BESS LOMAX HAWES AWARD RECIPIENT
Roland Freeman
Photo Documentarian, Author, and Exhibit Curator
Washington, DC
Roland Freeman, recommended as the Bess Lomax Hawes Award recipient, was inspired by the socially conscious Depression-era photography of Gordon Parks and Roy DeCarava as well as the Farm Security Administration photographers. At age 14, he met the author/folklorist Zora Neale Hurston, who also greatly influenced his life's work. A native of Baltimore, he began photographing in the DC area in the late 1960s. In 1968, he participated in and documented the Poor People's Campaign and the Mule Train trip from Marks, MS, to the nation's capital. Even while working as a stringer for Time and Magnum Photos, including coverage as a White House photographer, his real passion throughout his career has been the documentation of Southern folk culture. 

In the early 1970s, Freeman co-directed the Mississippi Folklife Project for the Smithsonian Institution's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. That work resulted in the exhibition Mississippi Tradition and Change. Continuously since then, Freeman has been a research associate/field research photographer with the Center. His interest in craft traditions led to his documentation and collection of quilts made by African Americans long before others were taking an interest in this distinct but little-recognized artistic tradition. This work resulted in the publication of two books Something to Keep You Warm and A Communion of the Spirits: African-American Quilters, Preservers, and Their Stories. 

In 1990, Freeman consolidated two decades of documentation of the disappearing tradition of Baltimore street vendors, many of whom still used horse-drawn carts, for a major exhibition titled "Arabbers of Baltimore" at the Baltimore Museum of Art and the publication of a similarly titled book. Freeman consistently works in collaboration with others: for more than 30 years, folklorist Worth Long and cultural historian Bernice Johnson Reagon have been invaluable guides and partners, and he has worked closely with folklorists Glenn Hinson, Charles Camp, and Jerrilyn McGregory. Over the years, Freeman's major projects have led to four national and international touring exhibits and the publication of six widely acclaimed books. 

Nicholas Benson
Stone letter carver and calligrapher
Newport, RI
Nicholas Benson is a third generation stone carver who today oversees a family shop that was established in 1705, one of the longest continuously running trade businesses in the United States. Over the past three centuries the John Stephens Shop has produced headstones for New England gravesites and its skilled artisans have designed and inscribed calligraphy on buildings and stone monuments. As with many trade crafts, Mr. Benson learned through a journeyman and apprentice system. In addition, he traveled to Basel, Switzerland, to study type design and calligraphy with European masters. Renowned for its flowing sculptural qualities and precise design, the work of Nick Benson and his father can be seen on the Maya Lin-designed Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama; the Poet's Corner in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York; and the National Gallery of Art, the Kennedy Center, the National Cathedral, and the World War II Memorial in Washington, DC. Recently, Nick Benson himself completed the work on the Georgia O'Keefe Museum in Santa Fe. The work of the Benson family was documented in the film Final Marks and in 2001 Nicholas Benson was featured in the "Masters of the Building Arts" program of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.

Sidiki Conde
Guinean dancer and musician
New York, NY
At the age of 14, Sidiki Conde lost the use of his legs as the result of polio. In his village in Guinea, West Africa, disabled people commonly were banished from their homes in order not to bring shame or bad luck upon their family, so he was sent to his grandfather's village deep in the forest. Knowing that he would not be able to participate in the coming-of-age ceremony if he could not dance, Sidiki reconstructed the traditional steps using his hands instead of his feet. He became so adept that he was able to travel to the capital city, Conakry, and form Message de Espair, an orchestra of artists with disabilities he recruited from the city's streets. In 1987, he was asked to join the prestigious troupe Les Merveilles de Guinea and he composed and directed musical arrangements for them as well as serving as director of choreography. While in Africa, Conde also worked as a musician and arranger with popular African musicians, such as Youssou N'Dour, Salifa Keita, and Baba Maal. In addition, he has made a special effort to teach workshops for Very Special Arts and to instruct other young people with challenges in life. In 1998, he formed the Tokounou All-Abilities Dance and Music Ensemble and teaches children in the public schools.

Violet de Cristoforo
Haiku poet and historian
Salinas, CA
Violet de Cristoforo, although born in Ninole, HI, was sent to Hiroshima, Japan, at the age of eight for her primary education. She returned to the United States when she was 13 to attend high school in Fresno, CA. Upon graduation she married Shigaru Matsuda and she joined a School of Haiku and became well known for her poetry in the kaiko or free style haiku form. Following President Roosevelt's Executive Order during World War II, she and her husband were removed to an internment camp in Jerome, AR. In 1946, she was repatriated to Japan but she later resettled in the United States with her second husband. Over a period of 50 years she has both written haiku poetry and collected and translated haiku from the internment camps and the various haiku clubs. The culmination of her life's work is the anthology she edited entitled May Sky: There Is Always Tomorrow; An Anthology of Japanese American Concentration Camp Kaiko Haiku.

