Water in Brooklyn’s Folk Imagination

Story, Song and Dance

Celebrate Mother’s Day by experiencing traditions associated with water, the mother of us all, while sitting on a barge docked in Red Hook’s Buttermilk Channel. You’ll enjoy mother-daughter duo Annie and Taseen Ferdous performing a Bangladeshi water vessel dance; James Lovell telling the Garifuna initiation story about Supnik, a boy who catches fish in a magical way; New York Harbor diver Lenny Speregen recounting legends of our harbor; Andrew Clarke with Braata Jamaican Folk Singers singing Jamaican Revival baptismal hymns; George Davidson telling the Guyanese masacura (river monster) story Gurdeep Kaur singing Punjabi tappe about water well meetings; and Dean Maitland bringing water songs and movement from Grenada. 

Presented by BAC in association with Waterfront Museum and Barge.

THIS EVENT IS PRESENTED AS PART OF:

Harborlore Festival
Where the River Meets the Sea in Brooklyn’s Folk Imagination
Dance, Music and Storytelling 

It’s no secret that Brooklyn is surrounded by over 50 miles of water from Greenpoint to Canarsie, and is also home to thousands of immigrants hailing from coastal locales across the globe—Jamaica, Bangladesh, Italy, Guyana, Egypt—where water is omnipresent. These immigrants, especially the artists among them, have brought cultural traditions to Brooklyn that capture the beauty, meaning and vulnerability of living at water’s edge.  For Harborlore Festival, BAC presents a series of free concerts, panel discussions and performing arts events exploring the role of water in the artistic traditions of Brooklyn’s diverse immigrant and diaspora communities. In post-Sandy New York, Harborlore Festival signals the importance of learning new respect and reverence for the power of water.

SPONSORS

Harborlore is sponsored by TD Bank.

BAC Folk Arts is sponsored by Con Edison.

Major support for Harborlore is provided by public funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the New York City Council. Additional support is provided by New York Council for the Humanities. Promotional Partner: Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. 

Media partner: WNYC Radio.