The main entrance to the Thomas Jefferson Building is through three double bronze doors showing images of writing, printing, and tradition.
That last image, depicting how art is preserved and passed along, seemed most appropriate to this occasion and especially to Boston-born Joe Derrane. He’s the first button accordionist in the Irish tradition and just the 10th Irish or Irish-American performer to receive a National Heritage Fellowship, which includes a check for $20,000.
By May 1997, the Thomas Jefferson Building had been renovated and restored to reflect the late 19th-century splendor of its Italian Renaissance design, and the Great Hall inside is an imposing sight. Its white Italian marble floors, columns, staircases, arches, stucco decorations, statues, mosaics, paintings, bronze busts, displays (e.g., the Gutenberg Bible), and 75-foot-high, stained-glass, gold-ornamented ceiling remind visitors that art, culture, creativity, and knowledge are prized and celebrated here. The Library of Congress itself is America’s oldest federal cultural institution and the world’s largest library, containing more than 120 million items.
Banquet bounty
NEA Chairman Dana Gioia, an accomplished poet, librettist, and critic, elicited some laughter from the Great Hall banquet audience when he referred to some of the inscribed author names surrounding him. “I feel Longfellow, Tennyson, and Cervantes are sort of looking down on me now and giving me a failing grade in oratory,” he said.
Modesty aside, Gioia is a gifted speaker with an engaging wit. The son of a working-class Italian father and Mexican mother, he clearly understands the cultural advantages of ethnic diversity in America. He’s also proved to be an astute administrator, helping to convince President Bush to ask Congress for a $18 million increase in the NEA budget for fiscal 2005. That’s no mean feat in this volatile election year.
At the podium, the chairman stressed the prestige of the National Heritage Fellowships since their founding in 1982. “This is the highest honor that America gives to traditional and folk artists,” he stated. Then he asked all 12 winners to stand and be recognized. “Pace yourselves,” Gioia told them after the applause subsided. “Tonight’s banquet is the first of several events in your honor.”
Gioia next read a letter of congratulation from President Bush. “As a National Heritage Fellow,” the president wrote, “you set an example of excellence and help us better appreciate the history and traditions of our society.” Each honoree received a framed, signed copy.
“At the National Endowment for the Arts,” Gioia remarked, “we have a saying: a great nation deserves great art. I’ve insisted that instead of just speechifying, we actually have art at all NEA events.” He then asked Jerry Douglas, one of the National Heritage Fellows, to perform.
The dobro, or resophonic guitar, is an acoustic guitar with a self-contained metal resonator, and it’s played with finger picks worn on one hand and a metal slide held in the other. No one in the history of the dobro, which was patented in 1925, has ever matched the innovative skill of Jerry Douglas, whose nickname “Flux” reflects how well he plays.
Douglas surprised the banquet audience with a superb solo of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” This wasn’t a calculated patriotic gesture flowing from the red state-blue state political divisions of today. Instead, it was a heartfelt acknowledgment of what the United States represents, ideally and practically, to all 12 National Heritage Fellowship winners.
“I’ve got the greatest job in the world, and the greatest week in my year is when I call each of these artists to tell them of this honor,” said Barry Bergey, director of folk and traditional arts at the NEA.
Bergey mentioned that a panel of cultural experts meticulously reviewed more than 260 nominees, from which a dozen artists were chosen for 2004. Often the first reaction from new honorees was disbelief, he said, followed by an admission that they stand on the shoulders of those who came before and helped them to excel.
Awardees speak
This mix of humility and gratitude was echoed in virtually every honoree’s comments from the podium.
Anjani Ambegaokar, a North Indian Kathak dancer who immigrated to the U.S. in 1967, cited her father’s initial puzzlement over her love of dance and her own determination to find a suitable outlet for her talent in America.
Chuck Campbell is a sacred steel guitarist who plays in a House of God church in Rochester, N.Y. He spoke of how he got his first pedal-steel guitar in the early 1970s and converted his playing of it to “our way of praising God.” Campbell also talked about the common link he saw among all 12 National Heritage Fellows: the desire “to share our culture with others.”
Milan Opacich, Schererville, Ind., is of Serbo-Croatian descent. He creates instruments for tamburitza, a century-old string ensemble tradition from former Yugoslavia. A tool-and-die maker by trade and later a firefighter, Opacich spoke of making instruments in a basement workshop of the firehouse he was stationed in. Tears streamed down his face as he spoke of the opportunity America had given him to develop and ply his art.
Barry Bergey injected a note of levity when he described the reaction of western swing fiddler Johnny Gimble to the news that he was selected for a National Heritage Fellowship in 1994. When Gimble heard about the money involved, which was then $10,000, he replied: “Can I pay that in installments or do I have to pay it all at once?”
Derrane’s remarks
Visibly moved by the honor, Joe Derrane said at the podium: “It’s been a long, long road for me. I had the good fortune, and some might say misfortune, to play the button accordion. The accordion has taken more than its share of lumps over the years. You know, standard jokes like, ‘Welcome to hell. Here’s your accordion.’
“But it’s a fascinating instrument, and when I was only 17, I had the good fortune to do a live radio show in Boston every Sunday night. One of the sponsors of that radio program owned a record store, and customers were coming in and asking if they could get a record of that young Joe Derrane they heard on the radio. The store owner said there were no records. Finally it dawned on him that maybe he should make some, and that’s what he did. He recorded me and my teacher, the great Jerry O’Brien, and that was the start of my recording career.
“The Good Lord has given me this gift, and I suppose it is, but I’ve worked long and hard to hone that gift. I made a pledge at the 1994 Wolf Trap Irish festival, where I had received this wonderful applause, that I would never quit playing the button box. I’ve kept that pledge.
“I’m humbled by this honor, but I’m most proud of the fact that this award is a validation of the button accordion and its place in Irish music.”
Caucus room
The National Heritage Fellowship awards presentation ceremony took place Thursday morning, Sept. 30, in the Cannon House Office Building Caucus Room. It is the oldest assembly room and one of the largest built for the House of Representatives outside the Capitol.
NEA Chairman Dana Gioia again presided, and some U.S. senators and congressmen dropped in to praise their states’ constituents who won the award. Sen. Jeff Bingaman and Rep. Tom Udall of New Mexico congratulated Santa Fe straw appliqu
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