Roberta was born a red diaper baby in the Bronx but spent most of her early life on Staten Island where being raised a secular lefty Jew in a predominantly Italian-Catholic environment was not easy. Her father, Joseph, who worked in the shipyard as a tool maker, died when she was eight years old. Her mother, Miriam, as a single mother raised Bobbi and her sister Liz, while working at a luncheonette and as a substitute caretaker for the parish priest (who loved discussing literature and politics with Roberta’s mother). In 1955, Roberta and her family moved back to the Bronx, which was a more welcoming environment. Puerto Rican culture was starting to fill the streets of the Bronx as the Jews and Italians fled the city and Bobbi reveled in the music, food and acceptance of her new friends and neighbors.

Bobbi studied the flute and later the saxophone and cello and entered the Manhattan School of Music on a scholarship. When her scholarship didn’t get renewed, she went to Hunter College (tuition was free) but continued to study music at Manhattan School of Music. She got her Bachelor of Science in Music Education. After taking time off from studying, staying with family and friends in Italy and Budapest, she got her master’s degree in ethnomusicology at Hunter, and later, her PhD in ethnomusicology at Indiana University in 1982. Her dissertation was aptly titled, My Music is Who I am and What I do: Latin Popular Music and Identity in New York City. Her research included interviews with some of salsa and Latin jazz’s cutting-edge Nuyorican musicians on the scene at that time, chronicling the dynamic Latino and cultural scene on the Lower East Side in the 1970s. She wrote about her friends and colleagues in the city and her experience with the Latin community and, in doing so, paved the way for other cultural researchers to study and write about this vibrant community for the first time. 

New York City was her classroom.  In the years leading up to the founding of City Lore, Roberta organized the 1983 concert, Music from the Islands: Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Manhattan, which marked one of the first performances of the iconic bomba and plena group, Los Pleneros de la 21. In 1986, she became one of City Lore’s first staff members, organizing a music festival in and around the Central Park bandshell.

That concert was pivotal for Bobbi, rejecting teaching in a classroom, she was always thinking, researching, observing, touring the vibrant Puerto Rican and Cuban music that was so alive in New York City and always making sure that the research was not just read by scholars but experienced by both Puerto Ricans and Cubans living in the United States and Cuba—making records, films and music tours to make sure all this research was accessible to the public at large.

This passion for Latin music in New York City led Roberta to create pivotal groundbreaking programs and projects featuring these traditional genres. Along with Rene Lopez, she helped produce the album Caliente Equals Hot in 1977, which featured an array of local Puerto Rican and Cuban musical styles. This was the first time that anyone had collected various types of Latin music genres in this type of showcase, showing off the community’s music in “all its grandeur,” as stated by musician Bobby Sanabria.

Bobbi was passionate about exploring the connections between Puerto Ricans in New York City and Puerto Rico: her first tour Somos Boricuas (We are Puerto Ricans) was designed to create an exchange between Puerto Ricans on the island and in the Diaspora. It was more than a concert. For the first time, musicians who might have visited New York City or Puerto Rico in order to see family had never really experienced how the Puerto Rican sound absorbed and played out in New York City or came alive in the lushness of the Puerto Rican countryside. Both ends of this tour made lifetime connections for Bobbi and the bands.

Bobbi liked to tell the story of Puerto Rican musicians who play la música jíbara arriving at Casita Rincon Criollo, a Puerto Rican social club in the Bronx built in the style of country homes on the island, for the first time: “…we were on the bus going up to the Casita with Island Puerto Ricans, and one of the decimistas (singers who  improvises décima) saw the Casita as we turned the corner and he started to improvise about how it looks as though he’s just going home. He just kept singing and singing as he got off the bus and he was singing as we went into the casita. And Ashley (James, the videographer) was filming, and I was crying . . . and the musicians were playing and the Pleneros were playing and they got together and into each other’s drums and guiros and faces. I see …it now, it was just the most magnificent, powerful thing and I was thinking all I did was have had an idea and they filled it out. It was just phenomenal. And then the next year we went to Puerto Rico and some of those relationships continue. . . .

