Month: October 2024

new orleans, louisiana — Louisiana’s Cajun and Creole heritage takes center stage this weekend when the Festivals Acadiens et Creoles marks a half-century of honoring and celebrating the culture through music, arts, food and community. 

What started as a one day concert in 1974 to entertain 150 French-speaking journalists gathered in Lafayette — considered the heart of Cajun country — has grown into a three-day event and possibly one of the largest Cajun and Zydeco festivals in the world, organizers said. And, they note, the entire event is free. 

Barry Jean Ancelet, one of the event’s organizers, said when the idea formed 50 years ago, nobody knew if anyone would even come to hear the music. 

“Cajun music at that time was largely considered ‘old people’s music,'” he said. “You’ve got to remember, we were in the throes of Rock ‘n’ Roll at the time. The people here loved it when they encountered it in dance halls, but this concert was designed to call attention to the music in a different way, to point out its value. They had to sit — not dance — and pay attention. And they ended up hearing it in a different way. It was so successful. We ended up turning it into an annual event where we could call positive attention to this important asset and get people to consider it.” 

The festival, now held annually in Lafayette’s Girard Park, brings together multi-generations of musicians and artists who annually fight to preserve a culture that continues to evolve. 

“We’ve always been about celebrating the past and handing it off to the future,” Ancelet said. “If you value and respect evolution, the culture will produce things that will continue to surprise you. It all comes out in the wash. What’s good will last and what’s not, won’t.” 

Festival co-founder Pat Mould said the festival is a “self-celebration of who we are, how we live, what we eat, the music and how we speak.” 

“If you know nothing and want to learn about the culture, this one weekend out of the year allows you to find out everything. Everything you want to know is represented at the festival. It’s a quick study of Cajun and Creole living,” he said. 

Event features homegrown talent

On tap musically for the Friday through Sunday event are performances by 60 musicians — all homegrown talent — including Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys, Wayne Toups, CJ Chenier, Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Chas, Chubby Carrier and the Bayou Swamp Band, The Revelers, Beausoleil avec Michael Doucet and The Lost Bayou Ramblers. 

On Friday, contemporary artists will pay tribute to the 1974 concert house band that included Zydeco pioneer Clifton Chenier, Cajun accordion maker Marc Savoy, the Balfa Brothers, a Cajun music ensemble of five brothers, Cajun accordion players Nathan Abshire and Blackie Forrester, and Jimmy C. Newman, a country music and Cajun singer-songwriter and long-time star of the Grand Ole Opry. 

“Get ready for Louisiana pure fun,” said Carrier, who’s scheduled to perform with his band on Sunday. “Get ready to eat some really good food and have the time of your life.” 

“People all over the word have these dates circled on their calendar,” he continued. “It’s an event that helps the younger generations continue the traditions. I’m a third generation Zydeco musician. This is a family oriented festival that brings people together of all ages.” 

A ‘celebration of everything Cajun’

Riley, who’s been performing at this festival since 1988, said he keeps returning for several reasons but especially because it helps preserve the culture. 

“It’s important to see us on stage, singing and speaking in French. That has an effect on people who come to see us and helps them fall in love with the culture,” he said. 

“There are a lot of events leading up to the weekend that focuses on the importance of the language, the culture, the food and, of course, the music. There’s none other that celebrates it like this one. I think it’s the biggest complete celebration of everything Cajun. It’s also inclusive of different generations, bands with lineage. That’s key,” he said. 

Riley, now 55, said he’s very proud that his three children play music. 

“It’s a beautiful thing for my family and others like mine,” he said. “Having your kids play with you is awesome. Most kids don’t want to have anything to do with what their parents do. Mine think what I do is fun and it is.” 

Riley said when he first started there weren’t too many young bands playing Cajun music. 

“There was real fear that the music would die off and dissipate like the language,” he said. “The opposite has happened. More young folks are preserving and playing this music than ever. The Zydeco scene down here is packed with young people. It’s super vibrant and alive. The same with the Cajun scene as well.” 
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NEW ORLEANS — On the eve of World War II, Nazis in Austria seized a pastel by renowned impressionist artist Claude Monet, selling it off and sparking a family’s decadeslong search that culminated Wednesday in New Orleans.

