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 tend to focus on folklore as literature, interested primarily in structure, narrative style, content and genre, while anthropologists view folklore as a means to understand the views of a culture, both of whish raises 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, folklore "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 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 study of folklore as a discipline independent of both literature and anthropology would not fully develop until the latter half of the 20th century in America and Western Europe.

Categories of Folklore

Legend

A legend is typically a Romantic adventure story told in an historical context, usually believed to be true. It is typically concerned with heroes and villians, epic battles and great feats of courage, and usually the hero is an iconic symbol of a particular ethnicity and or nationality. Legends usually are set in places and times long past, evolving as they are 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 tales 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 Camelot, The Knights of the Round Table, Guinevere, Sir Lancelot, and the Excalibur sword, with little being said of Arthur's role in the equally as popular 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.

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 from person-to-person, never as a first hand account of events, but believed to be only three or four people removed from the real source. Most Urban Legends can be be categorized into basic templates, the outline of the 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 supernatural. The driver who picks up a hitchhiker who vanishes before the trip is complete and is revealed to be a ghost is a classic example, as is the young couple that parks a car in the woods; the 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 being his shoes rubbing against the car's roof.

Such stories often mask a current of morality. 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 be etiological, explaining the origins of such things as the world and man. Myth more often than legend involves archetypal characters as the Jungian literary scholar Joseph Campbell claimed in his career of literary criticism. So basic is the idea of the journey of a hero to an underworld in an attempt 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, in both's attempt to detail the metaphysical and explain how why things are the way they are. 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 a fictious story, 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, and therefore does not carry the same status as those dominant beliefs. Thus, Roman religion is called "myth" by modern 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 of its influence on 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

Fairy Tales are universally seen as a fictional genre, often beginning with the phrases "Once upon a time..." or "In a land far, far away...", and recounting stories of heroines in danger, princes in disguise, magic, adventure and anthropomorphic animals and creatures. Concieved in Germany around the seventeenth century, the fairy tale is a type of folklore that has changed dramatically over time. Wilhelm and Jakob Grimm, known as The Brothers Grimm, started to collect orally transmitted German tales in the early 17th century, publishing the first series as Kinder- und Hausmärchen ("Children's and Household Tales") in 1812. These early fairy tales were vastly different from the children's tales of today. Most were dark stories revolving around such moral lessons as obeying your parents and rejecting evil. The familiar fairy take, "Hansel and Gretel, 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. The popularity of the Walt Disney Company lies in its reproductions of such classical fairy tales as Beauty and Beast, Snow White, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, adding a musical component to the genre.

Epic Poetry

Like myth and legend, epic poetry deals with heroes of long ago, supernatural powers and deities, and grandoise battles. The main difference between it and the latter two types is that epic poetry tends to be the end result of a series of oral traditions. Epic Poetry as a form of literature consists of a novel length poem, originally sang in ceremony. It involves the author's invocation of a muse, or God to speak through the author. The most famous of epic poets, ancient Greece's Homer, os believed to have produced such classics as The Illiad and The Odyessy by condenscening long standing Greek myth, legend and tradition into a structured narrative. Virgil's Aneid, brings together the traditions of Greek and Trojan legend as well as Roman belief to detail the founding of Rome, and John Spencer's The Faerie Queen bridges Arthurian legend, Protestant ideology and British lore into a classical work of fiction. John Milton's Paradise Lost not only uses the dogma of the Bible, but also incorporates Puritan traditions and beliefs, and most modern day conceptions of Satan and The Garden of Eden story comes more from Milton's interpertation than the Bible.

One of the most interesting aspects of Epic Poetry is that the majority of evolution that transpires during the ages comes from translation. Epic poetry is not as easily deciminated and used in an existing culture; rather it acts as its own cultural artifact that may inspire new forms of lore and fiction, but the original work is hardly changed in the way other forms of lore are. However, change does occur and is due mostly to the variations of numerous translations, depending upon the translator's bias, and the difference between the phoenetics and semantics of languages.

Tall Tales

A Tall Tale is another form of traditionally American folklore, often a light, comical story of some larger than life person who achieves super-human deeds. They are often stories of national pride and cultural iconography. Johnny Appleseed is credited with traveling the vast wilderness of early America, spreading apple seeds where ever he went, thus being the source of the numerous apple trees in the Northeastern U.S. Paul Bunyan and his ox Baby Blue are giant characters credited with the creation of such famous landmarks as the grand canyon and Pecos Bill was the image of frointer, cowboy life. Most of these stories are complete fiction, but at least one, Johnny Appleseed, is based on an actual person, John Chapman, whose life work as a nuseryman was greatly exaggerated. <ref. "John Chapman-A Gentle Hero" http://www.appleseed.org/johnny.html </ref>

Folk Songs

Folk Songs are perhaps the most culturally diffused of all types of folklore, musical traditions and styles being culturally traded long before the rise of written works and the advent of recording technologies. A folk song is sometimes defined as "a song belonging to the folk music of a people or area, often exsisting in several versions or with regional variations". As early as the 18th century, interest in regional ballads and music was on the rise in Europe, but perhaps the most significant means of cultural difusion came about because colonalism forced the meetings of different cultures. Slaves brought musical traditions to America, and are responsible for some of the most famous American folk songs. The hit song "Day-O', is actually based on an old Jamacian folk song. In recent times, artists such as Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Woody Guthrie have created their own music in the folk style.

Superstition

Superstition is the belief in the casuality of seemingly unrelated events and actions, known to anthropologists as "sympathetic magic" in that it is the belief that the actions of a person can influence events beyond the boundaries of time and space. It is a tradition rooted in the belief of larger, metaphysically controlling forces in the universe, whether a particular version of God or just the idea of luck. Famous examples of superstition include bad luck resulting from breaking a mirror, opening an umbrella inside or spilling salt, jinxing chances by using such phrases as "peice of cake", a fear of the number 13, and even the infamous tradition of the theater to refer to Shakespeare's MacBeth as "the Scottish Play" during a production or tragedy will befall the theater company.

Festival

The earliest festivals revolved around harvests, honoring of the dead or celebration. The communal activity was often accompanied by music, dance and story telling, the most common place and time of folklore transmission. Often the festival itself was based on a particular folkloric belief or tradition, such as the Dyonasis Festivals of ancient Greece. One of the most famous festivals and widely celeberated is that of Halloween, whose origins lie in Pagan rituals to ward off evil spirits that arose once a year along with the tradition of All Hallow's Eve, although it now has come to be a largely secular, children's holiday of dress-up and scary stories. This is not uncommon as Thanksgiving, Guy Fawke's Day and The Chinese New Year all are festivals that have changed meaning and celebartory style over the years.

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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