Roberta would eventually be honored as a Madrina (Godmother, meaning an elder treated with respect) to the casita for her work at the casita and the musicians who played there.

The next year Bobbi came into the City Lore office and said, “Hey Steve, I got an idea for a project and I sort of spun it out for him. And he said, ‘Write a proposal.’”

That proposal became the legendary Dos Alas/Two Wings Project, inspired by a poem written by journalist/poet Lola Rodríguez de Tío over a hundred years ago, Cuba y Puerto Rico, in which Puerto Rico and Cuba are depicted as two wings of the same bird. One hundred years later, this metaphor came alive as Bobbi’s project, Dos Alas/Two Wings, highlighted the cultural and historical ties between Cuba and Puerto Rico by presenting a program of Afro-Cuban rumba and Afro-Puerto Rican bomba.

The historic project brought together selected members of two widely celebrated vocal, percussion and dance ensembles: Grupo Afrocuba De Matanzas from Cuba and Los Hermanos Cepeda from Puerto Rico. The project, which was supported by grants from the Lila Wallace-Reader’s Digest Arts Partners Program, Meet the Composer International Creative Collaborations program and the National Endowment for the Arts, began with a month-long residency in New York City in October 1996 featuring concerts, master classes, workshops, lecture-demonstrations, block parties and more. The groups then toured the United States (from Keene, New Hampshire, to Sheboygan, Wisconsin, Detroit, Michigan, and other cities).

The concert programs consisted of Afro-Cuban rumba and Puerto Rico’s African-based bomba—living traditions that are rooted in West African music, dance, and spiritual beliefs, blended with indigenous and Euro-Iberian influences. They are quintessentially Puerto Rican and Cuban, born out of the social, historical, economic, and cultural conditions of their own soil. Bomba and rumba shape the lives of their practitioners and are constantly evolving as their roots grow stronger and deeper. 

The highlight of every concert was Los Hermanos Cepeda and Grupo Afrocuba De Matanzas. Closing out each concert in the Grand Finale tradition, the bands performed together in a Rumbombazo—a spontaneous, sizzling combination of rumba and bomba in which the Cubans and Puerto Ricans play and dance their own and each other’s traditions. Bobbi, the bands, and all that came to see the concerts were exhilarated.

One of the many outcomes of that tour was a film, Bomba, Dancing the Drum, directed by Ashley James, about the legendary Cepeda family of bomba fame. For nearly a century, the Cepeda family was in the forefront of keeping the legacy of the bomba tradition alive in Puerto Rico.

Roberta’s legacy for Puerto Rican music lives on as she was one of the founders of the Bomplenazo, a festival featuring the music of the Puerto Rican genres of bomba and plena at the Hostos Center for the Arts & Culture in the Bronx. She and her longtime programmatic collaborator, Wally Edgecombe, the Artistic Director of the Center, acquired grants to present the Bomplenazo which takes place every other year, since 2000. It brings together bomba musicians and dancers as well as pleneros from all across the Diaspora and from the Island for a 3-day showcase of the music and traditions and situates the Bronx as a center of that culture. It is probably the singular most important event for Afro-Puerto Rican music traditions, featuring concerts, workshops, film screenings and jam sessions. Artists from California to Texas, Chicago and Florida, and of course, Puerto Rico, come to the Bronx for this event.

Bobbi continued to work at City Lore, researching, presenting, mentoring folklorists new to the city and those interested in Caribbean music. She was equally passionate about social justice, worker rights. She fought valiantly against her Mitchell-Lama residence going private. The Mitchell- Lama program provides affordable rental and cooperative housing to moderate- and middle-income families. The program was sponsored by New York State Senator MacNeil Mitchell and Assemblyman Alfred Lama and was signed into law in 1955. Bobbi was raised to believe that everyone deserved to live a dignified life in a clean and respectable housing situation. Bobbi put up a good fight, but she lost that fight.

