Arts Endowment Folk Arts Program
odd: label: Introduction
content: This program offered a retrospective of the work of the Folk Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts since its establishment in 1974. The Program aimed to provide support to regional or cultural groups in our incredibly varied nation that need a little encouragement to remain themselves, to retain their uniqueness, to honor and revere their artistic pasts-presents-futures, to keep American cultural diversity and creativity alive and well. In that time, the Folk Arts Program had learned that:

Folk arts are  -- complex -- . Every report resulting from its apprenticeship program emphasizes that there is far more to learn than the neophyte has expected. The great guitarists, lace-makers, and step-dancers make it look easy, but mastering the art and the essence of the style is a long-term job that requires a serious commitment.

Folk arts are  -- culturally specific -- . In every multi-cultural urban festival, each ethnic or tribal group likes to demonstrate its own special aesthetic vision, its own particular artistic life. The single truly universal principle appears to be  -- mutual appreciation -- .

Folk arts are  -- sophisticated -- . Each master craftsperson, each master musician, works from a tradition so complex and so artfully refined over generations that it takes the most careful documentation to capture it for our future benefit.

Folk arts are  -- alive -- . Indeed, in many places and among many groups, they are growing. It is true that each week - sometimes, it seems, each day - another old master is lost; it is that which makes the agency's work seem ever more urgent. Still, the young people are always with us, and they seem, at this time, to be reevaluating the past, to be learning from it, to be using it as a springboard for new artistic adventures.

To support these complicated, culturally specialized, urbane, and lively arts, the Folk Arts Program has tried to be quick and clever and creative; above all, it has tried to remain single-minded, with only one goal: to help preserve the very highest forms of the multiple aesthetic systems that make life in the United States joyful and exciting. Other programs within the Endowment endeavor to sponsor variation and creativity by nurturing individual talent, the private visions of the independent and self-motivated artist. Folk Arts has a different task: the fostering and nurturing of whole aesthetic systems. That these systems exist is enough to enliven everyday life in the present. Their development may well enlighten the future that awaits us. We look to the past to inform the present and make the future more elegant.

The 1981 Festival program featured a sampler of musicians who had received funding support from the NEA Folk Arts program or had benefitted from organizational grants to community cultural institutions.
label: Participants
content: John Alexander, 1914-2001, lead and manager, Sterling Jubilee Singers, Bessemer, Alabama

Jose Barrera, 1945-, guitarist, Los Angeles, California

Robert Borrell y su Kubata, Afro-Cuban music, Washington, D.C.

Paul Brown, 1952-, banjo player, Mt. Airy, North Carolina

Andy Cahan, banjo player, Mt. Airy, North Carolina

Liz Carroll, Irish fiddler, Chicago, Illinois

Theofannis Charasiades,  -- laouto -- , New York, New York

Eunise Cook, 1938-1985, lead, Sterling Jubilee Singers, Bessemer, Alabama

Hazel Dickens and Friends, bluegrass music, Washington, D.C.

Michael Flatley, Irish step dancer, flute player, Chicago, Illinois

Alice Gerrard, 1934-, vocalist, guitarist, Garrett Park, Maryland

José Gutiérrez, 1942-, harpist, Los Angeles, California

Achileas Halkias, fiddler, vocalist, New York, New York

Periklis Halkias, clarinetist, New York, New York

Henry Holston, tenor, Sterling Jubilee Singers, Bessemer, Alabama

James Jackson, blues guitarist, Fairfax Station, Virginia

John Jackson, 1924-2002, blues singer, guitarist, Fairfax Station, Virginia

Tommy Jarrell, fiddler, Mt. Airy, North Carolina

Sam Johnson, 1913-2001, lead, Sterling Jubilee Singers, Bessemer, Alabama

So Khamvongsa (1919-) and the Laotian Music Ensemble, Falls Church, Virginia

Tom Lacy, 1898-1989, baritone, Sterling Jubilee Singers, Bessemer, Alabama

Sam Lewis, bass, Sterling Jubilee Singers, Birmingham, Alabama

Cesareo Ramon,  -- jarana -- , Los Angeles, California

Ioannis Roussos,  -- santourri -- , New York, New York

Charlie Sayles, harmonica player, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Sandman Sims, tap dancer, New York, New York

Dock Terry, 1921-1999, lead, Sterling Jubilee Singers, Bessemer, Alabama

Paul Van Arsdale, hammer dulcimer, North Tonawanda, New York

William Van Arsdale, guitar, North Tonawanda, New York
name: label: Collection Creator
content: Smithsonian Institution. Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
setName: label: See more items in
content: Smithsonian Folklife Festival records: 1981 Festival of American Folklife
dataSource: label: Archival Repository
content: Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
identifier: label: Identifier
content: CFCH.SFF.1981, Series 3
objectType: label: Type
content: Archival materials