PIEN HUANG, HOST:
Every year, the Smithsonian Folklife festival takes place on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. This year, it coincides with Fourth of July weekend.
Right on the green, there's, like, a skate park. There's a music room. there's a cafe. There's a whole bunch of people here. The theme this year is youth and the future of culture, and we're going to stop first at the lowrider tent.
There's bikes with tall handlebars and low seats and a police cruiser painted over and brought down.
How low is the car in the tent?
ERIK ERAZO: So our car is actually on the frame. The frame is on the ground, so unfortunately we can't get any lower than that. We wish we could.
HUANG: That's Erik Erazo, founder of the Olathe Leadership Lowrider Bike Club. It's a high school program in Olathe, Kansas, that teaches students how to build and customize lowrider bicycles. They get to keep their bikes when they graduate.
What is lowrider culture? What is it that brings you here to the mall?
ERAZO: So lowrider culture really started in the Chicano community. It really had a big influence from Hispanic veterans, going back to the old neighborhoods, taking cars that were handed down from, you know, parents or grandparents and started modifying them to kind of fit our style.
HUANG: He's here with his 22-year-old son, Christopher.
CHRISTOPHER: I still remember when my dad had a '90 - what was it? - a 5 - '94 Cadillac Fleetwood with wires that he would come and pick me up from in elementary school. So lowriding culture has always been something that's been a part of my life.
HUANG: Still, he says his dad was cautious about bringing him around lowrider culture growing up. He says it's because it was misrepresented through movies and media as being only associated with gangs.
CHRISTOPHER: The lowrider car culture started because of discriminatory laws against that - right? - enforced by police. To now have a lowrider in the National Mall - that's kind of a full-circle moment.
HUANG: Down the block at the leather, silver and beadwork tent, I meet Anna Severe.
ANNA SEVERE: This is some leather work. I'm working on a belt here. It's got, like, a Vegas theme, so it's got your playing cards and then some dice, and we'll eventually paint it with acrylic paints.
HUANG: She and her family are craftspeople and cattle ranchers in Idaho.
SEVERE: There's six of us, my husband and me and four kids. And so, sometimes we'll let the kids sleep in a minute, and we'll get all the horses saddled and then get the kids up, and they get the rest of their gear loaded up, like bridles and spurs and chaps and ropes that they'll need for the day.
HUANG: Her daughter Reata, who's 16, took up metalwork to round out the family trade and make horse bridles, which go over a horse's head to help control it.
REATA: It takes a silversmith, a leathersmith and then a rawhide braider to make it all together. And so my mom does the leather work. And then my dad braids the rawhide. And so all we needed left was the silver piece, and I thought it would be really cool to be able to make this full-piece set within just the family.
HUANG: Right now, Reata's working on a pair of copper earrings.
REATA: I use a little dremel and polish it off so I can end up with something like that. I have a little sunflower in the bottom corner and then, like, a spiral going to the top.
HUANG: It's her first time in Washington, D.C., and she's taking it all in.
REATA: It's just super - like, a super cool experience. Definitely a culture shock 'cause, like, in Idaho, in my class, there's 11 kids, and then you come here, and there's so many different people. Buildings are so high. Cultures are so diverse, and it kind of blows my mind.
HUANG: Anna, her mom, is happy to hear that. She's thinking about freedom and all the people who fought for it.
SEVERE: But it's fun to see, like, people marching here, and they're free to talk about what they want and march for whatever they want. I think it's cool, and it's cool for my kids to see that that's what happens here. Like, we are free to speak up for what we want. And we also need to be appreciative of, everyone's got a different opinion. Everyone comes from a different background, and it's ok. That's what makes us, us.
HUANG: The festival is between the Washington Monument on one end and the U.S. Capitol on the other. Walking towards it, we meet Karina Roca, who's apprenticing as a blacksmith.
Great to meet you.
KARINA ROCA: So good to meet you.
HUANG: Yeah.
ROCA: Like, I would be shaking hands, but I just - you know, (laughter) I am so dirty, covered in coal dust.
HUANG: At 28 years old, Karina is a next-generation artisan learning a building trade. She's out here showing off traditional forge welding.
ROCA: So when the steel is heated up almost to its melting point, folded on itself and smashed, that weld will stay clean, and it will be structurally sound for hundreds of years.
HUANG: The day is pretty hot as it is. Add on the full sun and the coal forge, which burns up to 3,100 degrees...
ROCA: I mean, it's intense. We are in New Orleans, and I have been interning all summer at Colonial Williamsburg in the Blacksmith shop, so I feel quite conditioned for this moment. But, you know, I think when you love what you do, it gives you the strength to endure.
HUANG: Karina came to welding after watching a documentary about a master blacksmith who's now her mentor. She was drawn to the beauty and longevity of the craft and of belonging to a line of craftspeople that go way back and, quite likely, way forward.
ROCA: I'm sick of being told that my craft is dead. I'm sick of being told that my craft is dying. It is endangered, and all that is endangered can be saved.
HUANG: Meeting other craftspeople from other parts of the country and the world - it has her feeling energized and hopeful.
ROCA: Some of the most beautiful, you know, creative partnerships are forged through this active community. We need each other. Our liberation is bound together, and this has been such an affirming celebration of that very concept.
HUANG: Out on the National Mall, there's fireworks, food and community. It's everything she wants in a July 4 weekend. Pien Huang, NPR News, Washington, D.C. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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