YALA Mini-Grants help launch local podcast "Folk Will Save Us"
Who are the folk, and what are they creating?
For local musician and YALA Mini-Grant recipient Sarah Larsson, music has long been a way for her to learn about the world.
Local musician and YALA Mini-Grant recipient Sarah Larsson. Photo courtesy of Sarah Larsson.
“As a teen in the suburbs, in Excelsior, I felt very limited in terms of being able to access the rest of the world,” Sarah said. “It felt very homogenous. I would go to the public library, and take out all of the World Music CDs. I think that came from knowing there was a wider world, and having somewhat of an ‘other’ identity, by virtue of my mom being Jewish. I think it was a big part of the nature of my Jewishness at the time.”
That passion—for music, and for learning about the wider world—followed her to college at Yale, where she became an anthropology major and pursued folk music as an extracurricular.
“For me it really often comes down to being able to understand the world in ways that people different from me understand the world,” Sarah said. “If I'm only getting it from my perspective, I’m missing a whole chunk of planet Earth.”
Sarah sang in the Yale Slavic Chorus, where she accessed different scenes around folk music and traditions.
“We would go to these festivals, and it would be all Balkan music—people dancing in lines, and holding hands with strangers,” she said. “It was all of these spaces where people were mostly dancing, mostly to live music, who were really deep in these traditions. It was the best thing ever. But then I was like, but why?”
This curiosity, combined with her community development work and anthropology major, meant that Sarah spent a large part of her college career seeking out and learning from folk traditions—from fishermen in Kenya to barn dancers in rural Connecticut.
“It’s been this running theme for me, where I want these stories to get out there more,” she explained. “I think there’s so much wisdom and insight from these perspectives that people already have.”
Fast forward to now, and Sarah’s new way to bring folk artists into the conversation with the help of a YALA mini grant. Her podcast, Folk Will Save Us, features folk artists across all mediums discussing their work and what folk art brings to the table. Art in this context, Sarah says, covers everything from weaving to dancing to agriculture.
“‘Who are the folk, and what are they creating?’” she said. “This first season of the podcast is zeroed in on what we think of as fine arts. But even within that, when you listen to these conversations, we’re talking about holidays, we’re talking about the way that people raise children. We’re talking about all kinds of things, because they’re all very embedded in each other.”
The first season, which went live September 10, features Rebekah Crisanta (Lady Xøk) & Xilam Balam (Los Nativos); Ahmed Ismail Yusuf (author, The Lion’s Binding Oath, A Crack in the Sky); Kari Tauring (heritage Nordic staff-carrying woman); Slavka Slavtcheva (dancer, St Cyril & Methodius Bulgarian School); and Hatim Belyamani (HAT, founder Remix ⟷ Culture). See more about listening to these interviews below!
“The episodes mostly highlight artists who are from the Twin Cities, and there’s one bonus episode that’s an interview with a Moroccan artist who was touring through and played at the Cedar Cultural Center,” Sarah said. “We were spending this time together and exchanging a lot of stories. We talked about traditions, favorite songs, things like that. One thing that did come up for a lot of people was this feeling of loss, of some sadness. Folks would tell stories about something they remembered from the past and expressed fearfulness about whether it would continue.”
The podcast, Sarah said, is a “tool in the toolkit” to help make people more aware of the value of folk traditions. With YALA’s help, she’s able to elevate the voices of these local folk artists and help bring them into the center of conversations around arts funding and community building—conversations that are still happening despite the pandemic.
“This idea was cooking for a long time, mostly because every time I had an amazing conversation with one of these artists, I wanted to share it as widely as I could. All of the interviews were conducted before COVID. But they are incredibly relevant,” Sarah said. “So many of us are asking questions about our roles in society, about race, about ethnicity, about what legacy we want to leave — when Slavka or Ahmed talks in their interview about knowing your community’s past in order to build your future, that’s exactly it. It’s a strong, hopeful vision.”
“What I really want to do is leverage the podcast to do things like having a seat at the table around policy decisions. If there are funding allocations being made on a foundation level, are you paying attention to folk artists?” she says, as an example. “There are so many people who count as artists but often aren’t at the table.”
Finally—why the name?
“The name is true. I think folk will save us,” Sarah says. “When I look around at things that people point to as problems in society, I’m like, ‘folk traditions have an answer for that.’”
Check out “Folk Will Save Us” on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Podbean and Stitcher, visit their website at www.folkwillsaveus.org, and follow them on Facebook!
For questions about YALA mini grants, email Emma Dunn, YALA MANAGER.