Fall–Winter 2011 Volume 37: 3–4

The Journal of New York Folklore

Yuri Yunakov, National Heritage Fellow

Rhetoric of Italian American Identity

Roman Turovsky- Savchuk and Ukrainian Folk Music

Remembering Jean Crandall (1964–2011) From the Director

As an organization, the varieties of musical expression found The New York Folklore Society continues the New York Folk- along and encouraged by the Erie Canal, its mission of education and encouragement lore Society has sup- both past and present. “Music of the Erie of traditional arts and culture in New York. ported regular oppor- Canal” will offer scholarly presentations as Please join us in our work! tunities for profes- well as the performance and presentation Ellen McHale, Ph.D., Executive Director sional development of music. Partnering with the Erie Canal New York Folklore Society and convening on Museum in Syracuse, the conference will [email protected] specific topics. Since involve multiple venues and diverse op- www.nyfolklore.org its founding in 1944, portunities to present the musical history the Society has annually supported at least of the Erie Canal. Please visit our website, From the Editor one conference for the exploration of www.nyfolklore.org/progs/cfp-eriemusic.html, for The present issue of topics of relevance to the collecting and the Call for Proposals and for additional Voices reflects in large study of folklore in New York State. In information for attendance. part upon ethnic iden- our early years, the Society supported both A new program for the Society, the gradu- tity in New York. In a fall meeting which was held outside of ate student conferences have been held at “Ethnicity, Nostalgia, the New York tri-State region and a spring New York University (2010) and Bingham- Affirmation: The Rhet- meeting which was held in New York City. ton University (2011). On February 7, 2013, oric of Italian American The spring meeting eventually was halted, the Society will hold its third graduate stu- Identity,” Michael Buonanno examines, but the fall meeting has been ongoing since dent conference at the Westchester County with poetic eloquence, some of the tropes our first fall meeting held in Cooperstown in Arts Council in White Plains, New York, in of speech and story which helped to shape 1945. In 2010–2011, the Society embarked collaboration with the Westchester County what it was, and is, to be Italian American on two new conference formats: a gradu- Arts Council. Please continue to check our in, and beyond, the community in which he ate student conference which showcases website for updates regarding the theme and was raised. Mu Li focuses with fascination student work and the New York State Folk a call for student work. upon activities Jewish Americans customar- Arts Roundtable, a professional develop- Finally, the New York Folklore Society is ily engage in upon the Christian holiday of ment opportunity, initiated by the Folk Arts pleased to announce that it will be convening Christmas, especially eating out at Chinese Program of the New York State Council a statewide youth conference on Latino dance restaurants. Frank Campagna (“Field Note”) on the Arts, which for several years was in 2013. Supported by funds from the National remembers a traditional Italian folk story organized with the assistance of the Cul- Endowment for the Arts, this Latino Dance passed down in his family, and what the story tural Resources Council of Syracuse and Conference will invite several youth dance offers to an understanding of how best to Onondaga County. In 2011, the New York troupes and their leaders to two to three days treat elders in their later, vulnerable years. Folklore Society became the convening of workshops and performances exploring the Pete Rushefsky and Ethel Raim share the organization for the New York State Folk connections between Latino dance traditions story of Bulgarian Romani saxophonist Yuri Arts Roundtable. from several countries. Youth participants will Yunakov’s career and celebrate his receipt Within the next several months, the have the opportunity to share their traditional of the NEA National Heritage Fellowship. New York Folklore Society will be offer- dance styles with other interested youth and Ukrainian American lutenist, composer, and ing a variety of new opportunities for the will have the opportunity to present their painter Roman Turovsky-Savchuk explains presentation of research and the explora- group’s work in a public presentation. Dance the development of his engagement with tion of folklore in New York State. On leaders will receive professional development Ukrainian music and musical genres, in life November 2–3, 2012, in collaboration with training on the organizational aspects of dance as well as in cyberspace, in “Dialogues with the Erie Canal Museum and with support troupes. Designed with the goal to provide Time.” We revisit the New York Folklore from the Erie Canalway National Heritage encouragement for traditional dance in New Society’s Annual 2011 “Legends and Tales” Corridor, the New York Folklore Society York State, the weekend should be both fun Conference proceedings via a report by Lisa will be presenting a symposium about and informative for the student attendees. continued on page 2 “The absence of models, in literature as in life, to say nothing of painting, is an occupational hazard for the artist, simply because models in art, in behavior, in growth of spirit and intellect—even if rejected—enrich and enlarge one’s view of existence.”

VOICES: The Journal of New York––Alice Folklore Walker, In Search of Our Mothers’ Gardens: Womanist Prose (1983), p. 4. Contents Fall–Winter 2011

Features 3 Ethnicity, Nostalgia, Affirmation: The Rhetoric of Italian American Identity by Michael Buonanno 11 Dialogues with Time by Roman Turovsky-Savchuk 3 16 Yuri Yunakov: 2011 National Heritage Fellow by Pete Rushefsky and Ethel Raim 11 24 Follow Spot: Growing the Ranks by Kristen Andresen 27 Jewish Activities on Christmas: An Online Case Study by Mu Li 36 Essere Vecchi é Brutto by Frank Campagna 38 A Report from an Embroiderers’ Gathering by Ellen McHale and Lisa Overholser

42 The New York Folklore Society Features “Legends and Tales” at Its 2011 Annual Conference by Lisa Overholser Departments and Columns 10 NurorAsian: Asian American Arts in New York by Andrea Louie 14 Upstate by Varick A. Chittenden 24 15 Downstate by Steve Zeitlin 20 In Memoriam: Jean Crandall by Eileen Condon, Elena Martínez, and Hanna Griff-Sleven 23 Play by John Thorn 26 Good Spirits by Libby Tucker 34 Still Going Strong by Paul Margolis

35 View from the Waterfront Cover: Yuri Yunakov at Lincoln Center. by Nancy Solomon The National Heritage Fellow of 2011 is profiled on p. 16. Photograph by 41 Songs Richard Conde. Courtesy of Center for 38 by Dan Milner Traditional Music and Dance Archive. 44 Reviews

Fall–WinterFall–Winter 2011,2011, VolumeVolume 37:37:3–4 3–4 1 1 From the Editor (continued)

Overholser, and Ellen McHale and Lisa by Andrea Louie. In upcoming issues, two Overholser describe the Society’s three- writers will pen this column in alternation:

day, two-state Embroiderers’ Gathering in Andrea Louie and Nico Daswani, both of Fall–Winter 2011 · Volume 37: 3–4 Ithaca in November 2011, thanks to a grant New York’s Asian American Arts Alliance Acquisitions Editor Eileen Condon from the Mid Atlantic Folk Arts Outreach (www.aaartsalliance.org). Finally, with sorrow, Copy Editor Patricia Mason Project. Voices is pleased to reprint an es- but with a shared gratitude for having known Administrative Manager Laurie Longfield Design Mary Beth Malmsheimer pecially noteworthy article from Inside Arts, her, three of Poughkeepsie-based folklorist Printer Eastwood Litho the publication of the Association for Per- Jean D. Crandall’s close friends reflect on Editorial Board Varick Chittenden, Lydia Fish, forming Arts Presenters (APAP): Kristen Jean’s life and legacy in folklore, since her José Gomez-Davidson, Hanna Griff-Sleven, Andresen’s account of the historic founding untimely passing in November. Nancy Groce, Lee Haring, Bruce Jackson, Christopher Mulé, Libby Tucker, Kay Turner, of WOCA—Women of Color in the Arts, Eileen Condon Dan Ward, Steve Zeitlin at last year’s APAP conference in New Acquisitions Editor Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore York City. Voices also welcomes its newest New York Folklore Society is published twice a year by the column, “NurorAsian: Asian American [email protected] New York Folklore Society, Inc. 129 Jay Street Arts in New York,” written for this issue P.O. Box 764 Schenectady, NY 12301

New York Folklore Society, Inc. Executive Director Ellen McHale Folklorist Lisa Overholser Gallery Manager Laurie Longfield Web Administrator Patti Mason Voice (518) 346-7008 Fax (518) 346-6617 Web Site www.nyfolklore.org

Board of Directors President Gabrielle Hamilton Vice President Elena Martínez Past President Paul Mercer Secretary Delcy Ziac Fox Treasurer Jessica Schein Pauline Adema, Karyl Eaglefeathers, Ellen Fladger, Anna Mulé, Christopher Mulé, Connie Sullivan- Blum, Libby Tucker, Kay Turner, Thomas van Buren

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2 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Ethnicity, Nostalgia, Affirmation: The Rhetoric of Italian American Identity

BY MICHAEL BUONANNO

he Italian diaspora, in all its various because the culture is the soil that nurtures the perhaps the central figure of speech in the T manifestations, is characterized by a religion and makes it bloom. They do make arsenal of rhetorical strategies—is one place profound sense of ethnic identity. Even for a point. There is a reality to being immersed where the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis works, those of us who don’t speak the language, in a singular cultural environment that places pointing out that “metaphor shapes reality there is a particular reality born of Sunday a stamp on one’s life. Such immersion does because it springs from our experience of dinners at Grandmother’s, the sound of Ital- not define individuals in all of their complex- reality.” Here Danesi is underlining a major ian—or more likely Sicilian, Neapolitan, Cal- ity, but by refining their sense of affiliation function of rhetoric: “Consider the expres- abrian, or another of the Italian dialects—at and the rights, obligations, and meanings sion,” he continues, “John is a monkey. The the kitchen table, and the innumerable stories that reside there, it orients individuals to the topic in this case is a person named John and that we heard there: stories of the people back world at large. the vehicle the animal known as a monkey. home in Italy and stories of the people just The continuing relevance of this orienta- Portraying John as a monkey forces us to down the street. There was the particularly tion, however—particularly for an immigrant imagine a human person in simian terms.... gluttonous Benedictine in the old country who community that is no longer regenerated by Like the spell put on people by shamans, gave gnocchi its nickname, stranga lu prev (stran- significant movement from the home country people become what our metaphors say they gle the priest), when he choked to death on and is subject to significant pressure to assimi- are” (Danesi 2004, 147). Metaphor, then, is it. And there was the woman down the street late—is sometimes difficult to define. As with not simply a rhetorical flourish; it is a mecha- who, upset at her husband’s extravagance (in- all immigrant communities, a shared history nism for constructing reality. But metaphor door plumbing), nicknamed the unhappy man in another country, stories of the migration is just one tiny nodule of rhetoric. What of Bagnarol (Bathtub)—only to discover one day itself, and the scramble to make a living and the other units of rhetorical analysis? There that her own nickname was Moglie di Bagnarol build communities in the host country became are any number of tropes beyond metaphor: (Wife of Bathtub). There was the mythical central features of Italian American identity, metonymy, synecdoche, pun, antonomasia, Italian who crossed the Delaware with George wherever and whenever it develops. But all and—one of my favorites—cryptonymy, a Washington; upon hearing Washington swear, of these elements of shared experience are figure which seeks to reveal through conceal- “Che cazzu freddu,” (roughly, “I’m freezing my steeped in a process of communication that ment (Abraham and Torok 1986, 132), just nuts off,”), he joyfully exclaimed, “Ma, tu sei represents and re-represents them in a rhetoric to name a few. There are also innumerable italiano!” (“Oh, but you’re Italian!”). of identity that hinges upon at least three speech acts: hyperbole, litotes, antinomy. And In my interviews with members of the crucial concepts: ethnicity, nostalgia, and af- then there are tones—essentially genres of Seneca Nation between 2000 and 2003, I firmation. It is in this rhetoric, I believe, that speech—to consider: sarcasm, irony, consola- sometimes heard the complaint that when the continuing relevance of Italian American tion, threat. non-natives borrow Native American religious identity is situated. Whether dealing with tropes, speech acts, traditions, they oversimplify them, making or tones, rhetoric entails the mobilization or them seem trivial or superficial. A person has Rhetorical Theory in Cultural redeployment of linguistic formulas in order to have grown up in the culture to understand Studies and Folklore to imply something more than the mere deno- the nuances of the religion, some Seneca say, Marcel Danesi suggests that metaphor— tative value of an utterance. Phonetics can be

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 3 Lucia and Alessandro in their flower garden. All photos courtesy of the author.

used to suggest different class affiliation: in the tion of Italian words may illustrate a lack of of the ladies of the community that she was early history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, interest in Italian identity: my aunt shocked going to give birth to a donkey—she gave for instance, omitting the final r in words to me one time when she nonchalantly uttered birth, in fact, to perhaps the most infamous emulate the privileged accent of the home an unaccented stess cos (same thing) with a scemu—dunce—the neighborhood ever knew. country. The artful use of morphemes can shrug of the shoulders instead of the usual In the context of my upbringing, this animal offer an utterance various suggestive quali- stessa cosa. The artful use of metonymy—the metaphor is evocative not only of obstinate ties: for instance, the morphological form, signification of someone by an item closely and foolhardy youth, but also of growing up -er can be added to the name of a political associated with him or her—allowed both in a context somewhat outside the mainstream group in order to suggest a degree of fringe Bagnarol and Moglie di Bagnarol their nicknames; of American society. ideology (John Bircher, Birther). Altering the in fact, it provided the nicknames that nearly When language—and the nonverbal com- intonation pattern of a word can insinuate a everyone in the community carried. Animal munication that surrounds it—is explored different meaning of the term than generally metaphors, such as those discussed by Danesi, rhetorically, analysis moves beyond that which intended; likewise, the grammatical environ- were a rich source of the rhetorical flourishes is merely informative to that which is cultur- ment of a word can give a word a connotative that characterized humor in my community. ally charged. Rhetorical analysis considers rather than denotative value: “I see the light,” I—like many Italian Americans—had in my language that serves not simply to communi- for instance, rather than “Turn on the light.” youth the term ciuccio (Americanized as chooch, cate cultural realities, but as Danesi suggests, There can even be gestural cues or specific literally donkey, but figuratively stubborn and to construct such realities and in doing so, I social settings that might alter the normative even dim-witted) hurled at me liberally. The would add, to establish identity. In fact, I think understanding of a communication: think term was rendered doubly poignant in my dissecting the rhetorical structure of culture to about the significance of the statement, “You community when one woman who had lost chart its effect on identity is essential, because look gorgeous in that outfit,” if the speaker track of the length of her pregnancy, started this analysis draws attention to the contested rolls his or her eyes while saying it. to approach, by her calculation, the fourteenth nature of culture: to the fact that culture exists Within the context of Italian American month, the gestation period of a donkey, only in its negotiation and renegotiation by rhetoric, blasé American-style pronuncia- and—as if to confirm the satiric warnings actual flesh-and-blood members of a society.

4 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore It is through this contestation that cultural tion and allows rhetoric to express not simply the cursed—those who actually gave the identity—the actual locus, or place, where itself but also the self. evil eye—seemed to stress the obstacles to culture is situated—emerges. The reason successful acculturation: the strega (witch), that rhetoric is the crux, even the crucible, Ethnicity: A Peculiar Antinomy characteristically a reclusive woman who was of identity is this: identity must be learned “Why, what makes you think that we know never going to adjust to a new society, and the and then displayed through communica- anything about that?” Maria asked when I jettatore (sorcerer), characteristically a powerful tion. Rhetoric—viewed as the deployment told her I was here to talk to her about her man who, once he gained his own position in of verbal, behavioral, and even material experiences with the evil eye. That was a bit the new society, acted to guard it jealously. If symbols—becomes the filter through which of a shocking response. Here I was, dili- a person had been looked upon with invidia communication renders identity legible. gently beginning my fieldwork in the Italian (envy) by a strega or a jettatore—my informants But here’s the problem with applying rhe- American community, and the friend who used both of those words—he or she would torical theory to cultural analyses and explor- had brought me to Vincenzo and Maria’s sicken. A persistent headache, a nagging pain, ing, in turn, the relationship of culture and house had assured me that the couple knew an upset stomach, even impotence—as if identity: rhetoric as a discipline has historically everything there was to know about the evil fertility and generation were metaphorically been so unwieldy! What exactly are the meta- eye. Now, I was not more than five minutes evocative of forward momentum—were con- phors or symbolic equivalencies that rhetoric into my project, and I had already offended tinuously seen as evidence of having attracted isolates? And where are their definitions? my informants. I looked over at my friend, but the envious glance of the strega or jettatore. What follows, then, is a selection of rhetorical he just glanced about the room abstractedly. The entire belief system, which the phrase devices I have found in my examination of The momentary discomfort that I felt, how- malocchio conjured, was steeped in what one of Italian American culture—partly as a result of ever, led me to an early recognition: some of my informants jokingly referred to as becom- my own life’s experiences and partly as a result my informants were in the habit of denying ing white—that is, making it in what Italians of formal fieldwork—and its significance in certain elements of their own culture. This almost immediately recognized upon arriving establishing (or not) an Italian American iden- recognition led me to a strategy—one that in America as a racially charged society. Spe- tity. I have not attempted to offer a systematic was, in fact, requested by a few of my infor- cifically, he claimed that evil eye was “some- treatment of these devices, and in fact I am mants—of maintaining a policy of anonymity. thing we believed in before we were white” unsure whether a completely systematic treat- I began to use pseudonyms in my field notes (Buonanno 1984, 39). Here, a troublesome ment is called for or even possible, but I have and the articles that resulted from them and aspect of Italian American culture emerges: attempted to organize my observations with to hide the locations (generally small towns the fear of being included in the underclass recourse to three major subsets of rhetorical and even smaller neighborhoods) where my of the host society, catapulting certain seg- devices that recur in Italian American cultural interviews took place. I was even reticent to ments of Italian American society (never the tradition and seem to effect the translation of give exact dates, as I was working in very small majority, but nonetheless a visible minority) a societal culture to its individual members: communities where people could be easily to embrace the racism that agitated social (1) tropes, in which one thing—through a identified. I have found the policy of anonym- relations and party politics in America. I will number of technical operations—stands for ity helpful in alleviating anxiety among some return momentarily to this fraught element of or symbolizes something else, (2) speech acts, Italian Americans who worried that professing Italian American culture, one that is too often in which the grammatical organization of an a belief in the evil eye could open them up to (like some embarrassing relative) dealt with by utterance serves to imply something more a reprimand from the parish priest or ridicule attempting to ignore its existence. than is explicitly stated—Deborah Tannen from members of the larger society. If a sufferer had been “looked upon” by the describes this as a “metamessage”—and (3) What I learned from Vincenzo and Ma- invidious gaze of the strega or jettatore, he or she tones, in which everyday speech patterns or ria—who, despite their initial disclaimer, did first needed a divination to ascertain whether genres of speech serve to mobilize an emotive seem to justify all my friend’s confidence in evil eye was indeed the cause of his or her response to an utterance. them—was that the belief in malocchio, or the ailment, and second—if indeed evil eye was When viewed through the lens of such rhe- evil eye, quickly adapted itself to an American the cause—a cure. A comare (godmother)—not torical devices, culture works very much like a landscape, and what was once a multifaceted a specific term, but the only one I have ever wiki: everyone in the society has an editorial belief system—with different variations for encountered—taught her patient the art of role, an ability to participate in the dialogue each of Italy’s disparate regions–became intercession through a kitchen reenactment of that is ultimately culture, but the dialogue homogenized. The belief became, in essence, the baptismal ritual that almost every infant itself—the culture proper—resides in no one. Italian American and took on a localized underwent within the confines of Roman It exceeds the individual, but at the same time, function: negotiating Italian Americans’ Catholic tradition. During the course of my it informs the individual, for it gives voice to status as outsider to mainstream American fieldwork, Lucia (named for the patron saint what would otherwise be inchoate informa- society. Over and again, the descriptions of of eyesight, upon whose day she was born)

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 5 Constructs of ethnicity, such as the sur- reptitious profession of a belief in malocchio, served to center Italian American identity, but often in the negative context of subordina- tion to the dominant social order. To know anything about the evil eye was, in essence, to open oneself to the accusation of being an outsider to American society: a cafone (peasant or bumpkin) from the Italian interior and vic- tim to all the superstitions that reigned there. The persistence of such a belief is therefore continuously allied to its denial, in a grand act of antinomy: a simultaneous I Am (depending upon who you are), and I Am Not (depending on who you are not). How like the peculiar brand of racism and its political concomitants that at times devolves into some segments of the Italian American community; the troubled The grandchildren on Lucia’s stoop. “othering” by the perennial Other partakes in the nature of this antinomous belief in the told me how she would intercede with Mary, Christmas Eve, and she would in turn give it evil eye. Each results in part from a desire the Blessed Virgin, on her patient’s behalf, by to a younger woman, again only once in her not to be included in a perceived underclass. dripping olive oil into a bowl of water. If the lifetime at Christmas Eve, when she could Certainly, we can only respond to the display oil slicked, it indicated that evil eye was the no longer bear the responsibility of an entire of a brutta figura (unseemly manner) by a cause of the patient’s illness, but when the oil community’s spiritual well-being. justice at the State of the Union address, the beaded normatively upon the water’s surface What is especially interesting is that the infamous incidents at Howard Beach and after the curative ritual, it indicated that a comare’s intercession is the direct spiritual Bensonhurst, and the anti-immigrant diatribes cure—by Mary’s grace—had been effected. corollary to the more pragmatic intercession of a grandson of Italian immigrants with a The Italian word for godmother is madrina, of another characteristic personage of Italian sense of embarrassment, given our intimate but my fieldwork indicated that the word American culture: the padrone or boss, who knowledge of the origin and intrinsic under- comare (literally, co-mother) was used for the found work for the men, but also the women standing of the rhetorical significance of such woman who stood up for the child at bap- and children, of the community through his behaviors. I suspect that some of the attribu- tism, so in the Italian American context, the early ability to build bridges with the host tions of racism that have unfortunately (and better translation for comare seems to me to society. His best assets were usually a facility not always unfairly) been leveled at the Italian be godmother. This translation draws atten- with the English language, which allowed him American community—in Spike Lee’s decid- tion to the fact that in the Italian American to construct a network of potential employ- edly evenhanded Do the Right Thing (1989), for context, at least, she who cures the evil eye ers, and the resources to be able to afford instance—result from the ambivalences with metaphorically participates in the nature of transport for the labor force he maintained. which Italians have faced the peculiarly racially the godmother: just as the godmother takes I will return to him shortly. For now, let me charged environment that they encountered responsibility for the spiritual well-being of simply point out that belief in evil eye be- in their host society. an infant in the baptismal ritual, the comare came not simply one of many elements of takes responsibility for the spiritual welfare Italian culture in America: so strongly was Nostalgia: The Mnememe of her entire community through her special it associated with the culture that it became One day, during one of the last gatherings at gift of intercession. It is her duty to dispel the over time a fundamental demarcation of my grandmother’s house that I can remember, ill effects of envy from the community and Italian American identity. Non-Italians in the I ran into Mr. Bellotta, a longtime resident replace it with beneficent grace—and only know could slyly mention the word malocchio of the neighborhood and one of the last she has the ability to do so, for she possesses to indicate that they had some knowledge of few original Italians, out on the sidewalk. He a secret incantation that breaks the back of or connection to the community, and it didn’t mentioned that his sister, who had once lived the evil eye curse. She had been given the carry the stigma of the scemu—dunce—who in the neighborhood but had moved back to incantation by an elderly woman, who could would injudiciously bring up that other word, Italy, had returned for a brief visit. “Nobody give it up only once in her lifetime and that on mafia, as soon as he learned you were Italian. remembered her,” he added bewilderedly. A

6 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore bit later, I was in my grandmother’s kitchen, identity, I believe, is nostalgia expressed in the since she moved to the States, perhaps twenty talking to Mary Genovese, who remained form of memories of the homeland and the years earlier. In her first years here, she put all unmarried for her entire life along with her early days of the Italian American community. her sons and daughters to work for Kingfish bachelor brother in their parents’ house, just Not surprisingly, narrative plays a large role in as well, and each day they dutifully put their two doors down from my grandmother’s. such expressions. Let me return to the per- earnings into Lucia’s hand, not keeping a “Guess who I was just talking to,” I said to sonage of the padrone to examine the role of penny back for themselves. It was with that her. “Well, how can I guess?” she asked. “Mr. narrative in the rhetoric of Italian American money that Lucia one day purchased the Bellotta,” I said. “Oh, you know his sister was identity. One of my favorite stories from the house that her family had rented: two thou- just back from Italy,” she said, but then added, neighborhood was that of the double-crossing sand dollars worth of bean picking, Mike said “She didn’t remember me.” padrone Kingfish. Among Kingfish’s many when talking about the house. As I think back on that incident, I can’t help businesses was a pool hall. Lucia’s son Mike Each afternoon that summer, Lucia and but recall the closing scene of Barry Levin- tells how Kingfish kept a picture of Mussolini Mike and the others would gather up the bush- son’s 1999 film on growing up in Baltimore’s hanging in his pool hall, but on the day that els of beans they had picked to weigh them Jewish community, Liberty Heights. As the Italy declared war on the United States in on the scale provided, of course, by Kingfish. cantor operatically intones the Rosh Hasha- 1941, Kingfish—worried that he might call Everyone swore that the scale was fixed, but nah service, the narrator’s voice proclaims: the combined might of the American armed they were never able to prove it. The best they “I had a relative who once said, ‘If I knew forces down about his ears—hurriedly took could do was distract Kingfish as they weighed things would no longer be, I would’ve tried the picture down. As he walked by one day, out the bushels and add a little poundage to to remember better.’” I think the same could Mike, noticing the bright patch of green paint their tally while his attention was diverted. But be said of many of the memories—my own that had been protected by Mussolini’s picture one day, one of the women claimed she had and others’—of my grandmother’s neighbor- from the sun shining through the pool hall’s weighed herself at the supermarket the day hood. And, it seems, the same could be said storefront window, shouted into the pool hall, before, and as everyone organized their bush- of the memories from many other neighbor- “Hey, Kingfish, where’s il Duce?” (Il Duce, the els of beans and waited for Kingfish to come hoods, communities, and even nations. Daniel duke, was a common title for Mussolini both over from his shady burrow, she began to step Martin’s notion of the mnememe is a discursive in Italy and the United States.) As he dashed onto Kingfish’s scale to test them. Kingfish cue—an aphorism, for example, or a formal down the street, fleeing Kingfish’s inevitable was just coming around from the front of his preamble, such as “once upon a time”—that wrath, Mike heard the pool stick, launched pickup, and when he saw what was going on, allows a sign to function mnemonically (Engel like a javelin from Kingfish’s hand, whiz not he started running toward her, shouting at the 1992, 187). A mnememe causes one to re- more than two inches past his ear. top of his lungs that he would kill her if she member, like the West African symbol of the Despite this run-in with the boss, Mike fucked up his scale. Mike stopped dead in his sankofa, a stylized bird that turns its head back elected to follow a time honored family tra- tracks, terrified, right in Kingfish’s path as he towards its homeland in order to remember dition: picking beans for Kingfish. Each day, rushed headlong at the woman on the scale, and thereby reempower itself. his mother, Lucia, and other women from and rather than going around him, Kingfish It sometimes seems as if we are witnessing the neighborhood, as well as a smattering of plowed straight on, so that Mike thought the fading away of the memory, not just of the neighborhood kids and teenagers, would Kingfish was going to kill him first and the a community, but of a culture. Still, statistics clamber into the back of Kingfish’s battered woman next. He said his fist just sprang out argue against this perception: approximately pickup, and Kingfish would haul them out to of its own accord and hit Kingfish square on 12.5 million Americans claimed Italian ances- one of the farms that lay just beyond town, the jaw, but before he could even see the result, try in the 1980 census, but by the year 2000 where they would spend the day picking. King- he took off running back toward town. Mike the number was closer to 15 million, and fish would arrange for work for the women always avoided Kingfish thereafter, and he in 2008 it was edging up toward 18 million and children, many of whom could not speak thought Kingfish hated him, but a few years (Mormino and Pozzetta 1990; U.S. Census English well enough to obtain work on their later, when it was time for him to go off to 2008). If self-identified Italian Americans are own, provide the women and their kids with the war, Kingfish stopped by and gave him growing in number, despite low rates of new transportation to and from the farms, and a gold watch—a typical act of beneficence immigration, some elements of our culture collect each of his laborer’s pay from the by a padrone. Later, a female competitor, or seem to be secure. But still, it is sometimes farmer for them. His reward was a cut of their padrona, purchased a truck and began to cut difficult to say exactly what—beyond the earnings, but while they picked all day in the in on Kingfish’s contract labor at harvest time, ability to recount oral histories and humorous sun, Kingfish drank cool water from a pail but I have never been able to ascertain if any anecdotes—it means to be Italian American beneath a hedge of sumac and wild grapevine, bitterness erupted from the competition. in the twenty-first century. his pickup truck always close at hand. The mnememe that arises from this nar- A continuing element of Italian American Lucia had been working for Kingfish ever rative is a rhetorical function not simply

