National heritage fellowships

The

National Heritage

Fellowships

1990

The National Endowment

for the Arts

Folk Arts Program

The National Heritage
Fellowships 1990

The poet Jean Toomer once wrote of folk artists
"making folk songs from soul sounds." All of the
artists honored tonight in these National Heritage
Fellowship ceremonies do the same: they make
their folk art from the soul.

The 1990 National Heritage Fellowships help
bring to greater national attention the talent and
diversity of some of America's best artists working
in traditional styles and practices. These ceremo-
nies and the presentation of the Fellowships
celebrate the skills and excellence of each of these
gifted artists. This occasion also underscores the
Federal government's commitment to furthering
the traditional arts and making them accessible
to all.

Thanks go to the Folk Arts Program and to the
panelists who recommended this year's National
Heritage Fellows, to our partners in the public and
private sectors who helped make this concert and
the related activities possible, and especially to
the thirteen master artists who have put their soul
into their work, enhancing and preserving
America's traditional arts.

John Frohnmayer

Chairman

National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts, through its
Folk Arts Program, welcomes you to the 1990
Heritage Fellowship celebration. This is the ninth
such occasion and — as always — it is designed to
be a joyous recognition of the creativity and
diversity to be found amongst the traditional arts
and artists of the United States.

This year there are thirteen artists to be hon-
ored from twelve states, speaking altogether more
than eight languages. There are five musical
instrumentalists, four crafts workers, two singers,
four dancers, one poet, one story teller, and two
orchestras. (The discrepancy in numbers is
caused by the fact that so many traditional artists
are actually multi-talented.) They come from
Hawaii to the west and New Jersey to the east,
from Puerto Rico to the south and Montana to the
north. They have been nominated by their neigh-
bors, by other artists, by scholars, by tribal or
ethnic associations, and by ordinary citizens.
Every one of them is an authentic and exquisitely
skilled practitioner of an art form traditional to
their own particular heritage, and every one of
them has contributed something of especial value
to that art form.

The Folk Arts Program is proud to present once
again to the American people a sampling of the
remarkable and varied art forms that flourish
between our borders. These art forms will con-
tinue to thrive, even to grow and multiply, to the
extent that they are supported, debated, dis-
cussed, studied, and analyzed by all Americans,
and to the extent that they are exemplified by such
stunning artists as the National Heritage Fellows.
Please join us in paying tribute to these remark-
able exemplars.

Ji^Vo (/Y^vv^eW*

Bess Lomax Hawes

Director

Folk Arts Program

Credits

The 1990 National Heritage Fellowships ceremo-
nies were produced for the National Endowment
for the Arts, Folk Arts Program by the National
Council for the Traditional Arts. The ceremonies
were planned and coordinated for NCTA by
Nicholas Hawes and Camila Bryce-Laporte.

NEA Folk Arts Program Staff
Bess Lomax Hawes, Director
Daniel Sheehy, Assistant Director
Rose Morgan
Pat Sanders
Barry Bergey
Terry Liu
Pat Makell

Heritage Fellowships Concert
Director

Murray Horwitz
Master of Ceremonies

Charles Kuralt
Production Manager

Tim Toothman
Scenic Design Consultant

Russell Metheny
Lighting Designer

Stefan Johnson
Sound Design/Production

Pete Reiniger
Costume Coordinator

Ellen Parker
Slide Projection

McGuire/Reeder, Ltd.
Lisner Auditorium Stage Manager

Phil Fox

Table of Contents

Howard Armstrong 4

Afro-American String Band Musician
Detroit, Michigan

Em Bun 4

Cambodian Silk Weaver
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Natividad Cano 5

Mexican Mariachi Musician
Monterey Park, California

Giuseppe and Raffaela DeFranco 7

Southern Italian Musicians and Dancers
Belleville, New Jersey

Maude Kegg 7

Ojibwe Storyteller/Craftswoman

/Tradition Bearer
Onamie, Minnesota

Kevin Locke 8

Lakota Flute Player/Singer/Dancer

/Storyteller
Mobridge, South Dakota

Marie McDonald 9

Hawaiian Lei Maker
Kamuela, Hawaii

Wallace McRae 10

Cowboy Poet
Forsyth, Montana

Art Moilanen 11

Finnish Accordionist
Mass City, Michigan

Emilio Rosado 12

Woodcarver
Utuado, Puerto Rico

Robert Spicer 13

Flatfoot Dancer
Dickson, Tennessee

Douglas Wallin 14

Appalachian Ballad Singer
Marshall, North Carolina

1990 National Heritage
Fellows

Howard Armstrong

Howard Armstrong was born in 1909 in Dayton,
Tennessee, the middle son in a musically talented
family of nine children. His father, also a musician,
supported his family by working in the blast
furnace section of a local steel mill, where he
occasionally was invited to entertain the company
executives. By Howard's tenth birthday, his father
had taught him to play the mandolin and had
whittled out a half-size fiddle for him with a
jackknife.

Within five more years, Howard Armstrong had
fully entered on a career as a professional musi-
cian. He performed with three younger brothers,
playing a wide variety of musical styles, before
joining with Carl Martin to tour Virginia, West
Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky. The duo
played in bars and restaurants, at fish fries, at
picnics, and in medicine shows throughout the
industrial East, entertaining steel workers and
miners from many ethnic groups. They developed
an eclectic repertoire of blues and popular music
of the day, picking up favorite songs from Italian,
Spanish, German, and central European audiences,
incidentally developing fluency in many different
languages. Today, Howard Armstrong can commu-
nicate effectively in at least eight languages,
including German, Italian, Greek, Swedish, and
Mandarin Chinese.

For a few years, Armstrong attended Tennessee
State Normal School as an arts student, playing
cello in the symphony and fiddle in the jazz band
while he studied painting and design. Later he set
up his own sign studio, but he never ceased his
life-long exploration of string music. During the
1930's and 1940's, he formed various quartets and
trios; during World War II, he worked in automo-
bile plants and body shops in Detroit, until a foot
injury put him onto the disability rolls.

