magazine of the philadelphia folklore project Volume 18:2/3 summer/fall 2005 ISSN 1075-0029 ● I choose to stay here ● We are here to make changes ● Acrobatics and freedom ● The dance is an offering ● We shall not be moved ● Arabic song, flamenco footwork ● Folk arts education Works in progress is the magazine of the Philadelphia Folklore Project,an 18- year-old public interest folklife agency. We work with people and communities inside in the Philadelphia area to build critical folk cultural knowledge,sustain the complex folk and traditional arts of our region,and challenge practices that diminish these local grassroots arts and humanities. To learn more,please visit 3 From the editor us: www.folkloreproject.org or call 215.726.1106.(Note: we’ve moved to 735 S.50th Street,Phila.,PA 19143) 4 I choose to stay here By members of Community philadelphia folklore Leadership Institute project staff Editor/PFP Director: Debora Kodish Associate Director: Toni Shapiro-Phim 8 Joaquin Rivera: We are Designer: IFE designs + Associates here to make changes Printing: Garrison Printers By Elizabeth Sayre [ Printed on recycled paper] 10 Acrobatics & freedom philadelphia folklore By Bill Westerman project board Germaine Ingram Ife Nii-Owoo 12 The dance is an offering: Ollin Ellen Somekawa Yoliztli Calmecac Deborah Wei By Kay Turner Dorothy Wilkie Mary Yee Juan Xu we gratefully acknowledge support from: ● The National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great arts ● Pennsylvania Council on the Arts ● Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission ● The Humanities-in-the Arts Inititative, administered by The Pennsylvania Humanities Council, and funded principally by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts ● The Philadelphia Cultural Fund ● The William Penn Foundation ● Dance Advance, a grant program funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts ● The Pew Charitable Trusts 14 We shall not be moved ● The Malka and Jacob Goldfarb Foundation By Thomas B. Morton, ● The Samuel Fels Fund Lois Fernandez & Debora ● Independence Foundation Kodish ● The Connelly Foundation ● The Philadelphia Foundation ● Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation 18 Arabic song, flamenco ● Windcall/Common Counsel Foundation footwork ● The Hilles Fund By Toni Shapiro-Phim ● The Walter J. Miller Foundation ● The Henrietta Tower Wurts Foundation ● The Douty Foundation Front cover: 22 Folk arts education ● Aramark & The Philadelphia Arts & Business Arisa Ingram and By Toni Shapiro-Phim Council a celebrant ● and wonderful individual Philadelphia ovecome with Folklore Project members the spirit, at the Membership form river, at 32 thank you to all ODUNDE. Photo: Thomas B. Morton from the editor Home, and the hard work of including the lifetimes of care, that feel right, good, beautiful, making and keeping a home, is work, and memories that add and just. much on our minds these days. intangible value to their homes. Trying to reorient peoples’ I write this from the West This is a different kind of math questions, Northwest Native Philadelphia rowhouse that we than that practiced by city poet Elizabeth Woody once told have been rehabbing for the officials deciding whose an audience of folklorists, “You Folklore Project’s new home. homes should be removed all are Native people, too. You The Folk Arts–Cultural and leveled, and which have just forgotten where Treasures Charter School, a families displaced. you come from.” Challenging joint effort with Asian People can build up a kind of how her listeners defined Americans United, was granted freedom and comfort in a themselves, Woody was also a charter this spring and will place, and over the course of 30 talking about our responsibility open this fall—a new home years, the ODUNDE festival has to cultivate a deep sense of for much of our folk arts created that kind of free zone in relationship and belonging to education work. Huge dreams, the blocks around 23rd and place—wherever we are. We both of these major efforts at South on the second Sunday of invite you to read about people home-making happened every June. The space that is who are engaged in just because so many people ODUNDE is built in time, not in such work. invested their time, labor and bricks, but it is as enduring and vision. Collective effort and life-sustaining. On the 30th —Debora Kodish community made both of these anniversary of ODUNDE, we homes possible—and even are proud to offer an exhibition imaginable. of Tom Morton’s powerful These two building projects photographs, on display in our leave no trace in these pages, new home through December. but essays in this issue A handful are shown in these introduce other efforts that pages. (A sampling of his were part of this past year’s images also illustrate the 30th work at the