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The Ozarks take center stage at Smithsonian Folklife Festival

Ozarks Celebration Festival. Ashlin Wang/Missouri State
Kevin White/Missouri State University
Ozarks Celebration Festival. Ashlin Wang/Missouri State

Missouri State University Libraries Dean Thomas Peters is co-curator of the two-week event.

Our weekly program, Missouri State Journal, is a collaboration between KSMU Radio and Missouri State University. It's hosted and produced by MSU's Office of Strategic Communication, and it airs each Tuesday morning at 9:45 a.m. on KSMU. 

The 2023 Smithsonian Folklife Festival will kick off later this month in the nation’s capital — and the Ozarks will be front and center. Hundreds of thousands will converge on the National Mall for the two-week event featuring master artisans and other tradition bearers. They will share stories of culture, creativity and community through their various performances, and demonstrations.

Produced annually by the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, the festival has featured participants from all 50 states and more than 100 countries. It honors contemporary living cultural traditions and celebrates those who practice and sustain them. This year’s festival carries the theme, “The Ozarks: Faces and Facets of the Region.”

If you’d like to learn more and see a full schedule of events, visit festival.si.edu.

Read the full audio transcript.

Emily Letterman has worked at Missouri State University since 2023 and is currently the public relations strategist in the Office of Strategic Communication. A longtime journalist with over a decade of reporting on southwest Missouri, she has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from MSU.