In 1972, he rejoined his old friends Carl Martin
and guitarist Ted Bogan, with whom he toured as
the "last of the black string bands: Martin, Bogan
and Armstrong." They played all around the
United States, as well as visiting Central and South
America and many African nations. They worked
together steadily until Martin passed away in 1979.
Since that time Howard Armstrong has continued
to play, sometimes with his sons or with other old
friends. He has appeared at the Smithsonian
Festival of American Folklife and the 1988 Festival

of Michigan Folklife. He designed the "juke joint"
scene that appeared in the film "The Color Purple,"
and his own life was the subject of a critically
acclaimed documentary film, "Louie Bluie,"
released in 1985.

Howard Armstrong remains faithful to his
extraordinary repertoire of blues, Tin Pan Alley
standards, old-country ditties from 19th century
Europe, religious hymns, and country dance tunes,
reflective of the remarkable reach of his long
career and the wide-ranging musicality of the black
string band tradition. For his versatility, his clean
musicianship, his engaging personality, and his
astute observation of the musical scene of this
century, Howard Armstrong is a national treasure.

Em Bun

1 here are certain crafts which are essential if
other associated traditions are to prosper. The
making of music, for example, depends upon the
making and repair of musical instruments. Less
obvious is the critical role of skills such as weaving
in cultures where dance, formal ceremony, and
proper costumes mark vital episodes in life and
work.

Em Bun arrived in the United States as a refugee
from Cambodia in 1980, along with her four
daughters and two sons. Her maternal ancestors
had always been considered the village weavers,
and Em Bun learned to weave from her mother
when she was about ten years old. She also
learned to process the silk from cocoons raised on
the family's farmlands. In the United States,
however, she could no longer continue her former
important, status-filled work as weaver, farmer,
and merchant. With a language barrier inhibiting
her ability to make new friends, she lapsed into
isolation and depression. Her children report that
the provision of a loom and weaving materials by a
group of interested Pennsylvania women made Em
Bun truly happy for the first time in nine years.

Today Em Bun has been recognized as a master
weaver by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts.
Grants from the Council have encouraged her
daughters to study their mother's art. All her
family now wear Em Bun's bright pure silk hand-
woven sarong skirts to Cambodian weddings and
celebrations. Cambodians in every community
along the eastern seaboard are sending orders for
their own two meter lengths of silk. She uses

Top:

Howard Armstrong

Photo by Bill Pierce

Bottom:
Em Bun
Photo © by Blair Seitz

leftover silk thread from a men's tie factory in
central Pennsylvania, anointing the materials as
she weaves with tapioca and coconut oil to
provide the unparalleled luster and sheen of true
Cambodian silk.

One Cambodian woman has moved in across
the street from Em Bun's home so that she can be
near enough to be involved in every aspect of silk
weaving. The rhythmic clatter of the beater and
the treadles resound throughout the house.
Usually it is Em Bun herself at the loom, as she
does not believe her apprentices can yet produce
work that cannot be detected from her own.
Indeed, her talented daughter Pech does not
believe she will ever be as good a weaver as her
mother because the sound the beater makes when
her mother is weaving is so different from hers.
There is much still to be learned about the dyeing
of the silk, the winding of the raw silk into cones,
and the dressing of the warp with its 3,500 single
threads. Each of the apprentices has specialized in
one part of the elaborate series of skills that make
up Cambodian weaving as a master craft.

The subtlety of a master Cambodian weaver is
expressed in the basic decisions of which colors
enhance others. Although Em Bun's work appears
to be mostly solid colors, close examination
reveals that the warp threads differ from the weft
threads that cross, producing unusual and shim-
mering hues. Em Bun's exquisite and sensitive
work has helped her continue to serve as the
"village weaver," although her village now is
nationwide. As such, she has helped keep her
fellow Cambodians in touch with their heritage
and produced another stream of beauty in which
her new friends in the United States can also
refresh their spirits.

Natmdad Cano

There is no music more widely evocative of
Mexican identity than that traditionally associated
with the ensemble known as mariachi. The unique
and versatile instrumentation of guitarron (bass
guitar), vihuela (small rhythm guitar), violins, and
trumpets allows this group to perform a wide
variety of music, from the most traditional sones
(dance pieces) to the latest Latin pop tunes. The
mariachi's early beginnings are rooted in the rich
heritage of string instruments brought from Spain
in the 16th and 17th centuries. It took its current

Top:

Natividad Cano

Photo © by Gerard Burkhardt

Bottom:

Giuseppe and Raffaela DeFranco
Photo by Martin Koenig,
Ethnic Folk Arts Center

form in the 19th and 20th centuries through the
musical creations of the farmers, ranchers, and
jomaleros (day laborers) in and around the west
Mexican state of Jalisco and its capital city
Guadalajara.

Natividad Cano was born in 1933 into a family of
jornaleros who lived near Guadalajara in the
village of Ahuisculco, Jalisco. His grandfather
Catarino Cano was a self-taught guitarron player,
and his father Sotero Cano was a versatile musi-
cian who was skilled at playing all the mariachi
string instruments. In 1939 Natividad's father
began teaching the six-year-old to play the vihuela;
two years later, "Nati" was enrolled at the
Academia de Music in Guadalajara to study the
violin. After six years, he left the academy and
joined his father, supporting the family by playing
in the local cantinas and cafes.

In 1950, Nati persuaded his father to let him
travel to the border town of Mexicali to join the
Mariachi Chapala. "I have to follow my dreams," he
told him. Though the youngest musician in the
group by at least ten years, Nati soon became the
mariachi's musical arranger. He stayed with
Mariachi Chapala for seven years before emigrat-
ing in 1960 to Los Angeles. There he joined
Mariachi Aguila, the house mariachi at the famous
Million Dollar Theatre, a major stopping point on
the Mexican professional music circuit. Upon the
death of the group's director, Jose Frias, Nati
became the new leader and renamed the group
"Los Camperos" ("The Countrymen"), the name it
has born to this day.

After spending several years touring throughout
the United States, Cano and the original six
members of Los Camperos settled in Los Angeles
in 1967 and opened La Fonda restaurant, at which
they have performed five nights a week ever since.
La Fonda soon gained a reputation as an important
center of Mexican culture in Los Angeles. For Nati,
the restaurant became the medium through which
he accomplished his personal mission of maintain-
ing high artistic standards while enhancing public
awareness of the mariachi tradition.

Over the past decade, Nati has increasingly
devoted himself to sharing his musical knowledge
with young people and to the cultivation of greater
public understanding and respect for the music to
which he has devoted his life. In Los Angeles, he
has initiated "mariachi-in-education" programs at
public schools, lent his name, expertise, and
resources to the Hispanic Women's Council's

"Nati Cano Cultural Arts Awards" in the Latin
performing arts, and donated his time at numerous
concerts to benefit the Mexican community. At the
national level, he has been a major figure as
teacher, performer, competition judge, and
benefactor in the growing number of mariachi
festivals throughout the Southwest. Through his
steadfast devotion to and love for mariachi music,
Natividad Cano has helped to ensure the contin-
ued vitality and integrity of this important
Mexican-American music tradition.

Giuseppe and Raffaela
DeFranco

The DeFranco family immigrated to the United
States in 1968, finally settling in Belleville, New
Jersey near many of their relatives and neighbors
from the old country. They came originally from
the mountain town of Acri, in the Cosenza Prov-
ince in Calabria, the southernmost region of
continental Italy, where the tarantella was known
and enjoyed even in antiquity.

Mr. DeFranco began working as a shepherd at
the age of eight and taught his pet goat, Sisina, to
dance to the music of the cane flutes he made and
decorated. Later he learned the chitarra battente
(rhythm guitar) with which he serenaded his wife
Raffaela, and although he does not consider
himself a singer, he composed several very moving
love songs to her while they were courting. Today
he is master of the organetto, a small button
accordion popular in southern Italy; sometimes he
dances the tarantella with Raffaela while simulta-
neously playing the organetto. He also plays the
ciaramella, or wooden oboe, as well as the
zampogna (bagpipes). He has taught his son,
Faust, to play the accordion, the tambourine, the
triccaballacca (a wooden percussive instrument),
and the harmonica. The DeFrancos are often
joined in concert by their son and by their long-
time friend Franco Cofone, an excellent tambou-
rine player and singer.

Raffaela DeFranco is a remarkable singer with
an extensive repertoire of serenades, tarantella
verses, religious songs, love songs, and lullabies.
She sings in the high-pitched throaty voice typical
of southern Italy; she is also proficient in the
villanella, the Calabrian choral singing style of
which she knows several of the special vocal parts

and many beautiful texts and tunes. Her music has
been much influenced by that of the Albanian
women from nearby villages whose songs she
heard when she went out to do day labor in the
olive groves and wheat fields. A tarantella verse
from Raffaela's enormous repertoire says:

And she circled and she turned

and I saw she was alone
And she circled and she twisted

and I saw she was escorted
And she turned another way,

she was a rose in bloom.

Perhaps the most important feature of the
DeFrancos is their self-conscious and dedicated
devotion to their traditions. They believe in the
vitality, the excellence, the all-around virtue of
their music and their dance; they lose no opportu-
nity to advance their cause. It is important to
realize that they carry on their art against a
continuing drum beat of mild but consistent
disapproval from some of the more conventional
parts of the Italian-American community, who fear
they may present a picture of Italian-Americans as
backward or countrified.

But the DeFrancos continue their devotion to
the courageous, life-enhancing, life-affirming
repertoire of their ancestors. They perform with
Calabria Bella, a group of Calabrian musicians from
Rhode Island, in addition to actively seeking out
other traditional Italian-American artists and
encouraging them to remember and to share their
traditional culture, regardless of their region of
origin. As scholars, practitioners, and savants of
the exceptional folk traditions of southern Italy,
Raffaela and Giuseppe DeFranco well deserve the
gratitude of their people and their nation.

Maude Kegg

Maude Kegg, an eminent craftsworker and
storyteller of the Ojibwe people, was born in a
bark and cattail mat wigwam in northern Minne-
sota. She was brought up by her maternal grand-
mother, a traditionalist who taught her little
granddaughter the things she should know of her
people and their long history — the language, the
myths and tales, the customary beliefs, the
traditional skills. Maude Kegg's mother died in
childbirth; her grandmother was never quite sure
about the date, so the little girl had to choose her

own birthday. "I was born on land my grand-
mother homesteaded near Portage Lake," she says
now. "I always heard it was riceing time on the
lake, so I picked August 26th (the harvest season)."

It was a choice that fit exactly into Maude
Kegg's future life style, for she has spent her long
career — she is now eighty-six years old — following
the ways of her people and sharing them with
others. She has written three books on the Ojibwe
(sometimes called Chippewa) people: When I was
a Little Girl, published in 1976, At the End of the
Trail (1978), and What My Grandmother Told Me
(1983). She has contributed language data and
special Ojibwe terms to scholars of the language.
Throughout her lifetime, she has explained and
demonstrated the agricultural techniques tradi-
tional to the Ojibwe, such as maple sugaring and
their special methods of harvesting and process-
ing the wild rice that grows in the northern lake
country.

In addition to her exceptional store of tradi-
tional Ojibwe tales and legends, Maude Kegg is
perhaps best known for the beauty and elegance of
her bead work. She is a master of Ojibwe floral
designs and geometric loom beadwork techniques.
She is one of the very few Ojibwe still competent to
produce a fully beaded traditional bandolier bag, a
symbol of prestige and leadership once commonly
worn by tribal leaders.

A number of years ago, she and two others
completely constructed the large diorama of the
seasonal life of the Ojibwe on display in the
Minnesota State Historical Society Indian Museum
at Mille Lacs, making every artifact included in the
exhibit. Since that time she has worked as a staff
member of the Museum and often acts as a docent,
taking parties of school children and other visitors
through the exhibit. Several of her pieces grace the
Ojibwe craft collection at the Smithsonian Institu-
tion and a Maude Kegg beaded bandolier formed a
centerpiece for the important American Federation
of Arts' traveling exhibit, "Lost and Found Tradi-
tions: Native American Art 1965-1985," curated by
Ralph Coe. Mr. Coe writes, "As an influence upon
and teacher of the young, as an example to follow
and emulate, as both preserver and extender of
the correct interpretation of the Ojibwe way,
Maude Kegg has made a major contribution to
Great Lakes Native culture ... I am grateful for this
opportunity to write on behalf of a notable North
American." In 1986 Governor Rudy Perpich of the
State of Minnesota proclaimed August 24th of that

year to be "Mrs. Maude Kegg Day" in tribute to
"her many years of knowledge, wisdom, and efforts
in the preservation of Ojibwe culture and lan-
guage."

