New York Folklore Society Fall 2000 Conference

A Conference of the New York Folklore Society

The Dynamics of African American Folk Culture

September 15, 16, and 17, 2000
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
New York City

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

ABOUT THE 2000 CONFERENCE

African American folk culture has been an enormously creative and powerful force in American life. Not only has it expressed and helped sustain the traditions, values, aspirations, and struggles of African American people over the centuries, it has also exerted a profound and continuing influence on American life as a whole, helping shape its music and dance, material culture, language, spirituality, and other dimensions of social life and cultural expression. Yet folklore as a vernacular concept and sociopolitical category is viewed with suspicion in much of the black community. Much of the scholarship by African Americans on folklore subjects is done under other disciplinary rubrics; the African American community is not well represented in terms of numbers in the folklore field; and the identification and funding of contemporary vernacular black culture as folklore has been problematic.

Under these circumstances there is a pressing need for conversation and exchange among African American scholars, artists, cultural workers, and community members, and between African Americans and non-African American scholars and others about African American folklore. The New York Folklore Society created opportunities for such dialogue at its 2000 fall conference.

Through this conference, we explored four major areas of African American cultural life. Taking a relatively narrow focus within each area, we looked at both traditional and emerging forms, and we explored their influence on and relationships with mainstream American culture.

Music and Dance—Hip-hop culture and its antecedents
Spiritual Expression—Burial customs, historical and contemporary, drawing on the work with the African burial ground in Manhattan
Material Culture—Adornment, hair, youth fashions (hip-hop)
Language and Narrative—Youth culture, African American linguistic creativity, influence on U.S. culture

A central theme running throughout these discussions were questions of definition and support: What constitutes folk culture in African American life where folk forms are created in abundance and quickly find their way into popular culture? How is folklore as a concept understood and evaluated within African American communities? Who defines and sets the boundaries of folk culture? What are the effects of these processes on the support for organizations in black communities and elsewhere that are engaged in research and programming of African American traditions?

Participants in the conference sessions included scholars, grassroots community leaders, and tradition bearers. In addition to talks, panel presentations, and small group discussions, the conference included performances related to the themes of the conference, demonstrations and presentations of African American material culture traditions, and a special evening concert.