Daryl Davis
2008-09 Folklife Apprenticeship Award recipient A child of a Foreign Service officer, boogie-woogie pianist Daryl Davis was born in Chicago but spent much of his childhood bouncing around the globe with his parents. Chicago did leave an impression though; it was here that Davis absorbed the sounds of African American musicians from the Deep South who had traveled North to...
Cheick Hamala Diabate
2008-09 Folklife Apprenticeship Award recipient Born in Mali and based in Maryland, Cheick Hamala Diabate is a steward of the 800-year-old West African griot tradition. Oral historians, singers and musicians, griots belong to a special social caste and are part of a hereditary lineage passed from parent to child. The son of two prominent griot families, Cheick was trained from...
Carolyn Rapkievian & Kristine Antanesian
Master Armenian dancer Carolyn Rapkievian has been teaching Kristine Antanesian traditional Armenian dances from the Anatolia region. Many of these dances are in danger of dying out due to a long history of political and social repression that culminated in the 1915 expulsion and genocide of Armenians in Ottoman Turkey. This tragedy saw the deaths of hundreds of thousands of...
Brendan Mulvihill & Emily Martin
2018 - 19 Folklife Apprenticeship Award recipient Fiddler Brendan Mulvihill is one of the finest Irish fiddlers in the U.S. and Ireland, and a keeper of a long Irish musical legacy. He was born in England in 1954 into a family of musicians, including his father, Martin, a master fiddler from County Limerick, Ireland, and a National Heritage Fellow, the...
Terry & the Zydeco Bad Boys
Terry Domingue is a native of Duson, a small community located 10 miles west of Lafayette in the heart of French Louisiana. Coming of age in this hotbed of Cajun and Creole culture, he developed a passion for zydeco. Since emerging on the scene nearly two decades ago with his own band, Terry & the Zydeco Bad Boys, Terry has...
Jeff Little Trio
Jeff Little continues an often hidden, yet fascinating tradition of piano playing in the Blue Ridge Mountains. With few exceptions, the piano does not play a prominent part in Appalachian music, and is rarely the lead instrument. But Jeff Little is an exception—and a remarkable one. His distinctive two-handed style, much influenced by mountain flatpicked-guitar tradition, is breathtaking in its...
Capoeira Luanda
When capoeira mestre (master) Jelon Vieira immigrated to the United States in 1975, Brazil’s African-based folk traditions were little known here. Largely due to his efforts, interest in capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian fusion of dance, martial arts, and acrobatics born in the northeastern state of Bahia, has exploded. Today Capoeira Luanda is integral to Mestre Jelon’s mission to promote and perpetuate...
Bill Kirchen
Called the “Titan of the Telecaster” by Guitar Player magazine, Bill Kirchen is one of America’s living guitar legends. A virtual encyclopedia of rock and roll knowledge, Kirchen’s live performances, inspired by guitar heroes like Merle Travis, Danny Gatton, Duane Eddy, James Burton, and Buck Owens, are high-energy romps through the last 50 years of American guitar history. As a...
Rahim AlHaj Trio
A 5,000-year-old musical tradition from the heart of Mesopotamia is alive and well in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the adopted home of renowned Iraqi oud virtuoso Rahim AlHaj. AlHaj is a cultural ambassador for the deep musical heritage of his homeland. His music evokes the experience of exile, new beginnings, and “the message of peace and compassion and love” that he...
Danny Paisley & the Southern Grass
Danny Paisley & the Southern Grass is a hard-driving, hot-as-a-firecracker bluegrass band with a sound rooted deep in the mountains of southwest Virginia and northwest North Carolina. With Danny Paisley’s rich vocals, T.J. Lundy’s timeless fiddling, and Mark Delaney’s stellar banjo picking, the group has earned critical praise as one of the steadfast proponents of a classic style. While often...
