What is Folklore?

http://www.nyfolklore.org/resource/what.html

What is Folklore?
This is probably the question most frequently asked of people who study and work with folklore. Here's how it often goes: "So, what do you do?" "Im a folklorist. I work for the New York Folklore Society." "Hmmm. Interesting. [pause] So, what is folklore, anyway? There are lots of denitions of folklore and the related terms folklife and folk arts. Here are some denitions and explanations drawn from various scholarly works, government agency publications, and other sources.

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Folklore and folklife (including traditional arts, belief, traditional ways of

work and leisure, adornment and celebrations) are cultural ways in which a group maintains and passes on a shared way of life. This group identity may be dened by age, gender, ethnicity, avocation, region, occupation, religion, socioeconomic niche, or any other basis of association. As New York folklorist Ben Botkin wrote in 1938, Every group bound together or by common interests and purposes, whether educated or uneducated, rural or urban, possesses a body of traditions which may be called its folklore. Into these traditions enter many elements, individual, popular, and even "literary," but all are absorbed and assimilated through repetition and variation into a pattern which has value and continuity for the group as a whole. These traditional forms of knowledge are learned informally within a one-to-one or small group exchange, through performance, or by example. In all cases, folklore and folklife are learned and perpetuated within the context of the "group," for it is the shared experience which shapes and gives meaning to the exchange.
Ellen McHale, "Fundamentals of Folklore," in John Suter, ed., Working with Folk Materials in New York State: A Manual for Folklorists and Archivists (Ithaca, NY: New York Folklore Society, 1994), p. 2.1

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What is folklore?

While folklore is private and intimately shared by groups in informal settings, it is also the most public of activities when used by groups to symbolize their identity to themselves and others.
Robert Baron and Nicholas Spitzer, Public Folklore (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992), pp.1-2.

George Ward sings songs of the Erie Canal at the 1997 Fall Conference.

For an individual family, folklore is its creative expression of a common past. As raw experiences are transformed into family stories, expressions, and photos, they are codied in forms which can be easily recalled, retold, and enjoyed. Their drama and beauty are heightened, and the familys past becomes accessible as it is reshaped according to its needs and desires.
Steve Zeitlin, A Celebration of American Family Folklore (Cambridge, MA: Yellow Moon Press, 1982), p. 2.

Preening Green Wing Teal by woodcarver Jim Neenan (visit our New York Traditions for folk art).

Folklore helps us to form and express identity in the midst of an always complex, sometimes confusing social context, in which our sense of who we are is frequently questioned and challenged.
Martha C. Sims and Martine Stephens, Living Folklore (2005) Beatrice Cisneros makes pupusa, a Salvadorean specialty. Photograph by Martha Cooper. Dan Hill, Cayuga flute maker and player and silversmith, Tuscarora Reservation. Photo by Martha Cooper. See Music and Art to Remember.

FROM THE DIRECTOR From the Spring-Summer 2010 issue of Voices I was recently asked to name the critical issues facing the eld of folklore and the New York Folklore Society today. While comedian Rodney Dangerelds I get no respect complaint comes immediately to mind, a more thoughtful answer is warranted. The problem is one of denition. Even in 1945, our then-editor Louis C. Jones lamented, There is a current notion across the country that we havent much folklore in New York State. Folklore

Folklore, like any other discipline, has no justication except as it enables us to better understand ourselves and others.
Roger D. Abrahams, Journal of American Folklore 81: 157 (1968).

For those who nd brief denitions helpful, there is no dearth of contemporary formulations: Materials...that circulate traditionally among members of any group in different versions, whether in oral form or by means of customary example (Brunvand, in The Study of American Folklore: An Introduction, 1968); The hidden submerged culture lying behind the shadow of ofcial civilization (Dorson, in Folklore Forum1, 1968); Artistic communication in small groups (Ben-Amos, in Journal of American Folklore, 1971); Communicative processes [and] forms ... which evidence continuities and consistencies in human thought and behavior through time or space (Georges, in Sound Archives: A Guide to Their Establishment and Development, 1983)
Elliott Oring, On the Concepts of Folklore, in Oring, ed. Folk Groups and Folklore Genres: An Introduction (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 1986), p. 17.

