A few San Jose State faculty and staff members put on the fourth annual International Mother Language celebration on Sunday afternoon at a local contemporary art space downtown dedicated to Chicanx and Latinx experience and history.
More than 200 San Jose community members attended the event at the Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana, commonly known as MACLA.
Event speaker Sasha Reiisieh said the idea of the celebration is a yearly worldwide observance to promote the awareness in linguistic, cultural diversity and multilingualism.
“In this community we believe in our work to preserve the differences in cultures and languages that foster tolerance and respect for others,” Reiisieh said during the event.
He said arts, games, dance and language are all methods of honoring cultural diversity.
Shannon Miller, dean of San Jose State's College of Humanities and the Arts said the International Mother Language celebration was a “wonderful mix” of parents, children and dance performances.
“We applied for an Abierto grant from the city and that helped fund aspects of the art activity going on here,” Miller said. “I want to give a big thanks to both the city and to MACLA.”
The event was sponsored by Abierto, the grant program from the City of San Jose.
The Abierto program is a fund of $1.4 million dollars from the Mayor’s Budget Office dedicated to “the arts community and public space activations/events” according to the City of San Jose website.
Miller said she was also thankful for Tina Korani, SJSU media design assistant professor, who organized the celebration.
“It was my first time organizing this and I was pretty nervous at first,” Korani said. “[In] the previous years, we didn’t have any performances but this year we were able to have . . . six different cultural performances.”
One of the performances was from the Abhinaya Dance Company, which is located in West San Jose and was founded in 1980.
Abhinaya dancers and student-teacher duo Dooja Sohoni and Maitreyi Patel both said it was exciting to have an opportunity like the International Mother Language celebration to perform in-person after previously performing virtually.
Sohoni and Patel performed a dance style called Bharatanatyam, which is specialized at Abhinaya Dance Company and originates from South India where it is performed in temples for and about the gods, according to Sohoni.
“I don’t speak my mother language . . . however, this feels like I’m still kind of connected to culture in some way which is nice,” Sohoni said.
Maitreyi Patel said she speaks her native language but she’s from a different part of India.
“I feel like this is a great way for me to connect to different parts around India and not just my own little state,” Patel said.
Shadan Mirabedi, the main instructor of Persian Dancing with Shadan based in Paolo Alto, said she thinks it’s beautiful when people of different cultures come to learn about each other.
“In this day and age, when politics is what politics is, [it’s important] to sort of show the richness and the beauty of the people through the art through the dances and the music, I want to educate and present our culture, which is a really rich, ancient culture, to the general community,” Mirabedi said.
David Vargas, also known as Texomazatl, is a Native American instructor of Tezkatlipoka Aztec Dance and Drum school based in San Jose. He said the celebration is a way to honor people’s ancestors and share their cultures.
“Today, we are here celebrating the Mother Language celebration in Downtown San Jose because we believe in the idea that we should honor our ancestral languages,” Vargas said.
He said the discipline taught through traditional arts is applicable in “any area” of life.
Andrea Topete, a teaching assistant to Korani, said everything bought for the event was bought from local businesses and the dance groups were all from the San Jose area.
Casas Topete, who helped organize the event, said she thinks everything being locally based is “cool” because it benefits the entire community.
In addition to the performances, an art workshop allowed kids of all ages to paint flags of the world on canvas with oil paints, acrylic paints and markers.
Artworks from young artists between 6 and 18 years old were displayed on MACLA’s walls to showcase their mother tongues, exploring their languages and cultural identities.
The young artists were awarded with certificates for participating and showing their art pieces.
SJSU engineering alumna Anginé Marouty came out in support of Korani, who’s one of her best friends, and said this event is all about inspiring and educating the next generation.
“It’s a nice event and we should have more . . . [to] spread the word to everyone that people want fun,” Marouty said. “People want to live together and be happy and we want to raise our kids [in] such a society for a better future.”
Korani said she felt relieved after the event and was proud of its success.
“I saw the crowd . . . they were really engaged and watching the performances and taking photos with all the performers,” she said. “All the effort, all the hard work made it all really worth it.”
Shannon Miller, SJSU College of Humanities and the Arts dean, said she saw the event as a representation of San Jose diversity and a way of living together.
“When you see all these people interacting together, you know . . . one of the huge strengths of the city and of the South Bay, and of San Jose State is the diversity and people’s willingness to understand and grow and learn from each other,” Miller said.