Kevin Locke

There is a difference between events that survive
only inside history books or in paintings and those
that still persist in living memory. Archaeologists
can replicate stone points for spears and arrows,
but they cannot tell us how or when or why they
were thrown, nor the dreams that flew along with
them. That knowledge is forever gone.

The world has come very close to losing
completely an exquisite musical tradition: the
Plains and Woodland courting flute. A Lakota Sioux
traditionalist writes: "All of us who love our Lakota
culture were saddened when we realized in the
60's that the music of our Lakota flute was gone . . .
that this instrument paying homage to woman-
hood was stilled. I cannot express the enormity of
the loss that we oldtimers felt when we realized
that the last of the flute players had died without
teaching the songs and technical artistry to
anyone in the next generation."

Fortunately, a number of young Indian musi-
cians were determined to do what could still be
done to recapture the art form before it faded
entirely from human memory. The Comanche
painter and musician Joyce Doc Tate Nevaquaya
(recipient of a Heritage Fellowship in 1986), Kiowa/
Comanche Tom Mauchahty Ware, and a few other
pioneers of this movement began their urgent
research during the 1970's and 1980's. Especially
prominent in this movement — in part because of
the exceptional development and extensive
repertoire of the Lakota instrument itself, and in
part because of his personal longstanding commit-
ment to traditional Plains Indian art and philoso-
phy— was Kevin Locke, a Hunkpapa Sioux of the
Standing Rock Reservation currently residing in
Mobridge, South Dakota.

Kevin Locke lived as a young man with an
elderly uncle who spoke only Lakota; from him he
learned both the language and the traditions of his
culture. He learned many of the numerous Sioux
courting songs and flute melodies from those who
could still remember them and sing them, includ-
ing Noah Has Horns, Ben Black Bear, and William
Horncloud. Today, he continues to regard himself

Top:

Maud Kegg

Photo courtesy of the

Minnesota Historical Society

Bottom:

Kevin Locke

Photo by Dan Koeck,

Minot Daily News, Minot, North Dakota

as a preservationist of the music rather than a
stylist or composer of songs. The old people say
he is better than the others they remember.

Kevin Locke not only performs and lectures in
schools all across the Plains States, he has toured
the world, appearing in Canada, China, Spain, and
Australia, as well as on tours of African nations
sponsored by the State Department. In addition to
the courting flute, he sometimes demonstrates the
Plains hoop dance, another ancient and honorable
Sioux tradition. The dance explicates the Plains
Indian world view as the hoops intersect and grow
into ever more complex shapes, always and
forever returning to the beginning. This articulate
and thoughtful artist always tries to bridge the gap
between Indian and non-Indian cultures, to bring
his audience into the circle of the Lakota Sioux
vision. His nomination for a National Heritage
Fellowship was supported by his own tribal
council, the elders of his community, the faculty of
the University of South Dakota (where he is
pursuing a Ph.D. in Education), and the South
Dakota Arts Council — a remarkable grouping of
sponsors that attests to generosity and breadth of
Kevin Locke's art.

Marie McDonald

Marie McDonald spent most of her childhood on
the rural island of Molokai in the Hawaiian chain.
She is descended from two great traditions: on her
mother's side, the Mahoe line of Hawaiian chiefs,
and on her father's side, the distinguished Adams
family of New England. She journeyed to Texas for
her advanced education, earning a degree in art
from Texas Women's University; since then, she
has lived in Hawaii, where she taught art and
Hawaiian Studies for many years in the public
schools and where she now owns and operates the
Honopua Flower Growers in Waimea, on the big
island of Hawaii.

Marie McDonald is not only the best known
practitioner on the islands of the art of Hawaiian
lei making, she is also its primary scholar. Her
research and documentation of the tradition in her
significant and lovely book, Ka Lei — the Leis of
Hawaii (Press Pacifica, 1985), is the authoritative
source on the topic. Even more recently, she
conducted field research on lei traditions associ-
ated with Hawaiian ranching, finally locating a lei
maker on Maui who could tell her about the leis

19

Top:

Marie McDonald

Photo courtesy of Smithsonian

Institution

Bottom:
Wallace McRae
Photo by Michael Korn

formerly made of sisal fiber scraps — the lei malino.
At her own ranch on the Big Island, she experi-
ments regularly with the raising of older plants and
flowers. Today, almost every lei stand includes the
subtler traditional leis researched by Mrs.
McDonald alongside those made from the more
recently introduced flowers such as orchids,
carnations, and plumeria.

Marie McDonald not only constructs beauty
with her experienced hands and eyes, she speaks
of her fragile art form with enormous eloquence.
"Why must visual beauty last forever?" she writes.
"What is wrong with short-lived beauty? Is it less
beautiful than any other kind of beauty?" She
points out that the moment of giving is the mo-
ment of love; the lei offered must then be at its
peak of beauty, so that both giver and receiver
experience that moment of shared love at its
fullest. She speaks of leis as exemplifying arms
entwined about another person's neck — mother
and child, lover and beloved, friend and friend.

It is known that all peoples in all historical times
have enveloped their bodies with decoration. In
some fortunate parts of the world this universal
impulse has reached special heights. The sweet
ginger necklaces of the wet forests and the fragile
pupu shell leis of the arid island of Niihau are only
part of the dazzling displays of color, fragrance,
and sculptural charm for which the Hawaiian
Islands are known around the world — a treasured
tradition that Marie McDonald has both guarded
and enhanced.

Wallace McRae

Wallace McRae, the cowboy poet, is a third
generation rancher from the Rosebud Creek area
near Colstrip, Montana in the southeastern part of
the state. His family's ranch is bordered on the
east by the Tongue River and lies just north of the
Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation. Both of his
parents were born and raised on Rosebud Creek,
and his family has run sheep and cattle in these
parts since 1885.

