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La Cultura Cura: How Latinos Are Reclaiming Their Ancestral Diets
Since 2007, there has been a 111 percent increase in Latina-owned businesses in California. That uptick, as Marisol Medina-Cadena explains in this piece, speaks less to a commercialized trend and more to a generations-old tradition of sustainable food culture in Latin American communities. “Maca root, chia seeds, spirulina, and cacao are not only vitamin supplements for good health,” Medina-Cadena writes, “but a means for diasporic peoples of the Americas to connect back to cultures and foodways that colonialism and assimilation worked to erase.”
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Swallowing the Sun: Folk Stories about the Solar Eclipse
On the heels of this month’s solar eclipse, we recommend folklorist James Deutsch’s survey of the many stories associated with the natural wonder, among them “a monster devouring the sun, a punishment from the gods for human errors, and a prelude to apocalypse.” From tales of Eternal Bats and Blue Jaguars destroying the stars to stories linking solar eclipses to Adam and Eve’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, the tales associated with solar eclipses are as enthralling as they are enchanting.
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Henry Cowell: Mellifluous Cacophony and Its Legacy
“It was Cowell’s inclination to avoid conventional techniques and revel in the mixtures of melody and tonality that made me love playing his piano music,” Sorrel Doris Hays writes in this essay for Smithsonian Folkways Magazine. Revisiting Henry Cowell’s experimental oeuvre, Hays pays tribute to the pianist’s rich and resplendent work. “To this day, all 75 years of days, I sit down at the piano and get a kick out of showing someone the glories of sound in one of his grandest pieces ‘The Harp of Life.’”
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Myth and Matricide: How the Narwhal Got Its Tusk
“The myth of the narwhal explains why it is different from other whales in the arctic, and why the narwhal—as a former human being living in the Arctic—is so special to the Inuit people,” James Deutsch explains in this article. Drawing on the collected myths of Danish Inuit explorer and ethnologist Knud Rasmussen and German American anthropologist Franz Boas, Deutsch examines the key element in both versions: the transformation of a mother into the first narwhal, her hair twisted into a tusk.
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Capoeira: From Occult Martial Art to International Dance
Capoeira is a dance as firmly rooted in Afro-Brazilian history as it is in contemporary practice, Juan Goncalves-Borrega explains in the Folklife Festival Blog. Tracing the history of capoeira from a social infirmity to an officially recognized sport, Goncalves-Borrega takes a closer look at the draw and deftness of international dance. “When I couldn’t find capoeira, I started to observe nature—how the animals survive, how they fly, how they hunt, how the animals behave,” Mestre João Grande explains. “Capoeira is nature.”
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Images (top to bottom): 1) Todo Verde’s mission is to create delicious and healthy plant-based food options inspired by familiar tastes using Mexican and South American flavors. Photo courtesy of Todo Verde. 2) Approaching a total eclipse in Queensland, Australia, November 2012. Photo by James Niland. 3) Henry Cowell’s Complete Works for Violin and Piano; Year of recording: 1980. 4) Image courtesy of Biodiversity Heritage Library. 5) Capoeira roda in the Arts and Industries Building at the 2017 Folklife Festival. Photo by Daniel Martinez, Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives. |
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