CTMD presents the 2023 Ayalga Cultural Festival

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Brooklyn has become a refuge for many Buryat Mongolians, whose Indigenous homeland lies around the Lake Baikal region of Russian Siberia. Seeking to preserve the endangered Buryat language through traditional song, the Ayalga Cultural Festival has provided a platform for this growing community to invest in its own cultural survival. Not only a day of concerts and celebration, the festival provides youth with free language, music, and dance classes for several months before they take the stage to show the community, and the general public, what they have learned and why it matters.

Now in it's 5th year, the festival will take place once again on June 14 at 3pm, free to all, at the My Way Youth Education Center on 888 MacDonald Ave in Brooklyn. First started as a part of the Inner Asian Sustaining Cultures Initiative, Ayalga is now a community-run event which CTMD fiscally sponsors.

Ayalga has received generous support from the New York State Council on the Arts since 2024.

Beat of the Boroughs is a new video series by the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) celebrating the stories and sounds of local traditional artists from around the five boroughs. In these times, it is more important than ever to celebrate the remarkable contributions of immigrant artists and the central role they have always played in the making of New York City and the United States.

Founded in 1968, CTMD assists New York City’s immigrant communities to sustain their distinctive performing arts traditions and promotes cross-cultural understanding by sharing these art forms with audiences across the city. Nationally renowned for programs that combine research, documentation, presentation and education, CTMD assists immigrant communities in passing traditions to new generations.

Find out more online at ​www.ctmd.org​.

This program is generously funded by the Scherman Foundation and the Howard Gilman Foundation.

CTMD encourages donations: https://ctmd.org/donate

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