The National Endowment for the Arts has honored the rich, artistic heritage of America through the NEA National Heritage Fellowships since 1982. The nation’s highest honor in the folk and traditional arts includes an award of $25,000 to each of the nine recipients in 2021, including the Winnsboro Easter Rock Ensemble from Winnsboro, Louisiana.
The Winnsboro ensemble maintains a rare women-led African American traditional spiritual ritual known as Easter Rock that was first practiced by enslaved Africans in the antebellum period. Easter Rock combines music and food with Christian and West African influences.
Susan Roach, director of the School of Literature and Language at Louisiana Tech University, wrote a history of Easter Rock for the NEA website:
Documented only in the Northeast Louisiana Delta region and first practiced by enslaved Africans during the antebellum period, Easter Rock was held from Lake Providence to Ferriday, Louisiana, typically in the Baptist church. Today, a Franklin Parish group under the direction of Hattie Addison Burkhalter appears to be the last practitioners of this once thriving tradition.
Held on Easter Eve to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ, Easter Rock offers a visual, musical, culinary, and spiritual feast, filled with Christian and West African symbolism. The lighted lamps in the darkened sanctuary create an otherworldly, hypnotic atmosphere as the streamers of the banner representing Christ’s cross sweep back and forth around the white table representing Christ’s sepulcher. Moving counter-clockwise around the table, the Easter Rockers sing spirituals accompanied by the syncopated beat of their feet hitting the wooden floor of the Delta plantation church, echoing their ancestral drums and call-and-response improvisational singing.
Following in the footsteps of her mother Ellen Addison and five generations of the family, Burkhalter, born in 1953, began attending the rock as a child around age six. When she was older, she helped her mother, and later took over as leader when her mother stepped down. Since the rock ritual is embedded in a church service, the leader secures the venue, invites the musical performers and speakers, makes the program, repairs or makes the banner, fills the lamps, obtains the cakes and punch representing communion, and trains, rehearses, and coordinates the group of 12 to 20 participants.
While the Easter Rock is a sacred service, they have performed numerous times for the Louisiana Folklife Festival (1994–2005), the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Natchitoches Folk Festival, the Northeast Louisiana African American Museum, and the 1997 Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife.
The other eight 2021 NEA National Heritage Fellows include Cedric Burnside, a Hill Country blues musician from Ashland, Mississippi; Tagumpay De Leon, a Rondalla musician from Burbank, California; Anita Fields (Osage), an Osage ribbon worker from Tulsa, Oklahoma; Los Lobos, a Mexican American band from Los Angeles; Joanie Madden, an Irish flute player from Yonkers, New York; Reginald “Reggio The Hoofer” McLaughlin, a tap dancer from Chicago; Nellie Vera Sánchez, a mundillo master weaver from Moca, Puerto Rico; and Tom Davenport, a filmmaker, documentarian, and media curator from Delaplane, Virginia.
“The diverse art forms of the National Heritage Fellows allow us to experience and appreciate the rich cultural traditions that make up America,” said Ann Eilers, acting chairman for the National Endowment for the Arts. “It is inspiring how these artistic practices continue the legacy of generations past, while blending contemporary elements as they continue into the future.”
For the second year, the National Endowment for the Arts will commemorate the NEA National Heritage Fellows with a film that visits with the fellows where they live and practice these traditional art forms. On November 17, 2021, the virtual presentation will be webcast free to the public at arts.gov.
