2016 Folklife

TOGETHER WE SING Call and Response, Work Songs, Sea Shanties, Protest Songs and more Janet Stetcher, Seattle Labor Chorus: Singing in a chorus empowers us. We become part of a powerful harmony, a larger voice. We breathe together, our hearts beat together and we share each other’s strength and beauty. In a community chorus, we are all equal, each a critical and unique thread in the fabric. In a justice chorus, we sing out a message that informs the listener, sustains the activist and empowers the singers. This is especially true if the membership or repertoire represents a marginalized viewpoint, a voice that has been ignored. Singing can affect even those who don’t consider themselves singers, and who are perhaps afraid to sing. The labor community has used song to tell the stories of recent injustice or triumph, to preserve memory and to let people know that others have shared their struggle. Catch the Labor Showcase on Saturday, May 28, at 7–9:30 p.m. in the Cornish Playhouse. HUMAN VOICES IN HARMONY Choirs, Doo-Wop, Barbershop, Glee and more Mary Sherhart, Bulgarian Voices of Seattle Women’s Choir Director: The power of singing has a deep significance in a group like Bulgarian Voices of Seattle Women’s Choir. Singing together each week offers a chance to be together as women with a common immigrant experience. We celebrate new babies, provide comfort for losses, make new friends in a small community, and explore folk songs and traditions of our homeland. Most of the women, all of whom were born in Bulgaria, never sang their traditional music before joining the choir, and many did not like it. However, nostalgia for home brings a new appreciation for their roots and a pride in sharing it with the general public. It is deeply moving to the singers who perform in traditional costumes, some made by their own grandmothers and great grandmothers. I have organized my life around singing since joining my first choir as a fourth grader in Fairbanks, Alaska, in 1964. Singing took me from a shattered home life as a teenager into a life rich with music, culture and experiences. I have seen singing enrich many lives of all ages in cultural groups, choirs, at raucous parties, music camps and around small dinner tables in someone’s cozy home. Catch the film “This Baba: Songs of Our Families” followed by a Q&A on Monday, May 30, at 2:30 p.m. in the SIFF Film Center. THE POWER OF THE HUMAN VOICE THROUGH SONG Every year, Northwest Folklife works to showcase a Northwest community during the year leading up to the festival. This “Cultural Focus” allows Northwest Folklife to connect more in-depth with the people that we serve, and empower their artistic expressions and cultural traditions. The 2016 Cultural Focus, “The Power of the Human Voice Through Song,” explores the power of the human voice and its role among communities. Singing is one of the most natural means of human communication and expression. Songs play an essential role in the social fabric of cultures — every ritual a community shares calls for its own song: birth, marriage, death, the planting and harvest, the coming of spring and fertility, the changing of the seasons, and so much more. Thus, singing is an ideal tool to express the common themes of humanity and culture. During the 45th Annual Northwest Folklife Festival, join us for four days of music performances, panels, presentations, films, visual arts and participatory workshops that explore the power of the human voice specifically through these following 5 themes. Your $10 suggested daily donation helps cover daily production costs. Thank You! CULTURAL FOCUS SONGS OF OUR CHILDREN: LULLABIES, NURSERY RHYMES, AND PLAY SONGS Masguda Shamsutdinova, Ph.D., Composer, Ethnomusicologist: “When a child is created in a woman, everything sings in her, and everything sings for her. A lullaby’s magic is in mother’s sound. It is in her voice, and in the calm that is first created in her own body. In singing her lullaby, a mother creates a rhythm of love and calm in herself first, and then gives that to her child. The song shows the baby that it’s mother will protect him. It is trust. More than 200 people have shared with me their lullabies to collect and preserve - they have sung to me as if I were their child.” Seattle Sings World Lullabies, Saturday at 2 p.m. in the JBL Theater. Seattle Labor Chorus Penka Encheva of ‘This Baba’: Songs of Our Families. “I am quite certain that singing saved my life.” “Singing together gives us courage to fight injustice.” 4