Daniel Sheehy is acting director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, effective April 13. Sheehy joined the Smithsonian in 2000, serving as director of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, curator of the Folkways Collection and director of Smithsonian Global Sound, an educational Web site offering information, video mini-documentaries and downloads of traditional music from around the world.

Before joining the Smithsonian, he was the director of Folk and Traditional Arts at the National Endowment for the Arts (1992-2000) and staff ethnomusicologist and assistant director (1978-1992). At the NEA, Sheehy supervised the National Heritage Fellowship awards and grants programs providing approximately $4 million annually for projects in the folk and traditional arts across the United States and its territories.

A Fulbright Hays scholar in Veracruz, Mexico (1977-78), he earned his doctorate in ethnomusicology from UCLA in 1979. He served as co-editor of the 1100-page “South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean” volume of the “Garland Encyclopedia of World Music” (1998). His book “Mariachi Music in America: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture” was published by Oxford University Press in 2006.

His eight-year Smithsonian Folkways initiative, the “Tradiciones/Traditions” recording series, has produced 30 recordings of grassroots música latina, earning eight Grammy nominations, one Grammy and one Latin Grammy award. In 1997, the American Folklore Society honored him with the Benjamin A. Botkin prize, recognizing his major impact on the field of public folklore and on public understanding of folklore. In 2006, the Municipio de San Juan, Puerto Rico, dedicated the Second Annual International Crafts Fair to Sheehy in recognition of his longtime support of Puerto Rican craftsworkers.

Sheehy has served on the boards of the American Folklore Society, the Society for Ethnomusicology, the National Council for the Traditional Arts, the Alliance for California Traditional Arts, the Association for Cultural Equity and the Community Council of WAMU public radio. Also active as a professional musician, he founded Mariachi Los Amigos in 1978, the Washington, D.C., area’s longest-existing mariachi ensemble.

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