Another fight Bobbi fought and ultimately lost, was her fight with 9/11-related cancer and other ailments. Bobbi lived a few miles from the Twin Towers and saw the planes hit on September 11, 2001. She stayed on her balcony and was covered in ash from the debris, which sadly caused her multiple cancers. First diagnosed in 2010, Bobbi sought treatment, kept it and Covid at bay, for 10 years, dying from heart failure and respiratory complications.

In and out of the hospital for the past few years and taking a few tumbles on the streets of Manhattan and in her home, her nephew Michael Apfelberg and his wife Kerstin moved her to New Hampshire in January of 2022. Kerstin visited Bobbi almost every day during Bobbi’s transition to New Hampshire. Initially homesick for New York, real chicken soup and Puerto Rican food, she had started to heal and walk about and organize the aids at her facility to advocate for better working conditions. Indeed, her nephew Michael recalled that on the day she died, she started to speak Spanish to her aide Lydia, asking her where she was from, about her family and about her new life in New Hampshire. A folklorist to the end.

She leaves behind her nephew Michael and his wife Kerstin Apfelberg; her niece Lisa Apfelberg-Walton and her husband Michael Walton and their daughter Madeline; her grandniece, Casey and her husband Jon and their son Hudson (nicknamed Hud by Bobbi, a pet name only she used), Woodward, who gave Bobbi much joy in her last months; her cousin Sandy Rear recently passed as I was writing this obituary. She was pre-deceased by her sister Elizabeth and her husband Hank Apfelberg and her uncle, Philip Singer.

The Drum Divide: Lambegs of Northern Ireland
By Hannah Julia Davis
Folklife, July 12, 2022

Plane tickets to Dublin were always cheapest on the Fourth of July. As American skies exploded with fireworks, my mom, sister, and I were always busy packing suitcases and prepping for our month-long pilgrimage back to Markethill, Northern Ireland. For me, summers were less red, white, and blue and more orange.

On July 12, I would wake at what felt like the crack of dawn in the attic bed of my grandparents’ house and rush to get dressed. On that date each year, rows of men wearing orange sashes march down the small, rural town’s main street. Families line the curbs, cheering as their brothers, fathers, sons parade past. The trill of flutes punctuates the air, but at the sonic helm of the column of marchers is the lambeg, a massive, booming forty-pound drum worn on a harness and beaten with curved Malacca or bamboo canes.

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

This program makes awards to institutions and organizations conducting field research that answer humanistic questions. Supported projects can use a variety of methodologies including ethnographic methods, oral history, and participant observation to answer significant questions in human history and culture. Projects can be led by individuals or teams of scholars, and awards are made for one to three years with funding up to $150,000. More information on the program, including the Notice of Funding Opportunity and links to the application package, is at: 
https://www.neh.gov/program/archaeological-and-ethnographic-field-research 

NEH will host a live webinar on July 20 for prospective applicants and grant administrators, introducing the program, describing the application process, and offering application-writing suggestions. There will be a chance to ask questions, captions will be available, and the webinar will be recorded so others can watch it later.  

Date: Wednesday, July 20
Time: 1:00pm - 2:00pm (Eastern time)   
Participants can access this webinar through the registration link.

Questions may be directed to fieldwork@neh.gov. We will also respond to draft applications if we receive them by July 25. Submitting a draft is optional but helpful for applicants. 

“Talking About the World”: Same Suki’s Revolutionary Folk Music
By Chela Aufderheide
Folklife, March 28, 2022

The SEM Board is currently collaborating with other music societies on a statement concerning the current situation in Ukraine. Please also note the following resources:

For Students – About Ukraine (March 1, 2022)
Audio Recording by Dr. Adriana Helbig
Chair, Department of Music
University of Pittsburgh



Understanding the War in Ukraine through its Musical Culture
Virtual Discussion with Dr. Maria Sonevytsky
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Music, Bard College
Wednesday, March 2, 3:00 PM EST
Sponsored by the Michigan State University College of Music
See attached flyer for Zoom registration and additional information.



