It was a bright, hot day and there were people everywhere.  But the heat and brutal rays of the sun were not enough to keep neither myself nor the crowds away from the Smithsonian Folklife festival.  Spread out across half of the National Mall just in front of the Washington monument, the yearly event consists of a small village of white tents, wooden demonstration huts and various food and beverage stands.  The featured cultures at the festival change from year to year and highlighted this year were Hungary and several regions of the world representing cultures who languages were in danger of going extinct.   This was only my second time at the festival- two years ago I was in DC and attended for the first time, eagerly looking forward to experiencing the National Folklife festival I had heard so much about over the years.

Musicians of the Bolivian highlands at the World Voices tent. Very lively and entertaining!

Festivals are a great way to explore the world while still in your own “backyard” and I have always enjoyed going to them.  Art festivals, music festivals, book festivals, they all have their attractions, but my favorite festivals are those which have an international flavor and where it is possible to listen to music and see performances that have roots that reach to anywhere  and everywhere on the planet.  The World Voices tent at this year’s folklife festival was no different and did not disappoint.  They had a full schedule that day, rotating throughout the day entertainment from the various countries.  Just by sitting in a folding chair in the shaded big wide tent I was able, in several hours, to travel from the Asian steppes through India, the Americas and the Caribbean.  The crowd moved freely in and out of the tent during the performances, but I sat through them all spellbound.

As I sat there immersed in the lively melodies of the Bolivian musicians,  I noticed the crowd becoming entranced as well, getting up to dance, learning the steps from a gentleman who was illustrating them.  With arms swinging, feet shuffling and hands clapping the whole tent was for a moment transported to the Andes highlands.  Not only was the crowd enjoying themselves, but the musicians were clearly pleased that their music was so well received.

Performers from the Asian steppes of Russia.

Even though I was in our nation’s capital I realized I could have been sitting in a similar tent, watching a similar performance, anywhere in the country.  Scenes like this are played out everywhere and I have experienced them myself in Houston, Chicago, and St. Louis.  As always, as I watch these performances, I take great joy in sharing that moment with the performers but at the same time am a little jealous.  My family has been entrenched in the US long enough that all traces of our immigrant heritage have been lost.  Thus I do not have a strong identity to any specific tradition and cannot claim any of the exotic dances or music as my own.  I am instead a mixture of many heritages that have blurred together over time to the point where no one ethnicity has any resonance with me.  Inevitably while watching the celebration of the various cultures I find myself wanting to be associated with one – any one of them.  I want to have that feeling of community that is engendered by sharing a common background.  Usually as I sit or stand in a crowd and watch the dancers, singers, and performers I imagine myself up there with them.  In the end, I always feel a bit left out and a little at sea as I wistfully watch these communities perform.

So there in the World Voices tent at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, in our nation’s capital, watching the cultural displays, watching how much fun the dancers were having, thinking about the history and heritage behind the art they were sharing, the familiar longing drew me to the performers.  I looked around the tent and observed the collection of people sitting in the audience and what I observed started me thinking about the diversity of our country.  On stage were people of a variety of different backgrounds, some Americans, sharing their various heritages with us, the audience, which was represented by Americans of an equally varied collection of backgrounds.

Large gazebo where Hungarian folk dancing lessons were being held. Large crowd taking advantage.

I began to realize that as someone with no strong allegiance to any one culture, I was free to embrace them all.  Because of where I grew up, in a country where you can find Mexican, Chinese, German, Ethiopian and Turkish food all within one block of each other, I am equally at home and adaptable when encountering any one of these ethnicities.  In contrast, I have met people, who, when teaching me the history of their country, emphasized the difference in bloodlines that are still present in the population 900 years later.  Diversity is clearly not welcome in such an environment, one that has difficulty adapting to change even after many centuries.  With our tradition of mixed heritage in the US, we automatically look forward, eager to see what we can learn next.  What happened decades ago, let alone centuries, is not what we focus on.

Thus realizing, and appreciating my relative “rootlessness”, now when I watch the beautiful displays of exotic costumes and dances my envy fades and my joy increases because at that moment I do feel a very strong sense of community- not just with the people on stage but encompassing the whole of the audience too. After all we are all there to learn and watch and appreciate together the various cultures that make up our great country. We all share the same American custom of bringing the old and new together to create the future.