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 7 defined by the act of remembering, but also patronage no longer exists as an active feature well, as the host society came more and more by evincing an emotive framework, particu- of Italian American culture. Rather—again, to take the presence of Italians for granted. larly Mediterranean in tenor, encapsulated by mnemonically—it exists as a demarcation of The evil eye belief, with less cultural work the construct of patronage—that is, venera- the place from which Italian American culture to accomplish for the immigrant, became a tion of a patron saint—which is metaphori- emerged. Although the art of intercession is quaint bit of Italian American folklore—ex- cally reconfigured in the personages of the no longer practiced as it once was, it is still pressed perhaps by wearing a golden Italian padrone and the comare. Both figures, by virtue comprehended and remembered, which be- horn on a chain, often to claim Italian Ameri- of their characteristic act of intercession, came apparent to me as Mike cut my words can identity without even realizing that the participate in the nature of the patron saint. short when I almost crossed a line with the Italian horn was a protective amulet against The rhetorical reconfiguration of the padrone padrona. the evil eye. as a kind of benevolent despot is further evi- There is more to the rhetoric of nostalgia But there is something more. Today, as denced by antonomasia, the signification of than the stories told and their evocative power. I have suggested, professing a belief in the an item or a person by an epithet, for padrone, I suspect that family photos, scrupulously malocchio has become—instead of an element if translated literally, means the patron; the curated and almost magical in their ability to of a conflicted acculturative process—a state- rhetorical reconfiguration of the comare as a stir faded memories, play a central role in the ment of ethnic pride: Italianità (Italianicity) nurturing mother to the community at large rhetorical function of the mnememe, as do cast in bold relief. It is as if the belief met- is further evidenced by her associations with the particular tastes, smells, and sounds that onymically stands in for ethnic affiliation. A the role of the godmother of the baptismal mnemonically reconstruct a grandmother’s colleague of mine mentioned surreptitiously font. The centrality of patronage to the life kitchen or a grandfather’s shady grape arbor. that, after having suffered a headache over of the community is underscored by the fact As long as my grandfather’s garden lasted, I which her mother presided with a successful that the patron saint is the figure that serves to liked to seek out the stone upon which we evil eye cure, she not only was rid of her nag- communicate the community to itself as well would sit with a sugar bowl between us, dip- ging headache, but also found a ten dollar bill as to outsiders. This is why Italian American ping fresh stalks from his patch of rhubarb on a campus sidewalk. With a wink, she let communities look upon the dissolution of and enjoying a treat which makes my non- me know that she and I were members of a patronal festivals—or, perhaps worse, the Italian friends grimace painfully. select club—those in the know—and whether inundation of community-based patronal or not our Anglo colleagues would label it festivals with outsiders who view the festival Affirmation: Italianità superstition or not, we knew that an evil eye as a piece of quaint ethnic charm—a bit wist- Affirmation is a bit of an oddity in the rhet- cure exiled bad luck and even welcomed good fully, if not with out-and-out dismay. oric of Italian American identity. We hear it in luck into our charmed circle. This was a far cry Although the comare intercedes with ephem- conference papers that conclude that Italian from an interchange that occurred in one of eral powers for the spiritual benefit of her American culture and identity are very much the last discussions I conducted with Lucia on client, and the padrone intercedes with the alive in contemporary American society. But the evil eye. During that chat, Lucia’s daughter host society for the more pragmatic political- when we return to our neighborhoods, often exclaimed: “Ma, you don’t really believe all that economic benefit of his client, in either case pale remnants of their former selves, or worse stuff, do you?” “Non lo so,” Lucia sighed, “I a palpable sense of transition permeates their yet, return to one of our favorite Little Italies don’t know.” And heaving herself back into efforts. It is as if everyone involved—patron (as I recently did to Saint Claire Street in To- the thoroughly American easy chair that had and client alike—comprehends that the com- ronto, after an absence of more than twenty become her favorite resting spot, she seem- munity that surrounds the comare and padrone years) to find that it is almost nonexistent, it ingly lost sight of the room, the people in it, is temporary, or—in the words of Victor becomes clear that Italian American identity and the emerging reality that was their life. Turner— liminal, a threshold community is a different sort of animal in 2012 than it Today, we find that surreptitious admission marked by all the ambiguity that characterizes was in, say, 1962. So many of the features of knowledge (rather than outright belief) in a community between two worlds. Perhaps that characterized our communities in the past the evil eye, wearing of a golden horn, or—as this is why both the comare and padrone are persist today only in our memories. many analysts of the Italian American experi- simultaneously feared and respected—and In some respects, this is natural. Once Ital- ence have documented—returning year after indeed, Mike cut me off when I unwittingly ian Americans were sufficiently assimilated, year to the hometown’s Festa Italiana to eat a almost said something inappropriate about the function of both the comare and the padrone grilled Italian sausage sandwich, affix a small Kingfish in front of the padrona that displaced became less and less a necessity to the com- ex-voto to the patron saint, and perhaps don him. Today, with the passing of the padrone munity, and these two local dignitaries slowly a red, green, and white beret all serve to affirm and comare from the active life of the com- faded from existence. The veneration of the identity. It may be that these affirmations— munity—and the transformation of patronal saints and belief in the efficacy of their in- slyly acknowledged, boldly voiced, or dramati- festivals into Italian street fairs—the notion of tercession became less a pressing concern, as cally enacted—are today the central rhetorical

8 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore strategies for establishing and communicating What It Means to Be Italian mants didn’t generally ask me to avoid identify- Italian American identity. American Today ing them, a few—especially older folks whom Today, the process of evaluating the Italian If Italian American identity has any endur- I interviewed about the evil eye—did, and as American experience—its past, its present, ing validity—which, of course, I believe it most of my fieldwork occurred in small towns and its future—in essence what it means to does—it has to be sought out where it actu- and even smaller communities, it seemed fair to be Italian in America today and tomorrow, ally exists, and not simply in the cultivation protect their identities. At times, a parish priest lies ahead of us. Is that experience, like that of nostalgic reminiscences of where it once might disapprove of my informants’ activity; of other immigrant groups, more or less over was. Where it exists, it seems to me, is in the other informants may not wish to risk being once the process of assimilation is close to rhetorical strategies that continue to center thought of as “superstitious.” My fieldwork complete, and the Little Italies (or Chinatowns Italian Americans for themselves, as well as was predominately completed in western New or Little Persias) are abandoned, or nearly so, for those outside the cultural confines of the York. It began in 1983 and continues to this in favor of suburban tracts? Is the subject Italian American household, community, or day. The majority of my accounts arise from in- matter for historians alone? Is the Italian diasporic enclave. terview notes, augmented by audio transcripts. American experience today based mainly The final chapters of Italian American his- on nostalgia for our Italian grandparents or tory and culture are yet to be written. What Abraham, Nicolas and Maria Torok. 1986. dwindling communities? Or will being Italian will have to be added or perhaps even deleted The Wolf Man’s Magic Word: A Cryptonymy. in America continue to be a significant factor is difficult to predict. What Italian American Theory and History of Literature, Volume into the future? identity and indeed ethnic identity means in 37. (Nicholas Rand, Translator). Minneapo- To suggest that the old Little Italies are as America—given the election of the first Afri- lis: University of Minnesota Press. vibrant as ever is a fallacy. People left them in can American president, an Italian American Buonanno, Michael. 1984. Becoming White: droves, often associating them with a way of woman quite recently two heartbeats away Notes on an Italian American Explanation life that was characterized by intense family from that presidency, and a population in of Evil Eye. New York Folklore 10(1–2):39–53. interaction, but also economic hardship and which former minorities are well on their way Danesi, Marcel. 2004. A Basic Course in An- a lack of upward mobility. Today, many—if to becoming majorities—is hard to imagine. thropological Linguistics. Toronto: Canadian not most—of us are conversant with or But I believe it will be the ongoing rhetorical Scholars’ Press Inc. even products of other communities with flourishes of American society that will offer Engel, William E. 1992. Cities and Stones: Mon- very different realities than those in which a significant key to these questions because, taigne’s Patrimony. Montaigne Studies: An we grew up. But we still get a charge out of in the final analysis, what rhetoric does is give Interdisciplinary Forum (Philippe Desan, encountering others who have experienced voice to inchoate identity and make it sing. editor). Hestia Press: Volume IV. 180–198. what was in our childhood the oddity of It is rhetoric that allows Celie in Alice Joyce, James. 1916. A Portrait of the Artist as a Italian American culture and what became Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple to step Young Man. New York: B.W. Huebsch. with time a distinguishing factor of our own out into creation and proclaim: “I’m pore, I’m Mormino, Gary R., and George E. Pozzetta. personal history and identity. black, I may be ugly. . . . But I’m here” (205). 1990. The Immigrant World of Ybor City. Italians Let me return for a moment to the joke It is rhetoric that allows Stephen Dedalus in and Their Latin Neighbors in Tampa, 1885–1985. about George Washington crossing the James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Champaign: University of Illinois Press. Delaware and remarking, “Che cazzu freddu,” Man to proclaim: “Welcome, O life! I go to US Census Bureau. 2008. The Statistical Ab- and the guy behind him—gloomy, shivering, encounter for the millionth time the reality stract of the United States. wrapped in his mantle against the blustering of experience and to forge in the smithy of Walker, Alice. 1982. The Color Purple. New York: cold—perking up his ears and exclaiming, my soul the uncreated conscience of my race” Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. “Ma, tu sei italiano!” The joke should be that (1916, 299). And it is rhetoric that allows the the icon of American exceptionalism, George Italian American both to formulate and un- Washington, could cut such a brutta figura derstand the beauty of a simple nickname like Michael Buonanno is professor of English (poor figure), but instead, it’s that Italians are and anthropology at the State College of Moglie di Bagnarol or to see the humor (when Florida–Manatee/Sarasota. His fieldwork always—incessantly, it sometimes seems— perhaps nobody outside the community does) in Sicily and his own Italian American trying to discover the other Italians in the in the simple phrase “Ma, tu sei italiano!” when community in western New York has led to publications in the Journal of crowd. Thus, it seems to me, this joke itself applied to the father of the country. American Folklore, New York Folklore, participates in the rhetoric of affirmation. It’s and The World Observed: Reflections on the Fieldwork Process (University of a way of asserting that, yes, we too participate Sources Illinois Press). He team teaches an online in the pageant of American history, but in our Author’s note: I have changed most personal course in the Italian American experience with his sister, Laurie Buonanno, at own particular, shared, and (from an outsider’s names and omitted place names in my field Buffalo State College and is currently perspective) perhaps even peculiar way. notes and in this article. Although my infor- coauthoring a text based on that course.

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 9 From the Killing Fields: Art and Healing in Asian America BY ANDREA LOUIE

What I remember most is that when the red candles melted into the asphalt parking lot, they looked like pools of blood. I was 18 years old—a Chinese girl who had grown up on the fringes of Amish coun- try in Ohio—when I entered Kent State as a freshman in journalism. Our classes took place in Taylor Hall, the building around which an anti-Vietnam war protest had taken place just over a decade before. On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into the crowd, killing

four and wounding nine, including students, Children of Bassac is a performance troupe of teenagers who study folk and classical in a parking lot. Every year the lot is closed dance with Master Artist Ieng Sithul, a popular performing artist who survived the for an all-night candlelight vigil. In the morn- genocide. Photo by Long Chean. Courtesy of Season of Cambodia. ing, the pooled wax evokes the killing that took place there and in Asia, an image that camp, Chorn met the Rev. Peter Pond, who presentation, but it’s just as critical to con- still powerfully resonates for me. eventually took him to New Hampshire, nect with the local community, especially *** adopting him and 15 other Cambodian Cambodian Americans,” said Prim. What incited that protest was President children. The Asian American Arts Alliance (a4), a Nixon’s April 30 announcement of incur- Ten years ago, Chorn-Pond founded nonprofit organization that has supported sions into Cambodia. For many Americans, Cambodia Living Arts, a Phnom Penh-based Asian American artists and arts groups for Cambodia meant only a far away jungle nonprofit organization dedicated to reviving 30 years, will connect these new master where too many soldiers were dying, a place traditional art forms and inspiring contem- artists from Southeast Asia with the local where we shouldn’t have been at all. Cam- porary artistic expression. The organization grassroots arts community, many of whom bodia was suffering its own civil war from also supports the music teachers who helped are immigrants and refugees as well. Linking 1970–75, and Nixon feared Communist Chorn-Pond survive the horrors of the young Cambodians with others with a his- expansion there. From 1975–79, the country Khmer Rouge, who killed an estimated 90 tory of violent conflict (such as Vietnamese suffered brutally under the maniacal Pol Pot percent of Cambodia’s performing artists. Americans and the Jewish community) is and his Khmer Rouge regime, with “Killing “It’s important for us to revive and pre- exciting and filled with promise. Fields” across the country; as many as 2.5 serve the cultural heritage of Cambodia, *** million died. which lost so many of its cultural masters For many of us who graduated from Kent Among the survivors was Arn Chorn. during the Killing Fields and in the devas- State, our college experience is inextricable Born into an illustrious musical family, he tating economic decades afterwards,” said from the shootings of May 1970. Today, it was nine when Pol Pot came to power. Phloeun Prim, executive director of Cam- is a privilege to be among those who, along Chorn and hundreds of other children were bodia Living Arts. “It’s also important for us with the Season of Cambodia, are work- sent to a Buddhist temple; a master musician to heal and to move forward, inspiring young ing to promote understanding and healing trained him and four others to play the flute people to make new and modern work.” through the arts. and the khim, traditional Cambodian dulci- The organization is planning the “Season mer. Perversely, the children had to perform of Cambodia” arts festival in spring 2013 lullabies for their captors. in New York. Partnering with such institu- Andrea Louie is the Chorn survived by showing no emotion tions as the Brooklyn Academy of Music, executive director of the Asian American NURORASIAN: ASIAN AMERICAN ARTS IN NEW YORK IN NEW ARTS AMERICAN ASIAN NURORASIAN: and repressing the horrors that he witnessed. Film Society of Lincoln Center, and Asia Arts Alliance (a4) He eventually escaped through the jungle Society, the festival will feature an impressive and a writer. into Thailand, stricken with cerebral malaria spectrum of the traditional arts. and weighing only 60 pounds. In a refugee “It’s important to have high-level cultural

10 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Dialogues with Time

BY ROMAN TUROVSKY-SAVCHUK

Murmur, murmur, murmur in the forest, the place where I was growing up. Their overseas lutenists—total strangers at that— The fog is covering the fields, sense of history intoxicated me, inexorably, without a return address or explanation. The fog is covering the fields, the fields. forever, even though I was unaware of it The music was clearly in a baroque style, A mother is sending her son away: at the time. It manifested itself much later but not always in character, being grim and Go, my son, go away from me. in my music. morose as would have befitted the music of I naturally studied painting from an early an entirely different era. At the age of seventeen I was transplanted age, and it would always remain my main Then I lost track of all this for more from my birthplace of Kyiv, Ukraine, to calling. Inexplicably, I remained indifferent than five years. Eventually the rumors New York. A dreamy European city in to music, despite being surrounded by of mysterious and interesting lute music front of my eyes was replaced by New it, until the age of fourteen, when I had trickled back to me, so armed with a York, with all its severity of lines and colors, an epiphany upon hearing “Trauermusik PC and the internet, I produced some unforgiving yet intriguing. I’ve painted since Beim Tode Siegfrieds” in Wagner’s paramusicological mythology, explaining my childhood, learning visual precision and Götterdämmerung. It opened the floodgate of the range of styles from 1680 to 1840 with honesty, developing a firm faith in harmony, music. I went on to study painting and music four generations of purported composers, beauty, and perfection. My new reality was after coming to New York. I studied lute all from the same family. This caper later rough and fearsome. And I knew that I was with Patrick O’Brien, who also taught me resulted in a few musicological scandals, being transformed. My new reality brought the basics of harmony and counterpoint. which gave me some professional repute new simplicity and roughness into my work. I began composing for myself during as a competent “baroque” composer I painted nudes, craving love, music, and the 1990s, concentrating on the baroque and a modicum of respect from lutenist spiritual fulfillment. All of these eventually idiom and my chosen instrument, the colleagues, while causing considerable came, bearing happiness for the émigré/ baroque lute. This instrument doesn’t irritation for the few detractors, who were exile/refugee, transforming him into an tolerate gratuitous dissonance, and my oblivious to the literary mystification/hoax American: compositions naturally took on the style culture prevalent in Europe since the late and character of the baroque era. eighteenth century. Come back, my son, come back to Descartes once said that when he was After many flame wars and a few op-ed me, my boy, a seminarian, he was told by one of his accusations of Ossianic immorality—some So I would wash your head. professors that if one gets a really good accusers were oblivious of the quotations Mother, my head could be washed by rains, idea, it must be immediately ascribed to a from Beethoven, Reger, and Giazotto that And my hair shall be combed by feral long dead authority. Mythopoeia ran in my I’d used in a baroque context—I earned winds. family, so I decided on a whim to invent some great friends for whom music’s quality a mysterious and previously unknown is paramount to its pedigree. Not least of There has always been music in my historical figure to which I would ascribe these are Luca Pianca, the founder of Il family. My father is an artist-painter, but my compositions as genuine baroque Giardino Armonico, who premiered my he was also a fine classical baritone in his music, and miraculously, they were taken pieces in his concerts at several international younger days. Our house was always full of as such. In the mid-1990s, I wrote out festivals, and American lutenist Robert interesting guests, of all kinds of arts. The some pieces in a nice baroque hand, Barto, who is featured in several of my grown-ups were infinitely more interesting signed them “Sautscheck,” the German video installations. than children of my own age. The former transmogrification of the second half T h e n c a m e o t h e r m o m e n t o u s were bearers of the historical weight of of my surname, and sent them to some developments. One was the growth of the

