Unexpected Folk Arts in Queens
by Lisa Biagiotti, Sushma Subramanian, and Michele Wilson
Debra Weil couldn't find the song for the dance she wanted to teach. She rewound and fast forwarded her Israeli dance tape 10 times until at last, she recognized a bit of the music and a smile of relief came across her face.
Weil teaches Israeli dance class at the Forest Hills Jewish Center every Wednesday night. Though the participants vary, five or six regulars weekly observe and absorb Weil's spirit and spit it out through the movements they learn.
"I love the music and connecting the words with the movement," said Weil, whose class is in its second year. "When I come home on Wednesday nights, no matter how tired I am, I come home euphoric. Those endorphins really come out and it's just a good feeling. And it's a lot of fun when your friends are all here."
Queens is a borough known for its immigrants, airports and ethnic restaurants — not necessarily its folk arts scene. But groups like the Israeli dancers at the Forest Hills Jewish Center prove that this scene in the borough is thriving.
Need more proof? Just look at the Indian and Bangladeshi community centers in Jackson Heights, the Bukharian Shashmaqam theaters in Rego Park, the Brazilian and Greek musicians in Astoria, and even an urban teenage troupe called the Underage Cabaret in Jackson Heights.
Within the past three decades, Queens has become a place for cultural creative juices to flow. Sometimes, the level of creativity displayed in Queens is more intense than in the countries where the traditions originated, according to Bradley Shope, Ph.D., an ethnomusicologist at St. John’s University.
At the Rajkumari Center for Indo-Caribbean Arts and Culture in Richmond Hill, for example, the Indo-Caribbean traditions from Guyana, Trinidad and Suriname are taught, preserved and passed on through sacred ritual and social interaction.
Every Sunday the community gathers at the Shri Maha Kali Devi Mandir temple on the border of Queens and Brooklyn for hours of healings and song devoted to the Madrasi Hindu Mother Goddess Kali.
“A lot of traditions they are practicing in the temples they've been doing for 5,000 years,” said Pritha Singh, who founded the center in 1996. “We are going after these rare art forms and trying to coax it out of the sacred space, so it can actually be appreciated by the broader community, and to develop a methodology for its preservation.”
Much of the teaching and sharing of art and culture is about this passing on of cultural experiences to a younger generation, said Shope, who previously directed the folk arts program at Queens Council on the Arts.
“The art [in Queens] is not connected to powerful institutions,” Shope said. “It's embedded in the culture.”
Nothing makes this more clear than where the art is found, in places in the community like church basements and universities rather than in museums, theaters and galleries, according to Vivian Warfield, Arts Fund Director for Queens Council on the Arts.
“We may not have as many theaters, but we have churches with great acoustics, universities [like] St. John’s, and the library system for visual arts and literary presentations,” said Warfield. “Our motivation is to nurture the arts.”
Warfield, who is also a world music percussionist, said that after immigrants process citizenship documents, they tend to set up non-profit community centers and encourage cultural expression through the arts.
“Queens is very user-friendly with all the ethnicities,” she said. “[Queens] understands and accepts newly arrived immigrants. We are the most ethnically diverse community in the entire country.”
By offering grants and support, the Queens Council on the Arts also is nurturing the immigrant population so prevalent in Queens.
"People are getting a little more organized, getting grants," said Shope, the ethnomusicologist. "A lot of the initiatives started by organizations are geared toward empowering people to organize themselves."
The performing artists live their ethnic cultures and celebrate ancient traditions in the urban backdrop of Queens. Like Weil’s Israeli dancers or Indo-Caribbean goddess worshipers, these artistic forms of expression bridge worlds and connect local communities. |
