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Contents
  Volume 32
  Fall-Winter
  2006
Voices


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Anup Kumar Das performing a Hindu dance

Gabriel Bol Deng performs with the Lost Boys chapter of Syracuse at the Emerging Traditions folk arts forum in Auburn, New York

Karen don dancers Dain Moo and Naw Phaung Phaung


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Features

3

Report from the Field: A Dialogue on Immigrant and Refugee Issues
by Laura R. Marcus and William Westerman.
Introduction by Eileen Condon.


16 Dance and Diaspora in Brooklyn
by Kay Turner and Nicole Macotsis


20 The Narrow Escape: The Facts of My Life
by Gabriel Bol Deng


26 The Don Dance: An Expression of Karen Nationalism
by Heather MacLachlan


35 Calico Indians: Festive Play in Acts of Resistance
by Roger Abrahams





Departments and Columns
2 Announcements


15 E-Resources
by Kathleen Condon


18 Upstate
by Varick A. Chittenden


19 Downstate
by Steve Zeitlin


25 Reading Culture
by Tom van Buren


33 Foodways
by Lynn Case Ekfelt


34 Play
by John Thorn


42 Good Spirits
by Libby Tucker


43 Books to Note


Saw Noven performs don dance

Cover: Dressed in traditional handwoven Karen vest and the military fatigues of the Karen Resistance Army, musician Saw Noven performs don dance music on electric guitar during the January 16, 2006, Karen new year celebration at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Utica, New York. Photo: Felicia McMahon.


FROM THE EDITOR
The Fall-Winter 2006 issue of Voices contains a unique collection of essays that range from historical research and theory by eminent folklorist Roger D. Abrahams to fieldwork by ethnomusicologist Heather MacLachlen. Abrahams writes about the Anti-Rent War, intercultural imitation, and the Calico Indians, an early vigilante group that operated as social bandits, while MacLachlen discusses her work among the Karen people in a refugee camp in Thailand. We are especially honored to publish an autobiographical essay by Gabriel Bol Deng, a young Dinka dancer who escaped from the civil war in Sudan. Essays by Laura Marcus and Bill Westerman, speakers at the 2005 New York Folklore Society Folk Arts Forum on Immigrant/Refugee Issues, underscore the needs of new immigrant and refugee communities. I know our readers will also find inspiration in the account written by public folklorist Kay Turner and her colleague Nicole Macotsis, who work with immigrant groups living in New York City.

This issue presents to our readers some of the issues at stake for folklorists working with refugee and immigrant communities. The next issue of Voices will include a new section, “Artist Profiles,” which will showcase the work of individual folk artists. I urge you, the reader, to submit your interviews and biographies of the folk artists with whom you are currently working.

Felicia Faye McMahon, Ph.D.
Acquisitions Editor
New York Folklore Society

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