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 11 Roman Turovsky-Savchuk playing his lute. Photo by Luba Roitman.

internet, which gave me a way to connect Ukrainian music was a true epiphany, from decidedly unbeautiful universe. In my case, with many colleagues worldwide, and which I—as a displaced individual—gained these means were the auditory memories another my renewed interest in Ukrainian a sense of total rootedness in that Old of my early childhood, specifically the musical culture in general, and its baroque World, paradoxically in harmony with my memories of polyphonic laments sung by period in particular. Ukrainian folk music American identity built in the tribulations girls while crossing the river in the evening is unique in many respects. The vast of immigration. to milk the cows grazing on the other side. majority of it is in the minor keys. Even My familiarity with existential angst was In 2000, I undertook some research the happy music is more often than not counterbalanced with happiness found into the history of Torban, the Ukrainian still minor, only at a faster tempo. It is also in cultural memory, the memory of old variety of the lute. The literature for probably the best documented of all folk songs amid new forms: bridges, highways, this instrument did not survive, as it music, with many compendia collected and skyscrapers of the New World. It was largely an oral culture, and so I since the eighteenth century. Ukrainian later found expression in several video began to use Ukrainian melodies in my folk music had a period of popularity in installations for which I also composed compositions as reconstructions of this Western Europe around 1800, and it left and produced the soundtracks. These lost musical microcosmos. In time I its mark on some composers, not the installations were built around a clear began to experiment with progressively least Beethoven. The literary qualities of central principle, according to which each earlier musical styles—early Renaissance its texts are astounding, their imagery sequence represented an increment in the and late medieval—in combination with profound. Its texts are often hair-raisingly voyage through forbidding space, where those Ukrainian folk melodies that were violent, as well as breathtakingly lyrical. the only available means to remain afloat archaic in character and could easily be This music is powerful. I didn’t choose were certain personal cultural memories, manipulated using the compositional it: it chose me. This reconnection with remnants, or fragments of beauty in the techniques of the fifteenth and sixteenth

12 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore centuries. The milkmaids’ choirs of my The most rewarding aspect of it all has early memories were a perfect match to been the totally unexpected appreciation Ukrainian diminutions and variation cycles for lute of Ukrainian music by musicians who had Ethnomusicological in the style of Joan Ambrosio Dalza, no familiarity with Ukrainian culture. I was Online Resources Francesco da Milano, or John Dowland. equally surprised by the sensitivity with This project has been nearly ten years in the which they interpreted this material. http://torban.org/pisni/ making and now numbers more than five All of these projects remain works in hundred pieces. I initially called these pieces progress, and in the meantime, I have put http://gomin.uazone.net/ “Cantiones Sarmaticae,” which were later all of my music online for lutenists’ free http://proridne.com/ augmented with “Cantiones Ruthenicae” use. The projects involving Ukrainian and “Cantiones Sarmatoruthenicae,” “Balli Renaissance lute may be found at http:// http://pisni.org.ua/ Ruteni” and “Balli Sarmatici,” in a nod to www.torban.org/mikrokosmos.html and the http://www.youtube.com/user/kkceh Sarmatism, a cultural movement in the baroque lute project at http://www.torban. Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth in the org/torban4c.html. http://www.youtube.com/user/mitka48 sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. In 2003, I made the acquaintance Each of these cycles was progressively of Julian Kytasty, the finest traditional more adventurous and complex, so I Ukrainian epic singer and kobzar-bandurist for my own use. They also inspired several later gave them the collective title of in the West. We became good friends, and variation sets on Ukrainian melodies in “Mikrokosmos,” in an insolent lutenistic he later became my teacher. He eventually baroque and early classical styles. challenge to Béla Bartók’s homonymous asked me to accompany him in his projects After the period of fakeloric music keyboard cycle. In the process of centered on the baroque period and artificially imposed on Ukraine during the composition, I discovered not only multiple occasionally to sing in them. We have had Soviet era, there is now a real revival of structural similarities between Ukrainian unusual concepts for our concert programs, the epic tradition in Ukraine, with kobzar dance melodies and Renaissance dances drawing from material rarely touched guilds established in Kyiv and Kharkiv and from Western Europe, but also evidence nowadays, such as penitential chants and many talented young musicians studying not that some late Renaissance melodies psalms and songs about violent historical only performance, but also lutherie. There survived in Ukrainian folk music. I was events, evil and treachery, marital and erotic is also a revival afoot of the traditional folk also struck with the medieval sound of the mayhem, and the miseries of war in a land polyphony, and there are several excellent folk polyphony of the Polissya region of that was split between two empires (Russian choirs specializing in that repertoire— Ukraine, from which my family came. These and Austro-Hungarian), whose inhabitants notably Bozhychi, Hurtopravtsi, Drevo, observations became inspirations, and the were forced to kill each other senselessly by Strila, and Korali—as well as ensembles that music flowed—in strict style, but with callow foreign royalty. specialize in Ukrainian early music. All of unusual cadences and forbidden intervals Julian and I received a folk arts these groups face many difficulties in the of the land. Such were my Dialogues with apprenticeship grant in 2008 from the cultural wars stemming from three centuries Time. New York State Council on the Arts, which of forced Russification of Ukraine, as well This music has gradually earned respect enabled us to work together for two years as hostility from the commercial media from lute players, and many colleagues who on the traditional epic style and repertoire, and music establishments and the large were total strangers to me, connected only which by then had become one of my main Russian minority, which still harbors anti- by the internet, began to perform these interests. Through Julian, I also met Nina Ukrainian sentiments. But the groups active pieces, record them, and eventually film Matvienko and Mariana Sadovska, two in authentic folk music are multiplying, and them for YouTube. Among these musicians great Ukrainian folk singers of our time. there are grounds for cautious optimism I should mention Robert Barto, Luca I also began many virtual friendships with that this music will live on. Pianca, Rob MacKillop, Christopher Wilke, great folk singers, notably with Natalya Ernst Stolz, Daniel Shoskes, Stuart Walsh, Polovinka and Volodymyr Kushpet. In Jindřich Macek, and Trond Bengtson. the spring of 2009, I undertook a journey Roman Turovsky-Savchuk is an American lutenist, composer, and painter. Born in Most of them I have not met in person to to Kyiv, after a thirty-year absence. There Ukraine, he has lived in New York City date. I have also had several collaborative I had good fortune of meeting Taras since 1979. His work is informed by both the American reality and Ukrainian cul- electroacoustic projects with Dutch avant- Kompanichenko and Eduard Drach, the tural memory. He is currently completing garde composer, lutenist, and carillonist finest carriers of the epic singer-kobzar a series of video installations, as well as Hans Kockelmans, who has written a tradition in Ukraine, and was able to adapt radio broadcasts of his music for Dutch radio. Examples of his work can be seen number of contreparties to my scores. some of their repertoire to the baroque lute on his web site, http://turovsky.org.

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 13 Why I Love the PO! BY Varick A. Chittenden

When I was a boy of 10 or so in the 1950s, or of housewives coming to mail letters to not only make trips to the post office more a daily trip to our little post office was part of daughters who had moved away with their inconvenient but more unlikely.

state many townspeople’s routine. The mail would young families. A favorite story among the Gathering at the post office was what I

p come in around 9:30 in the morning, so on loungers in the store was of one man who would now call “social networking.” And, school vacations or Saturdays, I’d try to get would send an order out in the morning mail it was face-to-face and nearly instant. You u there early, in case something really special only to come back that afternoon to see if could learn about whose barn had burned would come. Maybe it was a letter from his order had arrived. Then there was a store or the twins born to a neighbor’s daughter cousins in Iowa, a seed catalog in February, customer who, thinking he would save lots of in the night before, about who needed help or a copy of Boy’s Life...to me! But I was not money, ordered 25 pounds of oleomargarine with their haying or where to go to buy seed alone. By the time the letters, magazines, from a mail-order house. When it came, he potatoes. You could plan for a church supper newspapers, and ads were sorted into the 50 was too embarrassed to come pick it up, and it or start a flower fund for a deceased friend. or so boxes, there might be a dozen people melted in the post office, revealing his secret. If these institutions go, that kind of intimate huddled together in the “lobby.” Actually, Since its first years, for many, the post office exchange will be missed. that’s a stretch. Our post office in those days has been much more than a place to purchase Finally, the loss of a post office will be one was a room at the east end of Nona Weller’s stamps or money orders or send a package. more blow to small towners’ pride of place. house. Nona was postmistress for nearly 20 It’s been a gathering place and a social center As populations have dwindled, the vitality years. In those days, another load of mail in lots of communities, especially in rural of these towns has suffered. Schools have would arrive around 2:00 p.m., and the scene America. That’s why there’s been such hue centralized and closed; churches have merged would be repeated. and cry in recent months about the Postal and closed; retail shops and tradesmen have The US Post Office is an independent Service’s cost-cutting decision to close as given up and closed. Main Streets are boarded agency of the federal government responsible many as 2,000 post offices, with thousands of up, and people travel great distances to work for providing postal service in the United others under review for their viability. Small and shop. With all these changes has come a States. It is one of the few government agen- town newspapers everywhere—and even the loss of identity. Zip codes, area codes, user cies explicitly authorized by the US Constitu- New York Times and Wall Street Journal—have names, and passwords supplant our connec- tion. Now known as the US Postal Service, been following the story closely. In fact, given tions to real places. Without a post office and it traces its roots to 1775 during the Second the current economic climate, we can under- a postmark, we are like everybody else. Continental Congress, when Benjamin Frank- stand the Postal Service’s dilemma: costs have My hometown post office closed in 1989, lin was appointed the first postmaster general. skyrocketed, and income has tanked. We’re well before the current round in play. When it Since then, nearly every community—and told that there’s been a 20 percent decrease did, my feisty mother and some of her neigh- urban neighborhood—in the country has in first class mail volume alone in the last bors refused to submit so easily. Realizing had a post office to serve local businesses and five years. To solve their problem, they also that the Postal Service relied mostly on zip households. The Postal Service reports that propose to fire employees, eliminate services, codes for delivering the mail—theirs had been there are about 34,000 such brick-and-mortar and raise rates. 12940—they continued to write “Hopkinton, offices nationwide. For rural communities all over the country, NY,” now with “12965” on their letters. That’s For me, stories of the Hopkinton post however, the loss of their post office would because their mail now came to the post of- office are still vivid. The first postmaster be significant. It’s not just about nostalgia. fice a few miles away and would be delivered in town was Thaddeus Laughlin, a pioneer While rural households have long had mail by a rural letter carrier anyway. A small act of tavern keeper who began his duties in 1808, delivery—RFD (Rural Free Delivery) began rebellion is good for the soul. That’s what we only six years after the town was founded. in some places as early as 1896—the post may have to resort to now. From 1821 to 1975, my forebears ran a gen- office still provides some necessary services eral store that included the post office in a not met elsewhere. It’s true that more people separate room. My great-great grandfather, today rely on FedEx and UPS for packages great-grandfather, and great uncle were all and use e-mail for messages. But there are Varick A. Chittenden is professor emeritus postmasters; my grandfather, J. H. Chitten- vast parts of America where courier service of humanities at the den, was postmaster from 1898 to 1930. I and broadband don’t, and most likely won’t, State University of New York in Canton and the remember tales about men who would walk exist. In addition, for the disproportionately TAUNY Center project two or three miles to town in subzero weather aging population in rural communities, the director for Traditional Arts in Upstate New to pick up their veteran’s pension checks costs and conditions of traveling farther will York. Photo: Martha Cooper

14 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Poetry on the Porch BY STEVE ZEITLIN

My family and I love August in New for instance, Amanda’s sister Sarah reads my grandparents is one of my models York. Parking is easy, and we even get a “The Minuet” by Mary Mapes Dodge in for ‘home.’” seat on the subways. But the first week honor of her mother: “Grandma told me In The Second Life of Art, Italian poet of August every summer, we, too, flee all about it / Told me so I couldn’t doubt it Eugenio Montale writes about how the the sirens and horns, abandoning the / How she danced / my Grandma danced journey of art is an “obscure pilgrimage line, which we were able to recapture thanks to the internet, available even at the beach in recent cacophonous clatter of City Lore’s First / Long ago.” She reads that poem every through the conscience and memory of years. “Ah, that’s it! ‘He can take in his beak / Food enough for a week / But I’m damned if I see Street and First Avenue offices for a week year, because it reminds us all of a story men…” He suggests that music, painting, at the beach in Garden City, South Caro- howthat the Frances, helican.’” now 94, loves to tell of how and poetry exercise their powers outside lina. My wife and fellow folklorist Amanda she onceBut the jumped poems that upwaft ononto athe table sea air thatat eveningthe thecarry momentwith them not of only creation, the finely when they free

Dargan’s parents rent the house, and all wroughtJunior wordsSenior of their ball creators, and danced but the family to Cab stories Cal and- perthemselvessonalities and ethosfrom of “that the family particular situation of her sisters and our nieces and nephews loway’s 1931 hit “Minnie the Moocher.” of life which made them possible.” It is gathering. Each year, for instance, Amanda’s sister Sarah reads “The Minuet” by Mary Mapes pile in, spending afternoons and evenings We could have guessed what poem in precisely those moments when the on the screened-in porch overlooking the Dodgewould in honorcome of next.her mother Lucas,: “Grandma a forester told me alland about itpoem / Told me is so appreciated I couldn't doubt itin / situations, and sand dunes, the beach, and sea. Howenvironmentalist, she danced / my Grandma never danced misses / Long a ago.”chance She readsfor that reasons poem every the year, poet bec couldause it not even have Among our traditions is an evening remindsto read us allShelley’s of a story that “The Frances, Cloud”: now 94, loves“I amto tell ofimagined, how she once that jumpe thed up “circle on a table of understand- spent reading poems on the porch, a atthe the daughterJunior Senior of ball Earth and danced and to Water, Cab Calloway’s / And 1931 ing”hit “Minnie closes the andMoocher.” “art become[s] one with tradition Lucas Dargan, Amanda’s dad, the nursling of the Sky; I pass through life….” We could have guessed what poem would come next. Lucas, a forester and eagerly anticipates, with his at-the-ready the pores, of the ocean and shores; / I The poems on the porch were com- 101 Favorite Poems, published in 1929. But environmentalist,change, but Inev cannoter misses die. a chance . .” to read Then Shelley’s he “Theposed Cloud”: at “Idifferent am the daughter points of in human history, we all bring a few poems down to the Earthadds and each Water, year, / And “I the just nursling think of the it’s Sky; amazing I pass through but the aspores part, of theof oceantheir and “obscure shores; pilgrimage,” beach to read, and Aidan Powers, now 10 /that I change, a poet but I cannotcould die. capture . .” Then the he addshydrologic each year, “I justthey think sojourned it’s amazing forthat aa poet few moments on a years old, comes equipped with a full set couldcycle capture so well.” the hydrologic cycle so well.” porch in Garden City. Here they became of Shel Silverstein’s ingenious poems from Then my nephew Patton Adams, who part of the way family members share Then my nephew Patton Adams, who lived and worked in Beijing and speaks Chinese, books like Falling Up. (One of the Silver- lived and worked in Beijing and speaks what they love with one another, and, in stein lines delivered on poetry night has recitesChinese, a poem recites by Li Po, a “Quietpoem Night by LiThoughts,” Po, “Quiet among thethe most process,quoted poems share of the Tangsomething of them- even become a kind of family expression: dynasty.Night Thoughts,” among the most quoted selves (since, in some sense, you are what

“We can be friends forever,” I joke with poems of the Tang dynasty. you love).