Folklore Project— anniversary ODUNDE our arts education and artist calendar, for sale through residency programs, a our office). documentary video, and an Considering takraw players, exhibition—touching in Bill Westerman writes, “Beauty different ways on the and justice—whether interrelated questions of how comprised of free movement or we make homes, become free ideas—are defined and responsible to place and to one redefined locally.” In a world another, explore where we where folk arts are so often come from, and build (and considered to be exotic, easily hold onto) places where we learned, simple, or something can belong. that can be bought and sold, Length of time or investment put on and put off, the artists of labor in a place is no described in this issue— guarantee of safety, people Joaquin Rivera, the members have learned. Fighting the City of Herencia Arabe, Chamroeun of Philadelphia’s takings of Yin, the Aztec dancers of Ollin private homes, residents from Yoliztli Calmecac, the takraw West Kensington talk about players—are using folk arts to what their homes mean to shape languages, times, and them. They count what is places in which they can name priceless and irreplaceable, themselves and others in ways 2005 Summer/Fall WIP 3 < point of view > Below: Bodine Street before. Photo: Bahiya Cabral. Above: Bodine Street in the process of demolition. Photo: Debora Kodish 4 WIP Summer/Fall 2005 by Rosemary Cubas & members of the Community Leadership Institute I choose to stay here: perspectives from people fighting the city’s “takings” of homes The Neighborhood year CLI spearheaded the nic communities. But the Transformation Initiative City-wide Coalition of transformation of place is (NTI) sounded good at Concerned Residents and seldom seen from the view- first—a new commitment began organizing to help point of the poor and work- by the city of Philadelphia to individual families, raise ing people affected. rebuild and revitalize poor questions about what NTI Residents fighting and working-class neighbor- was doing (and how it was today’s takings by the city hoods. But some people in doing it), and get a morato- are articulating both impor- those neighborhoods are ask- rium on the takings. tant theories of value and ing whether the city is remak- At heart were basic ques- different versions of neigh- ing their communities for tions about who benefited borhood past, present, and their benefit or someone and who suffered for the future than those used by else’s profits. sake of“development.” city officials. How can we Under NTI, the city of In 1950, 23% of Center get others to hear displaced Philadelphia used its power City residents were people residents’ sides of the story? of eminent domain and of color. By 1980, only 10% And, even more, how can other means to condemn were, and that number has we make sure that the city’s and acquire more than 5,000 continued to drop even as future hopes will not properties in the year 2003 the diversity of the city as a demand sacrifices—even alone, arguing that these whole rises. Between those thefts—from particular resi- were necessary steps to two dates, a series of urban dents? In order to address “save” the city, bring in new renewal programs had a these questions, PFP residents, and build a bigger massive impact on North worked with CLI to develop tax base. In 2004 the Philadelphia and Center a documentary video, I Community Leadership City. Writing a decade ago, choose to stay here, over Institute (CLI) and others sociologist Nancy the course of 2004. discovered that about 250 of Kleniewski found communi- Describing what is price- the impacted properties ty people’s feelings still sim- less and irreplaceable, resi- were occupied homes mering, condensed in their dents reckon value in con- whose residents were to be description of such pro- nection to a place over gen- relocated. Some residents grams as “urban removal.” erations, in terms of homes had accepted relocation As they saw it, “poor and and legacies that can last deals, but others did not non-white people have had and be passed on to one’s want to move from the to bear the brunt of the children, recognizing built neighborhoods in which demolitions and displace- environments filled with they had lived for decades, ment from redevelopment lifetimes of work and care. or even generations. Adding projects.” There is an Zinka Hoxha says, “It’s not insult to injury, much of this important body of scholarly just losing your house. property was taken without work about the decline of You’re losing your neighbor. any apparent plan in place Philadelphia’s industrial You’re losing all your years for redevelopment. That base and about specific eth- experience in that house. All [Continued on next page ➝] 2005 Summer/Fall WIP 5 i choose to stay here/continued from p. 5 that.