Intercultural Residency Series
Spring 2012

Panelists for:
Making a Difference Through the Arts: The Practice of Cultural Advocacy

Theodore Levin, moderator
Theodore Levin is a longtime student of music, expressive culture, and traditional spirituality in Central Asia and Siberia. His two books, The Hundred Thousand Fools of God: Musical Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) and Where Rivers and Mountains Sing: Sound, Music, and Nomadism in Tuva and Beyond, are both published by Indiana University Press. As an advocate for music and musicians from other cultures, he has produced recordings, curated concerts and festivals, and contributed to international arts initiatives. During an extended leave from Dartmouth, he served as the first executive director of the Silk Road Project, founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma. Currently he serves as Senior Project Consultant to the Aga Khan Music Initiative, and as chair of the Arts and Culture sub-board of the Open Society (Soros) Foundations. His research and advocacy activities focus on the role of arts and culture in promoting and strengthening civil society in countries where it is endangered or still emerging. He is presently working on a book on culture and development in Asia, writing and editing a textbook on the music of Central Asia for university students in the region, and completing a 10-volume CD-DVD series, "Music of Central Asia," released by Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. At Dartmouth he teaches courses on ethnomusicology and world music, sacred music in East and West, and an interdisciplinary course on the Silk Road offered through the Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Program. http://www.dartmouth.edu/~music/faculty/levin.html

Richard Kurin
Under Secretary for History, Art, and Culture, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution. Richard Kurin is by training an anthropologist specializing in South Asia. Research Interests: cultural policy, cultural presentation and representation, culture and development, the cultures of south Asia and the United States, indigenous knowledge systems, kinship, religion, ethnicity
http://www.si.edu/ofg/Staffhp/kurinr.htm

Zeyba Rahman is widely recognized as a bridge builder who works at the crossroads of culture and civic issues. A firm believer in the capacity of creativity to make a difference, she uses culture’s lens to empower and transform through targeted initiatives in multiple media including, the performing arts, visual arts, film and video. Rahman is Director, Asia and North America, of the Morocco-based Fes Festival of World Sacred Music and its current affairs focused Fes Forum. The Festival has been honored by the United Nations as one of seven world heroes for the Dialogue Amongst Civilizations. In addition to her role with the Moroccan Fes Festival, Rahman serves as Creative Consultant for public programs of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s New Galleries for the Arts of the Arab Lands, Turkey, Iran, Central Asia and Later South Asia; and Artistic Director for the US national Caravanserai: A Place Where Cultures Meet, a cultural diplomacy initiative engaging Muslim cultures for small communities. In spring 2011, she was Chief Curator for the month-long World Nomads Morocco Festival that was honored by His Majesty King Mohammed VI’s royal patronage for programmatic excellence. From 2007-2009 she was Senior Project Advisor for the unprecedented Muslim Voices: Arts & Ideas Festival in New York. Past initiatives have included working as the Artistic Director of programs with the World Bank and at the World Millennium Peace Summit for Spiritual Leaders at the United Nations. Currently, she serves on the Steering Committee for the Independent Television Service’s (ITVS) Diverse Muslim Voices and is an advisor to Artworks for Freedom. For eighteen years, Rahman served as the Chairwoman of World Music Institute, a taste-making, socially conscious, cultural organization. A frequent public speaker on a range of subjects, she focuses in particular on global culture, the Muslim world, women’s leadership and the environment. Twice honored by New York City’s government for enriching the City’s cultural life, Rahman has been the subject of two television profiles as a global cultural leader. http://www.caravanserai-arts.org/blog/interview-artistic-director-zeyba-rahman

Ethel Raim: Cofounder and Artistic Director at the Center for Traditional Music and Dance. Ethel Raim has spent the better part of her lifetime tuning American ears to the tremendous beauty of traditional music and ensuring that communities value and support their own cultural legacy. Her love of Balkan music brought her together with Martin Koenig to found the Balkan Arts Center in l966 -- which was renamed Ethnic Folk Arts Center in the ‘80s, and later the Center for Traditional Music and Dance. Years of fostering and presenting the music and dance of numerous communities throughout the New York area makes the Center one of nation's great proponents of what Alan Lomax calls Cultural Equity, the right of every community or ethnic group to express and sustain its distinctive cultural heritage. Website at www.ctmd.org.

Jessye Kass, Brandeis 2013 from Concord, MA, is a double major in Anthropology and African & Afro-American Studies, with minors in Social Justice & Social Policy and Peace, Conflict and Coexistence Studies. During the fall semester of 2009, before arriving at Brandeis, she volunteered in Ghana, teaching at a school and working in an orphanage. In the summer of 2010, she returned to Ghana and met Serge Attukwei Clottey. Together, in the 2010-2011 year, they took their joint passion for teaching and art and co-founded an NGO: Attukwei Art Foundation (AAF) www.attukweiartfoundation.org. Kass petitioned the Ghanaian government for legal registration and was able to legally register AAF as an NGO in Ghana. AAF aims to bring free therapeutic art programs to children living in poverty, victims of abuse, and children with disabilities. Through the Sorensen Fellowship, a grant program, at Brandeis, Kass was able to fund this project last summer. In Ghana, she taught memoir writing, self-defense and art classes to children of all ages; children facing poverty, domestic violence, chronic illness and special needs., The organization is currently up and running, with volunteers presently working in the country.