Folklore

Folklore is the body of expressive culture, including tales, music, dance, legends, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, customs, material culture, and so forth, common to a particular population, comprising the traditions (including oral traditions) of that culture, subculture, or group. Scholars who study folklore are often called folklorists.

Definition

There is no clear cut definition on the term folklore, mainly because academics of different disciplines study the same material from completely seperate perspectives.English scholars will focus on folklore as literature, interested primarily in structure, narrative style, content and genre, while anthropologists will see folklore as a means to understand the views of a culture, rasing the question of whether folklore can be viewed as a common phenomena and therefore broken into broad categories, or as specifically cultural artifacts of a given society. Folkloristics tend to bridge both worlds, and in the 1970's a scholar by the name of Dan Ben-Amos, attempted to create a comprehensive understanding of folklore for all disciplines by arguing that folklore is either "a body of knowledge, a mode of thought, or a kind of art." While this thesis may not be as inclusively used as Ben-Amos had liked, nonetheless modern scholars usually view folklore as both literature and a unique cultural phenomena, as Henry Glassie says "remains wholly within the control of its practioners. It is theirs to remember, change, forget...is that which is at once traditional and variable" .

History

The concept of folklore developed as part of the 19th century ideology of romantic nationalism, leading to the reshaping of oral traditions to serve modern ideological goals; only in the 20th century did ethnographers begin to attempt to record folklore without overt political goals. The Brothers Grimm, Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, collected orally transmitted German tales and published the first series as Kinder- und Hausmärchen ("Children's and Household Tales") in 1812.

The term was coined in 1846 by an Englishman, William Thoms, who wanted to use an Anglo-Saxon term for what was then called "popular antiquities." Johann Gottfried von Herder first advocated the deliberate recording and preservation of folklore to document the authentic spirit, tradition, and identity of the German people; the belief that there can be such authenticity is one of the tenets of the romantic nationalism which Herder developed. The definition most widely accepted by current scholars of the field is "artistic communication in small groups," coined by Dan Ben-Amos a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, and the term, and the associated field of study, now include non-verbal art forms and customary practices.

Categories of Folklore

Legend

A legend is typically a Romantic adventure story told in an historical context. Typically, they are concerned with heroes and villians, epic battles and great feats of courage, and usually the hero is an icon symbol of a particular ethnicity and or nationality. Legends usually are set in places and times long past, evolving as they passed down from one generation to the next, originally in the form of oral tradition. However, when writing became an important archival and artist method, legends were reproduced time and again, changing with each author or writer's own background and perspective, surpassing cultural and national boundaries. More recently, through the meduims of film and television, legends have become perhaps the most long lasting and popular of all types of folklore. The Arthurian legends of Great Britian are an excellent example of the cross-culturalistic nature of legends. King Arthur, the symbol of chilvary and the representation of the noble knight, began with early British writers who believed Arthur to be a real, long ago King. There is no historical account of King Arthur tto verify such claims, but that did not stop British writer's throughout the ages using him in various works of fiction, marking his place among the most popular of British folklore. Interestingly, the twentieth century cinematic versions of Arthur seem to emphasis his role in Camelot, The Knights of the Round Table, Guinevere, Sir Lancelot, and the Excalibur sword, with little being said of the importance he plays in the Holy Grail legends.

Not all legends, however, are culturally difussed in such a scale. The legends of the French warrior Roland, the Sumerian prince Gilgamesh, the character Sinbad of the Arabian Nights legends all are important literary figures that have not been adapted and circulated to the extent of King Arthur or Robin Hood. Some remain small stories that circulate among groups of people and are not included in the literary or cinematic world, such as the claim that George Washington fell a cherry tree by himself at a young age. Yet legends remain profoundly important in the cultures that they come from, continuously being re-told to each successive generation.

Urban Legend

An urban legend is perhaps the newest form of folklore to emerge and one of the most unique. While it can be found in most industrialized countries, one of its distinguishing factors, it is most widespread in America. Urban legends are typically a collection of oral stories passed around with no clear distinction of where or how it originated. In fact, one of the tell-tale signs of an urban legend is a preface of having heard the story from a friend of a friend who knew someone that knew someone that this happened to, or some other distanting phrase that disassociates the teller from the alledged actual event. Most Urban Legends can be be categorized into basic templates, the outline of story being the same while some of the details change. Another characteristic is the twist at the end, some unforseen event that is either ironic or shocking. The driver who picks up a hitchhiker and drives to a house only to find the passenger missing and the family member at the location claiming the person had been dead for some time is a classic example, as is the young couple that parks a car in the woods. A story of a recently escaped serial killer/mental patient, with a hook for a hand, on the loose terrifies the girl, who in one version convinces the man to drive away, only to later discover a disembowled hook on the car door. In another version, the man exits the car to show to the girl that they are safe and dissapears, found later to be hanging from a tree above the car, the terrifying stratching noise the girl hears his shoes against the car's roof.

