Department of Anthropology, Syracuse University

Syracuse, New York

Mission

Amid the living and vibrant cultural milieu of Syracuse, the Anthropology Department is in a position to provide sustenance in the midst of plenty. As Chancellor Nancy Cantor has made clear in her Soul of Syracuse initiative, a truly great university looks beyond its own walls to serve the larger community. Therefore, the Department of Anthropology is working toward establishing a Program for Regional and Transnational Cultures to connect with non-profit organizations in our region and to build on existing programs at Syracuse University and organizations across the region. Our purpose is to document, interpret, and celebrate regional cultural vernacular expressions, in the forms of oral literature, music, dance, and material culture of older immigrant groups as well as new refugee communities who have relocated to our region. The already existing regional cultures, ranging from the established communities like the Irish and Ukrainians, continue to draw influences from their original cultural centers, and this is further enriched by the arrival of new immigrants from those original homelands. In addition, more recent immigrants from Burundi, Burma, Sudan, Congo, Liberia, Bosnia, Kosovo, and other new groups are establishing new cultural communities in our region, while at the same time maintaining significant transnational cultural ties with their former homelands. Our goal is to identify, to interpret, and to present the formative cultural fermentation going on in the present regional landscape.

The New Soul of Syracuse

Supporting the heritage of traditional arts of Syracuse refugees and immigrants by identifying, interpreting, and presenting their traditional arts.

Community Context

Over the last decade, Bosnian and Albanian-Kosovar refugees resettled in Syracuse and Utica to escape the war in the former Yugoslavia. There are now more than 3,000 Bosnians living in Syracuse and 6,000 Bosnians in Utica. More recent refugees to our city and Central New York include people from Afghanistan, Burma, Burundi, Congo, Iran, Iraq, Liberia, Sudan, and Ahisha from the former Soviet Union.

The first people to live in our area were the Haudenosaunee, people of the Onondaga Nation and the Oneida Nation, as they are known today. They were part of the powerful Iroquois Confederacy whose territory included the Syracuse area. Today the Onondaga and the Oneida live and work in the city of Syracuse or on the Onondaga and Oneida Nations that are not far from the city. The Erie Canal opened in 1825 and as a result of the boom of the early years, the villages of Salina and Syracuse merged to become the city of Syracuse in 1848. Syracuse's earliest residents were English, Welsh, and Irish immigrants who built the Erie Canal. African-Americans came to live in Syracuse, and from 1825-1915 Jewish, Polish, Italian, German and Syro-Lebanese immigrants arrived in waves. They were followed by refugees from Ukraine who settled here during WWII. After the Vietnam War, refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos arrived, followed by Russian immigrants. Syracuse remains home to all of these cultures and is also the home to immigrants from countries such as Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Puerto Rico.

Folk Arts: Soul of Syracuse

Fieldwork is time-intensive; funding is scarce, and the challenges are difficult, but with great reward. As a folklorist contracted by several institutions, I have been working since 1999 to find adequate compensation, musical instruments, art materials, and appropriate public venues for refugee artists in Central New York. Living in diaspora, these artists' communities face significant threats to social cohesion and the continuity of their traditions. The conflicts they fled affect the core of their identities as well as their physical well-being. Often these artists are dealing with serious health issues, low wages, and culture shock. Yet, I've witnessed firsthand how artists whom I've met embrace opportunities to perform their traditional arts for new audiences, welcoming the recognition and financial support. Now residing in Syracuse and throughout Central New York they are contributors to our changing cultural landscape. As one young Sudanese who had not sung his bullsong since his youth explained, "I carried it in my heart until you asked me to sing it."

In 2005, building on my earlier work as an independent folklorist for the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, New York and the Children's Museum in Utica, I initiated Folk Arts: Soul of Syracuse, the first refugee folk arts program in the city of Syracuse. Fieldwork funded by the New York State Council on the Arts during 1999-2004 had enabled me to document traditions of refugee artists in order to find adequate compensation for them at small-scale public programs in Auburn and Utica. These newcomers to Central New York included Bosnians, Congolese, Liberians, Sudanese DiDinga and Dinka, and Burmese-Karen. In 2002, as a part-time instructor at Syracuse University, I saw an opportunity to invite refugee artists from Sudan, Bosnia, and Ukraine to participate in the university-wide Symposium on Beauty. With modest support from the New York Council for the Humanities, while a research associate in the university's Program on the Analysis and Resolution of Conflicts, I facilitated The Wars of Our Fathers Are Not Ours , a talk-performance with elders and traditional singers who were refugees of the civil war in Sudan.