Aidan. “There’s really nothing to it. I tell   The evening wouldn’t be complete you what to do, and you do it!”) without my daughter Eliza reciting John


 Masterpieces and ditties are read side Masefield’s “Sea Fever” from memory:  by side. Poems from the English Roman- “And all I ask is a merry yarn from a laugh- 鄉 tics like Shelley, Keats, Wordsworth, and  ing fellow-rover, / And quiet sleep and a Byron are read side by side with cowboy Before my bed sweet dream when the long trick’s over.” poetry and nonsense verses. One family there is bright moonlight “Oh my God—look at that beautiful story reminded Lucas of an old limerick So that it seems sky,” Amanda says. We look up to see that he mostly recalled: “A wonderful bird Like frost on the ground: the moon casting its reflection on the d ownstate is the pelican / His bill holds more than Lifting my head water. Then Amanda’s sister tells us that his belly can….” Then Lucas forgot a line, I watch the bright moon, supper is on the table, and the poetry is which we were able to recapture thanks to Lowering my head put to bed. the internet, available even at the beach in I dream that I’m home. recent years. “Ah, that’s it! ‘He can take in his beak / Food enough for a week / But “I thought it would be appropriate for I’m damned if I see how the helican.’” poetry night at the beach,” Patton later Steve Zeitlin is founding director of City Lore. But the poems that waft onto the sea explained in an e-mail, “because the moon Thanks to Amanda air that evening carry with them not only was shining on the water; because of the Dargan for her help with this essay. the finely wrought words of their creators, extreme contrast between a frosty tundra but the family stories and personalities and and Garden City in August; and because ethos of the family gathering. Each year, being at the beach in the summer with

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 15 Yuri Yunakov: 2011 National Heritage Fellow

BY PETE RUSHEFSKY AND ETHEL RAIM

he Center for Traditional Music and owned company Haskovo-BT a large pro- Albert-system clarinet, and Yuri’s uncles on T Dance (CTMD) has been pleased to cessor and exporter of tobacco and ciga- accordion and duvale, large double-headed work closely for many years with pioneer- rettes. Tobacco factories were an important drums (known as tapans in other parts of ing Bulgarian Romani saxophonist Yuri employer of the residents of the Haskovo the Balkans). Depending on the occasion, Yunakov. Yuri is a featured performer in our mahala, or Romani quarter. Most of the the ensemble might also feature brass instru- Touring Artists program and a major innova- musicians of Haskovo were employed by ments such as trumpets and trombones. The tor, whose music is rooted in the traditions the tobacco factory and supplemented their group was augmented from time to time by of the cosmopolitan Thracian hinterlands incomes through wedding performances on Armenian and Jewish musicians: in particu- of Istanbul. In June 2011, the National En- the weekends. lar, Yuri remembers Armenian oud players. dowment for the Arts bestowed upon Yuri The Yunakov family is well known The ensemble performed a mix of Roma the prestigious National Heritage Fellow- through the region for their musicianship. and Turkish repertoire, mainly at Roma wed- ship, the nation’s highest honor for lifetime Yuri’s grandfather, “Kemence” Ali Yunakov, dings—they were rarely hired for Bulgarian achievement in folk and traditional arts. was a renowned violinist and singer from affairs—and made occasional appearances In the spring of 2009, we sat down with Sliven, Bulgaria. (In Turkish tradition, mas- on Turkish-language radio. Yuri to learn more about his musical heritage ter musicians are given an honorific name Traditionally, a Roma wedding in Thrace and central role in the development of the referring to their instrument—in this case spanned much of a week. The events started electrifying genre known as Bulgarian wed- kemence, the Turkish word for violin.) Yuri’s on the Tuesday before the nuptials, with ding music. This profile of Yuri is based on paternal grandmother Aishe was from the the bride performing a “show-and-tell” of what was shared in that exchange. Special border region of Greece and Bulgaria. the dowry her bridegroom was to receive. thanks to Cathie Springer for translating Born in the great Mediterranean port The next day, the women would gather for during our meeting. city of Izmir, known as Smyrna prior to a ritual bath of the bride at a local hamam the Greco-Turkish population exchange (Turkish bath). Two bands would be hired A Musical Dynasty in Thrace of 1922, Yuri’s maternal grandfather Ismail by the bride’s father on the Saturday of the Of Turkish Roma (Gypsy) descent, Yuri was a kasap (butcher), quite a respectable wedding—one would play for the women, was born with the name Hussein Yunakov livelihood in Haskovo. Yuri noted that his the other for men (larger, enterprising en- in 1958 in Haskovo, a city in the Thracian grandfather purchased the animals he butch- sembles could provide musicians for both region of southeastern Bulgaria. For centu- ered and then sold them, distinguishing him parties). There was also a place for music ries Thrace has been a rich melting pot of from less prosperous kasaps who were paid provided by zurna (a double-reed wind culture—a cosmopolitan borderland filled to slaughter but never profited from buying instrument) accompanied by duval, used to with Turks, Bulgars, Macedonians, Greeks, and selling the animals. Ismail’s wife, Yuri’s commemorate the bride’s departure from Roma, Sephardic Jews, Armenians, Alba- grandmother, died rather early. her family’s household. On the Monday after nians and others. In his popular ensemble, Kemence Ali the nuptials, the women would gather at the Cigarette production remains a major was backed by Yuri’s father, “Dancho” house of the bride to drink, talk, and sing. industry of Haskovo, with the government- (whose name was also Hussein), on a B-flat Men and women would dance separately.

16 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Bulgarian Romani saxophonist Yuri Yunakov, performing at Lincoln Center. Photograph by Richard Conde. Courtesy of Center for Traditional Music and Dance Archive.

A variety of dances were performed: line women dining and dancing together. The was common throughout Eastern Europe, choreographies such as pravo horo, kasapiko variety of dances performed diminished, larger national and regional folk orchestras horo (butcher’s dance), elenino horo (Greek as well: among line dances, only pravo horo were later assembled across Bulgaria (includ- dance), paidushko, and what Yuri called the and kasapiko horo were now commonly per- ing Philip Koutev’s State Ensemble for Folk “Gypsy 9/8” slow dance, as well as cocek formed at weddings. Songs and Dances) that employed Western circle dances. Musicians would also be ex- arrangements of folk music. pected to provide music to entertain guests Yuri’s Musical Development Yuri recalls Angelov as a musical visionary at the banquet table, drawing on a repertoire When Yuri was eight, he joined a bitov who attracted many young people to Bulgar- that included Turkish classical forms, such ensemble being organized at the local zariya ian folk music. He came to Yuri’s school and as peşrev and, less frequently, saz semai. (cultural center) by Mitko Angelov. Bitov mu- went from class to class recruiting young Over time, Dancho took command of his sic was removed from the typical music of musicians. When Yuri expressed interest in father’s ensemble and introduced changes Thrace, where it was rare to see instruments kaval, Angelov provided one there on the in instrumentation and repertoire. Brass such as gadulka (lap fiddle), gaida (bagpipe), spot, and within two hours, Yuri was able instruments were eliminated, and a drum kit tambura (lute), and kaval (end-blown flute). to play music (he had already learned some and electric bass were introduced. (Despite While these instruments were traditionally Bulgarian music from his father on clarinet). increasing use of a kit drum, young Yuri got played by solo instrumentalists, in the 1940s, Yuri was the only Roma in the ensemble; his start playing tapan in the ensemble.) Elec- mixed-instrument bitov ensembles began aside from a couple of young Turkish tronic amplification was another innovation. performing frequently on Bulgarian radio colleagues, the group was all of Bulgarian Weddings became two-day affairs, and the and recordings, employing standardized ethnicity. Over one hundred youth joined wedding party a mixed group, with men and pitch and virtuosic performance styles. As the ensemble, which also featured a dance

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 17 group and performed throughout Haskovo. Dancho died prematurely, when Yuri was Yuri’s time with Milev had a big impact Performing with the zariya ensemble during only seventeen. on his career. Milev encouraged Yuri to fo- the week, Yuri continued to play weddings Through his work with Ahmed, Yuri’s cus on saxophone, rather than clarinet, and with his father’s ensemble on the weekends. reputation soon grew among leading Yuri worked with Milev to create a nuanced He remained with the zariya ensemble for Romani musicians working to create a and virtuosic technique for the saxophone four or five years. During this time, Yuri new style that the University of Oregon’s that complemented the other major melody also initiated a short but successful foray Carol Silverman describes as emphasizing instruments, clarinet and accordion. Yuri into professional boxing that brought him “virtuoso technique, improvisation, fast credits accordionist Neshko Neshev’s father several national titles. speeds, daring key changes, and eclectic as the first wedding music saxophonist he Eventually, Yuri’s older brother Ahmed musical sources such as jazz, rock, Turkish, knew of, but according to Silverman, it was took over leadership of the ensemble. and Indian musics, as well as Balkan village Yuri himself who “created the saxophone’s With Dancho moving over to saxophone, music.” Yuri attracted the attention of accor- role in this style.” the new band—named Aida after a large dion virtuoso Ivan Milev from the town of While for many years, Bulgaria’s Com- local hotel—featured Ahmed and Yuri on Mladost. Milev convinced Yuri and Ahmed munist government tried to suppress the Boehm-system clarinets, as well as electric to join his band. They played with Milev for growing popularity of Roma wedding guitar, bass guitar, two accordions, drums, a number of years before returning to their music, the government eventually relented and two male singers. Aida performed a mix own family ensemble. Like Yuri, Milev has and sanctioned a festival dedicated to the of Bulgarian, Greek, Turkish, and Roma mu- since immigrated to the United States and genre in Stambolova. Even as it recognized sic. Although he was happy to be relieved of is very active in New York’s Balkan music a national craze that had its roots in Turkish the responsibility of managing the ensemble, scene. and Roma wedding music, the totalitarian

Yuri Yunakov at Lincoln Center. Photograph by Richard Conde. Courtesy of Center for Traditional Music and Dance Archive.

18 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore government simultaneously actively cen- in England, Papasov’s band was brought proaches to support his family. He recently sored unsanctioned forms of the music. to the United States for the first time to opened up a livery company in New Jersey. perform for the Queens Ethnic Music and He also participates in CTMD’s Touring Trakija and Beyond Dance Festival organized by the Center for Artists program, which creates performance After a strong showing in his first Stam- Traditional Music and Dance (then known opportunities for leading New York-based bolova festival, Yuri was approached by as the Ethnic Folk Arts Center) at Bohemian traditional artists at major venues across the clarinetist Ivo Papasov, the leading wed- Hall in Queens. This was only the ensemble’s country. ding musician in the country, to join his second performance outside of Bulgaria, band Trakija. He agreed only reluctantly, following a concert in London. During Discography as he feared upsetting his relationship with the American visit, the Papasov ensemble Recordings with Ivo Papasov Ahmed. Through his performances with performed on David Sanborn’s national TV Orpheus Ascending (Hannibal/Rykodisc) Trakija, beginning in 1983, Yuri became program, Night Music. A leading jazz saxo- Balkanology (Hannibal/Rykodisc) famous throughout Bulgaria, performing phonist himself, Sanborn was so struck by Together Again: Legends of Bulgarian Wedding frequently on radio and TV and for wed- Yuri’s playing and horrified by the condition Music (Traditional Crossroads) dings attracting thousands of attendees. As of his instrument that he presented Yuri Silverman puts it, “In the 1980s, Yunakov with a new saxophone. Recordings by the Yuri Yunakov and his band Trakija were household names Since immigrating to the United States in Ensemble in Bulgaria, and people would wait months 1994, Yuri has been in great demand on both New Colors in Bulgarian Wedding Music (Tradi- or even years to engage them for weddings, coasts as a musician of unstoppable energy tional Crossroads) concerts, and other events. They were the and power. While playing for weddings and Balada-Bulgarian Wedding Music (Traditional equivalent of rock stars in the West, with family gatherings in the Bulgarian, Turkish, Crossroads) many bookings and thousands of fans.” and Macedonian Romani communities, he Roma Variations (Traditional Crossroads) The popularity frequently created backlash continues to perform around the world with the government, as so much of the fronting his own ensemble, as well as reunit- wedding music scene operated outside of ing with Paposov from time to time for tours Pete Rushefsky is executive director of the authoritarian government’s control. Yuri and recordings. the Center for Traditional Music and and Papasov were twice imprisoned for their Despite his renown on world music stages Dance. Ethel Raim cofounded the Balkan Arts Center, now the Center for Tradi- musical activities. across the world and the great demand for tional Music and Dance, and continues to In 1989, with the help of Joe Boyd, a his music within the Roma community, Yuri serve as CTMD’s artistic director. renowned American record producer based has had to find other entrepreneurial ap-

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Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 19 Remembering Jean (1964–2011) Reflections by “Las Mujeres” (The Folklore Girls) BY EILEEN CONDON, ELENA Martínez, AND HANNA GRIFF-SLEVEN