Mr. McRae is a working cowboy and a working
rancher. Born in 1936, he attended college at
Montana State University, where he received a
Bachelor of Science degree in zoology. In 1958, he
was commissioned as a Naval Officer and served in
the Atlantic and Mediterranean Fleets. After his
father died in 1960, he returned to Montana with

his wife, Ruth Hayes; they have three children and
continue to live on Rosebud Creek in the vicinity of
the old family ranch.

The men and women who prospected, farmed,
mined, fished, hauled, hunted, built, explored, and
ranched across the North American continent
during the nineteenth century were not simply
people of action — they were also people of words.
They left records behind them: diaries, letters,
journals, and even such fripperies as new words to
old tunes. They especially often left poetry. Indeed,
as settlements built up in the wake of their explor-
atory adventures, a tradition of public recitations
sprang up, featuring narrative poems that re-
counted great adventures and comic events. Soon
a new "frontier" style of poetry began to emerge
from the pens of writers like Robert W. Service and
from the imaginations of working cowboys and
ranchers. Wallace McRae was born into such a
poetic tradition: his first public recitation was a
"Christmas piece," delivered at the local one-room
schoolhouse that his sisters attended when he was
four years old.

Since then, Mr. McRae has written more than
100 poems, among them the enormously success-
ful "Reincarnation," a poem destined to outlive
him — even in his lifetime it has passed into the
oral repertoire and is recited by cowboys who
never met the author. His poems have also been
circulated through his three books, It's Just Grass
and Water, Up North is Down the Crick, and Things
of Intrinsic Worth. Like the tradition he honors, he
has written not only on humorous and romantic
topics but on matters of public concern as well,
such as the need for environmental protection and
the effects of strip mining in the West. Another
group of poems such as "A Conversation with
Albert" deal with his neighbors the Cheyennes.

Some National Heritage Fellows are honored
because they have preserved for the nation an
ancient traditional repertoire. Wallace McRae has
preserved an ancient traditional artistic practice:
the writing of narrative poetry detailing the
problems and issues of a particular time in unfor-
gettable language and memorable forms. Through
his work, we can continue to thrill to the spoken
word — the impact of the genuine oral tradition,
where gifted poets speak a community's truth
back to the people themselves for their further
consideration, for their greater understanding, and
for their inspiration.

11

Art Moilanen

Art Moilanen was born in 1916. His parents came
from northern Finland early in the twentieth
century as part of that era's enormous immigra-
tion of more than 300,000 Finns to the mines, mills,
and factories of the United States. Half that num-
ber eventually arrived in the western Great Lakes
region, particularly in Minnesota's Mesabi Iron
Range and the Michigan "Copper Country." In July
1913, the Western Federation of Miners called a
strike for a shorter work day and higher wages
against Upper Michigan's mining companies.
Although supported strongly by the local Finnish
population, the strike was bitter, violent, and
unsuccessful. At its close, along with other Finnish
families, the Moilanens moved to the region near
Mass City, Michigan, where they farmed and
worked in the woods. That is where Art Moilanen
grew up and where he still lives. It was, and is, a
marginally logging area: "I grew up with sawdust in
my ears," he says now.

But there was music in his ears as well. Art
learned harmonica as a boy, graduating later to
button accordion and later still to the larger and
more showy piano accordion he now plays. He
learned Finnish tunes from recordings, touring
performers, and from the singing of neighboring
lumberjacks and miners, and by his teens he was
playing for dances. After serving in the Air Force
for four years during World War II, Art returned to
Michigan to form his own logging crews in the
White Pine papermill district. In 1965, he decided
to retire from logging and bought a tavern near
Mass City where, as he remembers it, there was
"dancing three, four nights a week, sometimes all
day and night long — it was just packed all the
time." At the age of sixty he retired again and
purchased "Art's Bar" in nearby Mass City, along
with an adjacent motel catering to hunters and
maintenance crews. He ran the two establishments
until a few years ago, when he sold out and made a
third attempt to retire.

It is difficult, though, to tell just how well he has
succeeded. He continues to play music for dances
with great regularity, performing always to packed
houses. As Dr. Michael Loukinen of Northern
Michigan University, a well-known scholar of
Finnish traditions, points out: "The last time Art
retired, he had so many requests to play at
weddings and parties that he had to retire from

Top:

Art Moilanen

Photo by Alan Kamuda

Courtesy of Michigan Traditional Arts Program,

Michigan State University Museum

Bottom:

Emilio Rosado

Photo by Walter Murray Chiesa

12

retirement and try to find relaxation by working
full time." Among other options to fill his time, he
continues to teach younger accordionists on a
regular basis, insisting always that they include the
folk melodies of the Scandinavian immigrants in
their repertoires.

Art Moilanen has taken on a role of great
importance in the northern European immigrant
communities around the Great Lakes, maintaining,
displaying, and rejoicing in the sturdy musical
tradition of waltzes, polkas, schottisches, and
other folk dances of Scandinavia, especially
Finland. His work is rooted firmly in the best of this
tradition. He stands on the same floor level as his
audiences and wears everyday clothes, "just like
everybody else." Although his repertoire is
classically Finnish, he also chooses music from
others of his neighbors, including country and
western players. A fine instrumentalist of great
virtuosity and skill, he thinks more about what he
plays than how brilliantly he plays it, for he is
concerned with inclusion; his tradition might be
called ethnic-American-regional-working-class
dance music, or perhaps, simply "people's music."
At an Art Moilanen dance, the people will be out
there dancing.

Emilio Rosado

Don Emilio Rosado was born in the municipality
of Utuado on the island of Puerto Rico in 1911.
They say that the moment he was born, all the
neighborhood roosters began to crow, and they
crowed on and on until they became hoarse,
honoring the infant who was to become the
greatest bird carver in Puerto Rican history.

Don Emilio comes from a family of carvers. His
grandfather's brother, Tacio Ponce, carved oxen
yokes and machete handles for a living and
walking sticks as a hobby. His father carved all the
handles for his tools, and his brother carved as
well. Don Emilio himself began carving around the
age of fourteen, mostly small animals or balls to
play with; sometimes when he was learning, he
would carve on a soft sweet potato until he
mastered the form he wanted. His first sale
brought $5.00 for a dove.