Additional Information
For additional information, learning resources, and contacts with Ukrainian musicians and scholars in diaspora, please contact Dr. Marcia Ostrashewski, Director, The Center for Sound Communities, Cape Breton University, Canada. marcia.ostashewski@gmail.com



Letter on Safeguarding Field Research Recordings
Iryna Voloshyna
Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology
Indiana University Bloomington


February 28, 2022

On February 24, 2022, on the first day of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, a group of folklorists, ethnomusicologists, ethnologists, and heritage studies scholars from Ukraine, reached out to me to help save their unique digital fieldwork recordings from years of their professional work.

My Ukrainian colleagues were asking for suggestions for safe cloud space in an organization outside of Ukraine to ensure that if their computers and hard drives were damaged during explosions, fires, lootings, or cyber-attacks, their fieldwork materials would be preserved. In Ukraine, research institutions create back-ups of their digital materials. Still, they primarily store them on hard drives since cloud space is expensive and institutions often don’t have the funding to pay for it.

I immediately reached out to the Folklore Institute and American Folklore Society, both based at Indiana University Bloomington, and received a prompt response. Jessica Turner, the Executive Director of the American Folklore Society, coordinated providing free unlimited cloud space at the AFS’s Google drive. We all realize that this is a temporary solution, but at the moment, it was fast and easy. By coordinating with the Ukrainian researchers, I created personal folders to upload their materials. As of now, there are about 50 folders for those who expressed the need.

Approximately half have been steadily uploading materials to our drive for the past four days. Researchers, primarily those based in Kyiv and are in the shelters in the subways, do not have access to their computers or internet connection to upload any files. Others have been heroically ignoring the air raid sirens and staying at their offices, uploading files. These researchers are affiliated with universities, research centers, museums, and NGOs in different parts of Ukraine – Kyiv, Lviv, Rivne, Sumy, etc.

We are continuing to coordinate this process. Other organizations, including SEM and the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University, are expressing their willingness to help. As I stated earlier, Google drive is a temporary solution, and we are looking into how these materials could be stored appropriately and safeguarded on a more permanent basis.

First and foremost, we are praying for the lives and safety of our researchers and the entire people of Ukraine.

Best,
Iryna Voloshyna

PhD Student
Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology
Indiana University Bloomington
ivolosh@iu.edu

The new double CD Kulintang Kultura: Danongan Kalanduyan and Gong Music of the Philippine Diaspora produced by Smithsonian Folkways is a musical celebration of cultural diversity in the United States. There are a number of reasons to celebrate.

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

The Contributions of My Mentor, Ethnomusicologist Peter Cooke (1930-2020)
By Jo Miller
Folklife, September 24, 2021


As an undergraduate music student in the 1980s, I felt there must be a means of studying the music of my own Scottish culture. In those days, the field of music was pretty conservative, so I knew more about Shostakovich than I did about the Highland bagpipe tradition.

I had not yet discovered ethnomusicology, but that changed when I became a postgraduate student at the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh. My time there, under the supervision of Dr. Peter Cooke, proved the most formative of my career. In this period, ethnomusicologists were increasingly investigating not only music from far-flung parts, but also starting to conduct fieldwork “at home”—in one’s own culture. Peter introduced me to the possibility of remaining part of my own community while daring to ask questions about it. . . .

As an early practitioner of what came to be called applied or public sector ethnomusicology, Peter provided the perfect role model for me in sharing musicological research beyond academia. . . .

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

By Bryan Cantero
Folklife, August 2, 2021

Urban corridos were bound to happen. Mexican and Black hip-hop culture live side by side in many Los Angeles neighborhoods, although sometimes our music gets along better than we do.