At an FBI field office, agents lifted a blue veil covering the Monet pastel and presented Adalbert Parlagi’s granddaughters with the artwork over 80 years after it was taken from their family. Helen Lowe said she felt that her grandfather would be watching and that he would be “so, so proud of this moment.”

Monet’s 1865 Bord de Mer depicts rocks along the shoreline of the Normandy coast, where Allied forces stormed the beaches of Nazi-occupied France during D-Day in 1944, marking a turning point in the war. The Monet pastel is one of 20,000 items recovered by the FBI Art Crime Team out of an estimated 600,000 artworks and millions of books and religious objects stolen by the Nazis.

“The theft was not random or incidental, but an integral part of the Nazis’ plan to eliminate all vestiges of Jewish life in Germany and Europe, root and branch,” U.S. State Department Holocaust adviser Stuart E. Eizenstat said in a March speech.

After Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Adalbert Parlagi, a successful businessman and art lover, and his wife, Hilda, left behind almost everything they owned and fled Vienna, using British license plates to drive across the border, their granddaughters said. Though the Parlagis hadn’t identified as Jewish for years and baptized their children as Protestants, they were still considered Jewish under Nazi laws, according to Austrian government records. Other relatives were killed in concentration camps.

The Parlagis attempted to ship their valuable carpets, porcelain and artworks out of Vienna to London, but found out later that their property had been seized and auctioned off by the Gestapo to support the Third Reich.

Multiple international declarations decried trading in Nazi-looted art, beginning with Allied forces in London in 1943. The 1998 Washington principles, signed by more than three dozen countries, reiterated the call and advocated for the return of stolen art.

Yet Adalbert Parlagi’s efforts were stonewalled by the Vienna auctioneer who had bought and sold the Monet pastel and another artwork owned by Parlagi. The records were lost after the fighting in Vienna, the auctioneer told Adalbert in a letter shortly after World War II, according to an English translation of a document prepared by an Austrian government body reviewing the Parlagi family’s art restitution claims.

“I also cannot remember two such pictures either,” the auctioneer said.

Many survivors of World War II and their descendants ultimately give up trying to recover their lost artwork because of the difficulties they face, said Anne Webber, co-founder of the London-based nonprofit Commission for Looted Art in Europe, which has recovered more than 3,500 looted artworks.

“You have to just constantly, constantly, constantly look,” Webber said.

Adalbert Parlagi and his son Franz kept meticulous ownership and search records. After Franz’s death in 2012, Françoise Parlagi stumbled upon her father’s cache of documents, including the original receipt from her grandfather’s purchase of the Monet pastel. She reached out to Webber’s commission for help in 2014.

The commission’s research team reviewed archives and receipts, contacted museums and art experts and scoured the internet, but initially found “absolutely no trace,” Webber said. Then, in 2021, the team discovered online that a New Orleans dealer acquired the Monet in 2017 and sold it to a Louisiana-based doctor and his wife.

The FBI investigated the commission’s research and, earlier this year, a federal court ruled the pastel should be returned to the Parlagis’ descendants.

“There was never a question” of returning the art to the rightful owners after learning of its sordid history, said Bridget Vita-Schlamp, whose late husband had purchased the Monet pastel.

“We were shocked, I’m not going to lie,” she said.

The family recovered another work in March from the Austrian government but there are still six more artworks missing, including from acclaimed artists Camille Pissarro and Paul Signac. The U.S. is likely the “largest illegal art market in the world,” said Kristin Koch, supervisory special agent with the FBI’s Art Crime Program.

The art world has a greater responsibility to investigate the origins of artworks and a moral obligation to return looted works to their rightful owners, Webber said.

“They represent the life and the lives that were taken,” Webber said. “They represent the world that they were exiled from.”