Such stories often mask a current of moral issues. Underage sex seems to always be coupled with violence and tragedy, as well as the preservation of innocence in a world full of corruption and evil, perhaps due to early America's more conservative, morally strict society.

Myth

Myth shares many characteristics in common with legends in that it usually depicts long ago events and persons of epic proportion, but has two distinguishing features. First, myths usually incorporate larger forces such as dieties and supernatural powers. Second, they can contain etiological, or explinations on the origins of things, elements. Myth more often than legend involves archetypal characters as the Jungian literary scholar Joseph Campbell claimed in his career or literary criticism. So basic is the idea of the journey of a hero to an underworld to attain powers that he can bring back to save his world from an evil, that the paradigm has appeared again and again in all forms of literature for thousands of years.

The structure and use of myth usually overlaps with religion, attempting to detail the metaphysical and explain how the world and everything in it came to be and why. In fact, every religion has its own mythology; for Christians the New Testament represents the oral traditions of Jesus Christ and the missionary movement of his apostles after His Curcifixation, while the stories of Siddharta's atainment of enlightment is the centeral mythology for Buddhists. The label of myth implies fiction, but that is because historically myth has been used to describe any figurative story that does not pertain to the dominant beliefs of the time is not of the same status as those dominant beliefs. Thus, Roman religion is called "myth" by Christians. Some of the most famous myths come from ancient Greece and usually involve Gods or demi-gods, the origins of such things as fire (the story of Prometheus) and the presence of evil in the world (the story of Pandora's Box). However, it should be noted that nearly every culture that ever existed has its own mythology and that ancient Greece's is the most famous because it has dominated in Western literature and culture.

Another distinguishing feature of myth are the un-human creatures that are incorporated into its narrative. The dragon is perhaps the most popular, a large, serpentine beast that has wings and breathes fire. Other's include the Sphinx, basilisk, chiamira, elves, dwarves, trolls, and giants.

Fairy Tales

Concieved in Germany around the seventeenth century, the fairy tale is a type of folklore that has changed dramatically over time.

Folk Songs

On the other hand, folklore can be used to accurately describe a figurative narrative, which has no sacred or religious content. In the Jungian view, which is but one method of analysis, it may instead pertain to unconscious psychological patterns, instincts or archetypes of the mind. This lore may or may not have components of the fantastic (such as magic, ethereal beings or the personification of inanimate objects). These folktales may or may not emerge from a religious tradition, but nevertheless speak to deep psychological issues. The familiar folklore, "Hansel and Gretel," is an example of this fine line. The manifest purpose of the tale may primarily be one of mundane instruction regarding forest safety or secondarily a cautionary tale about the dangers of famine to large families, but its latent meaning may evoke a strong emotional response due to the widely-understood themes and motifs such as “The Terrible Mother”, “Death,” and “Atonement with the Father.” There can be both a moral and psychological scope to the work, as well as entertainment value, depending upon the nature of the teller, the style of the telling, the ages of the audience members, and the overall context of the performance. Folklorists generally resist universal interpretations of narratives and, wherever possible, analyze oral versions of tellings in specific contexts, rather than print sources, which often show the work or bias of the writer or editor.

Applied Folklore

Applied folklore is the branch of folkloristics concerned with the study and use of folklore and traditional cultural materials to address or solve real social problems. The term was coined in 1939 in a talk by folklorist Benjamin A. Botkin who, along with Alan Lomax, became the foremost proponent of this approach over the next thiry years. Applied folklore is similar in its rationale and approach to applied anthropology and other applied social sciences, and like these other applied approaches often distinguishes itself from "pure" research, that which has no explicit problem-solving aims.

Botkin's development of the approach emerged from his work on the collecting by the Federal Writers' Project of oral narratives of former slaves, when he worked for the Library of Congress. He saw the dissemination of these materials as having the potential to improve race relations in the United States and to combat prejudice. The Abolition movement had similarly used the oral narratives of escaped slaves, such as those collected by William Still in his Underground Railroad Records, to draw support for their cause. Botkin's landmark work, Lay My Burden Down (1945) was the first American book to treat oral testimonies as historical evidence, and it was another thirty years before this became accepted practice. Botkin also worked with Quaker activist Rachel Davis DuBois to develop public programs to improve race and ethnic relations by incorporating cultural practices and materials into neighborhood events, such as festivals and block parties. Independent of this, Myles Horton, Zilphia Horton, Guy Carawan, Candie Carawan, and others at the Highlander Folk School in Tennessee incorporated folk song and folk dance into the training of civil rights activists, such as Rosa Parks and John Lewis.

