The Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD), formerly the Ethnic Folk Arts Center, works to celebrate and strengthen the practice of traditional performing arts, affirming the value of diversity as an essential component of our national identity. CTMD develops performance and educational programs of music and dance indigenous to the ethnic communities of the New York region, including concerts, festivals, audio and video productions, concert tours, technical assistance, collaborative projects and consultations with artists, cultural activists and with educational and cultural institutions.

Since its founding in 1968, CTMD has produced over 800 major presentations. Working with ethnic communities, the Center provides a year-round schedule of programs that research, document and present traditional music and dance. The Center collaborates often with community-based organizations and cultural institutions in New York that want to initiate, strengthen and/or diversify their cultural programming. The Center records and brings to the stage performing artists who carry on the rich and varied traditions of Dominican, Haitian, Irish, Italian, Jewish, Puerto Rican, African-American, Colombian, Balkan, Arabic-speaking, Portuguese, Scandinavian, West African, Asian Indian and other communities.

A number of artists with whom the Center has worked closely, and nurtured in the public presentation of their music, have received The National Heritage Fellowship Award, the nation's highest honor in the traditional arts, including: Adam Popovich, Serbian tamburitza musician, 1982; the late Dave Tarras, Jewish klezmer clarinetist, 1984; Pericles Halkias, Epirot Greek clarinetist, 1985; Ilias Kementzides, Pontic Greek lyra player, 1989; Giuseppe and Raffaela DeFranco, traditional Calabrian musicians, 1990; Jack Coen, Irish flute player, 1991; Fatima Kuinova, Central Asian singer, 1992; Simon Shaheen, Palestinian violinist and oud player 1994; and Juan Gutiérrez, Puerto Rican bomba and plena musician, 1996.