Pat Courtney Gold
Wasco sally bag weaver
Scappoose, OR
Pat Courtney Gold grew up on the Warm Springs Reservation in the mid-Columbia River area of Central Oregon. When visiting local museums, her mother, an accomplished beadworker would point to the displays and say with pride, "Those are our baskets; our ancestors made these." In her youth Pat was taken off to a Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding school where her hair was cut and she was made to wear a standard issue oversized dress. She went on to earn a B.A. in mathematics and physics from Whitman College and she embarked on a career as a mathematician and computer specialist. In 1991, she studied and helped revive the making of Wasco sally bags, twined root-digging bags, through the Oregon Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program. This launched her on a new career path dedicated to the preservation of her cultural heritage. She says, "As I began focusing more on my weaving, I also became aware that the technical technique was only a small facet of what I was doing. The other component was that I was dealing with a whole ancestral heritage. I felt as though the ancestors were waiting for somebody like me to come forward and that all this energy was being focused and funneled through me." Today Pat Courtney Gold is recognized internationally as an exquisite weaver who incorporates designs that express the cultural life of her people, not only traditional images but also figures that comment on contemporary life such as yuppie Indians and local environmental degradation.

Eddie Kamae
Hawaiian musician, composer, filmmaker
Honolulu, HI
Eddie Kamae was raised in Honolulu and Lahaina, Maui within a family steeped in Hawaiian tradition. His grandmother was a court dancer during the reign of King Kaläkauai. Early in his career, he was known for his mastery of the ukulele. In 1949, he toured the U.S. mainland as a member of Ray Kinney's Hawaiian Revue. Kamae became a key figure in the Hawaiian cultural renaissance, co-founding the influential band The Sons of Hawai'i. The band, while garnering a broad audience, became known for the authenticity of its feeling and the unique repertoire, much of which was based on Kamae's deep interest in tradition. In 1974, he helped produce the landmark album Music of Hawai'i part of the National Geographic Music of the World series and with his group produced seven albums of traditional Hawaiian music. During the 1980s, Kamae took up filmmaking to document and preserve authentic Hawaiian cultural continuity. Today he is known as a musical leader and an artist with a voice "both guttural and poetic that carries the spirit of an ancient vocal and chanting tradition into present day Hawaiian music." Among his many honors, he has been designated a Living Treasure of Hawai'i and has received the Hawai'i Academy of Recording Arts Lifetime Achievement Award. With all of this attention, one nominator says, "Eddie's main focus has always been the school children of Hawai'i …he continues to donate films and study guides and has personally presented to more than 200,000 students in the public schools."

Agustin Lira
Chicano Singer, musician, composer
Fresno, CA
Agustin Lira was born in Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico. At the age of seven, he moved with his family to California in order to follow the crops with fellow farmworkers through the San Joaquin Valley. When he was 19, he co-founded El Teatro Campesino, realizing the power of artistic expression in uniting and inspiring the farmworker communities. His powerful singing and socially relevant lyrics served as the voice of the Chicano movement. Lira blended Mexican song traditions such as ranchera, huapango, and bolero with Anglo folk and popular musical forms to create works that are sung to this day. Hugo Morales, founder of Radio Bilingue, a Harvard Law School graduate and MacArthur Fellows, says of Lira and Cesar Chavez, "As a young student they inspired me to study, do my homework and do well academically so that, as the only farmworker in my class who was on a college track, I could later help my farmworker brothers and sisters." Lira was invited to perform at the Newport Folk Festival in 1968 and 1969. After leaving Teatro Campesino, he continued to work in music and theater and formed the musical group Alma. Lira has appeared on numerous recordings and has written songs featured in theatrical productions and film. Previous recognition of his work includes the Latino Legends of the 20th Century Award from the Central Valley Mexican American Association and the Local Hero Award from Valley Public Television. Also, for the past 42 years, he has taught theater, music, and/or creative writing in academic, community and arts organizations throughout California.

Julia Parker
Kashia Pomo basketmaker
Midpines, CA
Julia Parker has spent most of her years living and working in Yosemite Village in California. Although she was born in her native Pomo territory, her early teachers were elder Indian traditionalists and basketweavers of the Sierra Miwok and Mono Lake Paiute people. After her mother's death when Julia was five, she and her siblings were placed in a foster home and later sent to Stewart Indian School near Carson City, NV. There she met her husband to be, Ralph Parker, and in 1948 they married and moved back to the Yosemite area. Ralph was employed by the National Park Service and Julia worked as a housekeeper for the Yosemite Park and Curry Company. In 1960, Park naturalist Douglas Hubbard wanted to revive demonstrations of Indian basketweaving at the Yosemite Museum and Julia volunteered. With master elders as her teachers, most significantly Ralph's mother, Julia soon was demonstrating basketweaving in the park. She also revived the practice of making acorn meal and mush, which in the traditional way uses a basket for the cooking process. Julia's work has been featured at the National Museum of the American Indian, the Heard Museum, and the National Museum of Natural History. In 1983 when Queen Elizabeth II visited Yosemite, Julia gave her one of her baskets and today it is in the Queen's Museum in Windsor Castle. Julia has been a central figure in the organization and ongoing activities of the California Indian Basketweavers Association.