The granddaughters of Adalbert and Hilda Parlagi say they are grateful for what they have already gotten back. Françoise Parlagi, a broad smile on her face, said she hoped to hang a copy of the pastel in her home. She said the moment felt “unreal.”

“So many families are in this situation. Maybe they haven’t even been trying to recover because they don’t believe, they think this might not be possible,” she said. “Let us be hope for other families.”
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From pop superstar Taylor Swift to former wrestler Hulk Hogan, celebrity endorsements have been a feature of this year’s U.S. presidential race. But whether they will have any kind of impact on the election is difficult to predict. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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seoul, south korea — South Koreans flocked to bookstores Friday and crashed websites in a frenzy to snap up copies of the work of novelist Han Kang in her home country, after her unexpected win of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Literature.

However, the author herself was keeping out of the limelight.

The country’s largest bookstore chain, Kyobo Book Centre, said sales of her books had rocketed on Friday, with stocks almost immediately selling out and set to be in short supply for the near future.

“This is the first time a Korean has received a Nobel Prize in Literature, so I was amazed,” said Yoon Ki-heon, a 32-year-old visitor at a bookstore in central Seoul.

“South Korea had a poor achievement in winning Nobel Prizes, so I was surprised by news that (a writer of) non-English books, which were written in Korean, won such a big prize.”

Soon after Thursday’s announcement, some bookstore websites could not be accessed due to heavy traffic. Out of the current 10 bestsellers at Kyobo, nine were Han’s books on Friday morning, according to its website.

Han’s father, well-regarded author Han Seung-won, said the translation of her novel The Vegetarian, her major international breakthrough, had led to her winning the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 and now the Nobel prize.

“My daughter’s writing is very delicate, beautiful and sad,” Han Seung-won said.

“So, how you translate that sad sentence into a foreign language will determine whether you win … It seems the translator was the right person to translate the unique flavor of Korean language.”

Han’s other books address painful chapters of South Korean history, including Human Acts which examines the 1980 massacre of hundreds of civilians by the South Korean military in the city of Gwangju.

Another novel, We Do Not Part, looks at the fallout of the 1948-54 massacre on Jeju island, when an estimated 10% of the island’s population were killed in an anti-communist purge.

“I really hope souls of the victims and survivors could be healed from pain and trauma through her book,” said Kim Chang-beom, head of an association for the bereaved families of the Jeju massacre.

Park Gang-bae, a director at a foundation that honors the victims and supports the bereaved families and survivors of the Gwangju massacre, said he was “jubilant and moved ” by her win.

“The protagonists in her book (Human Acts) are people we meet and live with every day, on every corner here, so this is deeply moving,” Park said.

Han’s father told reporters on Friday that she may continue to shun the limelight after giving no separate comments or interviews and eschewing media scrutiny since Thursday’s win.

“She said given the fierce Russia-Ukraine, Israel-Palestine wars and people dying every day, how could she celebrate and hold a joyous press conference?” her father said.

Han Kang received the news of her win about 10 to 15 minutes before the announcement, her father said, and was so surprised that she thought it might be a scam at one point.
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WINTER PARK, Florida — Many Jews worldwide will mark Yom Kippur in fasting and prayer at their synagogues this weekend.

But for the faithful in Florida, destructive Hurricane Milton has disrupted plans for observing the Day of Atonement — the holiest day of the year in the Jewish faith — that begins Friday evening and caps off the High Holy Days that began with Rosh Hashana on October 2.

Across the storm-threatened areas, rabbis and their congregants spent part of the Days of Awe — the span between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur — protecting their homes and synagogues as Milton churned off the coast, spiraling into a Category 5 storm. Many — though not all — evacuated, heeding the voluntary and mandatory orders, and found safekeeping for their synagogues’ Torah scrolls and themselves.

Milton hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday as a Category 3 cyclone, with damaging winds, heavy rains and tornadoes. By Thursday, the storm had moved eastward into the Atlantic Ocean.

