The powerful Smithsonian Foundation has dedicated the Basque Culture to the great folkloric festival in Washington, which this year celebrates its 25th anniversary. The debate has been whether the Basque representation has been too folkloric or just the opposite, whether it has been linked to folklore. I say the second, and I wanted to denounce that the Basques have shown in America that we are ashamed of our folklore.
The Smithsonian Folklife festival aims to make known the living cultural heritage of the world.
The organizers' request to the Basque authorities was clear: they wanted to know the Basque folklore, the traditional heritage. The Basques have been obsessed with appearing modern: Under the slogan Innovation by culture, our complexes have appeared repeatedly in the program: Bertsolarism has been the Modern Bertsolarism, the Innovative Gastronomy, Innovative Technologies in Sport in rural sport and New Paths in Basque Dance to talk about Basque dance.
We are ashamed of our folklore and therefore do not know our cultural heritage. Or is it the other way around? Are we ashamed of our cultural heritage because we do not know it? I don't know what the hen is and what the egg is, but we have both of them with us.
In Washington, Basque representatives have taught the Txapeloaz dance in the sessions to publicize the Basque dance in Basque. In the 19th century, in the United States of America, a slightly silly dance, coming from England, underwent a small but revolutionary change. At the end of each sentence a change of couple was organized. This gave him tremendous success that lasts until today. It was known in Scandinavia as All American Promenade in the 20th century and continued to spread throughout Europe under the name of Aleman’s marsj. In the 1970s he was taught in a course in the French town of Chapelle des Bois. Those who studied there could not remember the name of the dance and began to call it Chapelloise. It was brought to the Basque Country in the 1990s by Patxi Pérez. Chapelloise in Gurea is the Txapeloaz, the same dance, the same name, the graph translated to the Basque.
A consequence? That the Basques have taught the Americans a dance from North America, in which it is a Basque dance and which shows our millenary cultural heritage. In Euskal Herria we have great artists dancing tango, capoeira or hip-hop, and if we wanted to show that we are modern and cosmopolitan we could give their courses and demonstrations in Washington. But I suspect that we have not been invited to America to teach us to hunt buffalos and to smoke the pipe of peace.
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