Texas Folklife Festival - una fiesta más

Yup! This city whose middle name is "party", as I've said before, is having yet another one -- a major one. The Texas Folklife Festival is held every June (years ago it was in August) at HemisFair Park in and on the grounds around the Institute of Texan Cultures. The ITC is an adjunct of the University of Texas, housed in what was the Texas Pavilion during the 1968 World's Fair (HemisFair). The ITC is open year round and is always worth a visit. But it's sheer excitement during Folklife. That is, if you're into cultures as they're expressed in food, music, dance, and other arts.

Folklife celebrates the many, many ethnic cultures and national origins that together have composed the mosaic that is the people of this great state of Texas. And what better city to host it than San Antonio, to which city many ethnic groups have contributed since its founding or shortly afterward. Such as, the indigenous or native American (the local "Indians" evangelized by the Spanish Franciscans were the Coahuiltecans), the Spaniard, the Mexican, the German(Deutsch), the British or Anglo-Celt, and the African-American.

If you think that a typical Texan is a white, Anglo-Saxon cowboy type -- you're sadly mistaken! If you think that San Antonio is a city of mostly Mexicans and Anglos (or British-origin) -- you're still sadly mistaken! One aspect of this city (indeed also the state) that so much endears it to me is the tremendous variety of cultures and ethnic origins which not only historically contributed to it but are today celebrated in numerous festivals. Of which Folklife is the largest and most notable as the confluence of them all! (I understand that a subtitle of HemisFair '68 was "Confluence of Cultures", referring primarily to the convergence of the northern European from the north and east and the Latin-native (that is, the mestizo or mixed Spanish-Portuguese and indigenous) from the south in the host city.

So-o-o-o, as soon as I get off this computer terminal, I'm heading to Folklife! To get some culture! See you there some year?