Why this rabbi decided against evacuating before storm

Rabbi Yitzchok Minkowicz evacuated most of his family ahead of the storm, but chose to ride it out with his son, also a rabbi, at Chabad Lubavitch of Southwest Florida near Fort Myers. The center is hosting people displaced by the storm, including doctors, first responders and elderly who cannot evacuate.

It’s important to be “with the people and for the people,” and provide emotional and spiritual support, he said as the storm approached.

Near midnight Thursday, the Chabad center and the rest of the neighborhood lost power, said Minkowicz, making them among the millions without it. The center was spared from the storm surge, but homes and other buildings in the area were not, he said.

“Our pressing need is for Power so that we can help our community & hold Yom Kippur services,” Minkowicz told The Associated Press via email Thursday. “We’re praying for this to be resolved asap.”

The center planned to host Yom Kippur observances regardless of the storm. He said it was similar two years ago, when the holy day followed the major hurricane, Ian.

“Yom Kippur is a day that you open up your soul to God and you totally connect with God,” Minkowicz said. “When you go through a hurricane, anything materialistic is not important. They’re already in that zone where they’re totally focused on God.”

Congregation Beth Am in the Tampa Bay area also lost power and plans to hold Yom Kippur services online, said Rabbi Jason Rosenberg of the Reform synagogue.

“It’s important to keep perspective. Having a service online is not what anybody wants, but it could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. “This feels like a blessing.”

The storm underscored one of Yom Kippur’s annual reflections.

An implicit question, he said before Milton’s landfall, is “If this was going to be your last year on earth, how would you want to act differently? … When you’ve got a historical storm, a potentially life-threatening and life-altering storm bearing down on you, that message is really present.”

Milton disrupts Yom Kippur and October 7 commemoration

Like most of her congregants, Rabbi Nicole Luna had evacuated after helping secure Temple Beth El in Fort Myers, and entrusting several Torah scrolls to congregants should the threatened surge devastate the synagogue.

While the congregation braved Hurricanes Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022, Milton’s timing hit especially hard, having already forced the postponement of community-wide commemoration of Hamas attacking Israel on October 7, 2023. The war that followed is ongoing.

“It just feels like too much for our hearts to carry right now,” Luna said from Miami ahead of the storm. “It’s all very heavy.”

After the storm passed through, Luna told her congregation that their synagogue had emerged undamaged, though it lost power.

She announced plans for a service via Zoom on Friday evening, and in-person services Saturday.

“We hope by Saturday more traffic lights will be restored but please only come if you can safely navigate the roads,” she said in her message.

Luna said she was grateful for the “big outpouring of support” she received from fellow rabbis across the East Coast of Florida, who were opening their temples for the holidays to evacuees and have emphasized they can come as they are since few grabbed “holiday-appropriate clothing” in the rush to escape Milton’s fury.

The Chabad of Southwest Broward near Fort Lauderdale is hosting several evacuees from areas most affected by the storm, ranging from a mother with her newborn to an elderly couple, said director Rabbi Pinny Andrusier. They are invited to spend Yom Kippur with the Cooper City-based group, including sharing kosher meals before and after the day of fasting.

“We were spared, thank God,” Andrusier said of the storm. “We’ve been able to open up our doors” for those in the hurricane zone.

Synagogue skips holding Yom Kippur services

Hundreds of Jewish families on Longboat Key, a barrier island off Sarasota Bay, won’t be able to observe Yom Kippur in their synagogue for the very first time in their 45-year history, said Shepard Englander, CEO of The Jewish Federation of Sarasota-Manatee.

Access to the island, specifically the John Ringling Causeway, was closed ahead of the storm. The congregation decided it wasn’t worth risking Milton’s might for Day of Atonement services. They had celebrated Rosh Hashana in their building despite a number of nearby homes being damaged by Hurricane Helene, which made landfall last month.

Englander said he and his family evacuated from their home on a riverbank outside Sarasota and were hunkered down at a friend’s home inland. From there, he was trying to make sure community members from Longboat Key and other temples that won’t have services can say their prayers and break their daylong Yom Kippur fast at a newly constructed conference center in Sarasota with food items like blintzes, bagels, cream cheese and smoked salmon.