But it was when he turned to the carving of
roosters that he began to establish his importance
as a major Puerto Rican craftsman. He has carved
literally thousands of the birds since that time, and

an Emilio Rosado rooster carving is immediately
identifiable to the experienced eye. The eminent
authority on Puerto Rican crafts, Walter Murray
Chiesa, points out that although Don Emilio carves
santos such as the Three Kings, wooden machetes,
and small barnyard animal figures, it is when he
carves his favorite roosters that he truly comes
into his own. He raises the birds himself and loves
to talk abut the different varieties of rooster, their
varied shapes, colors, tail feathers, and the angle
of beak and comb. Occasionally he will have one of
his sons hold a bird in his hand so that he can
study its special qualities as he carves. In the end,
he will have not an exact copy, but a representa-
tion of a particular bird seen through the eyes of
an artist.

Don Emilio's birds are carved from a single
piece of cedar, sometimes mounted on a separate
piece of wood that serves as a base, sometimes
free standing. Each shows the long free swoop of
line from the bird's crest through to the tip of the
tail feathers that is so characteristic of his work.
The Institute of Puerto Rican culture owns a
collection of at least forty of Don Emilio's carved
cocks; the Institute has invited him to join their
sculpture division, but he prefers to remain an
independent artisan working among his beloved
roosters in his home town of Utuado. His work-
shop smells enchantingly of cedar. "Cedar,"
according to Don Emilio, "is a special wood with a
special story. When you cut down a cedar tree
there is always a small hollow inside; that is where
the Blessed Virgin hid on the flight from Egypt.
And that is why cedar smells so wonderfully good
too."

It is rare that an important symbol can be
traced to the work of a living individual artist.
According to Walter Murray Chiesa, the objects
most widely recognized as symbolic of Puerto
Rican culture are the carnival masks of Ponce, the
indigenous stringed instrument the cuatro, and the
carved roosters of Don Emilio Rosado. In 1982, he
was designated "Master Craftsman of the Year" by
the Government of Puerto Rico; in his own person-
age, he has become symbolic of the craft and folk
heritage of his beautiful island.

Robert Spicer

Robert Spicer was born in Dickson County,
Tennessee, in 1921, the youngest of nine children.

He has lived in the area ever since. His lifetime
pursuit of flatfoot or buck dancing began when he
was seven years old and visiting the nearby town
of Charlotte with his mother. He can remember the
moment to this day: "I seen a black man dancing
on the bed of a two-horse wagon. I just stood there
eating an ice cream cone and watched how he was
doing it and listened to the rhythm he was making.
I decided that I was gonna learn to do that . . ."
Apparently, the little boy never looked back.

The dance style that so fascinated Mr. Spicer
undoubtedly originated in Africa, where ground-
hugging, improvised dancing still thrives. In the
United States, these relaxed, subtle African styles
combined easily with articulated Celtic foot-
stepping to produce American flatfooting, a dance
that is widespread today throughout the South on
both sides of the color line. Flatfoot is an impro-
vised solo dance, characterized by fast percussive
footwork that stays close to the floor and often
duplicates the rhythm of the accompanying
instruments. The feet seem to be used "all of a
piece," the body is erect but not stiff, the arms
move gently in response to the need for balance.
Any kind of showy athleticism — jumping, leaping,
high kicking — is inappropriate; the dancers strive
for economy, neatness and simplicity of move-
ment, and always for rhythmic precision of the
highest order.

Flatfoot dancing is also called rhythmic buck
dancing. The origin of the latter name is still
mysterious. Older black dancers sometimes say
that there were 37 named steps in a complete buck
dance, steps that mimed the entire life cycle of the
black man. Mr. Spicer knows a few named steps —
"Cutting the Grass," "Shining your Shoes," "Rock
the Cradle," "The Wing," "The Old Time Double
Back Step." Accompaniment is an important part
of the dance. Lacking instruments, Mr. Spicer claps
for his dancers or plays the spoons, each instru-
ment beat to be echoed by a foot sound. Essen-
tially he provides what some call a "juba" rhythm,
a black contribution in which the hands clap twice
on the upbeat and the foot stamps once on the
downbeat. Like black gospel singers who clap in
parts, producing bass, baritone, and treble pitches
in their clapping, Mr. Spicer "tunes" his claps to
correspond to the musical effects produced by the
dancer he is accompanying.

For Robert Spicer is above all a consummate
teacher. He has won many flatfoot contests during
his lifetime, he has learned to call squares from his

13

Top:

Robert Spicer

Photo by Jacky R. Christian, courtesy of the

Old-Time Music & Dance Foundation.

Bottom:

Doug Wallin

Photo by Jeffrey Smith,

The News Record, Marshall, North Carolina

14

former neighbor, Fiddling Arthur Smith, and he has
supplemented his income by working as a profes-
sional dance caller and dance organizer at musical
clubs throughout Tennessee. But most of all, he
has taught in the old-fashioned way, setting up the
right atmosphere, the proper surroundings for
flatfoot dancing, in public parks and community
centers across middle Tennessee. Day after day he
meets prospective students, providing what
Tennessee Folk Arts Coordinator Roby Cogswell
calls "immersion in customary example" and
endless practice for his neophytes. Mr. Spicer
provides sensitive accompaniment with his
deceptively simple hand claps, along with positive
or negative reactions and patient reassurance. He
also helps his dancers move into showier venues
of public presentation, although he continues to
oppose the mechanized precision clogging rou-
tines of public square dance troupes.

Robert Spicer has led the way in preserving the
earliest dance styles of Tennessee's black and
white settlers. He is a local as well as a national
treasure.

Douglas Wallin

There are people who say that Doug Wallin is
quite simply the finest living singer of
unaccompanied British ballads in southern
Appalachia. It is a tradition that runs in his family:
he learned most of his songs from his mother and
father, the late Berzilla and Lee Wallin, from his
uncle Cas Wallin, and from other friends and
neighbors in Madison County, North Carolina.

