Central Park Plaza in downtown Valparaiso took on an international flavor Sunday for the annual World Cultural Festival sponsored by the Valparaiso International Center.
Tiger Kumar, of Valparaiso, was 4 years old when he saw a Chinese zither at the festival for the first time and wanted to learn how to play it. Last year, he said, he won a gold medal in an international competition in China.
Kumar, 16, said getting a zither and supplies like replacement strings means sourcing them from China. “You can’t really find good ones over here,” he said.
Chinese zithers like Kumar’s were developed about 2,000 years ago in China, he said.
“It’s pretty basic what you do; pluck the string,” Kumar said. As a musician’s skills develop, advanced compositions require advanced training. He’s taking online lessons now.
“I’m starting a group called Resonance,” he said, featuring different performers each month. The group will meet at the Valparaiso Public Library. “I want to connect different generations of people,” he said.
Baba Yaga’s Stew performed onstage at the amphitheater during the festival while the audience gathered under umbrellas. The group then did an encore performance under the Urschel Pavilion roof.
Lucia Thomas, of Chicago, played violin. Dianna Davis, of Indianapolis, played an accordion. Mehtab Kirtan, of Evanston, Illinois, used a cajon. It’s originally a Peruvian instrument now used across Central America, too.
“It’s been wonderful to perform here,” Thomas said, though the festival was “very wet, of course.”
“The crowd has been really enthusiastic,” she said.
Baba Yaga’s Stew plays a mélange of music that honors the immigrant community. “It’s a really special thing for us because we like to play music from around the world,” Thomas said.
“We’re trying to do our own take on a lot of different styles of music,” she said. “For us, it’s really special to be part of an international festival.”
Kirtan took notice of the other performers, many of whom were youngsters. “I think it’s a good sign that youths are representing different cultures,” he said, so the traditions will live on for generations.
The accordion isn’t the instrument for which Davis studied hard in school. “I studied piano in school. That’s what my degrees are in.”
A friend suggested she needed to play a colloquial instrument, so she picked up the accordion, a keyboard instrument that can be transported a lot easier than a piano.
“It’s really taken me wonderful places,” she said.
Jim Goetsch, of Fort Wayne, is a volunteer with Third World Shoppe, a nonprofit that supports fair trade. “Everything we sell benefits low-income families,” he said. “Because we help the poor, everything we sell is not for profit.”
The World Cultural Festival is one of the Third World Shoppe’s regular stops. “We’ve been at this festival for I don’t know how many years,” he said.
Goetsch offered a round-the-world tour of products the shop sells. Toy birds are made in Nepal, helping the people recover from disasters there. Olive wood creations help people in Israel and Palestine, especially with tourism plummeting because of war in the Middle East.
A ring of worry dolls helps fund a clean water project for the Guatemalan people who make them. A volcano dirties their water.
“These are the world’s smallest dolls,” Goetsch said. “If you tell the doll your worry before you go to bed, they tell you that when you wake up, your problem will be solved.”
In Kenya, the people carve rocks to support the local school. “It’s just an example of what people can do if they work together,” he said.
Critters made from tiny gourds in Mexico act like bobbleheads. “If they wiggle all at once, they say an earthquake is going to happen, Goetsch said.
“Our people keep looking for new ideas of what they can do,” he said.
Francesco DeNicolo, of Valparaiso, was born in Italy. He’s an artist who teaches Italian cooking, too.
“What I’m doing is very dedicated to art,” he said. His booth sold T-shirts, hats, calendars and other projects with his art.
“My goal is to try and open up a gallery and give people lessons,” he said, but that’s going to take some work to get ready for it.
Meanwhile, he enjoys seeing his art travel far. He’s sold works that are in Mexico, Italy and Liverpool, among other places. “I like the idea of having my pieces, my art, sharing it to other places.”
Ananya Kar, of Indianapolis, danced in honor of Kali, a Hindu goddess. “It’s a spiritual dance piece,” she said. As Kali, Kar depicts the divine feminine and the multifaceted aspect of it. “It’s very psychological,” she said.
Kar has been performing for audiences professionally for 15 years. “The biggest part of dance is being able to form this emotional connection with them,” she said.
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The festival, she said, is “a wonderful amalgamation of all the different cultures.”
A common theme through all the cultures is hospitality, Kar said. “No matter where you go in the world, you’ll find that hospitality and willingness to share cultures.”
Jim Martz and his wife, Sue, are volunteers with Compass International in Valparaiso. Parents go to weekly sessions to learn English while the Martzes and others supervise kids working on their homework and babysit preschoolers.
“Many of the volunteers are retired teachers,” Sue said. She and Jim are both former teachers.
Compass International has helped immigrants from Turkey, Iran, Belarus, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Mexico, China, Japan, various Central American countries and elsewhere, Sue said.
Antonio Perez, of Valparaiso, migrated to the United States from Guadalajara, Mexico, 36 years ago, at age 10. Becoming fluent in English took eight months of classes.
Perez led the parade of nations, flying the Mexican flag proudly.
“We have a lot of communities, different cultures, in Northwest Indiana,” he said.
Charles “Big Tiny” Canty, of Valparaiso, stood tall in the parade of nations at the event, representing Nigeria. Valparaiso has changed in the decades he’s lived there, he said.
Twenty-five years ago, he was at a protest when a driver passing by rolled down his window, called Canty the “N” word and told him to go home. “When I moved here, I was seeing one Black person a month. Now I’m seeing them every day,” Canty said.
Looking around him, “It looks like the whole world under one roof,” he said.
The annual festival shows people he’s multicultural and multifaceted. “Everybody is,” he said.
Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.