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certainly was and continues to be alive and well in the Empire State and has been the subject of more than 65 years of publishing by the New York Folklore Society. Folklore and folk arts are pervasive, but are often not recognized until someone points them out as being part of the social fabric of a community. The subject of our work as folklorists is in front of our eyes every day, yet somehow folklore continues to y under the radar. I recently had a conversation with a state assemblyman, in which I mentioned that at one time the New York Folklore Society was debating whether to change its name, feeling that the word folklore conjured up images of a nineteenth-century notion of oral poetry. Folklore does not reect everything the society does, I said. My comment evoked his impassioned response about the importance of the word folklore as a way to draw attention to what is truly local and unique about a community. He understood and embraced folklores totality. Folklore as a discipline stands today at an interesting place. In an era when the next Big Idea is usually celebrated, folklorists are working hard to recognize communities maintenance of cultural traditions. We have allies in new movements that are coming to the forefront in American society, such as the 100-mile diet and buy-local movement, which champion locally harvested foods and locally owned businesses as key to maintaining communities character. Folklorists are uniquely positioned to lend an important voice to the debates

This book is founded on the simple assumption that there must be some element all folklore has in common (else we could not lump it all together). No doubt an astute student could name several possible unifying characteristics, but I have chosen one: All folklore participates in a distinctive, dynamic process (p.10) Folklore comes early and stays late in the lives of all of us. In spite of the combined forces of technology, science, television, religion, urbanization, and creeping literacy, we prefer our close personal associations as the basis for learning about life and transmitting important observations and expressions. (p.25)
Polka has been central to Joe Macielags life, and his Pic-a-Polka Orchestra has helped preserveand expandthis traditional music in western New York. Photo: Kate Koperski. See Uptempo Upstate: Polka in Western New York.

Actually, folklore is a word very much like culture; it represents a tremendous spectrum of human expression that can be studied in a number of ways and for a number of reasons. Its primary characteristic is that its ingredients seem to come directly from dynamic interactions among human beings in communal-traditional performance contexts rather than through the rigid lines and fossilized structures of technical instruction or bureaucratized education, or through the relatively stable channels of the classical traditions. (p.28-29)
Barre Toelken, The Dynamics of Folklore (Boston: Houghton Mifin, 1979)

Folk arts are traditional cultural expressions through which a group maintains and passes on its shared way of life. They express a groups sense of beauty, identity and values. Folk arts are usually learned informally through performance, by example or in oral tradition among families, friends, neighbors and co-workers rather than through formal education. A living cultural heritage, folk arts link the past and present. Never static, folk arts change as they are adapted to new circumstances while they maintain their traditional qualities. Folk traditions are practiced by groups sharing a common identity on the basis of such factors as ethnicity, region, occupation, age and religion. They include many kinds of cultural expressionperforming traditions in music, dance and drama, traditional storytelling and other verbal arts, festivals, traditional crafts, visual arts, architecture, the adornment and transformation of the built environment and other forms of material folk culture.
New York State Council on the Arts Application Guidelines, 1994, p.51.

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around immigration and immigration reform. As globalization brings the world together, folklore works to draw attention to that which is local, individual, and expressive. Throughout the next decade, it will be important for folklorists to continue to draw attention to the eld of folklore through alliances with disciplines and organizations outside of folklore, thus providing a folkloristic perspective on contemporary life. To again quote Louis C. Jones, We have our part in building this nations knowledge of itself, a task which seems to us as important for a whole people as for an individual. Ellen McHale, Ph.D. Executive Director New York Folklore Society

The folk arts and crafts are those that are learned as part of the lifestyle of a community whose members share identity based upon ethnic origin, religion, occupation, or geographical region. Highly varied, these traditions are shaped by the aesthetics and values of the community and are passed from generation to generation. Some are eetingthe decorative mehendi painted on a Rajastani Indian brides hands before her wedding, the Karpathian Greek mandinathes, composed and sung for the funeral of a friend. Others are enduringa nely crafted cuatro, the ten-stringed guitar that is the hallmark of Puerto Rican jibaro music; a Seabright skiff used by Monmouth County lifeguards. Some are for workthe rhythmic chanteys sung by menhaden boat crews pulling nets heavy with shand others are for playwooden dradels spun to win Channukah treats. Some are part of festivalWest African-derived Trinidadian stilt dances performed for Carnival, Ukrainian pysanky painted with ancient symbols of life for Easter. Others are for daily lifethe strip quilts made by African-American women; the brightly colored grape baskets woven by Palestinian women.

