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Voices magazine is available only to members of New York Folklore Society. To ensure that you don’t miss another issue of Voices magazine, return the form with your membership or renewal check right away! Voices calls on you to join! Check our submission guidelines for authors. Send your letter to the editor here. Folklorists are writers. We write every day: monographs and scholarly articles, field notes, festival and event brochures, exhibit texts, grant applications, final reports, press releases, proposals. In fact, I would say that time spent writing is more than fifty percent of any folklorist’s annual cycle of work. The essentials of folklore—the ethnographic material—are fundamental to a great story. As any fieldworker can attest, entering into the personal experience of another individual is expansive and illuminating. The everyday becomes novel when viewed from the viewpoint of the uninitiated. The job of the folklorist is to translate that experience to those who may not get the opportunity to go through it themselves and to help the reader to find meaning in the experience. The history of folklore scholarship is replete with examples of good writing. The founding of the New York Folklore Society’s New York Folklore Quarterly in 1945 acknowledged the multitude of folklore materials and the many talented writers in the field of folklore. Benjamin Botkin, former head of the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress and a New York Folklore Society founder, encouraged the publication of folklore for a popular audience, as did founders Louis Jones and Harold Thompson. In the first half of the 1900s, folklorist Zora Neale Hurston wrote novels based on her fieldwork experiences, while at the same time publishing scholarly articles on African American folk culture. Contemporary folklorists, including Edith Cutting, Betty Belanus, Kirin Narayan, Joanne Mulcahy, and many others, have published poetry and fiction that draws upon ethnographic materials gathered in the field. Within the academy, folklorists have found their unique niche in designing and offering writing classes that draw upon student experience. ... The New York Folklore Society remains in the forefront of a creative movement. The impulse in 1945 to publish the folklore of New York State for the people of the state is continued today through this publication, Voices. The editors of this publication encourage your submission of scholarly writing, as well as nonfiction, fiction, poetry, memoir, and other forms of creative literature. Ellen McHale, Ph.D., Executive Director New York Folklore Society New York Folklore Society P.O. Box 764 Schenectady, NY 12301 518/346-7008 Fax 518/346-6617 nyfs@nyfolklore.org |
PUBLICATIONS | VOICES | BACK ISSUES | FOLKLORE IN ARCHIVES | FOLK ARTISTS SELF-MGT | ORDER PUBLICATIONS | SEARCH Listen to New York Folklore Society’s executive director, Ellen McHale interviewed by Steve Black for his radio show, Periodical Radio —Lee Haring, Professor Emeritus of English, Brooklyn College, CUNY
—Anna Lomax Wood, Director, Association for Cultural Equity
FROM THE EDITOR From the Spring-Summer 2011 issue of Voices: The Spring–Summer 2011 issue of Voices brings readers another tasty mix of story, ethnography, and analysis of New York traditions, upstate and downstate. We open with SUNY–Oneonta English professor Jonathan Sadow’s “Bagels and Genres,” an insightful and witty musing on what—in critical theory, as in life—makes a bagel a bagel, from Vegas to Montreal to New York. In “Petanque in New York,” Valérie Feschet, an anthropologist at the Université de Provence, shares a detailed portrait of the history, the play, and the multiethnic enthusiasts of this traditional French bowling game in New York City. By independent scholar and video artist Berta Jottar, “From Central Park Rumba with Love!” documents the sights, sounds, and struggle of the rumberos of Central Park to continue to practice their art in public spaces, despite prohibitions from the mayor’s office. We travel upstate with old-time fiddler and music educator Jackie Hobbs, a member of a multigenerationally musical family, who describes a tremendous musical resource for New Yorkers, musicians, and folk music historians: the wealth of recordings and biographical materials in the archival holdings she curates at the North American Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame and Museum in Osceola, New York. We wrap up in “A Family History Quilt,” by Adirondack quilter and community scholar Ruby L. Marcotte, with photography by George Ward. Step by step, Ruby leads us through the experience of refurbishing a family quilt—and tells about an uncanny coincidence she uncovered in the process. Finally, New York Folklore Society staff folklorist Lisa Overholser reports on the society’s annual meeting and September 2010 conference on Latino folklore, which was attended by young Latino folklore and ethnomusicology scholars from New York and across the country. We offer our kudos to Voices columnist John Thorn, who was recently named official historian for Major League Baseball. In this role he will continue and expand his longstanding research on baseball and spearhead other special projects for the league. John’s most recent book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden: The Secret History of the Early Game, was published in March; his other books on baseball include Treasures of the Baseball Hall of Fame and the Total Baseball encyclopedia series. John also served as the senior creative consultant for Ken Burns’s 1994 documentary series, Baseball. Congratulations, John! The New York Folklore Society joins with the New York State folk arts community in mourning the untimely loss of Mark J. Wright, artist advocate, theater director, performer, and program director at the Cultural Resources Council of Syracuse and Onondaga County. Mark died at his home on November 12, 2010, at age fifty. On January 30, dozens of performers, friends, and colleagues from the Central New York arts community honored Mark and his work with a four-hour tribute performance, which raised funds for the Mark J. Wright Scholarship for Young Artists. Contributions may be mailed to the Central New York Community Foundation at 431 East Fayette Street, Suite 100; Syracuse, New York 13202. Voices thrives on the interplay between its readers and authors. Please keep your comments and contributions coming. Whether online through our web site or by “snail mail,” our suggestion box is always open. Eileen Condon FROM THE DIRECTOR From the Spring-Summer 2011 issue of Voices: At a March 2011 symposium on cultural and heritage tourism held at Colgate University, keynote speaker Cheryl Hargrove spoke of the increasing importance of “place,” both to the residents of an area and to those who are touring a region. In exploring a place, visitors and residents alike are concerned with the “authentic local experience,” whether it is to sample the regional food, participate in a community festival, or visit a historic site. Hargrove stressed the need to preserve and protect the cultural and environmental resources of an area and to find a comfortable fit between the needs of a community and the interests of the tourist. The sustainability of cultural or heritage tourism should not be measured by the number of visitors nor the economic impact those visitors make on a locale, but rather by the quality of the local experience—which will satisfy the needs of both the tourist and the host community. Folklorists can offer important insights on a community as tourism site. Drawing upon knowledge gained through ethnographic fieldwork, folklorists are able to provide interpretive frameworks for a better understanding of a community’s traditions and cultural arts and may have a broader vantage point on a community’s cultural assets. In conducting a folk cultural documentation project, a folklorist often records that which speaks to the interests of the cultural heritage tourist: as Hargrove explained, “the traditions, art forms, celebrations, and experiences that define this nation and its people.” In 2009 and 2010, the New York Folklore Society worked in collaboration with the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor to develop an inventory of cultural and artistic sites that might interest a visitor to the Erie Canal Corridor. Assembling a team that included Daniel F. Ward of the Erie Canal Museum, Todd DeGarmo of Crandall Public Library, and Erin Dorbin of SUNY–Albany’s public history program, the New York Folklore Society developed an inventory of sites that reflect New York State’s rich artistic and cultural history and connection to the canal. Architecture, art, music, and literature in New York were influenced by the development and expansion of the canal system, from its original footprint to that of the present. You can view the inventory selection online. The New York Folklore Society continues to reach out to communities across the state, forging new collaborative partnerships. In the first half of 2011, the New York Folklore Society has presented programs or professional development workshops in Albany, Amsterdam, Batavia, Buffalo, Canton, Niagara, Saratoga, and Schenectady. Maybe we’ll be in your community soon! Please check our web site for upcoming events. Ellen McHale, Ph.D.
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