (Flowerdance), celebrating a girl’s entry into womanhood.

Through prayer about how to bring this ceremony back to the community, accompanied by extensive research to learn the old songs and to create the regalia including the essential maple bark skirts, the Ihuk Ceremony was revived in 1996 by a dedicated group of Karuk ceremonial families, after not having been practiced for over 80 years.  Ten years ago, Holly expanded her skills as a weaver by making maple bark skirts under the guidance of Lyn Risling, one of the instrumental cultural leaders and artists leading the Ihuk Ceremony revival.

Gathering, peeling, soaking and preparing the layers of bark, sizing and grading of the strips, twining, and proper ceremonial care and blessing are all part of the process of making a skirt.  Holly and Pimm worked together in all these phases at sites in Orleans and Somes Bar, creating during their apprenticeship two skirts to add to a growing collection of ten, already in use at Ihuk and Brush Dance Ceremonies. Each step also engaged community and family members directly associated with the girls who were being honored in the ceremony, as well as Pimm and Holly’s own family members. “It just seems like there’s more of a healing and more for the community, for the girl and everybody that participates,” explained Holly.

Making maple bark skirts demands a certain daily observation of and relationship to the landscape, and finding that perfect timing of when the bark can be removed from the trunk. “It means you have to pay attention to your surroundings and think about what is going on in the natural world instead of zooming through life,” Holly notes.

This is why Holly and Pimm share a keen interest in quotidian and utilitarian items, including the soap root brushes used to clean baskets, and in the continuation and development of the Ihuk ceremony.  They emphasized that although maple bark skirts and soap root brushes did not bear as many strict observances as other types of ceremonial regalia, the spiritual import of these items and of their creation was just as strong.

The Ihuk ceremony, Holly notes, “is about prayer, about being a good person. When you look around at who is there in that circle around you… to support you, [you] know and appreciate that fact.  When you are making a skirt like this, you are thinking about these things. You are thinking about how it is to be appreciated by a whole community and having a role and responsibility in that community.  And that gives you value.”

Pimm, who, in addition to her key roles in ceremonial protocol and as a singer, serves as Traditional Resource Specialist at Arcata’s United Indian Health Services, notes the opportunity to impart wisdom to the young women. “We talk to the girls about thinking about who made those skirts, what went into them, representing their families, the kind of thoughts they should be having.”

The inclusive nature of the process of making maple bark skirts, as well as the opportunity to honor womanhood, increases the opportunity for a shared experience, bringing in more people into the annual cycle of collecting bark and constructing skirts each year, and to the ceremonies.  The familial, celebratory nature of the Ihuk Ceremony results in an accessibility which allows people to “feel like they can participate in a way they haven’t been able to before,” which, Pimm notes, creates stronger community links and bridges generations of women. “I’m not the first one to hear that popping noise, and I’m not going to be the last.”

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