Splint and sweetgrass basket from Akwesasne. Photograph courtesy of Traditional Arts of Upstate New York. See Iroquois Basketry Thrives: Report on a NYFS Mentoring Project.

New York Folklore Society P.O. Box 764 Schenectady, NY 12301 518/346-7008 Fax 518/346-6617 nyfs@nyfolklore.org

These arts are practiced as part of community life, often playing an important role in events such as work sessions, holy days and holidays, festivals, and life cycle rituals. Folk artists are the practioners who learn these arts in those community contexts by watching, practicing, and learning from other community members. While they consider it important to maintain traditional forms and standards in their work, folk artists also bring their own individual touches to their arts. Their excellence and traditionality is evaluated by community members on the basis of shared standards.
New Jersey State Council on the Arts Guidelines, 1995-96

In 1976, as the United States celebrated its Bicentennial, the U.S. Congress passed the American Folklife Preservation Act (P.L. 94-201). In writing the legislation, Congress had to dene folklife. Here is what the law says: "American folklife means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benet of formal instruction or institutional direction."
Celtic cross created by woodcarver, Peter Teresco. Read Mary Hufford, American Folklife: A Commonwealth of Cultures (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, 1991), about Peters art in the NYFS p.3. gallery, New York Traditions.

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The folk and traditional arts have grown through time within the many groups that make up any nationgroups that share the same ethnic heritage, language, occupation, religion, or geographic area. The homegrown traditional artistic activities of such groups are often called folk or traditional arts, and they serve both to identify and to symbolize the group that originated them. Pueblo pottery, Appalachian ddling, Hawaiian hula, cowboy poetry, African-American Delta blues, Lithuanian weaving, Hmong needlework, and Texas-Mexican polkas are examples. They enliven the particular regions of the nation where they ourish and attest to the creative genius of their practioners.
National Endowment for the Arts Application Guidelines for Fiscal Years 1995 and 1996, Folk and Traditional Arts, p.5. Francisco Javier Durn Garca, known as Pinto Gira, creates his namesake instruments in his Corona, Queens, basement workshop. 2002 by Sydney Hutchinson. See Pinto Gira and His Magic Bullet.

Art for Communitys Sake [one component of a larger folk arts exhibit] addresses how folk artists and their communities look at themselves. In the worlds of most artists, work is measured by its purposehow it will serve the artist, his or her family, or the life of the communityand by its worthnot necessarily in money, but as an expression of the groups values and tastes. While the values explored in the exhibit are not mutually exclusive, they do represent various "windows" through which we can examine groups and individual artists who represent them. These values include: Keeping Traditions Alive: Some artists and their communities place high value on adhering to family or group traditions, preserving themand the way of life they representfor the next generation. The processes, tools, materials, designs, motifs, as well as functions, are closely followed. As time passes, some changes may occur, but the pursuit of tradition as a symbol remains important. Making it Useful: Some artists and their communities place high value on the usefulness of the objects they create. The design, materials, and execution all contribute to its function, an important aspect of the "aesthetic" in such things as folk furniture, utensils, and crafts. The look of durability and the objects ability to stand up to its intended use are important goals of the artist. Keeping Connected: Reinforcing a close identication with a group to which they currently belong is the ambition of many folk artists. They use forms, designs, colors, and motifs which clearly associate them and their work to others with a shared heritage. They may create objects for use by members of the group or to sustain outsiders' views of the group and its traditions. Re-creating Memories: An artists ability to recreate memories of shared group experiences is often personal but highly desired and encouraged by his or her group. Great emphasis is placed on precise detail and the object's ability to capture a complete scene or event.

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Sustaining the Spirit: Some artists place great value on objects that are used as integral parts of religious ritual or that hold special religious meaning for the audience. In creating these objects, the artists choose forms and images that are clearly associated with particular religious traditions. Being Creative: The ability to innovate within tradition is an attribute strongly admired in the shared group expressions of some folk communities. An artist may experiment with forms, materials, and designs in response either to personal choices or to changing cultural inuences in his or her life. Resourceful use of found or recycled materials is a challenge many contemporary folk artists relish.
Varick Chittenden, Exhibit Curator. From the brochure of the folk arts exhibition, Out of the Ordinary produced by Gallery Association of New York State (1995).

In sum, folklore is artistic communication in small groups."Dan Ben-Amos

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