Send us Fan Mail

This podcast explores folklore not as something preserved but as something lived and carried forward. Over fifteen years, I worked closely with a Holocaust survivor who escaped into the woods, joined the resistance, and rebuilt her life through fragments of song, food, and story. By the time she died in 2026 at 99, her story had become part of my own life and the performers I worked with to bring the story to life.

What she left behind was not just narrative but something that had to be performed, and through that performance the lived experience of folklore came to life. In this series, I speak with the musicians and puppeteers who helped bring her world to the stage. Through music, objects, and performance, they stepped inside memory and carried it forward in real time.

Together, we explore what it means to translate, embody, and sustain someone else’s history, and how folklore continues to move, change, and live through those who refuse to let it disappear.

Episode Credits

• Producer – Samantha Goldberg Blackthorn

___________________________

The Folklorist Next Door Series Credits

• Technical Producer – Lamont Jack Pearley
• Executive Producer – Jeannelle Ramirez

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Send us Fan Mail

As Spring returns to South Texas, the winds and rains help our iconic wild flowers break through the soil. Communities are planning gatherings and activities that connect them with the world around them. In this episode, we look at some of the ways ecological wisdom, spirituality and cultura have shaped the ways we interact with the return of the la primavera. With reflections from community organizer, traditional healer and land steward, Helga Garza and Chicano Studies Scholar Dr. Tomás Ybarra-Frausto we gain insight on how flores de papel and tejido de palma have remained important crafts in South Texas for generations.

Episode Credits:

Producer – Beto DeLeon

Interviews

Dr. Tomas Ybarra Frausto
Helga Garza
Dora Alicia Gomez
Lupita Dominguez
Manuel Davila

______________

Series Credits

Technical Producer – Lamont Jack Pearley

Executive Producer – Jeannelle Ramirez

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts

Send us Fan Mail

This podcast explores how dance, though ephemeral, generates tangible artifacts and living histories worth preserving in San Antonio. Opening with Mona Lisa Montgomery’s poem “Bertita’s Legacy” honoring Berta Almaguer, Montgomery shares her efforts to research Almaguer through interviews, limited archival traces, and rare community-held recordings.

These artifacts like shoes, costumes, instruments, studios, and recordings function as mementos of what communities value. Southside dance studio owner, Sarita Zúñiga emphasizes storytelling, cultural pride, and innovative work that blends genres, while costumes become cherished, reused links to memory and craft.

Contemporary artist Catherine “Cat” Cisneros discusses scarce documentation, sacred dance spaces, and preserving artifacts such as Vladimir Marek’s salvaged wooden floor. Closing with Gio Bazaldua’s activism-centered “PanzaFusion” and dragtivism, the podcast concludes with two goals: the importance of interviewing elders in the dance community and documenting artifacts to counter cultural reduction and ensure dance legacies endure.

Episode Credits

Producer - Amber Ortega

"I would like to dedicate this podcast to Dora Ruffner"

_______

Series Credits

Technical Producer - Lamont Jack Pearley

Executive Producer - Jeannelle Ramirez

Support the show

Learn more at TexasFolklife.org
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts