The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library, site of our 2000 Fall Meeting, is one of the most widely used research facilities in the world devoted to the preservation of materials on black life.
Howard Dodson, Director
515 Malcolm X Boulevard
New York, NY 10037-1801
212/491-2200
Fax 212/491-6760
The New York Folklore Society’s programs are made possible in part with public funds from the Folk Arts Program of the
New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org
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NYFS Conference 2000 Program
September 15-17, 2000
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Langston Hughes Auditorium
| FRIDAY, September 15, 2000 |
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| 9:30 a.m. |
Welcoming remarks and Libation |
| 10:00 a.m.-Noon |
Session One: African American Music and Dance Expression
Curator and Moderator: Dr. Beverly Robinson, Folk Arts Program at Mindbuilders, Bronx, and Theatre and Folklore Studies, UCLA
Panelists: Ayodele Casel (tap), Clyde Wilder (Lindy hop, social dances), Carolina Slim (blues) and Adelle Lewis, Nucleus (a cappela, doo wop), Ray Santos (Latin, Afro-Cuban, African roots), GrandWizzard Theodore
The State of New York has been an especially important setting for the nurturing of traditional and creative African American music and dance expressions. As part of the larger African cultural diaspora, African American music and dance are important expressions that help define and sustain a strong sense of community and identity. You are invited to come and experience and learn from a young artist like Ayodele Casell, a gifted tap dancer whose New York feet have taken her to national acclaim, including a presentation at the White House. This panel will highlight youth and elders (e.g., the blues of Carolina Slim and the roots of Lindy Hop with Clyde Wilder, the African roots of Latin music with maestro Ray Santos, and the Doo-Wop sounds of Nucleus ) sharing with us demonstrations of how their music plays and how their dances move to the tune of preserving and of perpetuating their folk cultural history. |
12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m.
1:00 p.m. - 2:30 p.m. |
Performances by Music and Dance panelists
Lunch and viewing of exhibits in the Mezzanine |
| 2:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m |
Session Two: "Folk" in African American Cultural Politics, Policy and Funding
Moderator: Gretchen Sullivan Sorin, Cooperstown Graduate Program in Museum Studies
Panelists: Mark Puryear, Malika Lee Whitney, Dan Sheehy
What are the meanings of "folk" in contemporary African American communities and within academic and policy circles: Does "folklore" have a respected home in the Black community? Does emerging community-based Black culture have a respected home in academic folklore and the funding community? |
| 4:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m |
Keynote: Dr. John Roberts, Deputy Chairman, National Endowment for the Humanities
"African American Folklore in 'Real Time'" |
| 8:00 p.m |
Gala Concert with OLUDARA, RHA GODDESS, and SOUL at the Schomburg Center’s Langston Hughes Auditorium
Emcee: Dr. Beverly Robinson |
SATURDAY, September 16, 2000 |
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| 10:00 a.m. - Noon |
Session Three: Material Culture and Fashion
Curator and Moderator: Diana N'Diaye of the Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Folklife Programs
Panelists: Joyce Bailey of the Black Fashion Museum, with Zelda Winn (designer), Jeannette Jacobs (Caribbean dress maker), Deborah Smith Pollard (liturgical dress), Coreen and Suzanne Simpson (documentary photographers of hip hop)
African American aesthetics of dress are local, global, pervasive, dynamic, diverse, gendered, and multi-faceted. Social dress is an artful tradition in communities of African descent in New York State and in the world at large. This session will explore traditions of African American social dressing and its occupational culture. It will include presentations by both traditional artisans and community-based scholars that support and document this aspect of African American expressive culture. |
| Noon - 1:00 p.m. |
Lunch |
| 1:15 p.m - 3:15 p.m. |
Session Four: Interacting with the Spirit in African American Culture
Curator: MaryKay Penn, Institute for African American Folk Culture
Panelists: Stephanie Weaver, Bethel United Methodist Youth Dance Ministry, Ta’quisha Mckenzie
This session will explore both traditional and emerging religious expression in New York’s African American community. Focusing mainly on changes in the expression of religious music, dance, and verbal tradition, the session will explore what these changes indicate about the evolution of African American spiritual culture and religious framework. Speakers and artists from both the African American Christian tradition and emerging traditional African spiritual communities will be featured. |
| 3:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m. |
Session Five: African American Linguistic Creativity
Co-Curators: Makelé Faber and Elena Martínez, CityLore
Panelists: Sankung Susso (Jali), Roberta Jones (Storyteller), Raymond Patterson (Blues Poet), Gary Colas (Influence, hop hop MC), and Kyra Gaunt, moderator
Whether it’s Sonia Sanchez shaping a poem as a blues composition, lawyers using the gospel preacher style to deliver compelling narratives to jurors, boys playing the dozens, or young girls improvising double-dutch rhymes, African American linguistic expressions have always displayed wit and verbal creativity as they celebrated and responded to social circumstances. This panel will focus on the relationship between contemporary urban art forms such as children’s games and rhymes, hip hop MC styles and comedy, and their roots in rural Southern forms like work songs and the blues. The panelists will also discuss how the urban landscape affects and reflects the oral expressions, in both content and performance, of African American and African diaspora communities in New York.
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SUNDAY, September 17, 2000 |
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| 10:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. |
Future Directions |
| 11:00 a.m. |
NYFS Annual Meeting |
 
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