Kumeyaay Community College is a public community college in California. Established in 2004 by the Sycuan Band of the Kumeyaay Nation, it is located on the Sycuan Indian Reservation near El Cajon.

Living Cultures Grant

2023

Kumeyaay Community College Summer Solstice Week

Funding will support the Kumeyaay Community College’s Summer Solstice Week, which will include a campout with Kumeyaay foods, plant knowledge hikes, traditional storytelling, a tule boat launch, and a cultural exchange and paint-making workshop for Kumeyaay members from San Diego and Baja California.

The post Kumeyaay Community College appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

The post Bernard B. Ellorin, Ph.D. appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

Berenice Badillo is a Spanish-speaking, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, illustrator, muralist, and multimedia artist. She is an immigrant from Mexico and has found herself straddling intertwined cultural and subcultural identities her entire life. She illustrated an award-winning book “Am I Blue or am I Green?” that explores the identity and impact of a boy’s life with parents that are undocumented in the United States. Badillo strives to document and encourage the creation of communal cultural wealth through murals, sculpture, pop up art galleries and in the co-creation of counter stories. She believes that there is an importance in representation and sees art expression as a means to both amplify the voices of BIPOC and disseminate the stories of their community where it can be witnessed on a grand scale. Badillo is a Chicano Park muralist, has a doctorate in Art Therapy, and is a social emotional learning consultant (SEL).

Living Cultures Grant

2023

Mural in Chican@ Park 2024

In 1997, Badillo created a forty-foot mural in defiance of Caltrans’ proposed retrofitting, which threatened to destroy the murals in Chicano Park in San Diego. Badillo plans to restore the now historic landmark mural and create a short documentary to highlight Chicana women muralists and the mural’s history and symbolism.

The post Berenice Badillo appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

Alyce Smith Cooper is known by many as the Golden Brown Fairy Godmother.  She is a storyteller, minister, poet and actress.  Through her art and ministry she has been dedicated to social and racial justice.  For the past forty years, she has been exciting the imaginations of children of all ages.  She was recently recognized out of eleven hundred remarkable applicants as a Legacy Art Fellow by the California Arts Council.

Living Cultures Grant

2023

Equity Through Generational Storytelling

With funding from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grant Program, Smith Cooper will work with consultants to develop and operationalize a professional social media strategy to disseminate her body of work to a larger population. She aims to increase access to her work, build connections across the world, and receive feedback from a diverse audience.

The post Alyce Smith Cooper appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

The post Berenice V Badillo appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

In 2021, with support from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grant Program, the Somali Community of San Diego will host an event bringing together Somalis of all ages in the San Diego community in celebration, dialogue, and engagement with Gabay, or traditional Somali poetry. Playing a significant role in Somali heritage, Gabay is used to capture and pass along stories, family lineage, and other significant occurrences in a family or clan’s history. The planned event is an effort to bridge the gap that exists in the Somali diaspora between a younger generation and the elders of the community that still hold onto this talent.

The post Somali Community of San Diego appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

In 2021, a grant from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grant Program will support workshops and performances of the indigenous dances and music of Maguindanaoans, an Islamic tribe in Mindanao, Southern Philippines. Interactive workshops, developed and taught by culture bearers and artists trained in Mindanao by Maguindanaoan master artists, will be held with intergenerational participants at community events.

The post SAMAHAN Filipino American Performing Arts & Education Center, Inc. appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

In 2021, a grant from ACTA’s Living Cultures Grant Program supported the ensemble in providing six months of free Mexican ballet folklorico instruction to students financially impacted by COVID-19. Weekly classes will be held over Zoom and will provide both technical dance instruction and cultural education about the origins, history, and traditions of ballet folklorico.

