Today is the opening day of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, held on the National Mall. The 41-year-old event highlights different cultures — this year, Bhutan and Texas — through performances, cooking demonstrations and discussions. This year’s program also will showcase NASA. Diana Parker has worked with the festival since 1975 and took over as its director in 1984.
What about the festival first interested you?
One was just the cultural interaction amongst the participants themselves, and the second — as an anthropology major — it was fascinating to me that we’d have a place at the national museum where people could speak about their culture directly to the American public.
What are you looking forward to at this year’s festival?
I think one thing that’s going to be fun this year is we have some programs for people from different parts of the festival to come together. For example, the national dish of Bhutan is melted cheese and chili. So we’ll have a Foodways session where a cook from Bhutan will interact with a cook from Texas.
During your time at the festival, is there one moment that stands out?
In the ’70s on the festival grounds, we had cowboys here from South Dakota, and we had a calf get loose and run into Independence Avenue during rush-hour traffic. So there were mounted police and all kinds of people trying to catch him on scooters. And one of the cowboys just jumped on his horse, took his rope and went after the calf. The calf went in the parking lot of the Kennedy Center, and the cowboy lassoed him and brought him back.
The festival is one of the longest-running events in the District. Why does it continue to be relevant?
I think the festival gives a little space for people to learn about something new that they didn’t know about before and get an understanding from the inside out.
