Monday, April 20, 1998
Festival in Santa Monica celebrates rich diversity
ART: Annual gathering includes environmental groups in city’s
history
By Megan Dickerson
Daily Bruin Contributor
Like any city with over a hundred years of history under its
belt, Santa Monica has many stories to tell.
"Santa Monica is a very metropolitan type of place," said Chuck
Kopczak, director of the city’s UCLA Ocean Discovery Center. "Yet
it has many aspects of being a kind of small town."
And on Saturday, the city of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs
Division told the cultural tales that often go unnoticed. In its
seventh year, the free Santa Monica Festival in Clover Park
gathered ethnic performing groups and environmental activists to
celebrate the community’s roots, cultural and otherwise.
"The overall purpose is to bring out a past history and a
current history, let’s say, of the diversity … of ethnic
traditions in Santa Monica," said Maria Luisa de Herrera, Cultural
Affairs Administrator of Santa Monica. "We can sustain that
richness and that diversity by honoring the natural environment
that we have here."
Performing groups ranging from drum ensembles to the Halibuts,
the surf band highlighted in the movie "Endless Summer II," were
featured on two stages. Informational booths dotted the grassy
park, representing both city agencies and private environmental
groups. Vendors sold food from various countries throughout the
day.
Like a boisterous Brazilian carnival with a distinct beach
community spin, the festival began at the Ocean Stage, where
children from five area schools paraded movable sculptures through
the park. The children were led by the thunderous drum rhythms of
Cheremoya Escola de Samba, a Hollywood-based youth performing group
with 25 members.
"We thought that this would be a unique way to possibly drum up
interest in the youth of Santa Monica," said co-director Linda
Yudin, who completed her graduate work in dance and ethnomusicology
at UCLA.
Yudin said her group incorporated young people of Brazilian,
Chicano, Central American and Thai descent, an example of what she
called the cultural artwork to be done in Los Angeles.
This goes for Santa Monica as well.
"I think a lot of people aren’t aware of how really culturally
diverse we are as a community," agreed event co-director De
Herrera. "And it’s (our objective) to bring out this history, that
isn’t necessarily written down anywhere, as well as to connect that
to the realities of Santa Monica."
Herrera said there are many branches of Santa Monica diversity,
of which the citizens of the city are often unaware.
"We have one of the oldest African American communities in the
Los Angeles area," De Herrera said. "We are the center for the
original Native American population that lived here – the
Gabrieleno Tongva Coalition calls this home, as they have for the
past 3,000 years. And we have, I believe, the largest Celtic
population outside of Britain."
To highlight these groups, the Cultural Affairs Division
recruited groups like Gaelic Storm, Santa Monica’s own five-member
Irish performing group, which rocked with the steerage dance scene
in "Titanic." The East West Players, representing the Asian
American community, presented folk tales of the Pacific Rim. And
the Golden State Klezmer Band, purveying the melodies of the
Eastern European Jews, represented the wide-spread Jewish
community.
The focus on environmental issues is a relatively new addition
to the festival, but is a long-time concern of Santa Monica
residents. Representatives of groups like Heal the Bay have always
maintained booths, but last year they asked to be incorporated into
the overall theme.
Telling the story of Santa Monica’s environmental roots through
its indigenous sea animals was Kopczak.
"Santa Monica has, as a city, a history of being part of the bay
or the bay being part of the cultural mystique of the area,"
Kopczak said. "If you know the history of the bay and its usage,
then it’s really clear that it’s part of the mindset over there,
that they think about the bay."
The UCLA Ocean Discovery Center, an outreach program of the UCLA
Marine Science Center, often attends event such as the festival
with touch tanks to educate the public on the city’s oceanic
resources.
"We’re here to highlight the animals and let people know that
there are things alive out in Santa Monica Bay worth doing
something to protect," said Kopczak, who also teaches a UCLA
seminar on Santa Monica Bay.
Actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. presented the
1998 Santa Monica Environmental Sustainable Quality Awards, which
congratulates local businesses on their efforts to sustain the
economy, community and environment.
In addition, a section of the festival called "The Home Zone"
featured tactics to make the home environmentally sound from the
garden to the driveway.
Plans are already being made for next year’s event, which will
take another spin on the artistic and environmental history of
Santa Monica.
"Because it does bring together people interested in the arts
and the environment, and people of all ages, it is always a really
fun and great event," said Judy Rambeau, Santa Monica
Communications Coordinator, attending with her two children.
"There’s something for everybody at the Santa Monica
Festival."
For more information about next year’s event or the Santa Monica
Cultural Affairs Division, call (310) 458-8350.