43rd Annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival
June 24 through 28 and July 1 through 5 on the National Mall
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is an international exposition of living cultural heritage held outdoors on the National Mall and produced by the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Open daily 11 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.
Evening events at 5:30 p.m.
Admission is free.
The Smithsonian Folklife Festival is an educational presentation that features community-based cultural exemplars. Free to the public, like other Smithsonian museums, each festival typically draws more than one million visitors. The festival takes place for two weeks every summer overlapping the Fourth of July holiday.
This year's festival themes are:
Giving Voice: The Power of Words in African American Culture
The Giving Voice program will present the deep, rich threads of the African-American oral tradition. Through the power of words, African Americans have given voice to the needs, hopes, aspirations, and dreams of a people whose traditions are a major force in American culture. The program will showcase this living legacy by featuring exemplary bearers of oral traditions on the National Mall. Through theater, poetry, storytelling, radio, and humor, Giving Voice will celebrate the community roots of African-American oral expression.
Las Américas: Un Mundo Musical (The Americas: A Musical World)
Las Américas, the final and most broad-reaching program of the Nuestra Música: Music in Latino Culture Smithsonian Folklife Festival "living exhibitions" series, will feature outstanding artists from the United States and Latin America in an engaging cultural dialogue. Artists will represent the rich diversity of emblematic musical styles in the United States and throughout the Americas, including Puerto Rican bomba, plena, and jíbaro music, Mexican son music from various regions, mariachi music, Colombian vallenato, joropo, and currulao, Dominican merengue típico, bachata, and salve, Chilean cueca, tonada, and nueva canción, Venezuelan música llanera, Paraguayan polca, Guatemalan marimba, and Salvadoran chanchona music.
Wales Smithsonian Cymru
Wales (Cymru in Welsh) is a dynamic and resilient nation. The industrious and resourceful nature of its people provides a firm platform from which to present its rich culture and heritage.
Wales Smithsonian Cymru will celebrate language, literature, and the spoken word, present crafts and occupational skills, share music and cooking, and evoke the spirit that powered the industrial revolution and is now championing sustainable solutions. The program will explore how age-old knowledge, skills, and materials continue to be refashioned, recycled, and reinvented to meet modern demands and to continue to connect Wales to the world.