In the 1960s, other American folklorists began to apply knowledge gained from folkloric sources to address social issues, most notably drawing on folk medicine in the teaching and practice of holistic and cross-cultural approaches to medicine and public health. Folklorists also began to work as consultants in city planning, gerontology, economic development, multicultural education, conservation, and other fields.

Public folklore is the term for the work done by folklorists in public settings in the United States and Canada outside of universities and colleges, such as arts councils, museums, folklife festivals, radio stations, etc. The term is actually short for "public sector folklore" and was first used by members of the American Folklore Society in the early 1970s. Archie Green is generally credited as the founder of the public folklore movement, although his work builds on that of Ben Botkin and Alan Lomax, going back as far as the 1930s. (They called their work "applied folklore," a related but distinct paradigm.)

The birth of public folklore can be traced back to the creation of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in 1970, by an act of Congress, sponsored by Sen. Ralph Yarborough (D-TX) and written by Green and then-Senate aide Jim Hightower. Other national programs were later established at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), where prominent folklorists such as Ralph Rinzler, Alan Jabbour, and Bess Lomax Hawes worked. Funding programs were also established in the 1970s and 1980s in over 40 state arts councils, and these facilitated the eventual creation or funding of major non-profit centers for folklife documentation and presentation, such as CityLore and the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York, Texas Folklife Resources, Northwest Folklife, the Western Folklife Center, and the Philadelphia Folklore Project.

Public folklorists are engaged with the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folk arts, craft, folk music, and other genres of traditional folklife. In later years, public folklorists have also become involved in economic and community development projects.

Each year, some 15 outstanding American folk artists and performers are awarded National Heritage Fellowships from the NEA for their lifetime achievement. Some more widely known awardees over the years have included John Lee Hooker, B.B. King, Clifton Chenier, Michael Flatley, Shirley Caesar, Albertina Walker, Janette Carter, Koko Taylor, Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, Jean Ritchie, Boozoo Chavis, Zakir Hussain, Helen Cordero, Margaret Tafoya, Santiago Jiménez, Jr., John Cephas, Bois Sec Ardoin, Mick Moloney, Clarence Fountain & the Blind Boys, and the Dixie Hummingbirds.

The Smithsonian Institution features the Smithsonian Folklife Festival every June and July which attracts upwards of two million people to hear live performances and view demonstrations of traditional crafts.

Public folklorists also work in "folk arts in the schools" programs, presenting master traditional artists to primary and secondary schools in demonstrations and residencies. They develop apprenticeship programs to foster the teaching of traditional arts by recognized masters. They also present traditional music on radio programs such as American Routes on Public Radio International. Occasionally they produce documentary films on aspects of traditional arts; Smithsonian folklorist Marjorie Hunt won an Academy Award for her 1984 short documentary film The Stone Carvers about the carvers at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.

External links

North America

• American Folklore Society
• American Folklife Center
• Western States Folklore Society
• Folklore Studies Association of Canada
• Indiana University's Folklore Program
• The Ohio State University Center for Folklore Studies
• Folklore Program at the University of California at Berkeley
• Memorial University of Newfoundland's Folklore Program
• Folklore Program at Western Kentucky University
• Folklore Program at Utah State University
• University of Oregon's Folklore Program
• Folklore Program at the University of North Carolina
• World Arts and Cultures Program of the University of California at Los Angeles
• Folkstreams.net-video streaming films on American traditional culture and folklife
• Ukrainian Folklore Centre, University of Alberta
• Ukrainian Traditional Folklore, University of Alberta
• Slavic and East European Folklore Association

United Kingdom

• The Folklore Society, founded 1878 - very extensive links list among much else

For further reading

• Adrienne Mayor, "Bibliography of Classical Folklore Scholarship: Myths, Legends, and Popular Beliefs of Ancient Greece and Rome", from Folklore (April 2000)

Sources

• Botkin, B.A., Lay My Burden Down. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1945.
• Jones, Michael Owen, ed., Putting Folklore to Use. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1994.
• Goldstein, Diane, Once Upon a Virus: AIDS Legends and Vernacular Risk Perception. Logan: Utah State University Press: 2004.

External links

• American Folklife Center
• NEA Heritage Awards
• Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, Smithsonian Institution
• Fund for Folk Culture
• CityLore
• Center for Traditional Music and Dance
• Philadelphia Folklore Project
• Institute for Cultural Partnerships, Harrisburg
• New Jersey Folklife Partners
• Texas Folklife Resources
• Northwest Folklife
• Nebraska Folklife Network
• Western Folklife Center

Sources and further reading

• Baron, Robert, and Nicholas R. Spitzer, eds., Public Folklore. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1992.
• Feintuch, Burt, ed., Conservation of Culture: Folklorists and the Public Sector. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1988.
• Green, Archie, Torching the Fink Books: And Other Essays on Vernacular Culture. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001.
• Hufford, Mary, ed. Conserving Culture: A New Discourse on Heritage. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

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