Past Projects
Brooklyn’s evolving cultural heritage is documented and preserved in our folk arts archive, online and by appointment at Brooklyn Arts Council. Traditional, ethnic, and diaspora arts express and preserve cultural custom, history, memory and identity.
Music & Dance Workshop with Tambacum
Renowned Afro-Colombian traditional music group Tambacum hosted a one-of-a-kind music and dance workshop on October 17, 2024, bringing the powerful beats of Tamborito directly to Brooklyn. This workshop was a unique chance for participants to immerse themselves in the sounds and movements of the African diaspora during Tambacum’s U.S. tour. In collaboration with Ifetayo Cultural Arts Academy, Afro-Latino Festival of New York, Afrolatin@ Project, Rueda de Oro, and Liber Arte, attendees learned from the rich traditions passed down through generations of Afro-Colombian cultural heritage practitioners.
BRINGING J’OUVERT TO THE FOREFRONT
This initiative aims to create sustainable tourism, apprenticeship, and career opportunities around Brooklyn's J'Ouvert celebration and parade by providing job skills training to artists to seek employment as tour guides, teaching artists, and skilled tradespeople.
NYC Beatz Coronavirus
Brooklyn Arts Council’s Cultural Heritage program asked New York City traditional artists to create original music to inform the public amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Our NYC Beatz Coronavirus Song Contest received numerous entries; each song’s music and lyrics offers incredible tools for living, raises awareness to stem the spread of coronavirus in New York City, and — most importantly — inspires hope.
Thank you for playing an integral part in choosing this era’s new anthem. View these incredible performances online, anytime.
2018 Tradition as Resistance
Traditional art forms thrive and persist throughout the borough of Brooklyn, born out of histories of struggle and opposition that make these artists no stranger to the tensions of the current socio-political climate. During a time when the news cycle overwhelms and inflames and it has become far too easy to focus on the negative, Brooklyn Arts Council invites you to pause and take in the traditions around us.
BROOKLYN Cultural Heritage & ARTISTS SERIES 2018
Brooklyn Cultural Heritage & Artists Series, a partnership with Brooklyn Public Library, spotlighted Brooklyn's immigrant communities historically underrepresented by cultural institutions. With an emphasis on art forms in need of preservation, the series included performances by 20 folk and traditional artists throughout Spring 2018.
Performances took place at libraries across Brooklyn, from Crown Heights to Fort Hamilton:
Marbarid Uzbek Dance Group performed traditional dance and music at Sheepshead Bay Library
Suvdaa Khereid performed the Urtiin duu, a form of Mongolian folk long song at Brighton Beach Library
Pianist Frankie MacIntosh, steel pan player Garvin Blake, and the Steve Massive Rhythm Band led by Steve Bhola brought music of the Caribbean to Crown Heights Library
Palestinian musicians Zafer Tawil and Fouad Salloum brought arabic music on oud, violin, and qanoun Kunan to the Fort Hamilton Library
Citizen Folklife 2017
Citizen Folklife has mobilized artists, grassroots organizations, community advocates, youth, and ethnic media journalists with strong ties to folk and traditional art forms by providing training, resources, microgrant funding, and mentoring to research and share observations of folk arts practices within their own communities.
Expanding Traditions 2017
The goal of this program is to create an intergenerational experience for traditional artists, while informing the more general public about the roots of these hybrid styles. In 2017, Pakistani tabla player and singer Aziz Peerzada and his son, Saboor, performed traditional Punjabi folk music at BAM Café in downtown Brooklyn.
Festivals Traditional Style 2016
In the summer of 2016, Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC)’s Folk Arts program had a presence at six community festivals. BAC’s event tents provided friendly neighborhood gathering places for festival-goers to dive into the cultures that drive our borough. From July through September, BAC hosted hands-on workshops, discussions on cultural issues, interviews with artists, and presentations and performances by local groups.
Folk Feet Dancing Community 2015
From May 30 through July 26, BAC will celebrate Folk Feet’s 10th anniversary through a series of public programs that will fuse past participants of Folk Feet with emerging traditional dance forms and communities in Brooklyn. In keeping with Folk Feet’s rich tradition, each free public program will feature a mix of teaching workshops and dance showcases.
The Sweetest Song Festival
Brooklyn Arts Council’s The Sweetest Song Festival (TSS), is a month long focus on Brooklyn’s traditional singers and song styles. From April 26 through May 27, The Sweetest Song will present 12 concerts and 8 singing master classes at various Brooklyn venues. The programs will explore a range of singing traditions as practiced and performed in Brooklyn’s immigrant and diaspora communities and engage New Yorkers in a creative, cross-cultural exchange with some of the finest traditional singers living in Brooklyn.
Harborlore Festival: Dance, Music, Storytelling
Harborlore Festival is a series of 12 free dance, music and storytelling events throughout Brooklyn exploring the role of water in the artistic traditions of the borough’s diverse immigrant and diaspora communities in a post-Sandy world.
Half the Sky Festival: Brooklyn Women in Traditional Performance
From April 21 – June 10, 2012, BAC explored gender and diaspora in Brooklyn women's traditional genres with six weeks of concerts, performances and workshops.
Once Upon a Time in Brooklyn: Traditional Storytellers and Their Tales
A series of public programs and workshops featuring folktales, fairy tales, ghost stories, saints’ legends, personal experiences, spoken word, talking drum, narrative dance, and more from Brooklyn storytellers.
Black Brooklyn Renaissance
Black Brooklyn Renaissance (February 2010 - February 2011) featured performances, exhibitions, symposia and workshops, a conference, an oral history project and an archive. BAC joined forces with artists and organizations across the borough to make Black Brooklyn Renaissance a truly collaborative and holistic endeavor.
Days of the Dead
In August 2008 BAC Folk Arts initiated a year-long project called Days of the Dead in Brooklyn, Diverse Traditions of Mourning and Remembrance (DODB). The primary goal of the project was to heighten public awareness of Brooklyn-based community and family arts practices related to mourning and remembrance. Public programs including performances, lecture-demos, and symposia were presented at a range of venues throughout 2008-2009. Generally death and dying in the United States are ignored, denied or treated with a somber sense of privacy and isolation. But in traditional communities death is often addressed with directness and understanding because the means of mourning are readily available in various arts practices.
Folk Feet
Traditional dance is one of the least served areas of the arts in the United States. As a result, many traditional dance groups lack sufficient funding and remain unknown.
Brooklyn Maqam
Ahlan wa Sahlan! Welcome to Brooklyn Maqam Arab Music Festival, featuring local musicians, bands, and dancers presenting Arab music traditions from Egypt, Yemen, Israel, Tunisia, Palestine, Iraq, Morocco, Syria, and Lebanon.
September 11 Memorial Projects
Beginning in 2005, BAC Folk Arts director Kay Turner initiated annual programming to commemorate September 11, 2001 and also to explore, document, and discuss various memorial traditions, especially those performed in Brooklyn.
