The Soorya (Sun) Festival is an annual night-long summer festival celebrating the cultures and traditions of Sri Lanka along Staten Island’s North Shore waterfront.
An expansive interdisciplinary, intergenerational and inter-community project that focuses on next generation traditional music and dance practitioners who are ‘inheriting the city’ with increasingly ‘New York formed’ traditions and stories.
The Mariachi Academy of New York is devoted to preserving the rich heritage of Mariachi to youth in New York and performances for community-based and general audiences. The organization works to develop the participants’ skills in musical training, discipline, creativity and self-esteem while strengthening language, team working skills and a strong sense of identity.
The mesmerizing “Fan Dance” and “Drums of Ecstasy” are among the dazzling and engaging repertoire of Sounds of Korea, whose repertoire spans a vast range of styles and settings, from classical court music and dance traditions, to theatrical masked dances and solo instrumental folk genres.
Shashmaqam is a vibrantly colorful ensemble that performs the highly compelling and centuries old musical traditions of Central Asia. The ensemble presents a panorama of the classical and folk music of Uzbekistan and Tajikistan, as well as the liturgical repertoire of Bukharan Jews.
As part of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance’s ongoing partnership with the New School Eugene Lang College’s Civic Liberal Arts initiative, Global Voices is a recurring course offering, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Spring semester 2018’s course focused on community-based culture work and the vital music and dance traditions practiced in NYC’s […]
It is with great sadness that we heard of the death of George Caba on February 17th, 2010. Our heartfelt condolences go out to George’s sons Craig and Patrick and to his sister Dorothy. We first met George when he came as a spectator to the Tribute to the Tamburashi program that Martin and Ethel […]
Founded in 1968, the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) assists New York City’s immigrant communities to preserve the vitality of their distinctive performing arts traditions and promotes cross-cultural understanding by sharing these art forms with audiences across the city.
Latest News
CTMD is proud to announce that its Co-Founder and Artistic Director Emeritus Ethel Raim has been awarded the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellowship, a lifetime achievement award that recognizes artistic excellence and continuing contributions to our nation’s traditional arts heritage! Ethel has been one of the leading pioneers in researching and presenting immigrant […]
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Featured Sustaining Cultures Program
This multi-sited interdisciplinary project encourages important cultural conversations between often disparate ethnic factions of the Sri Lankan community as well as shares a cross-section of the country’s rich cultural traditions with the general public in an effort to create a lasting impact on NYC’s sound and artscape.
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