Colombian culture, as it intertwines with the country’s natural bio-diversity, will be on display on the National Mall in Washington D.C. for the 2011 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
The “Colombia: The Nature of Culture” exhibition at this year’s Folklife Festival will celebrate the bio-cultural diversity of Colombia and will explain how the variety of cultures in the country are connected to their natural environments.
Gold mining techniques still used by the ancestors of the African slave trade in the Pacific bio-region of Choco will be presented along with leather crafts from the Orinoco Plains and basket weaving from the Andean Savannah.
Artists and performers will conduct forums to demonstrate and explain their customs and the impact that the natural environment has on them.
According to the festival’s website, “a Mompox drum maker will discuss how his tradition depends on protecting the fragile flood plains that contain the wood used to build his instruments,” and a “basket weaver from Filandia will demonstrate the creative solutions she has found to maintain the vitality of her tradition, at a time when the industrial coffee workers do not use her baskets for picking coffee.”
The Folklife Festival, which will also celebrate the history of rhythm and blues and the 50th Anniversary of the Peace Corps, will run from June 30 to July 4 and July 7 to 11 on the streets of the National Mall.