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    Categories: 2018

Smithsonian Folklife festival to highlight Armenian food and craft

Public Radio of Armenia
10:06, 14 Jun 2018

Visitors to the 2018 Smithsonian Folklife Festival will have a unique opportunity to experience the cultural heritage of Armenia, the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage reports.

The 2018 Festival, which runs from June 27 to July 1 and July 4 to 8, will feature hundreds of artisans, designers, musicians, and cooks from Armenia, Catalonia, and other locations to highlight the importance of cultural heritage enterprise in the face of change.

Presented through ten days of workshops, demonstrations, participatory experiences, and discussion sessions, the Armenia: Creating Home program on gastronomic and artisan craft traditions will allow visitors to learn about how Armenian communities have integrated heritage into their own strategies for economic and cultural

hospitality of Armenian cooking, eating, and drinking is a source of cultural pride,” said Halle Butvin, one of the program’s curators. “We hope to convey how its deep history, a tradition of feasting and innovations in technique are energizing Armenia’s food scene.”

Visitors will learn to make the staples of an Armenian feast: breads, cheeses, and barbecued meats (khorovats). While tasting and toasting Armenian wines, visitors will learn about the recent discovery of a 6,100-year-old winery in a cave in Armenia, and how winemakers in that same region are reinvigorating the industry through their production, from cultivating ancient varietals and aging wine in traditional clay pots (karas), to a winery incubator model encouraging the growth of small labels. Participants will share their experiences with traditional Armenian recipes and the ways in which food- and wine-related enterprises have shaped their cultural identity and created a pathway for exchange—both within Armenia’s boundaries and across its many diasporas.

Emil Lazarian: “I should like to see any power of the world destroy this race, this small tribe of unimportant people, whose wars have all been fought and lost, whose structures have crumbled, literature is unread, music is unheard, and prayers are no more answered. Go ahead, destroy Armenia . See if you can do it. Send them into the desert without bread or water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh, sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a New Armenia.” - WS