Berzilla Wallin used to speak of the visit of the
world-famous English ballad collector Cecil Sharp
some seventy-five years ago. She remembered it
plain as day, and apparently the visit impressed
the scholar as well. He described the Sodom-
Laurel section of Madison County where the Wallin
family lived as "a community in which singing was
as common and almost as universal a practice as
speaking." Indeed some years ago, the Folk Arts
Program at the National Endowment for the Arts
received a nomination recommending that the
entire population of the Sodom-Laurel area receive
a single National Heritage award, since it was so
obviously a local tradition held in trust by all the
residents.

It was later determined that such a nomination
was not legally practical — an individual, such as

Doug Wallin, must stand as representative of the
entire community. Actually, this is very fitting for
the repertoire itself, since the surviving ancient
British ballads in this country are always sung as
solo accounts of long ago, although they have
been edited in the subtlest of way by the hundreds
of voices and minds that have passed them along.

It is a rare experience to hear an unaccompa-
nied song, much less a ballad or story song. The
singer has so little to work with: a simple, usually
four-line rhyming stanza with an occasional brief
refrain; a brief melody that repeats with each
verse; some powerful and evocative tales that
touch the main themes of love, death, betrayal,
and loss that so excite that European listener; the
refined and knowing use of poetic repetition and
subtly shifting stresses. But a well-sung ballad —
one of the great ones — by an experienced singer
can, as one listener put it, "lift the hair right off
your head."

Doug Wallin is such a singer. He is a quiet and
modest man who not only sings the songs, but also
tells the stories. And he is also a fine fiddle player.
He has looked into the scholarship about his
tradition as well, and he prides himself on the
completeness and complexity of his repertoire. In
1988, the Governor of North Carolina announced a
program of North Carolina Folk Heritage Awards to
bring public recognition to "our native sons and
daughters who perform the traditional arts of
North Carolina with great distinction and skill."
Doug Wallin was one of the first North Carolina
artists so honored.

Acknowledgements

The 1990 NEA National Heritage Fellowships
concert and related activities were planned and
coordinated with the assistance of the National
Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA), a private
non-profit corporation founded in 1933 and
dedicated to the presentation and documentation
of folk and traditional arts in the United States. The
NEA would like to thank NCTA, the Philip F. Schoch
Bequest, the Joseph Martinson Memorial Fund,
and Northwest Airlines for their assistance in the
presentation of these fellowships. The Folk Arts
Program would like to express gratitude to every-
one involved, with special thanks to:

Chris Ballentine

Anna Chairetakis

Jacky R. Christian

Roby Cogswell

Meg Glaser

Sherman Holbert

George Holt

Sharon Koenig

Kara Larson

Barbara Lau

Jim Leary

Yvonne Lockwood

Michael Loukinen

Rick Luftglass, Ethnic Folk Arts Center

Lynn Martin

Minnesota Historical Society

Nina Archabal

Andrea Mugnier

Tim O'Donald
Walter Murray Chiesa
National Geographic Society
John Nichols
Jeff Place
Amy Skillman
Donald and Joyce Wedll
Joseph T. Wilson
Tony Ziselberger

