Juan Uribe is a Colombian musician and recording engineer living in New York, he has played with La Cumbiamba Eneye, Rebolu, Edmar Castañeda, and the United Nations Orchestra. After earning his degree in Jazz Performance (Saxophone) from City College of New York, he...
Dr. Liu was born in China and has lived in the Albany area for over 30 years. He holds a Ph.D. in economics and formerly served as a principal economist for the State of New York. Alongside his professional career, he has maintained a lifelong interest in art,...
Denise “Weetahmoe” Silva-Dennis (Shinnecock/Hassanamisco-Nipmuc) is a multi-disciplinary artist and educator living on the Shinnecock Nation in Southampton, New York. Denise retired from the Southampton School District in 2016 after a 21-year teaching career, K-12, as...
I make acoustic guitars in a shop about the size of a two-car garage, and I use woods that grow right here in the area where I live. What is most important to me in guitar making is to create a pleasing sound, an attractive appearance, good craftsmanship, and an...
I grew up in a family that had parties for everything, from christenings to first communions, quinceañeras to weddings. A party was food, music and dance to celebrate milestones in life, except funerals. But when mom sent me to dance classes...
Shayee is a multifaceted Nigerian artist, born into a family of visual and performing artists. She started at the tender age of three, dancing, singing, and doing textile and painting alongside her mother, Nike Okundaye. She has always found a way to infuse her...
I spent my early years in New York speaking Ukrainian as my first language. When I started kindergarten, I realized everything about me was different from the other kids at school. I wanted to fit in, and had a hard time accepting myself for who I was. By high school...
Dobre Den! Good Day! My name is Cheryl Dutko and I am an American of Carpatho-Rusyn descent. I imagine that you never heard of a country called Carpatho-Rus and you would be correct. There never was a country of that name. But people who live in the...
Countries have anthems, branches of service have marches, lovers share “our song,” and big cities like Chicago, San Francisco, and New York have million seller pop hits. So why can’t towns and villages celebrate with their own song? This is the story of one upstate hamlet in Essex County and how some elementary students created their very own hometown theme song.
For the second year in a row the NY/NJ Folk Arts Roundtable convened in Schenectady, NY! From May 5th to 7th folklorists, artists, arts administrators and tradition bearers gathered for the 42nd time! We kicked things off on Monday afternoon with Asiyah Kurtz, who...
Sara Milonovich is an award-winning songwriter and fiddler from the Mohawk Valley who performs nationally and internationally with her alt-country band, Sara Milonovich & Daisycutter. A 2023 winner of the Bluebird Golden Pick Contest (Bluebird Cafe/Taylor...
Vicie A. Rolling of "Framing the Past", is a storyteller and oral historian who concentrates on telling the stories of African American life in the twentieth century. She says, "With historical research, I craft dialogue and narratives of their lives. I sometimes...
Step dance, also known as stepping, is a style of percussive dance where a dancer uses their entire body as an instrument to make rhythms and sounds through a mixture of footsteps, spoken words,and hand claps. Traditionally stepping was rooted and developed after the...
Pamela Badila is a folkteller artist and co-founder, along with her late husband Elombe Badila, of the Diata Diata International Folkloric Theatre. Pamela Badila is a visual and performing artist with a background in education. As part of of Diata Diata...
Maxwell Kofi Donkor is an internationally recognized artist and master cultural educator who is most known for his performances and teaching of African Drumming and Dance, through the Sankofa African Drum and Dance Ensemble. For many decades, he has focused on...