Scope and Content
The collection consists of audio and visual recordings, photographs, posters, and handouts related to programming by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) from 1968 to 2015. CTMD promotes and facilitates traditional immigrant and ethnic performing arts in the New York City metropolitan area. The CTMD collection is among the largest collections of video, sound recordings, photographs, and ephemera documenting the diversity of New York’s immigrant performing arts traditions over the past fifty years. The collection comprises both field recordings and program documentation.
Documentation from the 1970s focuses primarily on communities from the Balkans, Eastern and Southern Europe, including home audio recordings made by tamburitza musician George Skrbina, production material for the 1977 film The Popovich Brothers of South Chicago, and a series of field recordings of Bulgarian songs made by Martha Forsyth, 1980-1981.
Documentation from the 1980s and 1990s expands to include Center-produced recordings of Greek, Jewish, Irish American and Puerto Rican music, as well as its album of the Bukharan (Central Asian) Jewish ensemble, Shashmaqam, on the Smithsonian Folkways label. In addition, the Rhythms of New York concert series and associated video productions are included.
The collection also includes rare recordings of icons in folk and traditional performing arts, including more than fifteen NEA National Heritage Award recipients. These include: Puerto Rican bomba and plena master Juan Gutierrez and his ensemble, Los Pleneros de la 21; Greek lyra (fiddle) master Ilias Kementzides; Klezmer musician Andy Statman; Irish step dancer Donny Golden; Irish musician Mick Moloney; Palestinian musician and composer Simon Shaheen; Chinese pipa (lute) player Liang-xing Tang; Bukharan Jewish singer Fatimah Kuinova; Southern Italian musicians Guiseppe and Raffaela DeFranco; Irish flute player Jack Coen; Serbian Tamburitza master Adam Popovich; Epirot Greek clarinet master Perikles Halkias; Irish American fiddler Martin Mulvihill; Klezmer clarinetist Dave Tarras; Bulgarian saxophonist Yuri Yunakov; and Yiddish singer Beyle Scheachter Gottesman.