National Mall, Washington, DC
June 27-July 1 and July 4-8, 2007

Spotlighting Virginia for the first time, the 41st annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival explores Virginia’s Native American, English, and West African roots.  The Roots of Virginia Culture, festival program marks the 400th anniversary of the founding of Jamestown, VA, the first permanent English settlement in what is now the United States.

The culture of the Virginia began with Native-American traditions and has been enriched by many groups over the centuries. Both English and African traditions have been maintained throughout Virginia's history from the early 1600s, when ships carrying these cultural groups first landed in Jamestown.

Festival Highlights
The Roots of Virginia Culture program will bring to Washington approximately 120 performers, artists, musicians, dancers, storytellers, cooks, farmers, and craftspeople to explain, demonstrate, and celebrate cultural traditions from native Virginia, southeastern England, and West Africa. Some of the featured participants include Native Americans from Virginia's eight original tribes, West Africans representing the roots of enslaved Virginians, and groups from Kent County, England, representing the roots of the earliest colonists.

Come celebrate regional folk culture in America. A showcase of Virginia’s diversity, ethnicity and unique history, the festival includes performances, demonstrations, food, music and other special presentations of Virginia history, culture, industry and agriculture, as well as the legacies of Jamestown. More than 1 million visitors attend the Smithsonian Folklife Festival annually.

For more information, see http://www.folklife.si.edu/festival/2007/index.html