In South Central, which I call home, the pounding bass from a passing car can feel like a mini earthquake. Walking down Crenshaw Boulevard, it is near certain you will hear a Nipsey Hussle rap coming from one way and a Fuerza Regida corrido the other. But hearing a legit fusion of the two genres in the same track—something that feels natural to young Mexican Americans—surprises others and is scorned by older generations.

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

The Field Research program makes awards to institutions and organizations conducting empirical field research to answer significant questions in the humanities. Supported projects can use a variety of methodologies, including archaeological excavation, documentation, participant observation, and surveys, that provide observational and experiential data on human history and culture. Projects can be led by individuals or teams of scholars, and awards can be for up to three years, with award amounts up to $150,000. More information on the program, including the Notice of Funding Opportunity and links to the application package, is at:

https://www.neh.gov/program/archaeological-and-ethnographic-field-research

In a few weeks we will offer a live webinar for prospective applicants and grant administrators, introducing the program, describing the application process, and offering application-writing suggestions. There will be a chance to ask questions, captions will be available, and the webinar will be recorded so others can watch it later.

Date: Monday, June 21

Time: 2-3 PM (Eastern time) 

To watch the presentation, click on this link.

Questions: fieldwork@neh.gov or 202-606-8200. We will also respond to draft applications if we receive them by August 12. Submitting a draft is optional but helpful for applicants.

National Endowment for the Humanities

Thursday, 27 May 1:00 pm HST on Youtube: “Okinawan Music and Dance in honor of Barbara B. Smith” are current performances of genres included in the 1976 Japan Studies Institute: Performing Arts of Okinawa. These include eisā (Paranku Clubs of Hawaiʻi), minyō (Urizun Minyō), utasanshin (Norman Kaneshiro), dance and kumiudui (Jimpu Kai) with Cheryl Nakasone as program MC. Access available on the date of the premiere and anytime afterwards through www.eastwestcenter.org/ZfZ

Thursday, 10 June 1:00 pm HST on ZOOM. Birthday Festivities: Barbara B. Smith turns 101 years young! The event includes dances by Onoe Kikunobukazu (Howard Asao) and Garrett Kam, family greetings, and the traditional toast. Attendees at any event of the year-long festivities will receive the link to the 2020BBS year of celebration. Save the date!

From the Mountain to the World: My Travels with the Chinese Yandong Grand Singers
By Mu Qian
Folklife, April 19, 2021

Wanp-wanp jangl kap means “everyone, listen close” in the language of the Kam (or Dong) people, a Chinese ethnic minority group well known for its polyphonic songs. Many traditional Kam songs, which are often without formal titles, start with this line. . . .

In 2019, I recorded and produced a CD of traditional Kam songs and used Wanp-Wanp Jangl Kap as its title. . . . this album was selected by the Transglobal World Music Chart as the Best Asia & Pacific Album of the 2019-2020 season. A dream of mine was coming true: that audiences around the world could now hear the voices of the Kam people in a way that is true to their culture, voices that have fascinated me since I first met these singers over a decade ago.

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

The Dance of the Spider: A Musician’s Journey to Revive the Feminine Legacy of the Italian Frame Drum
By Isabel Spiegel
Folklife, March 29, 2021

The year was 1983, at La Festa di San Rocco, the Feast of Saint Rocco, in the Apulia region of southern Italy. Alessandra Belloni grasped her moon-shaped tamburello and stepped boldly into the ronda, a circle of thirty male drummers. She followed the frenetic rhythm of the pizzica-tarantata while men dueled in the center of the circle, slashing through the air with their bare hands as they performed the ancient knife dance la scherma. They eyed her with displeasure, as if she were crashing a bachelor party. . . .

Thirty-seven years later, Italian-born Belloni speaks with me via Zoom from her apartment in New Jersey.

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

Ella Jenkins, a Hidden Figure in the Fight for Civil Rights
By Ty-Juana Taylor
Folklife, February 26, 2021

In 2011, Ella Jenkins and U.S. Representative John Lewis shared a stage to accept the Living Legends for Service to Humanity Award. The two are seen laughing, perhaps sharing a memory from a history that most never knew intertwined. To many, Ella Jenkins is solely the First Lady of Children’s Music—the figure who, on Barney, Sesame Street, and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, introduced them to the music and culture of other youth across the globe. However, unbeknownst to most, her career has always been tethered to the fight for equality for all Americans.

