Pine Bluff's Crossroad Festival focuses on state's diverse southeast

For many, the southeastern Arkansas stretch of U.S. 65 is drive-through country — just an area to pass through on the way to vacation on the Gulf Coast. Those people are largely unaware of what the region has to offer.

The Arts & Science Center for Southeast Arkansas' Crossroad Festival aims to change that.

"We're focusing on a stretch of southeast Arkansas that has such a rich history and diversity and most people are not even aware of it," says ASC Executive Director Rachel Miller.

This is the second year for the festival, a three-day celebration of the cultural diversity of an area that encompasses Pine Bluff, McGehee, Dumas and Lake Village.

The festival ties back to the Heritage Detectives program the ASC directed several years ago, when an artist and historian were placed in area schools to create pictorial histories of the communities and the cultural groups that had an impact on their development. Now, each year, the festival focuses on three of those cultural groups: the black community and one or two others.

"We explore their history and their culture through the interpretive lens of music, food and story and sometimes film," Miller explains.

This year's festival, in addition to black contributions, will focus on French Creole and Cantonese communities and the roles they played. The overarching theme will be folk tales, using folklorist Richard Dorson's 1958 book, Negro Folktales From Pine Bluff, Arkansas, and Calvin, Michigan, as a guide. The Brer Rabbit tales, collected by Dorson, were stories of resistance and opposition to slavery and will play a major part in the theme.

It starts Friday night with "Tricksters, Tall Tales and Blues Notes," a program of music and stories with local performers put together by Delta Rhythm & Blues Bayous Alliance Executive Director Jimmy Cunningham.

Then, on Saturday, the focus turns to folk tales and traditions as told through food.

Scholar Elista Istre will lead Folktales Family Fun, a hands-on program with stories and crafts centered on French Creole stories and their ties to West Africa.

In the afternoon, Kevin Kim will join Istre in exploring the Creole and Cantonese assimilation and dissemination with southeastern Arkansas culture, doing full food demonstrations using their own family's stories and cooking implements like a generations-old wok. The Jefferson County 4-H Club will pitch in to help.

Miller says that last year, the food demonstration with the Quapaw Tribe was more of a tasting.

"Now, we're trying to have more of an interactive program," she says. "They get to look at the ingredients. They get to touch and taste. They get to hear stories with the demonstrations of how these traditional recipes are prepared."

The festival ends on Sunday with a screening and Q&A session with award-winning animator — and Pine Bluff native — Byron Vaughns and his film The Adventures of Brer Rabbit.

The whole weekend is family-friendly.

Miller points out that the Crossroad Festival isn't a festival in the contemporary sense, with bands and food and merchandise vendors.

"We see it as more of a cultural celebration that is geared to be completely engaging of the audience," she says.

Weekend on 02/28/2019