Missouri Folk Arts Program Announces 2024 Living Traditions Sustainer Fellows

Missouri Folk Arts Program Announces 2024 Living Traditions Sustainer Fellows

May 13, 2024

COLUMBIA, MO – The Missouri Folk Arts Program is thrilled to announce the recipients of the 2024 Missouri Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowship, the state’s award to recognize the artistic excellence and lifetime achievement of living traditional artists and community scholars in the Show Me State. The fellowships honor these individuals and their deep-rooted contributions to traditional arts within their vibrant Missouri communities.

Three nominees rose to the top of the highly competitive pool. Please join us in congratulating: Gordon McCann (Springfield), Prasanna Kasthuri (Ballwin), and Sharon “Bear” Foehner (St. Louis). They will be celebrated on May 19, 2024, at Compass, Inc., 1107 University Avenue, Columbia, Mo., along with the 2024 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program participants, from 2:30 – 4:30 p.m.

Missouri’s 2024 Living Traditions Sustainer Fellows:

Gordon McCann, Old-time Rhythm Guitarist and Community Scholar

Springfield, Mo.

Dean Thomas Peters and Kaitlyn McConnell nominated Mr. McCann and wrote: “McCann co-authored with Vance Randolph volume two of Ozark Folklore: An Annotated Bibliography, published in 1987. McCann became especially interested in regional music, and enjoyed playing guitar at jam sessions such as Emanuel Wood’s Ozark Opry in Ozark, Mo. At that weekly jam session, he met fiddler Art Galbraith (1909- 1993), with whom he later performed professionally for seventeen years.

In the 1970s, McCann also began to make audio recordings of the music at gatherings such as jam sessions, fiddle contests, house parties, and festivals, first to learn guitar chords better and then to document the music more fully. Among the fiddlers he documented extensively during the 1970s were Glen Rickman, Emanuel Wood, Lonnie Robertson, Art Galbraith, Raymond Campbell, Jude Herndon, Tilford Jones, Alton Jones, and Bob Holt.

In 1978, he began to perform locally and nationally with fiddler Art Galbraith at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the San Diego Folk Festival, the 1984 World’s Fair, the National Folk Festival at Wolf Trap, and at many Midwest locations connected to the Mid-America Arts Alliance. They continued to perform together until Galbraith’s death in 1993. McCann formally retired in 1996, and he became deeply involved in projects related to Ozarks folk music.

Prasanna Kasthuri, Bharatanatyam Dancer, Performer, and Teacher

Ballwin, Mo.

Seema Kasthuri wrote in her nomination: “Prasanna Kasthuri fondly and respectfully known as Guruji (meaning the respected teacher) is a Bharatanatyam dancer, performer and teacher based in St. Louis MO.

He is a well-known personality in the art space around the world. He established a dance organization called Shantala Arts Academy, in 1985 in India. He then established Soorya Performing Arts in 2002 in St. Louis, Mo., to promote Indian classical dance, music, and theater to the greater Midwest audience of United States of America. He headed many great projects co-sponsored by the prestigious Regional Arts Council of St. Louis and Missouri Arts Council. He created some unique productions such as – “Gokula Nirgamana” – a first Indian Opera ever performed outside India. In this production, dancers sang and danced simultaneously, which is a rare achievement in the field of Bharathanatyam. He collaborated with Pandit Vishwamohan Bhat to compose his innovative – “Rainbow-II” – a dance production based on famous English and American Poems. He was invited to International Tap festivals held in Oklahoma and St. Louis and performed in Asian Festivals in Columbus, Ohio.

Apart from these he has trained thousands of students in India, Europe, and in the USA.”

Sharon “Bear” Foehner, St. Louis Blues Musician

St. Louis, Mo.

As Ms. Foehner’s nominator Andy Lewis wrote: “Sharon Foehner—the singer/songwriter, guitarist, and bassist who performs as Sharon Bear—is one of St. Louis’s true contemporary links to its 100+ year-long history of innovation in blues music. The distinct musical feeling she gained during her tenure with many of the city’s most vital and influential blues legends is felt by all who see her perform, as well as all of the musicians and area students for whom she has been a generous mentor.

Preserving the history of St. Louis blues has also become a personal mission for Sharon, and her original songs like “Bennie, Bennie, and the 7th Son” celebrate those she learned from and those who came before. In this case, “Bennie” is Bennie Smith, the beloved St. Louis guitarist and singer with whom Sharon completed two apprenticeships through the Missouri Folk Arts program in 1995 and 1997. Foehner also has a dense archive of recordings she has made of regional blues icons beginning in the 1980s, amounting to an important well of knowledge for the future of St. Louis blues. Channeling the work of musicians who are no longer with us, like Bennie Smith and Henry Townsend, Sharon has passionately continued St. Louis’s unique legacy in the blues.”

Living Traditions Sustainer Fellowships are modeled on the National Heritage Fellowships presented since 1982 by the NEA. For Missouri’s fellowship, Missouri Folk Arts Program uses the NEA’s definition of folk and traditional arts:

 The folk and traditional arts, which include crafts, dance, music, oral traditions, visual arts, and others, are those that are learned as part of the cultural life of a community whose members share a common ethnic heritage, cultural mores, language, religion, occupation, or geographic region. These traditions are shaped by the aesthetics and values of a shared culture and are passed from generation to generation, most often within family and community through observation, conversation, and practice.

This project is made possible through grant funds received from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and the Missouri Arts Council, with support from the Museum of Art and Archaeology at the University of Missouri.

About the Missouri Folk Arts Program

In the mid-1980s, the Missouri Arts Council (MAC) and University of Missouri formed a partnership with National Endowment for the Arts grants that established a statewide folk arts program to support traditional artists, their communities, and organizations. With ongoing grants from the NEA and MAC, the Missouri Folk Arts Program continues to build cross-cultural understanding by documenting, sustaining, and sharing our state’s living folk arts and folklife in collaboration with Missouri’s citizens. Since 1993, Missouri Folk Arts Program has been anchored at the University’s Museum of Art and Archaeology.

For more information on the Missouri Folk Arts Program, contact Lisa L. Higgins, director, HigginsLL@missouri.edu, 573-882-6296, https://mofolkarts.missouri.edu/