The NEA National Heritage Fellows and the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage have a long, intertwining history. Many of the National Heritage Fellows have been participants in the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival, going back to its beginnings in 1967, and more than a hundred of the fellows are featured musicians on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
The Center and the NEA Folk & Traditional Arts program have long worked in tandem to provide opportunities for broad public recognition of our nation’s accomplished traditional artists. The following videos from our collection capture just a few of the extraordinary NEA National Heritage Fellows who have taken part in the Festival and in Folkways recording projects over many decades.