Ahead of the storm, people were scattered in the region at emergency shelters or staying with family or friends, Englander said.

“It’s in difficult times that you really understand the power of community,” he said. “And this is a caring, tight-knit, generous Jewish community.”
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Taipei, Taiwan — Organizers of Taiwan’s premier film festival report a huge increase this year in entries from China, despite a ban imposed by Beijing six years ago on participation in the festival by Chinese filmmakers and actors.

As many as 100 Chinese entries had been submitted for Golden Horse Awards in recent years, in defiance of the ban and without apparent consequences. But this year organizers say the number of movies and documentaries submitted from China shot up to 276.

More than a dozen of the Chinese films are potential finalists, some in multiple categories. The winners will be announced on November 23.

Industry analysts and directors say many of the Chinese filmmakers may have turned to the Golden Horse Awards to earn exposure for their movies, fearing they would be banned at home. Others point to the festival’s reputation for hosting a diversity of films.

According to a list of finalists released on October 2, Chinese director Lou Ye’s pseudo-documentary, An Unfinished Film, and Geng Jun’s black-and-white gay film Bel Ami were shortlisted for multiple awards.

Wonder Weng, executive director of the Taiwan Film Critics Society in Taipei, said both movies are likely to be banned in China.

He said that Lou, a regular participant in the Golden Horse Awards, has never bowed to the Chinese system and that his An Unfinished Film deviates from Beijing’s favored narratives about the COVID-19 pandemic. Geng’s Bel Ami, Weng added, challenges the values of the Chinese Communist Party amid a heavy-handed crackdown on the LGBTQ community.

Among this year’s entrants is Zheng Yu, a 27-year-old independent director from Inner Mongolia who specializes in expressing thoughts and emotions through images and who has been involved in film and television production for eight years.

His entry, Her Dream in the Living Room is a short film that records how life for his family was changed by an elder’s chronic disease. Although he was not shortlisted in the end, he told VOA that he still dreams of standing on the stage of the Golden Horse Awards one day.

Zheng said there are three golden awards in the Chinese film industry: the Taiwan Golden Horse, the Hong Kong Golden Statue and the China Golden Rooster Awards.

Among the three, “The Golden Horse Awards are more welcoming to varieties of films, and it is also more supportive of young directors, so this is why I wanted to apply for the Golden Horse Awards,” he said.

In addition to the film entries from China, this year’s festival includes 277 entries from Taiwan, 72 from Hong Kong, 17 from Macau, 21 from Malaysia, 17 from Singapore and 67 from other countries.

Ng Kwok Kwan, an associate professor at the Academy of Film at Hong Kong Baptist University, said the Golden Horse Awards are the oldest Chinese film awards on either side of the Taiwan Strait.

Although entries from China, Hong Kong and Macao have been discouraged by politics, the Golden Horse Awards are still seen as major awards in the Chinese film industry, and being nominated for a festival award will greatly enhance a film’s visibility, he said.

Ng added that the festival has become the best channel for Chinese-speaking audiences to access excellent works, and it is also the ideal outlet for some non-mainstream Hong Kong and Chinese filmmakers.

He said Hong Kong-made films received a total of 18 nominations at last year’s Golden Horse Awards and finally won four awards: Best New Director, Best New Actor, Best Feature Short Film and Best Animated Short Film.

“In recent years, some of the Hong Kong films nominated have been very good. They belong to a relatively niche and non-mainstream, and [the festival] has a special [interest] in the themes of non-mainstream, social issues, and experimental films, and I think it really has a certain contribution [to Hong Kong films],” he said.

Seventy-two Hong Kong films participated in this year’s Golden Horse Awards. From Now On, which explores the situation of older lesbians, was shortlisted for the Best Feature Film, Best Director and Best Actress awards.

Among the five shortlisted films for Best Short Film, three are Hong Kong films, including Colour Ideology Sampling.mov, Something About Us and Letters from the Imprisoned: Chow Hang Tung.
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