Plunkin' and Fiddlin' on the Great Mall

Washington was full of summer tourists last week, cheerfully enduring the capital's heat and smog, accepting that while the founding fathers had guaranteed them the right to assemble, that did not assure them a parking space. The pace of Government seemed slower, more relaxed. The Senate recessed. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was out of town, not coping with trouble in some faraway cockpit but continuing his travels in the U.S. heartland to build up public support for himself and the Ford Administration's foreign policy. In Atlanta, Sigma Delta Chi, the journalism society, made him an honorary member and presented him with an old-fashioned editor's green eyeshade. The President held a genial news conference on the White House lawn, having harsh words only for the oil-exporting nations, who are contemplating another price increase this fall. Such an act would be "totally unacceptable," said Gerald Ford, but he did not say what the U.S. could do about it. Much of his week was spent entertaining a cross section of Americans and two old Russian flyers, who brought him a model of the plane they had used in their 1937 polar flight. He also received a few field pointers during a visit by soccer's Brazilian superstar Pete.

An attraction for visitors was the Smithsonian Institution's Festival of American Folklife, spread across 50 acres along the Washington Mall beside the 2,000-ft. reflecting pool. The festival celebrates and demonstrates ethnic and cultural diversity in American life, from Ukrainian folk dances to Indian lacrosse matches. TIME Correspondent Bonnie Angelo took in the sights:

Overlooked by the Lincoln Memorial, the festival holds forth as a patchwork of Americana to show the nation's ethnic roots from abroad and their perpetuation in American history. The Smithsonian's scholars reject with a shudder the "melting pot" concept of America. They believe in an ethnically diverse, pluralistic nation to which scores of cultures have supplied the pieces that make up the American mosaic.

The festival features 900 "natural" performers--netmakers, square dancers, fiddlers, weavers, cooks, cowboys and others--discovered across the nation by 50 Smithsonian field researchers, and others sought out abroad to demonstrate the old ways that have been transplanted to the New World. The researchers, scouting the country for local talent, came up with Fiddler Ed Johnson and Guitarist Joe Trottier, North Dakota Indians who play Scotch-Irish jigs. They found Charles Sayles playing his harmonica on a street corner in Greenwich Village and discovered Dolores Pequefio, a grandmother from San Diego, who sings 500-year-old Portuguese ballads.

On logs arranged like benches beneath towering elms, an enraptured, mostly young and blue-jeaned audience listens as Bessie Jones, a spirituals singer, talks about the songs her slave grandfather used to sing in the cotton fields in Virginia. As her vibrant, mellow voice lifts into song ("I'm going to lay down my life for my Lord"), the young people clap their hands in rhythm.

A few yards away, in counterpoint, comes the strident chant of a group of Plains Indians, accompanied by throbbing tom-toms and jangling bells. Drops of perspiration trickle down the puffing cheeks of the Freistadt, Wis., Alte Kameraden Band, whose members wear lederhosen, embroidered knee socks and felt hats as they oom-pah-pah through German folk tunes. In a nearby tent a lissome Lebanese girl is cooler than her audience as she moves sensuously in a Smithsonian-approved belly dance, while the appreciative crowds munch m 'jardm (lentils and rice).

Black Culture. One popular section of the festival is the "African Diaspora" which traces black culture from its origins in West Africa to the Caribbean Islands and then to the U.S. Salisu Manama, a Ghanaian, wears his traditional tribal garb as he plays the gonje, a one-stringed instrument. Jamaican Claudia Nelson weaves baskets from the jipijapa plant as she talks in a beguiling lilt about her life. Young blacks stop to have their hair "cornrowed" in African style. There is a model of an early rural black church, a cloth-shaded open marketplace from the Caribbean and a replica of an African grass hut.

In another section, called "Regional America," a minisampler of the Northern Plains states is on display. Minuscule plots of corn, wheat and sorghum are trying to take hold on the currently tropical Mall. An exhibit known as

"Working Americans" displays a freight train complete with five-ton locomotive mockup, a 70,000-lb. caboose and 288 ft. of track, and leaping into the jet age, how airplane seats are made.

The visitors to the Mall are in no danger of starving to death. The exotic victuals available include Portuguese fiesta breads; Norwegian lefse, a cakelike confection of mashed potatoes, whipped cream and flour; Ghanaian bitter-leaf soup; Middle Eastern hummus, a chick-pea puree; Japanese mochi or rice cakes; and calabazitas, a Mexican stew. It is all part of the festival's purpose: to celebrate the diversity of U.S. culture and give those who come a chance to rediscover the varied roots of the American heritage.

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