What follows is a series of remembrances by (save that for the traditional artists!), we’re folk artists, immigrants, and arts. Mexican Eileen Condon, Elena Martínez, and Hanna nevertheless taking our collective recent holiday customs and foods, altars, papel pic- Griff-Sleven, three of folklorist Jean Crandall’s loss as something of a “Yes, way,” after ado, piñatas, rock-star muertos, mirrors, mats, in memoriam many friends and colleagues in the field of folk the fact, not because we’re fine with it, palm miniatures, painted animal carvings, arts in New York State. Special thanks to Jean’s but because it’s customary. Folklorists handmade Nativity sets, filigreed earrings, brothers and sisters—Beth, Rob, Trafton, and know about the importance of custom embroidered tapestries, handmade paper Sarah —for their permission to incorporate the and ritual, to remember and show respect. hangings, pop-art magnets, wrestling obituary they wrote for their sister just after her So, incomprehensible as your passing still masks, beaded rings and bracelets—your untimely death in November 2011, in the section seems to us all—to your close friends, to folk arts programs, your house, and later, which concludes this piece. your close family of brothers and sisters your store, were chock full of the art and and nieces and nephews and grand-nieces, the soul of Mexico. At 47, in the midst From Eileen: to the many artists and students whose of being so fully alive, you had a heart Dear Jean, lives you touched, to your colleagues in the attack—while busily packing up your car First, I have to apologize. At various field—it’s your turn to get praises lavished to be ready to leave for an upstate migrant past meetings in restaurants of “Las Mu- upon you, despite your previous objec- affairs conference the next day. You had jeres de Folklore,” Hanna and Elena and tions. Given the circumstances, though, I recently returned home from a birthday I all tried cajoling you into being the next imagine you might understand, and cut us party that dear ones had thrown for you Mujer to be profiled in my “In Praise of a little slack. in Oaxaca. You had dropped off the Women” column in Voices. “No WAY!” The timing was bad. November 1st was ankle-biting black kitten, Spock, that very was the usual reply. And although you el Día de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead. morning at the vet, for neutering. (Day of meant it, because you were too modest to You had devoted so much of your life to the Dead, the perfect day for this proce- be comfortable in any extended spotlight supporting and advocating for Mexican dure, as we had both noted!) You adopted Spock because no one else could handle him. And you cursed the day, from time to time, threatening to return him, which I half dreaded and half hoped for. I had bottle-fed and raised Spock as a foundling, but a fourth cat in a studio apartment is, let’s face it, wacko. No one else could make room for Spock, so you did. You refused at first (the rational impulse), then called back later to say, okay, you would give it a try. Adopting Spock and his older feline brother Loki was a rehearsal for the next phase, after all: adopting a Mexican boy or girl. All the prospective adoptive aunts and uncles and cousins were waiting ex- citedly along with you for that big day. So there Spock was, probably just blinking his way out of heavy anesthesia at Dutchess County SPCA, gonad-free, unbeknownst Jean Crandall with Kuchipudi-style Indian classical dancer Kantham Chatlapalli, and to himself, when in between phone Kantham’s students, at Spirit of Beacon Day celebrations, Beacon, NY, September 2011. Photo by Sandesh Viswanathan. calls and text messages and the freak

20 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore past few years: La Mula Chula in Rhine- shows, concerts, events at the Bardavon beck (fieldwork+fair trade, yes!), getting Opera House in Poughkeepsie. Jean was a garden put into your backyard (thanks, the catalyst. Maura!), field trips and visits to Mexico, Jean took her training as a folklorist re- waiting for new life to come into your life, ally seriously; it was a big ethical point for and into everyone else’s, via the adoption her, along with the way she presented art- process, working through all the paper- ists, and later, presented them in her store. work to make that happen. You continue She was very much into working directly to inspire me. Your life proclaimed to all with artists. How many times did artists of us all the time—live! Live it up, laugh, actually stay with her! If she was going to keep loving, no matter what happens. do this—this was how it was going to be — Eileen done. We attended a bunch of Clearwater P.S. At the end of November, I talked to festivals. We could laugh at the silliness Elena, asking her what she would want to and corniness of A Mighty Wind. We saw say about you in this piece we were going that together in Rhinebeck. Maybe that to put together. This is what she shared summed up a lot for her. She had the abil- Jean Crandall in her fair-trade Mexican as we reflected over the phone. ity to laugh at the scene like that. Amazing, folk arts store, La Mula Chula, in Rhine- how close she was to all her nieces and beck, New York, July 2010. Photo by Rob Crandall. From Elena: nephews. Despite their all being so differ- When I first came back to New York ent, and in some cases, uninterested in folk Halloween snowstorm’s knocking the after Oregon, at that first folk arts stuff. Jean was so playful and fun that she power and trees and wires down at your Roundtable that I attended, everyone got bridged such gaps easily. house, calling the electric company, send- introduced. That was 14 years ago—I met We shared a love of chocolate—we went ing funny text jokes and photos about Hanna and Jean for the first time, and we to the exhibit on chocolate at the Museum the whole situation, somewhere in the really connected. of Natural History. Like most fancy ex- midst of all that ordinary living, you had I worked for Jean in the Poughkeepsie hibitions, not so good, all on form, no a heart attack, and we lost you. And here and Rockland folk festivals, and then the substance, great video and technical and we remain, struck by lightning, the power folklore world got away from the produc- interactive stuff, but not much substance. to make much sense of this knocked out tion of festivals. There are not as many We bought chocolate, went out on the of us all. festivals going on now; everyone has front steps, and just ate chocolate. Our People spend years cultivating belief in moved on. With Jean, it wasn’t just a friend underlying themes: chocolate and music. what we can’t be sure about, after death. relationship, it was working together. I Jean pushed people to go places. Jean was Odd, how hard it can be, to cultivate could work with her well because she was generous. She had a really scathing sense belief in what we already know to be cynical about the folklore structure, about of humor. Eileen and Jean playing very bad true intellectually, and by evidence—the people who took themselves too seriously. congas at our house in the Bronx—that got gathering at your sister’s in Hastings, your We could kid around on the same wave- us in trouble with the neighbors. beautiful memorial in Poughkeepsie, and length in that way. When you’re close friends you get to your ongoing physical absence. It reminds We were friends who also worked know your friends’ quirks. Jean was always me of my favorite line from my folklore together. All of us Folklore Girls have running late, always getting lost, even with students’ papers: “The fact that it was the this, and it strengthened all of us. Eileen a GPS—that was part of her. She would truth made it all the more believable.” Facts and Jean had the Dutchess County link, a just take a wrong turn. Always. With her, don’t work that way. You must just be in double relationship of working and hang- it sort of got to a point that you knew Oaxaca, really, or down in Hastings for a ing out. Jean lived in Poughkeepsie, and wherever you went, that would happen. while, or in Tarrytown, or Cambridge, or my family in Wappingers also saw her. I down south, or in Vermont, just a little went to a lot of concerts with her. She was From Hanna: longer than usual. We haven’t seen you for good at pushing me to see more: Lucinda Last night I was cooking dinner and a while. I would say you are in all of those Williams, Los Lobos, Richard Thompson. reached for a jar of orange blossom honey places, especially Poughkeepsie. Levon Helm at the Beacon Theater—the to add to the sweet potatoes I was making. I’m glad you had been realizing a bunch best concert I ever saw in my life. She Jean had given me the jar for my birthday of dreams in fairly short order over the was always getting tickets, for all kinds of last winter. I opened the jar and inhaled this

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 21 most fragrant stuff and got such an intense memory of my friend Jean. I broke down POUGHKEEPSIE — Jean DeGrace and cried for a bit, mourning my friend. Crandall, 47, died on November 1, 2011, I knew Jean for 14 years as a colleague at her home in Poughkeepsie, New York, and great friend. We first met when I where she was a longtime resident. Born was a program assistant in the Folk Arts in White Plains, NY, on October 10, Program at the New York State Council 1964, she was the daughter of the late Robert Wilson Crandall and Therese on the Arts (NYSCA); her organization, DeGrace Crandall. She is survived by the Dutchess County Arts Council, was her sisters Elizabeth Crandall Barnes and an applicant and I had to evaluate Jean’s Sarah Crandall Knox and brothers Traf- programs; observing her work was a plea- ton Milford Crandall and Robert Wilson sure. She was organized, informed but Crandall, Jr., and her beloved nieces and most importantly, so engaged with her nephews Melissa, Alice, Carolyn, Grace, work. I loved seeing her work with all her Douglas, Katherine, Bennett, Joseph, constituents; she had a way with connect- Rory, and James and two great-nieces ing with people of all backgrounds. Lucy and Clara. When I left my job at NYSCA, and Jean grew up in Briarcliff Manor, took the position as director of Public NY. She graduated from Briarcliff High Programs at the Museum at Eldridge School in 1982 and earned a BA from the Portrait of Jean Crandall in Briarcliff, NY, University of Vermont in 1986. She also Street, it was Jean whom I hired to help 2004. Photo by Rob Crandall. earned a Masters in Folk Studies from me coordinate the annual Egg Rolls and Western Kentucky University in 1995, Egg Creams festival. She was terrific: forg- the Bardavon Opera House in Pough- and an MS in Education (ESL) from ing collaborations with the local Chinese keepsie, and in the City. I depended on SUNY New Paltz, NY, in 2008. and Orthodox Jewish community. Being her to keep me up on who was putting Jean worked as the Folklorist for the neither Chinese nor Jewish never daunted out a new album when. We also had great Dutchess County Arts Council and as a Jean; she found a common language and foodie adventures. We both liked to cook consulting folklorist for the Westchester helped make our festival most successful. and liked to check out food in unexpected Arts Council and other local organiza- She chose wonderful artists to represent places. My husband and she bonded over tions. She was a board member of the the eclectic culture of the Lower East Side. a Sri Lankan dinner that proved too spicy New York Folklore Society. Most recently I loved working with Jean so much for Paul, but he sweated (literally) it out she worked as a Tutor Advocate for the that when I got a grant to take a 13-piece just to hang out and get to know Jean and Mid-Hudson Migrant Education Out- reach Program in New Paltz. Jean was klezmer band upstate on a 10-day tour in Elena Martínez who had joined us that also the owner/operator of La Mula fall of 2007, I hired Jean to help me once evening. Jean, Elena, Eileen Condon, and Chula in Rhinebeck, NY, a store featuring again. Jean proved to be the right choice. I tried very hard to meet for dinner and fair-trade Mexican folk art, which she im- She drove one of the vans, helped me with drinks every six weeks (wished so much it ported herself. Jean was fluent in Spanish all the logistics of the drive, the concerts, could have been more). In fact, we had one and travelled frequently to Mexico, where the feeding, and tending to our wonder- scheduled for the Sunday after Jean passed she had developed personal relationships ful musicians. It was a wonderful week of away (a belated birthday toast for her). with the artists whose works she sold. music and bonding. Moreover, I always appreciated Jean’s Jean was a true community activist and In addition to her outstanding skills and balanced approach to her job, keeping it philanthropist. Jean was warm hearted abilities, Jean was an exceptionally lovely in perspective while cultivating these other and altruistic in nature and had a special person and a good friend; and her ability aspects of her life. Her opening of La commitment to the immigrant commu- to nurture close and caring relationships Mula Chula, her beautiful Mexican import nity of the greater Poughkeepsie area. set her apart. She had a wicked sense of shop in Rhinebeck, NY, was a way for her She will be greatly missed by many. Within the next year, the Crandall fam- humor and adventurous musical and food to make a living from knowing and bond- ily plans to create a foundation in Jean’s tastes. One of my favorite things to do ing with the amazing folk artists she met name to sustain Mexican folk arts and the with her was check out new and old music in Mexico. Her kindness, enthusiasm, and social justice causes dear to Jean’s heart. (we both adored Richard Thompson and generosity were infectious, and she will be For further information, contact Sarah got to see him a few times together). We missed by the many people whose lives she Knox at [email protected]. got to see Bob Dylan play at a little league touched, and selfishly, by me. park in Poughkeepsie, heard great jazz at

22 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore pl ay

Lost Treasures BY JOHN THORN

To give an idea of how large a story a small understood today as Batman’s hometown, is inch length. With unquestioning confidence artifact may tell, and how rich in association also a common synonym for New York since that only comes with ignorance, I snorted at it may prove, allow me to present a baseball our English cousins began to refer to those finding this insignificant piece of kindling, in pin no larger than a dime, along with a “fools” who sailed from the mother a plastic bag without any tag indicating that common nursery tale. country (three men in a tub) to it had ever been accessioned. “I know you’ll “Three wise men of Go- make their fortunes in New take anything here,” I laughingly announced to tham went to sea in a bowl,” York as residents of the some library staffers, “but I thought at least it went the Mother Goose “New Gotham.” The most had to have something to do with baseball!” rhyme; “and if the bowl richly evocative of all the All of us were puzzled by the stick; none had been stronger, then my city’s nicknames, it was, like of us knew how it had entered into the collec- rhyme had been longer.” Yankee Doodle, originally tions or why it was being retained. I chalked Mother Goose’s Histories or intended by its English coin- this up to the democratic, if not overly dis- Tales of Passed Times was first ers as an insult. criminating, collections policy of the early published in London about 1775, Washington Irving also applied Hall of Fame. This endearing commitment, based upon English and French sources. the name of Gotham to New York in as baseball’s attic, to accept even the humblest Not a propitious beginning for a baseball 1807, in some of his Salmagundi letters from offerings from fans is the magic that brings story, but look at the accompanying pho- Mustapha-Rub-a-Dub Keli Khan. (“Rub-a- the multitudes to Cooperstown. I thought tograph, of a pin worn by members of the dub-dub, three men in a tub...” is the way no more about the stick for five years, until I Gotham Base Ball Club of New York in the another variant goes.) And in the subsequent was reading through Henry Chadwick’s scrap- 1850s. Let’s track the story back to 1460, when craze for all things Irving, Gotham was seized books, at the New York Public Library—and the “Foles of Gotham” were first mentioned upon as a badge of honor for New Yorkers then the stick became The Stick. There, in in the Towneley Mysteries, and a century later, and a rebuke to John Bull. Volume 20, dominated by cricket stories, I when the absurd doings of the village’s people Proper businessmen scorned the young found the following innocuous note: (seven miles from Nottingham, England) were men who played baseball in the New York collected in a book, Merrie Tales of the Mad area around 1850 for acting like fools, trying to Previous to 1746, the score was kept by Men of Gotham. extend their youth beyond the time when men notches on a short lath: hence the term notches for runs. The notching-knife The simplicity of the inhabitants was leg- should give over childish things. So the Go- gradually gave way to the pen, and the endary. One absurdity attributed to them was thams, in defiance against the British, cricket, thin stick to a sheet of foolscap. the building of a thornbush round the cuckoo and their elders’ puritanical attitudes toward to secure eternal spring; another was an at- play, named themselves for the legendary fools The fool’s cap belonged on my head. I had tempt to rid themselves of an eel by drowning of the mother country and made up this little dismissed as inconsequential what was surely it. But the archetypal tale of Gothamite behav- badge of honor for its members. This pin was a scorer’s stick from an exceedingly early game ior was when King John intended to establish issued to Henry Mortimer Platt and donated of baseball, an artifact earlier than Doubleday a hunting lodge nearby. The villagers, fearful to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939 by his or Cartwright or anyone you might name. This of the cost of supporting the court, feigned daughter. For me, this was the most splendid stick, perhaps the most resonant of all items imbecility when the royal messengers arrived. piece in the Hall. In renovations to the Hall relating to the game’s prehistory, is now lost, Wherever the king’s men went, they saw the before its 1993 enlargement, this pin, long too—in part because I failed to hear its story fools of Gotham engaged in some lunatic on display, was lost—and therein lies another at a time when it might have been recognized endeavor. When King John selected another arrant tale. as a treasure, and saved. spot for his lodge elsewhere, the “wise men” In the 1980s the National Baseball Library boasted, “We ween there are more fools pass was cramped for space and pressed for cata- through Gotham than remain in it.” loging services. Some large boxes were filled How did this tale come to resonate with the with unrelated items of mixed provenance and John Thorn is the au- thor and editor of many Gotham Base Ball Club, formed in 1837, as scant documentation. In one such box, packed books, including Base- perhaps the game’s first organized club, eight loosely among some truly notable curios (I ball in the Garden of Eden (New York: Simon years before the self-proclaimed pioneers, the recall Cy Young’s rookie contract from 1890) and Schuster, 2011). He Knickerbockers? Why did they name them- was a thin wooden stick, with irregular hand- lives in Catskill, New York. Copyright © John selves after the proverbial wise fools? Gotham, hewn notches along part of its perhaps 10- Thorn.

