[music] [applause] David Taylor: I don't usually get such a warm introduction, do I? Well, I want to welcome everyone to the Coolidge Auditorium here at the Library of Congress. My name is David Taylor. I'm head of Programs Research at the American Folklife Center, and on behalf of the Folklife Center to welcome you to this, the first in our home grown series of concerts featuring the best traditional musicians and dancers from around the United States, our first this year. I wanted to let you know that this performance is being recorded for our archive so people will have the benefit of this performance in the future, and to let you know that for the first time our colleagues from the Voice of America are here also to videotape this performance for international broadcast to India. [applause] And this is a good point to remind you to turn off all your cellphones, please, because we don't want to interfere with the quality of the recording or the performance today. Our performance is brought to you in collaboration with the American Folklife Center here at the library and the Millenium Stage at the Kennedy center, and also with help from our folklore colleagues around the United States. Our performance today is by Major League Tassa, a fantastic Indo-Caribbean group from New York City and we're going to hear a bit more about them and their tradition with help from our colleague folklorist Robert Baron who is the director the Folk Arts Program at the New York Council on the Arts. So please give a warm Library of Congress welcome to Robert Baron. [applause] Robert Baron: When Thea Austen, who produces this series for the American Folklore Center asked me to recommend a group from New York I was pretty flummoxed. I mean we have just about everything in the world in New York. People come from everywhere and bring their traditions, and maintain them, and continue them, and transform them, so we have everything and then some in folk traditions. So we have Sherpa, a group of Sherpas from Nepal who have come into Brooklyn who are maintaining their traditions of performing. We have over 20,000 Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders -- [break in audio] -- a statistic that astounded me, and we also have people from throughout the United States that maintain their identities. There's a group of Mississippians who have an annual picnic and get together, and keep their traditions up. And so I was sort of searching and for some time I was thinking about what would be good to present? And then I saw Major League Tassa. It's a group that I'd seen a bit before and I was just knocked out by the hot rhythms of the drumming, and the tight integration between the drumming and the dancing, and I also felt that they told -- the story of the group told a wonderful story, an American story, actually, of groups who have taken their folklife, their traditions from their homeland and maintained them, and creatively adapted them to life in America. Tassa drumming traces its origins to Bihar and couple of other states in north India where it's traditionally associated with the Muharram Festival, which is a Muslim festival. In India to some extent, but especially in the Caribbean and in New York, it's practiced by both Muslims as well as Hindus. In Trinidad, and Guyana, and Suriname, and several other Caribbean islands East Indians were brought to the region as indentured laborers working in the sugar cane plantations and other agricultural businesses industries. And they kept up the tradition of Tassa. It was associated with something called Jose, which is basically the Muharram Festival as it's practiced in the Caribbean. And during this festival there are miniature temples which are processed and paraded on the heads of the people in the festival. And again, in Trinidad and Guyana it's something that's practiced by both Hindus and Muslims. Actually in recent years it's become more of a Hindu festival. There's been a great deal of migration of in the Caribbean people to South Florida, to a certain extent, but especially to New York City and Queens, and the Richmond Hill neighborhood of Queens is a center for the Caribbean people in New York City. And in New York City -- I think you'll see in the music that there's a great variety of rhythms which are used in tassa drumming. They're called hands, and there's a dancing hand, there's a religion hand, which are associated in the case of this group with Hindu deities and Hindu festival's. The hands, rhythms which are used for processions which opened up the event today, and there are also hands which are drawn from Afro Caribbean traditions and western Indian traditions such as steel pan. I think that group will be performing one of those. It's performed to the accompaniment of dancing, chutney dancing, which is a popular dance form, which for those of you who know dance from India, you'll see some familiar elements such as from Bharat Natyam, perhaps, from D. C. Dance, but it also has some very distinctively Caribbean dimensions and also some aspects which have been developed in New York City as well. The Library of Congress here has -- in the American Folklife Center and the archive of folk culture, there's a remarkable collection, the Alan Lomax collection, which includes recordings done of East Indian music in the West Indies by Alan Lomax, probably in the 1950's I think, including some tassa drumming. But now you can see it here right in America, and it's a very vibrant tradition in New York. It's performed in nightclubs and bars during the the Diwali Festival. There's a parade which happens in Queens. And I think what we'll do is we'll have the group here introduce themselves. The leader of the group is Anil Raghoonanan and I'd just also like to say what a privilege it is to be here at the Library of Congress with its high dignity and its great intellectual achievements, but I think as all of you know there's a relationship between the mind and the body which is indissoluble, and I defy any of you here to avoid moving your body just a little bit. This music is very hot. [laughter] So I'll just introduce Anil, and he will introduce the members of the group and give you a little tour of the instruments. [applause] Anil Raghoonanan: Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen and special guests. My name is Anil Raghoonanan. I'm the leader of the group. This group was founded three years ago at Major League Tassa. Also, along with my cousin Kevin we found the group three years ago. So now we have these guys, they grew up together playing drumming so we got together and tried, and thank God we're here. I want to appreciate, tell thank you to the Library of Congress and the American Folklife Center for having us. I hope you guys enjoy the show. We have Kevin Raghoonanan on the bass, which is made out of goat skin [applause] We have Doodnath Lalchan on the small "cutter" drum, tassa. [applause] And we have Dave Seetaram on the next clay tassa drum. His will be "fulley". [applause] And myself with the dhol. This is two brass -- this is called jhanj, to keep up with the rhythm. Thank you very much and enjoy the show. [music] [applause] [music] [applause] [music] [applause] [music] [applause] Thea Austen: So let's give them a big hand. [applause] [music] Thea Austen: Think you all so much for coming and enjoying our concert this afternoon with Major League Tassa. They'll be playing tonight at the Millennium Stage at 6:00, also a free concert, so if you liked that please join them there. And watch for our new concert series which starts in April, April 24 with the Beehive String Band from Utah. So thanks very much. [applause] [music] [end of transcript]