SALEM - A new moon will rise over the Peabody Essex Museum tomorrow night, and on Saturday afternoon five artists from different indigenous cultures will salute it in their own ways at the museum's ECHO festival.
Artists with Massachusetts, Hawaiian, Alaskan, and Cape Verdean roots will perform music, dance, and storytelling to show how their cultures follow the cycles of the moon and the harvest.
The centerpiece of the event is a group performance, "Keeping the Fire in the Dark Moon Times," reflecting what the cultures share, particularly the struggle to keep traditions alive.
"It shows the times of hardships - and the practices we have held onto to get through those times," said Jonathan Perry of Buzzards Bay, an Aquinnah Wampanoag.
The other artists this year are Cape Verdean artist Candida Rose of New Bedford, Hawaii native Ani Lokomaika'i Lipscomb, and Loren Anderson of the Sugpiaq nation and Debra Dommek of the Iñupiaq, both from Alaska.
"Fundamentally these are all stories about maintaining a culture against diversity or in a time when that culture is under some kind of stress, either through changing environment or changing social conditions - they're stories about cultures learning to remember," said Dan Elias, ECHO project director for the Peabody Essex.
The event is especially appropriate for the Peabody Essex, said Elias, because of its history collecting the art and artifacts of Native American and Pacific cultures; the Hawaiian and Alaskan collections in the museum are among the nation's finest, he said.
The ECHO (Education Through Cultural and Historical Organizations) project is an annual event with a changing lineup.
The artists gather in Hawaii to assemble their performance, then travel to each of the artists' sponsoring institutions, as well as the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and other venues.
"It just really, really amazing. It just became so clear when we all sat with each other for the first time and talked about our cultures and ourselves, it just made a lot of sense," said Rose, describing her first ECHO experience last season.
"As we told our stories and as we talked about our histories and our cultures . . . we found that there were lots of commonalities within us," she said.
"If you see [this year's] show, you'll see things like 'Lines of Communication,' about how do you keep lines of communication open when you're away from [your family and culture] or when you're taken away. We all have the same kinds of trends that go through our cultures even though our cultures are far from each other."
Said Elias: "For me, the group performance, which is this narrative story of individuals from different cultures losing and regaining their individual heritage, is a beautiful thing to see.
""The blending of the voices, and these very different-appearing people, in the costumes of very different indigenous groups, singing in a unified way, in harmony, is a beautiful moment."
The eighth annual New Trade Winds/ECHO Performing Arts Festival is Saturday in the Peabody Essex Museum atrium. The ensemble performance is at 2 p.m., with individual performances throughout the afternoon. The event is free with general admission.
