| Volume 30 Fall-Winter 2004 |
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             Return to Table of Contents Not only did campers visit the mountain communities and enjoy visits of the regional people to the camp, the campers delighted their new acquaintances by creating and performing songs and dances based on the traditional material they had learned through their friendship.
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PUBLICATIONS | VOICES | BACK ISSUES | FOLKLORE IN ARCHIVES | FOLK ARTISTS SELF-MGT | ORDER PUBLICATIONS | SEARCH  The Catskill Folk Festival—in both its original form of the 1940s and 1950s and its late-1970s revivals—gave upstate New York tradition bearers an opportunity to share their world with city dwellers. The later festivals were reunions that featured many of the earlier fiddlers, singers, dancers, and storytellers, all performing the same pieces they had presented in the 1940s and 1950s. The audience, however, had changed—from the young children of Camp Woodland to a more general community. The revived folk festival ended soon after the death of Camp Woodland’s founder, Norman Studer, but the traditional music, dances, and stories of the Catskills still draw performers and audiences. ...The “folk festival” planned and staged by people outside a traditional community to present traditional dancing, singing, and storytelling came in the twentieth century, after the changes wrought by the industrial revolution left people nostalgic for the past. Among the oldest of these—preceded by the 1938 National Folk Festival—is the Catskill Folk Festival. The Catskill Folk Festival was held annually from 1940 to 1962 and later revived in 1977, 1978, and 1979. For the first twenty-three years, the festivals were a celebration at the end of the Camp Woodland summer camp season. The camp operated in the Catskills near Phoenecia, New York, serving children from the New York metropolitan area (Johnson 2002). Norman Studer, camp director, felt that the folk festivals were a natural extension of the progressive educational philosophy and democratic principles that were at the heart of the camp experience. Notes from a camp staff meeting reveal that the purpose of the camp was to give campers “a sense of the dance of life”... Primary Research Particularly from 1940 to 1962, when it was an extension of a children’s camp and a direct result of primary folklore research, the Catskill Folk Festival had a different character from the more public and commercialized festivals that were beginning to grow as the folk music revival inspired reverence for traditional performers. Norman Studer developed a practice of taking the summer campers to visit Catskill residents who were rich in traditions. Studer would lead conversations between tradition bearers and the children... Not only did campers visit the mountain communities and enjoy visits of the regional people to the camp, the campers delighted their new acquaintances by creating and performing songs and dances based on the traditional material they had learned through their friendship. The audience for the early festivals included the campers and their family members, the performers and their families, and some locals in Ulster County, as well as hundreds of radio listeners who heard the radio shows that were produced for some years by the camp. The early Catskill Folk Festivals always included folk music performances by traditional musicians from the Catskills’ mostly Scots-Irish settlers. For most of those years the festivals also included storytelling, jigging, square dancing, fiddling, children’s performances, craft demonstrations and exhibits, which grew into a folk museum by the 1950s. At least three of the festivals included plays...the festivals commissioned compositions based on local history and folklore.... Spheres of Influence The legacy of Camp Woodland and the Catskill Folk Festivals is noteworthy. In its documentation of regional folklore, it resembles many Works Progress Administration collections developed about the time Camp Woodland began. But because the festivals spanned nearly forty years, the documentation, particularly of regional folk music, is extensive. This sustained and focused documentation resulted in a significant record of Catskill folksongs, Catskill Folk Songs, by Norman Studer, Norman Cazden, and Herbert Haufrecht (1982). The way Camp Woodland and the Catskill Folk Festival influenced the young campers is also part of the legacy. Camper Joe Hickerson was first introduced to folk music through the camp and its festivals, and he eventually made an enormous contribution to folk music through his years of work at the Smithsonian Archive of Folk Music.... The Festival