SNEAP Year 1 Presentation at the Commemoration of the Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico Event, 1999

SubjectPortrait of Lydia Pérez (Puerto Rican)

SubjectPortrait of Menen Osorio (Puerto Rican)

Date1999 March 22

Mediumpositive color film slides

ClassificationsGraphics

Credit LineConnecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program collections

CopyrightIn Copyright

Object number2015.196.1012.1-.22

DescriptionImages from an event celebrating the Commemoration of the Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico held on March 22, 1999. The event was organized by FLECHAS Inc.

The event was also a required public presentation of the Southern New England Apprenticeship Program Year 1 team in Puerto Rican bomba dance with teaching artist Lydia Perez and apprentice Menen Osorio, at Casa Linda, New Haven.

Programs and brochures for the event (2015.196.33.1-.3) are in the Connecticut Historical Society collection.

(.1): Flechas director Menen Osorio is inside the kitchen of Casa Linda. A comparsa mask is shown.

(.2): Lydia Perez and others are singing and playing plena on panderos.

(.3): Lydia Perez and members of Yoruba II are playing bomba drums.

(.4): Members of Youruba II are with Flechas guests and event speakers.

(.5-.14): Lydia Perez is performing bomba dance. A sign in the background reads “FLECHAS, INC. / ‘A Puerto Rican Expression of Three Cultures’.”

(.15): Lydia Perez is drumming with Youruba II.

(.16-.18) Lydia Perez, Menen Osorio, and others are drumming.

(.19): Flechas guests with Lydia Perez.

(.20-.22) Lydia Perez and others are singing and playing plena on panderos.

NotesBiographical Note: Flechas Inc. was a long running Puerto Rican arts, culture, and advocacy organization based in New Haven, developed in 1977 by Menen Osorio and others who came from Loiza, as do many in the New Haven Puerto Rican community. They organized an annual festival – Fiestas de Loiza En Connecticut Honor al Apostol Santiago - celebrating the festival held in Loiza, Puerto Rico, that commemorated St. James (Apostol Santiago) defeating the Moors in Spain. In this festival, both in Loiza and in New Haven, folk dances featuring costumed vejigante dancers were a major element of the presentation. Many of the most prominent Puerto Rican musicians in Connecticut and nearby performed over the years. Loiza is a town on the north coast of Puerto Rico with strong African-influenced traditions from its roots in the sugar cane industry and the culture of its enslaved people. Flechas devoted its work to educating audiences about the African heritage of Puerto Rico.

Flechas also held educational events throughout the year in New Haven, such as the Commemoration of the 1873 Abolition of Slavery in Puerto Rico and performances by the group’s Folkloric Bohio Dance Troupe. Lydia Pérez of Yoruba II bomba y plena group also performed often at the Festival, and she was a mentor to Menen Osorio’s dance troupe in 1998-1999 under the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program.

Subject Note: The Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program is a CCHAP initiative since 1997 that fosters the sharing of community-based traditional (folk) artistic skills through the apprenticeship learning model of regular, intensive, one-on-one teaching by a skilled mentor artist to a student/apprentice. The program pairs master artists from Rhode Island, Massachusetts, or Connecticut with apprentices from one of the other states, as a way to knit together members of the same community or group across state lines. Teaching and learning traditional arts help to sustain cultural expressions that are central to a community, while also strengthening festivals, arts activities and events when master/apprentice artists perform or demonstrate results of their cooperative learning to public audiences. The Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts Program at the Connecticut Historical Society manages the program in collaboration with the Folk Arts Program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council and independent folklorist Winifred Lambrecht who has a deep knowledge of the folk arts landscape of Rhode Island. Primary funding for the program comes from the National Endowment for the Arts, with support also from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, the Institute for Community Research, and the Connecticut Historical Society.

Biographical Note: Lydia Pérez has been a teacher in the Southern New England Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program in 1999-2000 to student Maria Perez Colon, and Menen Osorio in 1998-1999, both in Puerto Rican bomba dance. Lydia has been an apprentice in the program three times: with mentor Angel Sanchez Ortiz in vejigante making in 2006-2007, and 2015-2016 and 2016-2017 with mentor Carlos Santiago Arroyo in santos carving. Lydia is a longtime arts activist and practitioner of Puerto Rican bomba and plena dance and music with her family joining her in the group Yoruba II. She has developed the Puerto Rican Institute for Arts and Advocacy, an organization for education, performance, and advocacy for Puerto Rican arts and culture, and gives performances and teachings all over New England.

Additional audio, video, and/or photographic materials exist in the archive relating to this event and these artists.

Cataloging Note: This project was made possible in part by the Institute of Museum and Library Services MA-245929-OMS-20.

Status

Not on view