New York Folklore Society Newsletter

"Zooming out for a broader view, our field has matured tremendously during this decade . . . Folk arts is now a firmly established and growing part of the cultural infrastructure of New York." —John Suter

NOTE: The New York Folklore Society Newsletter and New York Folklore Journal were replaced by Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore which debuted December, 2000.

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

Fall/Winter 1998

FALL/WINTER 1998 NEWSLETTER MAIN PAGE

Farewell from the Executive Director

After nine good years as executive director of the New York Folklore Society, I have decided to move on and will be leaving the society in January. This is a fine organization and an exciting and challenging job, but periodically the need for change, promising new challenges and new rewards, bubbles up within me. I’m leaving before it reaches a rolling boil.

I am deeply grateful for the support and encouragement I have received over the years from many people—far too many to acknowledge by name. I arrived at NYFS via the Ethnic Folk Arts Center (now the Center for Traditional Music and Dance) in New York City, and before that, the Center for World Music in San Diego. I’m not a folklorist and was brand new to the field when I came to New York. Yet I have always felt welcome among this fine and generous group of people. Many of you have been my patient mentors as I have wrestled with the concepts, the rhetoric, the history, the politics, the diplomacy, and above all the substance of folklore. I’ll mention only a few. Ethel Raim and Martin Koenig gave me my first fascinating introduction to folk arts through their exemplary work at EFAC. I have also benefited tremendously from the advice and wisdom of our fine board and staff, the many consultants who have participated in NYFS projects, and colleagues throughout the state.

Of critical importance from the beginning has been the counsel and support of Robert Baron, director of the NYSCA Folk Arts Program and in significant measure the architect of our field in New York State. His vision of the field and of the place of a service organization within it, and of course the financial support provided by the program, account for much that the society has accomplished in the 1990s.

The Folk Archives Project introduced me, the society, and much of our field to the world of archives—its language, methods, and most significantly, its importance to our field. Kathleen Roe, who directs the Documentary Heritage Program, which funds our project, has been an extraordinary mentor to me and to all the folklorists who have been involved in the project.

I am also grateful to all of you who have supported the society through your membership and all who have attended our events or participated in our programs. Your interest and confidence in the New York Folklore Society make a huge difference.

As I write this, my mind is flooded with people, colleagues who have become friends, from New York and around the country, whom I would like to thank personally. In the interests of space: Many thanks to you all.

Looking back at the newsletters, beginning in 1990 when I first arrived, it is striking to notice what has changed and what hasn’t, both within the society and in our environment. By the late 1980s the New York State Council on the Arts Folk Arts Program had stimulated rapid growth in folk arts programs around the state, and it was becoming apparent that the field needed a service organization—a communications hub, a source of technical assistance, a locus of advocacy, an initiator of statewide programs. NYFS began its further evolution in that direction (the newsletter, New York Folklore, and the annual fall conference were already thriving) with the Mentoring Program in 1989. That program has grown, joined by the Folk Archives Project, expansion of our conferences, and forums, new and reconfigured publications, leadership in advocacy for the arts, and various special projects. Recently we’ve launched our Voices initiative, designed to put people in touch with the folklore in their own lives, and this growing Web site. The society’s board of directors has grown substantially in its sophistication as a board and its engagement with the organization, and our fine staff is dedicated and talented.

Zooming out for a broader view, our field has matured tremendously during this decade. When I attended my first New York State Folk Arts Roundtable, the superb annual gathering of the folk arts field organized since 1986 by Robert Baron and Dan Ward, sponsored by NYSCA, and hosted in Syracuse by the Cultural Resources Council there, it felt to me, an outsider, like a support group for a new and struggling field. Today, it is a vibrant gathering of confident professionals, experienced or new to the field, most with secure positions in cultural organizations throughout the state. Among these, half a dozen are dedicated primarily to traditional arts. Folk arts is now a firmly established and growing part of the cultural infrastructure of New York.

In the area of things that change but stay the same, my first contribution to this newsletter (fall 1990) was titled "NEA in Crisis: Act Now!" Nine years later the NEA, now about half its earlier size, is recuperating from its latest crisis. NYSCA, resting on a much firmer political foundation than the NEA’s, is on the way back from the disastrous cuts of 1991 and 1992. In 1990, I set up a tiny office in downtown Ithaca. We’re still here, watching the same coal trains rumble by outside, but now in an expanded, remodeled office outfitted with four up-to-date computers for our staff and volunteers.

There is much more to do here at the New York Folklore Society. Exciting new programs in technical assistance are in the offing; our publications are in the early stages of metamorphosis; important conferences are being planned for the next two years. This is a good time, it seems to me, for new leadership and new energy to inspire and guide the society in the coming period. I look forward to the next phase of the society’s evolution with confidence and great interest.—John W. Suter

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