Feb. 15, 2019
2019 Apprenticeship Team, Premachandra & Kanumury
It is with great pleasure that we roll out profiles of the 2019 Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program teams of master artists and apprentices. We are especially delighted to introduce readers to master Bharatanatyam dancer Ashalatha Premachandra (“Asha Prem”) and her apprentice Kareena Kanumury. Asha Prem is no stranger to the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program; she taught two apprentices in TAAP in 1988, the project’s third year (it is now in its 34th year). As a small child in Bangalore, Asha was eager to dance and learn the South Indian tradition, working very closely with her teacher Sunandana for fourteen years.
Jan. 16, 2019
Then & Now: Ray Joe Hastings
Once again, we are happy to launch a Then and Now: Apprentice Journeys video on our YouTube channel! Take a look at an edited video from the live oral history of master gigmaker Ray Joe Hastings of Doniphan, Mo. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CKowSlSM81M] Ray Joe Hastings with gig. Photo Credit: Lisa L. Higgins In April 2018, MFAP’s Folk Arts Specialist Deborah A. Bailey had the honor to interview Mr. Hastings at the Community Center in downtown Doniphan, where he shared stories about his 1996…
Oct. 22, 2018
Tribute to Ann Rynearson
It seems these messages come far too often now. We were heartbroken to learn that Dr. Ann Rynearson, who retired in 2009 from International Institute St. Louis, died in late September. Ann Rynearson was influential for many years upon Missouri’s Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program. On occasion, she served as a volunteer panelist who reviewed TAAP applications for funding. On several occasions, though, she put her cultural anthropologist hat on, seeing the artistic expressions that newcomers carried with them as they resettled in Missouri; the best of those artists, she encouraged…
Oct. 1, 2018
Tribute to Becky Schroeder
We’ve learned sad news that Becky Boies Schroeder died on September 14, 2018. What a loss! So many knew Becky and her late husband Dolf for their tireless research and support of Missouri history and culture organizations. She herself was a tenacious editor for the University of Missouri Press Missouri Heritage Readers Series, which covered just about everything Missouri–including Gladys Caines Coggswell‘s 2009 Stories from the Heart: Missouri’s African American Heritage. As her family obituary notes, Becky Schroeder was “acutely modest” and “widely honored.” It was our honor…
Sep. 27, 2018
Ozarks Alive: Marideth Sisco
If readers haven’t subscribed to the Ozarks Alive! blog, please do. We highly recommend the great posts that Kaitlyn McConnell and friends sift from the rich Ozark hills. In the post linked below, guest blogger Michael Coonrod writes about Marideth Sisco, likely no stranger to Show Me Folk’s friends. Marideth even authored a Stories from the Field post for us, following up the great 2016 floods in south central Missouri. Mr. Coonrod fortunately attended a recent performance by Marideth Sisco and Blackberry Winter Band at Prairie Day at Carver National Monument in Diamond, Mo., where audience members…
Sep. 19, 2018
eMissourian.com: MO Friends of the Folk Arts
We were so excited that folklorist Barry Bergey and friends organized a recent reunion of Missouri Friends of the Folk Arts. He and friends founded MFFA in the 1970s to produce folklife events (including the Frontier Folk Festival, 1977-1983) and to document a number of traditional artists in Missouri and Arkansas. After MFFA, Barry brought his rich experience to a new position as Missouri’s first state folklorist and later in Folk and Traditional Arts positions at the National Endowment for the Arts. Here’s a news article (linked below) about the reunion, Barry’s career and…
Sep. 11, 2018
Tribute to Betty Curry
We were sad to learn that Betty Curry died recently. Mrs. Curry and her late husband Roger Curry were widely recognized as keepers of an Ozark white oak basket making tradition. Both Mr. and Mrs. Curry inherited the tradition from long lines of ancestors (Gibsons of Arkansas in his family and Missouri Derryberrys in hers).* Photo credit: Fieldworker Jeanette Lowry (on behalf of the Missouri Cultural Heritage Center–MFAP’s precursor) took the photo below at the Curry home workshop in July 1986 for archival purposes. Mrs. Curry carried on the tradition until fairly recently, according to a 2015 article by …
Aug. 28, 2018
Tribute to Lawrence Schuler
Lawrence Schuler (center) dances a waltz with his great-niece Jody at the Old Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival in 2010.Photo credit: Lisa Higgins We were sad to hear that Lawrence Schuler, one of the Ava Dancers, passed away August 23 at his home in Texas. Over the years, we often saw Mr. Schuler dancing at events (like Bethel Youth Fiddle Camp and Old-Time Music, Ozark Heritage Festival) with his late sister Edna Mae Davis, his niece Cathy Marriott, his sister Evelyn Pruitt, and other family members and friends. They have always been up to…
Aug. 24, 2018
St. Louis Public Radio: Carmen Dence
In this news story from St. Louis Public Radio, master Colombian folkloric dancer and retired Research Associated Professor in Radiology at Washington University Carmen Dence describes the multi-generational dance community she fosters at home and at public events like Festival of Nations.
June 11, 2018
Faye Dant: Hannibal Juneteenth
Welcome back to Stories from the Field and a new post in our Show Me Folk blog. The blog is our dedicated space for staff, student workers, traditional artists, cultural experts, consultants, and community scholars to share photo essays on an array of topics in Missouri’s traditional arts and folklife. We first met Faye Dant, a community scholar from Hannibal, Missouri, at a workshop MFAP organized in St. Louis in 2011. Since, then, Faye has invited us to Hannibal on several occasions to learn more about Hannibal arts and history, particularly African-American cultural contributions to the river city and its region. Retired from a…