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 23 Follow Spot: Growing the Ranks

BY KRISTEN ANDRESEN

everal years ago, Kaisha Johnson was She turned to Alison McNeil, who was sional development programs. Johnson and S doing what arts administrators do: working with Arts Presenters at the time, McNeil are in the process of establishing a attending regional conferences, engaging and together they formed Women of Color pilot program to introduce young women in dialogue with colleagues, taking in new in the Arts. The group has grown to include in the Washington, D.C., area—ranging work. But she noticed something was miss- more than 100 members who represent all from junior high school to college—to the ing: People like her. segments of the field—presenters, manag- idea of arts administration as a career. It is “I was surveying the field, and I was seeing ers, agents, arts educators, fundraisers and their hope that this will “help diversify the a lack of diversity among administrators,” development professionals—and it now pipeline.” recalls Johnson, director of touring artists at includes representation from The Nether- They’ve also created a brown-bag lunch the Center for Traditional Music and Dance. lands, Colombia, Brazil and the U.S. Virgin series, led by members who are experts in “On our stages, certainly there’s a diversity Islands. areas of importance to WOCA, such as of work, but what was being presented “These women are feeling isolated in their building strategic partnerships. It has been so onstage was not reflecting what was going work, too,” McNeil says. popular in the Washington area that they’re on behind the scenes. I wanted to reach out Because of WOCA, they aren’t alone. planning a similar series in New York. to women who felt like they were working Its members are engaged in everything “We’ve had some ‘aha moments,’” Mc- alone and formalize a network where we from casual networking and idea-sharing to Neil says. “Being able to come together to could support one another’s work.” more formalized mentorship and profes- meet and network and being able to hear

WOCA, which convened at APAP|NYC 2011, has more than 100 members. Photos by Jacob Belcher /Association of Performing Arts Presenters.

24 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore lessons learned from the host and the fea- Though WOCA has well-defined core tured speakers allows us to go back to our objectives (see sidebar), McNeil and Johnson Voices extends its thanks to Alicia Anstead, editor-in-chief of Inside Arts, organizations and approach things a little predict that the group and its programming the magazine of the Association of differently than we would’ve before.” will continually evolve as members’ needs Performing Arts Presenters (www. APAP365.org) for permitting a direct A website that serves as an online forum change and the ranks grow. reprint of this article from the Spring for members to discuss issues and help “This is all about enhancing contribu- 2011 issue. For more on WOCA’s one another with career networking is in tions to the performing arts field that could continuing development and programs, visit their website at http://www. the works, and WOCA’s first meeting at ultimately make it more diverse in a lot of womenofcolorinthearts.org. APAP|NYC 2011 was a resounding success. ways,” Johnson says.

WOCA’s Objectives: • Creating an online network to discuss issues in the field, specifically affecting women of color • Creating a community to share information about career opportunities • Organizing annual interest group sessions to fellowship and create agendas at the regional booking con- ferences (WAA, Arts Midwest and PAE) and at the national Arts Presenters conference • Facilitating panel discussions at conferences, specifically targeted to encouraging diversity in the field and addressing the necessary sensitivity needed for implementing more diver- sity on stage • Providing mentorship opportunities for new and midlevel administrators

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 25 Down to the Depths BY LIBBY TUCKER

During the 2011 hurricane season, this firmly locked door. Why would a these dark pools beneath their campus’s New Yorkers have gone through an un- breeze blow out of a confined space? In- dry buildings, the students took many pic- usual amount of stress. Many people’s quiring young minds want to know! tures. Later, they noticed that some of the basements have flooded, and towns such Of course, any locked door with a “NO pictures contained small, glowing spheres as Margaretville and Burtonsville have ADMITTANCE” sign offers a folkloric of light, which ghost-hunters call orbs. suffered severe damage. With our gov- challenge. Just as Pandora could not resist Did these orbs show that ghosts haunted ernor’s new “Labor for Your Neighbor” opening her box, and Bluebeard’s wife the basement, or were they just offshoots g oo d s p irits program, more of us can travel to flood- could not resist opening the door of the of digital photography? This question soaked parts of our state to lend a hand. locked room where her fellow wives’ bod- provided a good subject for discussion in Many of us who have bailed out our own ies lay, some students have not been able to class later on. flooded basements would welcome the resist trying to open the locked door in the While the underground pools and orbs chance to help our fellow New Yorkers, basement of O’Connor. Finding that the were exciting, the best part of my students’ and some of us have found basements to lock did not yield to pushing and prodding tour was their entry into the forbidden be interesting places to visit. After years a few years ago, two students asked me if room of O’Connor’s sub-basement. At of teaching at Binghamton University I could get permission to open the door. last, a look at the room that had been (BU), I have learned that basements seem I tried but did not succeed, so the space locked for so long! The students discov- to provide a home for mysterious, elusive behind the door remained a mystery. I did ered that the room was dark, dusty, and campus ghosts. learn, however, that this space belonged to full of calcified spiders. On its floor lay Many of my students at BU have loved our campus’s underground tunnel system. countless burnt-out light bulbs, and near to tell and hear ghost stories, and the best Knowing that it was part of a tunnel made the room’s entrance was an old, broken of those stories have come from personal that part of the sub-basement even more chair. Could these light bulbs and the chair experience. Basements—dark, chilly, silent attractive to the students who longed to have a relationship to what happened to spaces—have furnished especially good visit it. Alice years ago? When she had her ghostly locations for students’ encounters with Finally, last spring a group of students experience, she was reaching up to clean a ghosts. I have heard many students express in my “Ghosts in American Culture” class light fixture. Aware of this connection to dismay about hearing spectral sounds and obtained permission to enter the forbid- an important campus legend, the students seeing strange sights while doing laundry den space in O’Connor’s sub-basement. took photos of the chair and light bulbs. in their residence halls’ basements late The head of our physical facilities depart- Besides photographing the forbidden at night. When they are all alone close ment kindly offered to take them on a room, the students picked up a souvenir: to midnight, and eerie thumping sounds tour: not just a tour of the lower regions one of the light bulbs that had lain on come from the dryer, uncanny experiences of O’Connor, but one that encompassed the room’s floor for so many years. They sometimes follow. all of the most interesting hidden, deep- presented the light bulb to me as a gift on One of the spookiest places down in down spaces of the campus. This tour the last day of class. I cherish this gift and the depths of Binghamton University’s was very helpful to the students, because would be glad to show it to anyone who campus has been the sub-basement of it gave them a chance to prepare an oral can come in to visit my office. During O’Connor Hall, where Alice, a friendly presentation with a set of slides that all floods and other times of stress, we need member of the custodial staff, once of the other students and I were eager to good spirits. fainted and fell off a ladder while cleaning see. Wearing hard hats, carrying cameras, a light fixture. After she woke up, Alice and clutching notebooks and pens, the claimed that the spirit of a young man students set out with their tour guide late named Michael had passed through her one cold spring evening. Libby Tucker teaches folklore at Bingham- body. Students have visited the spot where What they found—not surprisingly— ton University. Her she fell off the ladder, noting its location was water, lots of water. Deep down book Haunted Halls: Ghostlore of American next to a sign proclaiming, “DANGER. beneath the basements of some build- College Campuses NO ADMITTANCE. FOLLOW CON- ings, rainwater had formed dark, Stygian (Jackson: University FINED SPACE ENTRY PROCEDURE pools. Because the buildings had been well Press of Mississippi, 2007) investigates col- BEFORE ENTERING.” They have also planned, with plenty of room for runoff, lege ghost stories. Her noted that a cold breeze blows out through this water did no damage. Intrigued by most recent book is Children’s Folklore: A Handbook (West- port: Greenwood, 2008).

26 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Jewish Activities on Christmas: An Online Case Study BY MU LI

I miss New York City at Christmastime. tions,” a report based on the 2000–2001 households never have a Christmas tree, and It’s not the tree in Rockefeller Center or the National Jewish Population Survey (NJPS) less than 3 percent of families where both ice skaters, the gray snow or the windows at for the United Jewish Communities, “Most spouses are Jewish have a Christmas tree Lord and Taylor’s. It’s eating Chinese food American Jews identify as Jews through a (Kosmin 1991). According to one blogger, and going to a movie on Christmas Day, a denominational prism, unlike the experience Tracey R. Rich, and several of her friends, New York Jew’s ritual. in other large Jewish population centers such many Jewish families with small children —Molly Jackel, 2005 as Israel or the former Soviet Union (FSU). have Christmas trees to keep their children The demographic characteristics and Jewish from feeling deprived or left out of the n the minds of many people around connections of those who identify and af- aggressively marketed Christmas season I the world—both Christians and non- filiate with Jewish religious denominations (2007). The survey findings seem to indi- Christians—Christmas means Santa, ex- therefore take on special importance in the cate that some number of Jewish families changing gifts with family members and American setting” (2005, 3). choose to deny or downplay the Christmas friends, a family dinner of turkey, carols, and The National Jewish Population Survey is trees they had. a decorated Christmas tree. No matter how a nationally representative survey of the Jew- During my online research on Jewish secular elements in American society and ish population living in the United States— Christmas traditions, I also conducted a simi- popular culture have whittled away at the more than 4.3 million—administered to a lar investigation of Chinese observations of religious meanings of Christmas—and even group of approximately 4,500 respondents. the holiday. Like Jews, most Chinese people many Christians now consider Christmas Interviewing for NJPS took place from Au- follow the lunar calendar and celebrate an American holiday, a secular holiday, or gust 21, 2000, to August 30, 2001, and was Chinese New Year (Spring Festival). My a cultural holiday—my online observation conducted by telephone, using a random online and face-to-face Chinese interview- suggests that most Jewish people, especially sample of telephone numbers in all fifty ees—around 150, representing many profes- Orthodox Jews, still consider it an important states and the District of Columbia. Among sions and different ages and immigration Christian holiday, if not the most important all respondents, 34 percent called themselves statuses—regard the Christmas celebration one. The religious nature of Christmas Reform Jews; 26 percent self-identified as as entertainment only. Nevertheless, sur- leaves many people of other religions out- Conservative; 13 percent described them- rounded by a large population of Christians side the nationwide celebration. selves as Orthodox; 2 percent considered and widespread Christmas celebrations and Jews constitute one of the largest non- themselves Reconstructionist; and the other work holidays, both of these outsider groups Christian groups in the United States, and 25 percent were “just Jewish.” Therefore, have gradually invented new customs to they have generally not acculturated to main- nearly 75 percent of these American Jews build their own Christmas. stream Christmas traditions. For reasons prefer to identify themselves as Jews through According to Ament’s analysis of the both religious and historical, most Jewish particular Jewish denominations. No matter 2000–2001 NJPS data, the populations of people maintain their traditional holiday which form of Judaism is claimed, religion both Reform and “just Jewish” groups, who observations, such as Hanukkah, the Fes- clearly plays an important role in the every- are thought to be much more flexible in tival of Lights, which is determined by the day lives of many American Jews. interpreting and enacting Jewish tradition, Hebrew calendar but falls in late November The above data accord with the 1990 Na- are experiencing a rapid increase, while those or December. As Jonathon Ament writes tional Jewish Population Survey. According of the Orthodox and Conservative groups in “American Jewish Religious Denomina- to the 1990 survey, 82 percent of Jewish are consequently declining (2005). In this

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 27 article, I primarily discuss Jews who iden- that Chinese restaurants are seemingly open and the formerly low position of Chinese tify themselves as Reform or “just Jewish.” all the time, some promising explanations people in American society, made Jews feel To many of these North American Jewish are certain features of Chinese food and safe and comfortable in Chinese restaurants families (which may include non-Jewish Jewish people’s concerns, including Jew- (Tuchman and Levine 1993, 388–92). members)—especially those living in New ish identity, acculturation, and community Moreover, according to Tuchman and York City—Christmas means going to a solidarity. Levine, Jews in the twentieth century movie theater and enjoying dinner at their understood Chinese restaurant food as favorite Chinese restaurant. This emerging Connections between Jewish a cosmopolitan and urbane symbol. For custom is depicted in Brandon Walker’s and Chinese Food many Jews in New York City, eating in 2007 video Chinese Food on Christmas, which Although Chinese food is a central part Chinese restaurants signified that they were has been seen by more than 1,780,000 view- of the Christmas tradition for many less not provincial or parochial Eastern Euro- ers on YouTube alone. The video spoofs conservative Jews, especially those in New pean Jews, not “greenhorns” or hicks, but Brandon Walker’s dull life at Christmas, York City, the tie between these American American—more specifically, open-minded, when because of his Jewish identity, the only Jewish people and Chinese food continues modern New Yorkers (Tuchman and Levine things he can do are go to a movie theater past Christmas. Chinese food and Chinese 1993, 392–4). What is more, as Tuchman and eat Chinese food like other Jews. restaurants have become a part of their ev- and Levine note, many second- and third- If forced to choose either the movie or eryday life in many parts of North America. generation Jewish immigrants identify the Chinese food, the Chinese dinner seems As Kim Vo reported on Mercury News on themselves as modern American Jews, or to be more significant. Jews may not always Christmas Eve 2006: “‘When Jews are 3 New York Jews, by getting together to eat go to films, but Chinese food is indispens- years old—from the time they’re ready to Chinese food to reminisce about the “soft able on this special vacation day. As Ferrir eat real food­—they go to Chinese restau- and gentle flavors of the past,” since “eating commented online, “We come here [to eat rants,’ declared Alan Sataloff, CEO of the Chinese” became an established New York Chinese food] every Christmas. It’s my treat Albert L. Schultz Jewish Community Center Jewish custom, a part of daily life and iden- to my family” (Poole 2005). Meanwhile, B- in Palo Alto. ‘It’s either matzo ball soup or tity for millions of Jews (1993, 394–402). Side wrote on his blog that he and his friend won ton soup.’” Jessica Carew Kraft claims In a similar vein, Donald Siegel explores Jash spent more than three hours looking that many Jews have effectively ritualized the the Jewish-Chinese culinary connection and for an open Chinese restaurant in the Los Chinese meal and made it an integral part the reasons why many Jews are interested in Angeles area, and at last they had to order of modern Jewish life in America. Indeed, eating Chinese food. His findings are similar take-out Chinese food. B-Side complained she noted, “Many Jews say they mastered to those of Tuchman and Levine, but Siegel of the closed restaurants, “Point is, no chopsticks before they learned the Hebrew particularly focuses on similarities between Chinese restaurant with ‘Cohen’ in its name alphabet” (Kraft 2002). In a culinary arts kreplach and wontons and emphasizes the can be closed on Christmas in a Jewish forum, Mizducky commented that her par- proximity of Jewish and Chinese immigrant neighborhood of a stereotypically Jewishy ents took her to the local Chinese restaurant communities in New York City between city. IT’S JUST NOT ALLOWED” (2007). for the first time in 1958, when she was two 1880 and 1920. He argues that shared In some cases, when those Jewish people years old (2008). neighborhoods may have resulted in shared move out of the United States, or even New Why do these Jewish people like Chinese culinary experiences and the transmission York City, the difference between the local food? Two Jewish sociologists, Gaye Tuch- of recipes (Siegel 2005). Siegel also cre- Chinese food and that of their hometown man and Harry Levine, note some possible atively attributes Jews’ culinary adaptations will make them homesick. Mooselet com- reasons, although they do not differentiate to ancient Jewish communities of China, plained online of the Chinese restaurants groups of Jews by their denominational particularly the Kaifeng Jews in Henan in Australia, as she missed the flavors of affiliations. One explanation is the specific province, China. He describes a student of New York, where she grew up (2008). To ways that Chinese food is prepared and his from China, whom he suspects may be many Jewish people who do not strictly served, which help Jews and their children a descendent of the Kaifeng Jewish com- keep traditional kosher foodways, Chinese to find Chinese food more attractive and munity because his surname is Lee (Lee and food has become an inseparable part of a less threatening than other treif (non-kosher) Jin are thought to be surnames that replaced Jewish Christmas. foods. Chinese restaurants also rely on some original Jewish names). The student grew up But why is Chinese food involved in this ingredients, such as garlic and chicken, that without eating pork or shellfish, and on spe- new—distinctly unorthodox—Jewish tradi- are familiar to Eastern European Jews, and cial occasions, his family cooked lamb stew tion, rather than some other ethnic food— Chinese cuisine does not mix milk and with onions and peppers, a dish thought to and why is Christmas different from other meat. In addition, the similar injustices of be a traditional Sephardic meal with origins Christian holidays? Besides the simple fact anti-Semitism and racism against Chinese, on the Iberian Peninsula (Siegel 2005).