Mary Jane Queen
Appalachian musician
Cullowhee, NC
Mary Jane Queen grew up in the Appalachian region of southwestern North Carolina. Her parents' home was a local hub of musical activity and family members sang at church and social events. In addition to learning tunes on the banjo, much of the singing repertoire that she absorbed included the old ballads and story songs sung around the house to accompany everyday work. After raising eight children and following the passing of her husband, Claude Queen, she began singing some of these family songs at local and regional festivals, often accompanied by some of her children. Maggie Greenwald who wrote the script for the movie The Songcatcher based the character of Viney Butler on Mary Jane after a visit to her home. Butler performs Mary Jane's signature song "I Wish I Was a Single Girl Again" in the film. Recently Mary Jane Queen received both the North Carolina Folk Heritage Award and the Brown-Hudson Folklore Award. Queen has recounted her experiences in her autobiography The Life and Times of Mary Jane Queen: Her Art, Her Heritage, Her Music.

Joe Thompson
African American string band musician
Mebane, NC
Joe Thompson has played fiddle music in his home community in the Piedmont region of North Carolina for more than 80 years. The tradition, representing some of the earliest string band instrumentation on the continent, melds African and Anglo instrumentation and styles. Joe's father, John Arch Thompson and his brother, Walter, were sought after by African American and Anglo neighbors to provide music for local square dances. As soon as Joe took up the fiddle, he and his brother, Nate, and their cousin, Odell, were in demand for local house parties. Most of the tunes they learned have today become standards for Southern fiddlers and banjo players, but some were unique to the African American repertoire. Joe also punctuates his performance with sung verses and square dance calls, many of which are rarely heard today. Joe and his cousin Odell have performed at Carnegie Hall, as well as at the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, the National Folk Festival, and the International Music Festival in Brisbane, Australia. Their unique style was featured in Alan Lomax's American Patchwork film series. After Odell's death in 1994, Joe considered giving up music but he began playing publicly again with younger musicians in the region. In 1999, Rounder Records released Joe Thompson: Family Tradition focusing exclusively on his unique musical repertoire.

Irvin L. Trujillo
Rio Grande weaver
Chimayo, NM
At the age of 10, Irvin L. Trujillo began weaving under the tutelage of his father, renowned weaver Jacobo Ortega Trujillo. This begat the seventh generation of weavers of the Trujillo and Ortega families of Chimayo, in northern New Mexico. Although he graduated from college as a civil engineer and worked in that profession for a time, Irvin continued to study ancient weaving techniques. In 1980, he and his wife Lisa founded the Centinela Traditional Arts studio in Chimayo, making it possible for them to weave alongside Jacobo but also allowing them to teach others in the community. Work in the studio included related traditional techniques of loom design, natural dyeing, spinning, warping, weaving, and finishing. Both a keeper of tradition and an innovator, Irvin has received many awards including three Grand Prizes and the Master's Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Spanish Market in Santa Fe. His work reflects who he is and where he comes from. Weaving only five to eight pieces in a year, he says, "When I do a major piece it is like putting my life on that line of weft. All of my experience goes into it. I am trying to approach the spirit of the old pieces. In doing that, I need to learn from the past, but how to live in my time and environment."

Elaine Hoffman Watts
Klezmer musician
Havertown, PA
Elaine Hoffman Watts' family came to the United States from a town near Odessa in the former Soviet Union. Her father, Jacob Hoffman, was a prominent member of a klezmer band that was recorded in the 1920s. Elaine received training from her father and uncles in the family's repertoire of polkas, freilachs, mazurkas, shers, and other tunes of Eastern European Jewish musical tradition. She became the first woman graduate in percussion from the Curtis Institute of Music. With many opportunities before her, Watts chose to maintain the three-generation family tradition of playing klezmer music at weddings, bar mitzvahs, and other social events. She points out that being a woman and a drummer often was a barrier in her career but as one klezmer scholar observes, "Elaine is an important role-model to young players who otherwise would have no clue that women were indeed a part of traditional Yiddish music. Because those of us who study traditional Yiddish culture have no homeland in Europe to which we can return, we rely heavily on the 78-rpm recordings that were made during the early years of the 20th century. The vast majority of musicians on those recordings were men, and Elaine's presence is critical in redressing this imbalance."

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