As acquisitions editor for Voices: Journal of New York Folklore I issued a call for articles authored by other folklorists working with refugee artists (e.g. see Voices Fall/Winter 2006, Special Issue on Diaspora/Homeland). I also presented three small-scale refugee arts programs on the university campus and at the Community Folk Art Center in downtown Syracuse. These programs were supported through modest funding from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York Council for the Humanities, as well as collaborations with local church volunteers at St. Vincent de Paul in Syracuse, the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Utica, the Center for New Americans, and Catholic Charities Refugee Resettlement Services. These talk-performances featured speakers and traditional artists of Ahiska, Burmese-Karen, Sudanese-DiDinga and Bosnian heritages, all of whom reside in the cities of Utica and Syracuse.

A grant from the New York State Music Fund Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors supported the first Folk Arts: Soul of Syracuse Traditional Music Festival for refugee and new immigrant musicians, which was held in October 2007 at The Warehouse in downtown Syracuse. The all-day festival focused on music, song, and dance of the Ahiska (Russia), DiDinga (Sudan), Congolese, Liberian, Bosnian and Karen (Burma). The festival attracted over 500 visitors and performers from the city and the suburbs, as well as throughout Central New York, including Ithaca and Utica. Exposure at the festival resulted in additional invitations for some of the musicians. For example, the DiDinga appeared on WCNY-TV and sang live on WAER radio. Also, the LeMoyne College Muslim Student Association and SUNY-Cortland provided honoraria for traditional music and dance performances by the Ahiska at public programs on those campuses in November 2007.

In December 2007, Attorney Carl Oropallo of St. Vincent de Paul Church, Dave Turkon of Ithaca College, Father Phil Kelly of St Francis of Assisi, and I began collaborating with members of the Lost Boys Chapter in Syracuse on The Lost Boys Cow Project. Young male refugees from four ethnic groups in Sudan are working with clay to create traditional images of their former pastoral lives in Sudan, where as children they learned to sculpt clay and make glazes made from lizard's manure, tree sap, or fire ash. In Central New York, local residents and businesses have donated clay, glazes, and the use of a kiln.

Sustaining folk arts programs for vulnerable populations requires guaranteed, multi-year funding. A great deal of my time is spent searching for the external funding desperately needed to support my work and the folk artists. Without consistent funding it is difficult to maintain the momentum of our folk arts initiative. In 2008 the Department of Anthropology will have an annual commitment from Syracuse University's Chancellor's Initiatives Fund to be applied as matching support for external funding. I am hopeful that I can continue to find this funding for what I believe has the potential to become a vibrant program.

Learn more

Voices (Spring-Summer 2007) vol. 33:1-2, Special Issue on Diaspora/Homeland and Refugee Arts, can be ordered from the New York Folklore Society: emchale(at)odyssey.net or 518.346.7008. For more information, see www.nyfolklore.org

My book, Not Just Child's Play: Emerging Tradition and the Lost Boys of Sudan (2007), chronicles the challenges and rewards of collaboration on public folk arts programs with refugees from Sudan. The book can be ordered from the University Press of Mississippi, www.upress.state.ms.us/books/1080 . Proceeds from book sales will be donated to the Syracuse Chapter of the Lost Boys of Sudan.

At our book signing, hosted by Barnes & Noble in Syracuse, the young men sang traditional songs and then autographed books, a thrilling opportunity for them. Our city paper, The Post Standard , created a three-minute video for their news website and included our Clay Cow Project. The video is available at http://blog.syracuse.com/video/2008/01/sharing_sudanese_tradition.html ("Sharing Sudanese Tradition", January 9, 2008).

Contact

Dr. Felicia (Faye) McMahon

Dept. of Anthropology

Syracuse University

209 Maxwell Hall

Syracuse, NY 13244-1090

315.443.2200

frmcmaho(at)maxwell.syr.edu

Photos, top to bottom

Sanabar Kakhramanova, center, with Camila Kakhramanova, left, and Sabina Mamedova pose before performing Ahiska Turkish dance in Syracuse, New York.

Clay cows created by Sudanese Lost Boys in Syracuse , New York .

Photos, Faye McMahon, courtesy of Syracuse University .

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