The post Ballet Folklorico El Tapatio de San Dieguito (BFETdeSD) appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

Bernard Barros Ellorin of San Diego learned traditional tagunggu’ music from various master artists living in the province of Tawitawi in the Sulu Archipelago, Philippines during his graduate studies in 2006-2008. Tagunggu’ music from the Sama and Tausug–two of the indigenous Muslim societies from the Sulu Archipelago– is traditional gong ensemble music played for festive occasions during the week of a full moon. It has shared similarities with gong-chime traditions on Mindanao Island, Philippines and neighboring Southeast Asian countries. Tagunggu’ music also functions as the accompaniment to Pangalay–an indigenous classical dance form with graceful curvilinear movements. Similar to the kulintang practiced by the late Danongan Kalanduyan, the ensemble has the kulintangan, a gong row instrument with up to eight kettle gongs, which are supported by larger gong and drum instruments. Musicians of all ages play the music within the community for festive occasions. In the Filipino American diaspora, tagunggu’ music with Pangalay dancing celebrates the diversity of Philippine cultural arts and its people. More importantly it instills respect for indigenous cultural art forms marginalized by the majority population in the homeland.

Bernard studied under three master artists representing both ethnic groups: the late Taalao Manandao and Timallay Gilasti, his Sama informants, and Salmeno Elang, a musician of Sama and Tausug ancestry. Bernard is also a long-time student of kulintang music from the late Danongan Sibay Kalanduyan. Tagunggu’ music from the Sulu Archipelago is part of Bernard’s life’s work in promoting indigenous Philippine music with artistry, integrity, and respect. Learning to meticulously study each complex melody–both from Kalanduyan’s heritage from Mindanao Island and the repertoire taught by Sama and Tausug musicians–is part of Bernard’s work as a Philippine ethnomusicologist with a passion for educating his community about marginalized Philippine cultural art forms.

Bernard Ellorin performing with members of the Pakaraguian Kulintang Ensemble of the Samahan Filipino American Performing Arts & Education center at a conference for the Filipino American Historical Society in July 2014.

Apprenticeship Program

2021

Tagunggu’ music
with apprentice Rogelle Zamora

Bernard and Rogelle will engage in a six-month intensive covering the cultural background and the rudiments for playing musical instruments from the tagunggu’ music ensemble, namely from the Sama and Tausug ethnic groups located in the Sulu Archipelago, Philippines. The apprenticeship consists of two parts: private instruction on the kulintang, also known as kulintangan (gong row instrument), and participation in the Pakaraguian Kulintang Ensemble’s group rehearsals on the larger gong and drum instruments. All of these activities are in preparation for the Samahan Filipino American Performing Arts & Education Center’s 44th Annual Gala Concert of Philippine Music & Dance scheduled for November 2021. The two-hour concert will feature music and dances from different regions of the archipelago. To demonstrate the apprentice’s proficiency in tagunggu’ music, we will perform a suite of music and dances from the Sulu archipelago featuring traditional musical repertoire and its symbiotic relationship to accompanying the classical dance form known as Pangalay.

2019

Kulintang music
with apprentice Kimberly Kalanduyan

Master artistBernard Barros Ellorin trained his apprentice Kimberly Kalanduyan in Kulintang music of the Southern Philippines. Click here to read more about Kimberly’s journey with kulintang as she reconnected with family and her grandfather, Danny Kalanduyan’s, legacy through her Apprenticeship.

Bernard and Kimberly practice kulintang in San Diego as part of their 2019 ACTA apprenticeship.

The post Bernard Barros Ellorin appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.

The Ah-Mut Pipa Foundation in the city of Bard in Imperial County was founded in 1996. The mission of the Ah-Mut Pipa Foundation is to educate the Quechan community, the Tribes of California, and the general public, in order to increase understanding of Native American ethnohistory, culture, and art.  In 2018 the Foundation got a license to run a low-power radio station, KUAV radio, from the Ft. Yuma Indian Reservation. They have been on the air since January 2018. They air tribal music, some local news, and a few events when possible.

Living Cultures Grant

2020

Kuruk: Quechan Mourning Ceremony

In 2020 the Ah-Mut Pipa Foundation received a Living Cultures Grant from ACTA to research and teach the cultural history surrounding Kuruk mourning practices. The Quechan people practice a cremation ritual that derives from their creation story. When Kumat, the Creator, died, he was cremated. Their tribal songs describe the ritual conducted at that death. The Foundation is applying the grant to teach young men and women of the Quechan Nation about the ancient Kuruk Mourning Ceremony and how it relates to today’s cremation ceremony so that this cremation practice will not die as it is part of the traditional culture of the Hokan-speaking people of the Southwest and northern Baja, Mexico.

The post Ah-Mut Pipa Foundation appeared first on Alliance for California Traditional Arts.