Dear Friends,

Can you imagine California without the sounds of mariachi, blues, Japanese Taiko, or old time fiddle?  All types of food from Africa, Asia, and Latin America help us to explore the many tastes of the world.  Native storytellers and weavers maintain the history of our state and provide a foundation for California culture.  Hundreds of cultural expressions are vibrant today thanks to the tradition bearers that pass knowledge and culture from generation to generation.  We are incredibly fortunate to live in such a unique state!

The Alliance for California Traditional Arts (ACTA) sustains these traditional arts with advocacy, financial resources, and connections for folk and traditional artists.  Since 1997, we have raised over $2.3 million to support the work of 600 organizations and individuals!  From Ohlone basketry and African-American quilt-making to cowboy poetry and Hindustani music, ACTA supports a wide array of cultural communities.

In 2012, we hope to expand our work with the support of people like you who understand the necessity of folk and traditional arts.  We seek the inclusive support of many people to give what they can, so we can all share the success.  Any amount is appreciated.  You can donate with your credit card via PayPal or with a check.  

A hardworking young Latina mother in Fresno thinks supporting traditional arts is so important to her children's future that she donated $100.  An aging Asian American in Ventura County who knows that ACTA has played an important role in preserving his culture just sent us $200 from his limited savings.  A paralegal working with farmworkers in the San Joaquin Valley just sent $25. What amount can you comfortably contribute? 

Below you will find a few stories that demonstrate how traditional arts matter in our lives.

We sincerely thank you for your consideration of our request.

Sincerely,

Amy Kitchener

Executive Director

Drumming classes at the Hmong Association of Long Beach build physical and spiritual strength and harmony.  Photo: Kutay Kugay

ACTA supported the Hmong Association of Long Beach's Qeej Not Gangs program.  Started by Hmong immigrants concerned about their children's growing alienation from their parents' generation, the free culture school connects youth to the traditions of their parents and grandparents.  Pan dau reverse embroidery, qeej (pronounced "ghang," a bamboo mouth organ) music, cheexai (funeral chants), dance, drumming, and Hmong language are taught and learned for six hours every Sunday.

A generation of young people have been raised and educated here since the early days of Hmong resettlement in Long Beach in the 1980's.  Refugees continue to arrive and now find a vital organization which provides services, community building, and a cultural oasis that has been hard fought and hard won.

____________________________________________________  

Ty'ithreeha Allen (center) is flanked by Dolli McCovey (left) and Aurelia Robbins (right), participating at a Ihuk Ceremony in 2006. Ty'ithreeha and Dolli's maple bark skirts were created during an ACTA-supported apprenticeship between Holly Hensher and Pimm Allen.  Photo: Pimm Allen

In Humboldt County, ACTA supported basketweavers Holly Hensher (Karuk) and Pimm Allen (Yurok/Karuk) in creating maple bark skirts worn by girls and women in tribal ceremonies, most notably the Ihuk Ceremony, celebrating a girl's entry into womanhood.  The Ihuk Ceremony was revived in 1996 by a dedicated group of Karuk families, after not having been practiced for over 80 years.  

The ceremony, Holly notes, "is about prayer, about being a good person.  When you look around at who is there in that circle around you... to support you, [you] know and appreciate that fact.  When you are making a skirt like this, you are thinking about these things.  You are thinking about how it is to be appreciated by a whole community and having a role and responsibility in that community.  And that gives you value."   

__________________________________________________  

In San Francisco, Glide's Women's Center is home to the ACTA-supported Healing Through Negro Spirituals program.  Serving vulnerable women who have suffered violence in their lives, this program is a powerful testimony to the link between traditional arts and health and well-being.

Weekly, women gather to learn and sing Negro spirituals, and, as mentor-teacher Wanda Ravernell, describes: "They sing themselves to laughter and tears of joy and realization, the realization that a whole people who once suffered the burden, pain, and sorrow of slavery have made it through and that today, just as those songs comforted the souls of those long gone, so can those very same songs lift burdens today, the burden of domestic violence, the stigma and denigration of drug addiction or alcoholism...."

__________________________________________________