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

Barbara Smith Webinar Series Panel #7, December 10, 2020

“Performing Ethnomusicology”: Reflections on Our Practices

Register now for the seventh webinar in a series of seven monthly Zoom webinars held on the 10th of each month from 1:00 to 2:30 PM HST celebrating the 100th birthday of Barbara B. Smith, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa ethnomusicologist and professor emerita. You are already registered if you attended the previous webinar. 

https://bit.ly/3dxgaLf

The year-long celebration 2020BBS includes a musical instrument exhibition, performances of world music and dance, and talks on world music.

October 10: Music, Tradition, and the Politics of Sound

Register now for the fifth webinar in a series of seven monthly Zoom webinars held on the 10th of each month from 1:00 to 2:45 PM HST celebrating the 100th birthday of Barbara B. Smith, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa ethnomusicologist and professor emerita. You are already registered if you attended the previous webinar.

https://bit.ly/3dxgaLf

The year-long celebration 2020BBS includes a musical instrument exhibition, performances of world music and dance, and talks on world music.

Enquiries: 2020bbsconference@gmail.com

2020 Barbara B. Smith Webinar Series, Panel #4,
September 10: Ethnomusicology and the Dynamics of
Cultural Interchange, Part II

Register now for the fourth webinar in a series of seven monthly Zoom webinars held on the 10th of each month from 1:00 to 2:30 PM HST celebrating the 100th birthday of Barbara B. Smith, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa ethnomusicologist and professor emerita. You are already registered if you attended the previous webinar.

https://bit.ly/3dxgaLf

The year-long celebration 2020BBS includes a musical instrument exhibition, performances of world music and dance, and talks on world music.

Sonic Reflections: Observations of the Changing Soundscapes of the COVID-19 Pandemic
By Marinna Guzy
Folklife, July 27, 2020

The community you live in strongly shapes the soundscape of your life story. Why? Because human culture and the natural world dictate not only what we hear but also how we listen.

Depending on our background and values, we experience the sounds of our community in different ways. A neighbor’s windchimes may provide a relaxing backdrop to your meditation practice, or it might be a constant irritation intruding on your movie night. You might fail to notice the ’70s folk tune coming from a passing car, while the sound takes your Chilean companion back to the Santiago of his youth.

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

A Balinese Call to Prayer
By Meghan Hynson
August 3, 2020

I remember the first time I heard it in 2010. I had lived in a Balinese family compound for years but had been back to the United States to work on my PhD. On the morning after my return to Bali for next-stage research, I was jolted awake at exactly 6 a.m. by an enormous crack and the sound of something unexpected: a Sanskrit prayer accompanied by Balinese gamelan music.

Continue reading . . .

Folklife is the digital magazine of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife & Cultural Heritage.

Barbara B. Smith Webinar Panel #3, August 10:

Creative Ethnomusicologists and Creative Teaching

Arts Outreach in Alaska|World Music for Gen Z Malaysia|Ethnomusicology in Mexico

Register now for the third webinar in a series of seven monthly Zoom webinars held on the 10th of each month from 1:00 to 2:30 PM HST celebrating the 100th birthday of Barbara B. Smith, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa ethnomusicologist and professor emerita. You are already registered if you attended a previous webinar.

More information:

https://bit.ly/3dxgaLf

The year-long celebration 2020BBS includes a musical instrument exhibition, performances of world music and dance, and talks on world music.

Enquiries: 2020bbsconference@gmail.com    Program abstracts: https://bit.ly/3i5Bry9

The webinar is free, but we invite you to donate to the year-long celebration

[designation: Arts Program; comments: 2020BBS]

https://www.eastwestcommunity.org/donatenow