Harmony In Three Voices: Folklife Festival

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DESPITE ITS FOCUS on regional and national cultures, the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival has a truly global scope. This year, the 10-week event highlights Wales, African-American oral traditions and Latin-American music styles, which may seem like disparate programs but have all disseminated new ideas and customs around the world.

Examining African-American oral tradition through storytelling and theater, "Giving Voice" was developed with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, which will open in 2015.

Complementing these programs is "Las Américas," which festival production manager Stephen Kidd says will "look at the variety of musical traditions that exist within Latin American countries and at the relationships among them and the differences between those cultural traditions."

The goal is to determine how such disparate cultures overlap in an ongoing give-and-take, and toward that end, there will be a joint performance on July 3 with Welsh harpist Catrin Finch and Colombian string band Grupo Cimarrón.

» National Mall; through July 5, free; 202-633-1000. (Smithsonian)

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner
Photo courtesy Crown Copyright