15

The National Heritage
Fellows 1982-1989

Dewey Balfa

Cajun Fiddler
Basile, LA

Joe Heaney*

Irish Singer
Brooklyn, NY

Tommy Jarrell*

Appalachian
Fiddler
Mt. Airy, NC

Bessie Jones*

Georgia Sea
Island Singer
Brunswick, GA

George Lopez

Santos
Woodcarver
Cordova, NM

Brownie McGhee

Blues Guitarist
Oakland, CA

Hugh McGraw

Shape Note
Singer
Bremen, GA

Lydia Mendoza

Mexican-
American Singer
Houston, TX

Bill Monroe

Bluegrass
Musician
Nashville, TN

Elijah Pierce*

Carver/Painter
Columbus, OH

Adam Popovich

Tamburitza
Musician
Dolton, IL

Georgeann
Robinson*

Osage Ribbon-
worker
Bartlesville, OK

Duff Severe

Saddle Maker
Pendleton, OR

Philip Simmons

Ornamental
Ironworker
Charleston, SC

Sanders "Sonny"
Terry*

Blues Musician
Holliswood, NY

Sister Mildred
Barker*

Shaker Singer
Poland Springs,
ME

Rafael Cepeda

Bomba Musician/
Dancer
Santurce, PR

Ray Hicks

Appalachian
Storyteller
Banner Elk, NC

Stanley Hicks*

Appalachian
Musician/Story-
teller/Instrument
Maker
Vilas, NC

John Lee Hooker

Blues Guitarist/

Singer

San Carlos, CA

Mike Manteo*

Sicilian
Marionettist
Staten Island, NY

Narciso Martinez

Texas-Mexican
Accordionist/
Composer
San Benito, TX

Lanier Meaders

Potter
Cleveland, GA

Almeda Riddle*

Ballad Singer
Greers Eerry, AR

Simon St. Pierre

French-American

Fiddler

Smyrna Mills, ME

Joe Shannon

Irish Piper
Chicago, IL

Alex Stewart*

Cooper/Wood-
worker
Sneedville, TN

Ada Thomas

Chitimacha
Basketmaker
Charenton, LA

Lucinda Toomer*

Black Quilter
Columbus, GA

Lem Ward*

Decoy Carver/
Painter
Crisfield, MD

Dewey Williams

Shape Note
Singer
Ozark, AL

Clifton Chenier*

Creole Accordi-
onist
Lafayette, LA

Bertha Cook*

Knotted

Bedspread Maker
Boone, NC

Joseph Cormier

Cape Breton
Violinist
Waltham, MA

Elizabeth Cotton*

Black Songster/
Songwriter
Syracuse, NY

Burlon Craig

Potter
Vale, NC

Albert Fahlbusch

Hammered
Dulcimer Maker/
Player
Scottsbluff, NE

Janie Hunter

Black Singer/
Storyteller
Johns Island, SC

Mary Jane
Manigault

Black Seagrass
Basket Maker
Mt. Pleasant, SC

Genevieve Mougin

Lebanese-
American Lace
Maker
Bettendorf, LA

Martin Mulvihill*

Irish-American
Fiddler
Bronx, NY

Howard
"Sandman" Sims

Black Tap Dancer
New York, NY

Ralph Stanley

Appalachian
Banjo Player/
Singer
Coeburn, VA

Margaret Tafoya

Santa Clara
Pueblo Potter
Espanola, NM

Dave Tarras*

Klezmer
Clarinetist
Brooklyn, NY

Paul Tiulana

Eskimo Mask-
maker/Dancer/
Singer
Anchorage, AK

Cleofes Vigil

Hispanic

Storyteller/Singer
San Cristobal, NM

Emily Kau'i
Zuttermeister

Hula Master
Kaneohe, HI

Eppie Archuleta

Hispanic Weaver
San Luis Valley,
CO

Periklis Halkias

Greek Clarinetist
Astoria, Queens, NY

Jimmy Jausoro

Basque
Accordionist
Boise, ID

Mealii Kalama

Hawaiian Quilter
Honolulu, HI

Lily May Ledford*

Appalachian
Musician/Singer
Lexington, KY

Leif Melgaard

Norwegian
Woodcarver
Minneapolis, MN

Bua Xou Mua

Hmong Musician
Portland, OR

Julio Negron-
Rivera

Puerto Rican
Instrument Maker
Morovis PR

Alice New Holy
Blue Legs

Lakota Sioux
Quill Artist
Oglala, SD

Glenn Ohrlin

Cowboy Singer/
Storyteller/
Illustrator
Mountain View,
AR

Henry Townsend

Blues Musician/
Songwriter
St. Louis, MO

Horace "Spoons"
Williams*

Spoons/Bones
Player/Poet
Philadelphia, PA

Alfonse "Bois Sec"
Ardoin

Black Creole
Accordionist
Eunice, LA

Earnest Bennett

Anglo-American
Whittler
Indianapolis, IN

Helen Cordero

Pueblo Potter
Cochiti, NM

Sonia Domsch

Czech-American
Bobbin Lace
Maker
Atwood, KS

Canray Fontenot

Black Creole
Fiddler
Welsh, LA

John Jackson

Black Songster/
Guitarist
Fairfax Station, VA

Peou Khatna

Cambodian Court
Dancer/
Choreographer
Silver Spring, MD

Valerio Longoria

Mexican-
American
Accordionist
San Antonio, TX

Joyce Doc Tate
Nevaquaya

Comanche Indian
Flutist
Apache, OK

Luis Ortega

Hispanic-
American
Rawhide Worker
Paradise, CA

Ola Belle Reed

Appalachian
Banjo Picker/
Singer
Rising Sun, MD

Jenny Thlunaut*

Tlingit Chilkat
Blanket Weaver
Haines, AK

Nimrod Workman

Appalachian
Ballad Singer
Mascot, TN/
Chattaroy, WV

Juan Alindato

Carnival
Maskmaker
Ponce, PR

Louis Bashell

Slovenian
Accordionist/
Polka Master
Greenfield, WI

Genoveva
Castellanoz

Mexican-
American Corona
Maker
Nyssa, OR

Thomas Edison
"Brownie" Ford

Anglo-Comanche
Cowboy Singer/
Storyteller
Hebert, LA

Kansuma Fujima

Japanese-
American Dancer
Los Angeles, CA

Claude Joseph
Johnson*

African-American
Religious Singer/
Orator
Atlanta, GA

Raymond Kane

Hawaiian Slack
Key Guitarist/
Singer
Wai'anae, HI

Wade Mainer

Appalachian
Banjo Picker/
Singer
Flint, MI

Sylvester
Mcintosh

Crucian Singer/
Bandleader
St. Croix, VI

Allison "Totie"
Montana

Mardi Gras Chief/
Costume Maker
New Orleans, LA

Alex Moore, Sr. *

African-American
Blues Pianist
Dallas, TX

Emilio and
Senaida Romero

Hispanic-
American Crafts-
workers in Tin
and Embroidery
Santa Fe, NM

Newton
Washburn

Split Ash
Basketmaker
Littleton, NH

Pedro Ayala

Mexican-
American
Accordionist
Donna, TX

Kepka Belton

Czech-American
Egg Painter
Ellsworth, KS

Amber Densmore

New England
Quilter/Needle-
worker
Chelsea, VT

Michael Flatley

Irish-American
Stepdancer
Pahs Park, IL

Sister Rosalia
Haberl

German-American
Bobbin Lace-
maker
Hankinson, ND

John Dee Holeman

African-American
Dancer/Musician/
Singer
Durham, NC

Albert "Sunnyland
Slim" Luandrew

African-American
Blues Pianist/
Singer
Chicago, IL

Yang Fang Nhu

Hmong Weaver/
Embroiderer
Detroit, MI

Kenny Sidle

Anglo-American
Fiddler
Newark, OH

Willie Mae Ford
Smith

African-American
Gospel Singer
St. Louis, MO

Clyde "Kindy"
Sproat

Hawaiian Cow-
boy Singer/
Ukulele Player
Kapa 'au, HI

Arthel "Doc"
Watson

Appalachian
Guitar Player/
Singer
Deep Gap, NC

John Cephas

Piedmont Blues
Guitarist/Singer
Woodford, VA

The Fairfield Four

African-American
a capella Gospel
Singers
Nashville, TN

Jose Gutierrez

Mexican Jarocho
Musician/Singer
Norwalk, CA

Richard Avedis
Hagopian

Armenian Oud
Player
Visalia, CA

Christy Hengel

German-American
Concertina Maker

New Mm, MN

Ilias Kementzides

Pontic Greek Lyra
Player
Norwalk, CT

Ethel Kvalheim

Norwegian
Rosemaler
Stoughton, WI

Vanessa
Paukeigope
Morgan

Kiowa Regalia
Maker
Anadarko, OK

Mabel E. Murphy

Anglo-American
Quilter
Fulton, MO

LaVaughn E.
Robinson

African-American
Tapdancer
Philadelphia, PA

Earl Scruggs

Bluegrass Banjo
Player
Madison, TN

Harry V. Shourds

Wildfowl Decoy
Carver
Seaville, NJ

Chesley Goseyun
Wilson

Apache Fiddle
Maker
Tucson, AZ

* (deceased)