Salem, OR —Join folklorist Amy Howard, Samoan dancer Tasi Keener, and Tlanese artist Paola Sumoza for a conversation about some of the cultural traditions of Marion County and the people who practice them. The talk will be on Friday, July 27th at 6:30 PM at Casa de la Cultural Tlanese, 1154 Madison St NE, Salem, OR 97301.

This open community conversation invites audiences to connect with Marion County tradition keepers Tasi Keener and Paola Sumoza. Keener, the Director of Paradise of Samoa, a traditional Polynesian dance troupe, will demonstrate traditional Samoan costume and dance. Sumoza, CCO and co-founder of Casa de la Cultural Tlanese, a nonprofit organization committed to sharing Mexican culture through folk dance, community workshops, and traditional events, will discuss the organization and demonstrate traditional Tlanese arts. Howard spent several days in Salem and the surrounding area speaking to members of the community, documenting their traditions, and learning how their occupations shaped their lives. Please come and chat with Keener and Sumoza and learn how they are actively passing their skills and knowledge through the generations.

Funding for this program comes from the National Endowment for the Arts to the Oregon Folklife Network, Oregon’s designated Folk & Traditional Arts Program. The project sent trained folklorists to conduct research in the Willamette Valley area of Benton, Linn, Lane, and Marion Counties and the Grand Ronde Community to meet and document culture bearers in the region. Free public programs are held in each area.

Amy Howard received a BA in Anthropology from Brigham Young University and an MA in American Studies and Folklore from Utah State University. Her love of folklore fieldwork began in 2007 on an undergraduate field study in Guatemala. Since then, she has interned at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, coordinated public programs, and worked on multiple documentation projects in Utah and Idaho. In 2013, she collaborated with other fieldworkers documenting and producing a book on quilting traditions in the Bear River Heritage Area. In 2015, she and two of her students documented artistic, occupational, and recreational traditions in the Southeast Idaho Snake River Plain for the Idaho Commission on the Arts. Together, they created an exhibit and organized public performances at the Idaho Museum of Natural History. She is currently documenting Oregon traditions and culture keepers in the Willamette Valley.

For more information about public programs in throughout the Willamette Valley, contact Jennie Flinspach at ofn@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3820.

Please contact Oregon Folklife Network Director, Riki Saltzman, at riki@uoregon.edu or 541-346-3820 with questions about the Oregon Folklife Network or recommendations for traditions, groups, or individual folk & traditional artists to be documented in the Willamette Valley area. OFN always appreciates contact information for traditional musicians and dancers, quilters, storytellers, cooks, leatherworkers, fly-tiers, wood carvers, silversmiths, taxidermists, basket makers, and more.

The OFN is administered by the University of Oregon and is supported in part by grants from the Oregon Cultural Trust, Oregon Arts Commission, Oregon Historical Society, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

About the University of Oregon

The University of Oregon is among the 108 institutions chosen from 4,633 U.S. universities for top-tier designation of "Very High Research Activity" in the 2010 Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. The UO also is one of two Pacific Northwest members of the Association of American Universities.

SOURCE: Jennie Flinspach, ofn@uoregon.edu, 541-346-3820

Note: The University of Oregon is equipped with an on-campus television studio with a point-of-origin Vyvx connection, which provides broadcast-quality video to networks worldwide via fiber optic network. In addition, there is video access to satellite uplink, and audio access to an ISDN codec for broadcast-quality radio interviews.