People

Staff and Associates

Debora Kodish (Director) is the founder of the Philadelphia Folklore Project. She has directed the organization since its inception in 1987 and has focused on developing projects that support the culture and folk arts of Philadelphia communities since that time. Her work has resulted in numerous exhibitions, public programs and publications, as well as opportunities for local folk artists and grassroots cultural organizations. At the PFP she has conducted field research and edited publications on Cambodian folk opera, African American social dance, Lithuanian folksongs, and other topics, and served as project director and researcher for the PFP's work on African American women tap dancers, which resulted in an exhibition which she curated and a documentary videotape for which she is a co-director. Kodish taught folklore in universities and conducted folklife research in a range of settings before beginning the PFP. She worked in some of the country's first public folklife programs, doing field research in Oregon and Maine for exhibitions and publications in the 1970s. Kodish received her Ph.D. in Folklore from the University of Texas in 1981. Her publications deal with the history of folklife study, early public sector folklife, feminist approaches to folklife and the conventions that folklorists rely on in developing their work; since working at PFP she has focused on issues in public interest folklore. She serves on the Advisory Council of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Policy, and the board of the Folk Arts - Cultural Treasures Charter School. She can be reached at kodish@folkloreproject.org.

Germaine Ingram (Interim Associate Director) has, over a career spanning 35 years, applied her training and experience as a civil rights and trial lawyer, law professor, child advocate, school district and non-profit executive, public policy consultant, and performing artist to diverse organizational settings and endeavors committed to increasing social and economic equity, improving child and family welfare, and encouraging educational reform. At the Folklore Project, Ingram has taken on various roles: leading a documentary project to record the life stories of veteran African American women tap dancers, serving on the board, and, as a tap dancer, participating in a range of performance projects. She can be reached at gingram@folkloreproject.org.

Elizabeth Sayre (Research Associate) is a musician and an ethnomusicologist, with specializations in Afro-Latin and African percussion traditions, Latin American music (especially Cuba and Brazil) and African and Diaspora music. A Ph.D. candidate at Wesleyan University, Sayre is completing a dissertation on African heritage hand drumming in Philadelphia communities since 1945, and has several publications on Afro-Cuban percussion. She has taught music and lectured at Swarthmore College, Temple University, Wesleyan University and elsewhere, served as Director of Education at the Asociacion de Musicos Latinos Americanos, and performs regularly with Alo Brasil, a Philadelphia-based Brazilian dance band, and accompanies Afro-Cuban folkloric dance classes at the Alvin Ailey School in New York. She has worked on various projects at the Folklore Project, including Philly Dance Africa (1998), a Caribbean Folk Arts exhibition (1999), in our technical assistance program (1999, 2003, 2007) and has authored a variety of artist profiles in PFP's Works in Progress magazine since 1997. She can be reached at s esayre@folkloreproject.org

Ife Nii-Owoo (Graphic Design) runs Ife Designs and Associates, an award-winning design company. She has designed the PFP's publications (including books, videos, calendars and other print media) for more than a decade. She can be reached at ife@ifedesigns.com

Patricia Frahme (Accountant) ably manages PFP's financial systems.

Teaching Artists currently include:

• Kormassa Bobo, Liberian dance
• Sifu Shu Pui Cheung, Chinese hung gar kung fu and lion dance
• Fatu Gayflor, Liberian song
• Linda Goss, storyteller
• Shuyuan Li, Beijing Opera
• Thavro Phim, Cambodian chayyam
• Losang Samten, Tibetan sand mandala painter
• Zaye Tete, Liberian song
• Dorothy Wilkie, John Wilkie, Baba Robert Crowder, Paul Lucas, and Ishmael Jackson, West African and Afro-Caribbean dance
• Chamroeun Yin, Cambodian craft traditions
  
  

Board members (2007 - 2008)

• Linda Goss (storyteller, co-founder National Association of Black Storytellers)
• Mimi Iijima (arts/humanities program officer)
• Debora Kodish
• Ife Nii-Owoo (graphic designer, business owner, Ife Designs and Associates)
• Mawusi Renee Simmons (ethnomusicologist, development officer)
• Yvette Smalls (hair artist, media artist)
• Ellen Somekawa (community activist, director, Asian Americans United)
• Dorothy Wilkie (dancer, artistic director, Kulu Mele African American Dance Ensemble)
• Mary Yee (educator, long-time activist)
  
  

Funders

The Philadelphia Folklore Project is supported by the donations of members (people like you who are committed to sustaining diverse and vital community arts) and by a number of generous funders. We are grateful to all of you. Recent funders have included:

• The National Endowment for the Arts
• The William Penn Foundation
• Dance Advance, a program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by the University of the Arts
• Philadelphia Music Project, a program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by the University of the Arts
• The Pew Charitable Trusts
• Philadelphia Exhibitions Project, a program of The Pew Charitable Trusts, administered by the University of the Arts
• The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
• The Humanities-in-the-Arts Initiative, administered by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council & funded principally by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts
• The Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission
• The Jacob and Malka Goldfarb Foundation
• The Connelly Foundation
• The Philadelphia Cultural Fund
• Independence Foundation
• The Samuel Fels Fund
• WYBE-TV
• Stockton Rush Bartol Foundation
• Philadelphia Foundation
• Henrietta Tower Wurts Foundation
• The Hilles Foundation
• The Douty Foundation
• The Walter J. Miller Foundation
• Windcall
• and our many generous individual donors and members!