Photos courtesy of Santa Monica Festival 2001 This year’s
theme for the Santa Monica Festival 2001 is "A Celebration of Our
Community Roots."
By Darcy Lewis
Daily Bruin Contributor
A sense of community is sometimes lost in a city the size of Los
Angeles, but it can be found in abundance at the Santa Monica
Festival this Saturday.
The Santa Monica Festival takes place at Clover Park and is a
colorful celebration of culture, the environment and the community.
While celebrating the city’s various cultures, the festival
also seeks to celebrate the ethnic history of Santa Monica.
“The reason the festival was originally done in the format
that it is in was to highlight the African American and Latin
American communities of Santa Monica,” said festival head and
UCLA alumna Maria Luisa de Herrera. “Of course, everyone
knew that Santa Monica at one point was Mexican, but what most
people did not realize was that it also is the home to one of the
oldest African American communities in the Los Angeles
area.”
With the festival’s creation 10 years ago, Herrera hoped
to show that, contrary to popular opinion, the community’s
diverse groups were harmonious.
“I wanted to celebrate the fact that they’ve lived
in harmony together for centuries and generations and that they
have a lot of intermingling as far as customs and traditions and
mutual respect (are concerned),” Herrera said.
 Francis Awe performs as part of the
Nigerian Talking Drum Ensemble. The festival has since grown to
include an even more diverse representation of Santa Monica. This
sort of diversity is expressed in both the Global Café
section, which showcases a collection of ethnic food, and the
Marketplace area. Herrera said the marketplace is a collection of
vendors who sell art products which relate to the festival’s
multicultural theme.
The Community Walk section of the festival, on the other hand,
will showcase local businesses and non-profit organizations that
also incorporate the festival’s goals, namely commitment to
the environment and to community. Herrera said this year’s
booths have been sponsored by different environmental organizations
in Santa Monica, as well as by the police and fire departments.
The Santa Monica Festival is not about reliving archaic
traditions, but about celebrating the way culture is thriving today
““ especially in Los Angeles, where there is not one dominant
culture, but rather a type of cultural fusion, Herrera
said.Â
This year, an example of such cultural fusion can be seen in an
exhibition of traditional Japanese Taiko drumming that will be
performed by an all Chicano group. Another group performing at the
Festival that captures this same spirit is Francis Awe and the
Nigerian Talking Drum Ensemble.
Awe, a UCLA alumnus, said the group’s overall performance
is authentically African, but the tribes included in the
performance represent Caucasian and Spanish traditions as well.
“It is the love of Africa that we carry through our
drumming, dancing and singing,” Awe said. “Our music,
dance and song ““ they are medical treatment; they
heal.”
The range of music the festival offers encompasses multiple
cultures and generations. The
 Students from Edison Elementary who worked with artist
Alvaro Asturias create artwork based on the
rainforest.
spectrum ranges from Matt Bob and the Santa Monica Drifters,
playing Western swing and cowboy music, to the sounds of the Zydeco
Party Band, playing Creole tunes.
Carolyn Campbell, special events coordinator for the Festival,
said that in addition to the musical appeal for people of all ages,
there are various other aspects that make a trip to the Festival
worthwhile.
“There’s storytelling for people of all ages, and I
don’t know of anybody who doesn’t enjoy having a story
told to them,” Campbell said. “There are also dance
workshops, so, as long as you can get up and move, I think that
speaks to everyone.”
Though the festival represents Santa Monica’s culture and
ideals, it also encourages people to have a good time.
“It’s a celebration,” Campbell said.
“It’s certainly to bring the community together so they
can acknowledge the contributions that everyone has made to make it
a sustainable environment, a culturally diverse and rich
one.”
“It’s a party, it’s fun. Let’s not kid
ourselves ““ it’s about having a good time,” she
added with a laugh.
FESTIVAL: The tenth annual Santa Monica
Festival will be held at Clover Park on Ocean Park Blvd. in Santa
Monica from 11 a.m. until 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 28. All events
are free, and parking is free as well. For more information call
(310) 458-8350 or visit the Web site www.arts.santa-monica.org.