Thanksgiving: NEA National Heritage Fellows 2018

As part of our annual Thanksgiving tradition, we celebrate America’s diverse heritage by spotlighting this year’s National Endowment for the Arts Heritage Fellows—recognized for their excellence in folk and traditional arts. Live in concert, Texas guitar maven and singer Barbara Lynn commands the stage with her brand of Gulf Coast rhythm & blues; old-time fiddler Eddie Bond shreds Appalachian style; Don & Cindy Roy from Gorham, Maine, punch out French reels; and New York City cultural documentarian Ethel Raim sings a Yiddish song of her own. We talk tradition and technique with Native American basket weaver Kelly Church; Palestinian embroiderer Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim; rodeo tailor Manuel Cuevas; Chicana altarista Ofelia Esparza and African American quilter Marion Coleman. And we revisit performances and conversations with past NEA fellows like Hawaiian slack-key guitarist Ledward Ka’apana, circus aerialist Dolly Jacobs, soul singer Mavis Staples, and the late guitar virtuoso Doc Watson, among others.