Redux The earliest festivals, from 1940 to 1953, had been held in the town hall in Chichester, but after the building was sold to a private woodworking factory, the festival moved outdoors to the Simpson Ski Center near Phoenicia. When Norman and Hannah Studer wanted to hold a reunion festival in the mid-seventies, they approached the McIntosh family, who owned the Catskill Ski Center in Andes, some miles northwest of Phoenecia, to discuss the potential of reviving the Catskill Folk Festival. Through meetings and correspondence between the Studers and the McIntosh family, the Catskill Folk Festival was reimagined and revived in 1977, 1978, and 1979.... ...The festivals of the 1970s...developed equally as celebrations among the mountain folk and as performances for city people, showcasing the experiences, skills, and ways of life of the people of the Catskill Mountains... ... With the exception of the cantatas and plays, the revivals at the Catskill Ski Center included almost all of the performance types and particular songs of the earlier festivals. Folksongs, fiddling, storytelling, and square dancing were still strong in the Catskills. Studer’s film, Indian Summer, about the building of the Cannonsville Dam, was shown at both the early and the later folk festivals. There was still storytelling and singing around the campfire, and the great circle dances of performers and audience that ended the festivals on the Simpson ski slopes also brought the festivals to a close at the Catskill Ski Center. ... An Enduring Tradition Norman Studer died on October 27, 1978, and the Catskill Folk Festival the following summer was dedicated to his memory. Grant Rogers, a central character in the festivals since 1950 who performed in the 1977 and 1978 festivals, also died and was honored at the 1979 festival. Norman Cazden died in 1980. Herbert Haufrecht held a few events that were an echo of the festivals, but they were not sustained. Although the festival has not been held for twenty-five years, Catskill traditions are still strong, and people who were influenced by the festival in their youth are telling the stories and singing the songs they heard...In 2004, he [Ira McIntosh] and wife Laurie received a New York State Arts Council grant to produce Catskill Tales and Tunes, a series of concerts throughout the Catskills to celebrate the centennial of the Catskill Park. They relate stories of Mike Todd, of the blue stone quarries, of hunting in the hills, and they sing “I Walk the Road Again,” “Blue Stone Quarry,” “The Second Dam Song,” “The Delhi Jail,” and “How Slide Mountain Got Its Name” as part of their Catskill repertoire that still communicates a sense of place and community. ...As Pete Seeger sang at Norman Studer’s memorial service in 1979, may all our children and our children’s children “guard well our human chain, watch well and keep it strong, as long as sun does shine.” Literature Cited Note: Norman Studer’s documentation on the Catskill Folk Festival is in the M.E. Grenander Special Collections and Archives in the University at Albany Archives, and Norman Cazden’s materials are in the Maine Folklife Center. Some tapes of the earlier festivals reside in the American Folklife Archive at the Library of Congress. Cazden, Norman, Herbert Haufrecht, and Norman Studer. 1982. Folk Songs of the Catskills. Albany: State University of New York Press. Johnson, Dale W. 2002. “Camp Woodland: Progressive Education and Folklore in the Catskill Mountains of New York.” Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore 28: 6-12. Studer, Norman. 1962a. Philosophy of Camp Woodland. Outline of Goals of Folklore Ed. Studer Papers, Series 4: Camp Woodland, Subseries 1: Administrative, Box 12, Folder 5. University at Albany Archives. ——. 1962b. Studer Papers, Series 8: Writings, Subseries 1: Writings, Box 21, Folder 13. University at Albany Archives. ——. 1962c. Studer Papers, Series 4: Camp Woodland, Subseries 4: Administrative, Box 12, Folder 5. University at Albany Archives. ——. 1962d. Studer Papers, Series 4: Camp Woodland, Subseries 2: Activities, Box 12, Folder 35. University at Albany Archives. Whisnant, David E. 1998. “The White Top Folk Festival: What We (Have Not) Learned.” Paper presented at Virginia Highlands Festival, Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center, Abingdon, Virginia, August 6. "Catskill Folk Festivals: A Sense of the Dance of Life," by Karyl Denison Eaglefeathers appeared in Voices Vol. 30, Fall-Winter 2004. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society now. HOME | ABOUT NYFS | PROGRAMS & SERVICES | PUBLICATIONS | RESOURCES | CALENDAR | WHAT’S FOLKLORE? | MEMBERSHIP | GALLERY | SHOP |
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