28 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Jewish Christmas and the deliberate non-celebration of those many other Americans do, especially in the Chinese Food Orthodox or Conservative Jews who do not western United States (Li 2002, 339–343): Although the above reasons are convinc- recognize Christmas at all. they actually intend to display their religious ing explanations for why Chinese food is So why do less conservative American and ethnic difference from mainstream popularly accepted by many Jewish people, Jews celebrate Christmas in this particular Americans, primarily Christians. they still fail to answer my earlier questions: way—and why do they continue celebrat- This dilemma of acculturation is also il- why is Chinese food involved in this Jewish ing in this way? The answer may lie in the lustrated by Jews’ choice of Chinese food. tradition, rather than some other ethnic dilemma some Jews face: whether to ac- As Tuchman and Levine argue, Chinese food, and why is Christmas unique? In other culturate to the American mainstream or food in the past acted as a tool to assist words, why do an increasing number of Jews maintain their distinct ethnic and religious them to become Americans or New York- recognize Chinese food on Christmas as identity. In Christmas at Shalom Hunan, an ers—but this effect can be extended to their own tradition—and why do some Jew- eight-minute interview video shot in 2004, other cuisines, if those foods are viewed as ish people even protest outsiders’ invasion many interviewees (all are Jewish except one) similarly cosmopolitan. Many Jewish people of this tradition? As Adam Gerard remarked reported that they like Christmas, and some mention in their blogs or online comments online, he has seen many non-Jews (primar- said that they exchange Christmas gifts with that they eat or will eat Vietnamese food ily Christians) at the movies and Chinese their Christian friends (Padmewan 2007). on Christmas, instead of Chinese food (for restaurants on Christmas, which makes him An elderly Jewish woman pointed to the example, Andrea 2008, L. 2007, Modern Girl and his Jewish friends angry at the “greed” change in attitudes toward the Christmas 2008). This flexibility indicates an evolving of Christians who are not satisfied with tree from her generation to her children’s sense of what it means to be a cosmopolitan their own tradition. These interlopers cause and grandchildren’s generations. Decorating American. Some scholars, such as Steven theaters to be packed and restaurant waits a Christmas tree in her childhood brought M. Cohen and Samuel Heilman, regard this longer, which ruins the Jewish tradition and scolding from her rabbi father, but her developing but continuous cosmopolitan “holiday.” To his Christian friends, Gerard children and grandchildren, although they ideal as an integral part of Jewish identity. suggested, “You stick to your presents, and maintain their Jewish identities, celebrate They contend that Jewish people, especially we’ll stick to our Chinese food and a movie. Christmas as well as Hanukkah and have those after the first or second generation in Everyone will be happy. Please?” (2004) their own Christmas trees. As time passes, this country, are a people without a national Tuchman and Levine would argue that the more Jewish people may acculturate into the home, since Israel was founded in 1948, de- underlying reason that Jews “eat Chinese” is American mainstream of Christmas holiday cades after many European Jews had arrived to create a new Jewish identity in the New celebration. in the United States. These contemporary World, an identity that cannot be confused Nevertheless, many Jews also express American Jews consider their modern iden- by mainstream Americans, even if the reli- explicit hesitation to this acculturating tity cosmopolitan, identifying themselves as gious tie is loose in these Jews’ daily lives. Lia process, and some intend to deny this “world citizens” (Cohen 1984). Lehrer, a young Jewish writer and blogger, process. To many American Jewish fami- actually defined American Judaism specifi- lies, with far-flung adult children living far Foodways and American cally in terms of Chinese food and a movie: from their parents, the Christmas vacation Jewish Identity “As minyans and minyans of Jews gather in is a convenient time to get the whole fam- Foodways always display and create local Chinese restaurants and celebrate the ily together. Scheduling a family gathering identity, in both past and modern societies. day with egg drop soup and moo shu tofu during Christmas, however, makes some Michael Owen Jones asserts that “eating and rent V for Vendetta, they’ll be practicing Jewish families—particularly those with practices reproduce as well as construct the newest branch of Judaism: American strict religious beliefs—feel “a vague sense identity,” suggesting that by eating Chinese Judaism.” Lehrer juxtaposed Christmas of guilt,” since they are afraid of being food, Jewish people not only represent with Hanukkah and other traditional Jew- recognized as celebrating Christmas (Rich themselves as Jews and cosmopolitans, but ish holidays, concluding that the holiday 2007). To release this tension, these Jew- also are shaped by Chinese food (2007, 130). Chinese dinner functions as a central Ameri- ish families “often repeatedly remind each As I mentioned above, Siegel points out the can Jewish tradition: “We have sedarim on other that ‘we’re not celebrating Christmas, similarity between kreplach and wontons. Passover, we eat latkes on Hanukkah, and, it’s just a convenient time to have a family Tuchman and Levine also observe similari- most importantly, we eat Chinese food on get-together’” (Rich 2007). This hesitation ties between traditional kosher cuisine and Christmas” (2007). Nonetheless, a Jewish may even explain why Jewish people choose Chinese food. These similarities make Chi- Christmas—related to Chinese cuisine—is to use Chinese chopsticks when they are nese food acceptable to most Jewish people, clearly different from the Christmas cel- eating Chinese food, rather than asking for but at the same time, by eating Chinese food ebrated by Christians, and also distinct from forks and knives in Chinese restaurants as on Christmas Day, Jews become outsiders

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 29 to mainstream American culture. Paradoxi- The best part of my family’s Chinese- is not an event limited to Christmas for most cally, eating Chinese food on Christmas both food-on-Xmas tradition is that every Jews, but rather a common, ordinary feature identifies Jews as American and prevents year as we’re exiting the restaurant of everyday life. A Jewish interviewee of filled with outwardly Jewish-looking them from completely acculturating. A mine, who describes herself as not religious, Jews (usually featuring a rabbi or two, few characteristics of the American Jewish as well), the restaurant staff never fail tells me that her family in New York goes practice of celebrating Christmas with a to wish us all a Merry Christmas. I look to Chinese restaurants every Sunday. They Chinese meal mark Jews’ dual identity as forward to it each year. The probably eat chow mein, wonton soup, eggrolls, fried simultaneously exotic and acculturated to Buddhist Chinese servers wishing the rice, sweet-and-sour chicken, and kung American society. Both the celebration and rabbis and congregants a Merry Christ- pao chicken every weekend—and also on mas. It’s American; it’s brilliant (2009). the identity it helps to build are 1) nontra- Christmas. But most American Christians ditional or exotic, 2) enacted in public, and Being a Jew and being an American are eat Christmas dinners that are distinct from 3) explicitly secular. compatible in the minds of many Jews, and their everyday dishes. Turkey with all the The traditional main course in most the compatibility is displayed and fulfilled in trimmings is definitely not typical for an American families on Christmas is turkey, Chinese restaurants. ordinary meal, but prepared for Christmas which is not a part of Chinese cuisine. In A second characteristic that confirms (and Thanksgiving) only (Schlechter 2007). Bob Clark’s 1983 comedy A Christmas Story, American Jewish dual identity is the public Jewish people do not typically elevate a Christian family orders duck at a Chinese location of the Christmas celebration. Eat- Christmas above other ordinary days, but restaurant after a neighbor’s dogs steal their ing at a Chinese restaurant and watching a conversely, a dietary style that regularly Christmas turkey. In Clark’s movie, eating movie in a theater are both non-domestic embraces Chinese food reduces the impor- Chinese food on Christmas is funny and activities, while most American Christian tance of one Jewish New Year tradition. ridiculous, and it only happens in extraor- families prefer a private family celebration Tuchman, Levine, and especially Siegel have dinary circumstances. Indeed, Chinese at home. Pleck considers the family-based emphasized that the wonton is similar to restaurants are still exotic—especially on tradition as America’s way to integrate the traditional treat kreplach. Kreplach is the cozily domestic Christmas holiday—in newcomers (as well as the rural poor) and usually served with a holiday meal, whereas the minds of many American people. A socialize them as American citizens, which wontons—serving many American Jews as commenter on Ian McNulty’s blog article ultimately promoted national unity (2004, a substitute for kreplach—is always available “Traditional?” about the Jewish Christmas 46). Nonetheless, the public nature of Jewish in Chinese restaurants. Hence, the symbolic tradition wryly remarked: “I think this was Christmas practices are private and family- and ritualistic significance of kreplach in actually popularized more when A Christ- oriented in some senses. Since a majority Jewish culture is unexpectedly weakened mas Story came out—Dinner eaten by the of Christians celebrate at home during the by the secular and regular availability of dogs? Head for a Chinese restaurant!—and Christmas season, formerly public places— wontons. has been transformed into a Jewish thing” such as streets, restaurants (especially those (Liprap 2008). owned by non-Christians), and movie the- A Chinese Christmas—with For many Jewish people, however, the aters—become a temporary “private” area. Jewish Customers Chinese restaurant is also a symbol of accul- As blogger Bill Sobel noted, even the usually The interaction between Jewish and turating to the American ethnic mainstream: noisy and crowded casinos in Atlantic City Chinese people not only constructs a New going to a Chinese restaurant makes Jewish are practically empty on Christmas, except World Christmas tradition for some Jewish Americans feel not Jewish, but white. In for Jews, Indians, and Asians (2006). Chinese groups, but also shapes the holiday customs Philip Roth’s 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint, restaurants in many regions have only Jew- of Chinese Americans or Chinese living in Alex Portnoy remarks on the relation of ish customers on Christmas, which creates the United States, especially owners and Jewish and Chinese: “To them [Chinese a temporary Jewish space (Walker 2007). employees of Chinese restaurants. While people] we are not Jews, but white—and In addition, eating at a Chinese restaurant Jewish Christmas practices boost the busi- maybe even Anglo Saxon. No wonder they on Christmas Day is not a personal activity, ness of Chinese restaurants and serve to de- can’t intimidate us. To them, we’re just some so much as a family or ethnic behavior: an marcate owners and workers as identifiably big-nosed variety of WASP” (90). Moreover, ethnic custom or ritual implying Jewish ac- “Chinese,” the interaction between these the Chinese are the only ethnic group wish- ceptance of the American family-based idea. two ethnic groups also reshapes the identity ing many American Jews “Merry Christmas,” The third characteristic—an explic- of Chinese people in the New World into which reminds them of their acculturated itly secular, “everyday” approach to the “American Chinese” or “Chinese Ameri- American identities. Aaron regards this holiday—marks the contradiction between can.” Due to their marked racial features formality as a memorable part of celebrating Jewish Christmas and traditional American and skin color, Chinese acculturation in the holiday at a Chinese restaurant: Christmas observances. Eating Chinese food North America has been a long and difficult

30 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore odyssey, even more than for Jewish people. place, where the provincial Chinese—both contemporary North America, promoting In addition to racial differences, religious the people and culture—disappear. By the transformation of Chinese people into beliefs have motivated exclusion and dis- sharing the comedy, the Chinese owners, Chinese Americans. Through the interaction crimination against Chinese people. Chinese workers, and any Chinese customers also between some subgroups of Chinese and people who converted to Christianity have become part of a joint, secular American Jewish people, cosmopolitan Jews trigger historically enjoyed more acceptance from Christmas celebration. Cosmopolitan Jew- the cosmopolitan feelings of Chinese and American society (Carnes and Yang 2004). ish identity therefore promotes the birth stimulate them to identity themselves as For many Chinese restaurant owners and of a cosmopolitan Chinese and Chinese insiders in their adopted country. their employees, however, the Jewish Christ- restaurant culture. mas tradition unintentionally postpones or In addition to the comedy shows, some Communication between hampers their religious practice. To cater to Chinese restaurant owners have introduced Ethnic Cultures these Jewish customers, Chinese restaurants traditional Chinese lion dance troupes on Generalizing about the Christmas activi- near large Jewish communities regularly Christmas, even though the lion dance is ties of either Jewish or Chinese American keep open during the whole Christmas sea- typically performed during the Chinese remains premature, with further research son, unlike many other local restaurants, New Year celebration in January or Febru- needed. Not all Jews go to Chinese restau- especially those in the suburbs, which close ary (Wong 2006). This innovation brings rants on Christmas; some prefer to stay at for the holiday. As Andy Wong, owner of traditional Chinese cultural meanings into a home with their families or keep strictly a Chinese restaurant in Seattle named Sea fundamentally Western tradition, but it also kosher at home or in Jewish restaurants, Garden, remarked, “We want to keep our indicates that some Chinese in America may rather than substituting Chinese food. It is customers happy, we don’t want to miss this have accorded Christmas the same cultural also possible that the simple availability of day” (Wong 2006). Simon Zeng, another res- connotation as Chinese New Year or that Chinese restaurants is the only reason that taurant owner, mentioned that his restaurant they are gradually regarding Christmas as non-Christians like Jews choose Chinese stays open until 3 a.m. to cater to more cus- containing the same meaning. food on Christmas; if there were other tomers on Christmas Day (Wong 2006). The Finally, Jewish dietary preferences—par- ethnic restaurants available around Jew- owners and staff—many Christian—keeping ticularly on Christmas—have greatly influ- ish neighborhoods, Jewish people might these Chinese restaurants running on Christ- enced the menu of Chinese restaurants in switch from Chinese to other ethnic food. mas are unable to celebrate this holiday like North America. Jewish people, especially But according to my review of blog entries, most of the American public and are left seniors and middle-aged people, prefer Can- comments, and online articles, I believe that outside of the nationwide celebration. tonese dishes to other regional cuisines of longer hours of operation could not give While this growing Jewish tradition ham- China, such as the spicy food of Szechuan birth to a tradition, let alone keep it alive pers the religious acculturation of some and Hunan (Mortart 2006). Although some over a considerably long period. People Chinese, it does serve to promote a Chinese Chinese restaurants frequently introduce need more reasons and passion to create element within the Christmas celebration. new dishes, many Jewish people, even and maintain a tradition. The Kung Pao Kosher Comedy is one young people, stick to their preference for The sheer quantity of articles and com- of the best examples: “Kung Pao Kosher Cantonese food (which also happens to be ments about Jewish activities on Christmas Comedy started it all in San Francisco, mix- more kosher) and refuse the suggestions of indicates that the tradition of Chinese ing comics and Chinese food for an annual waiters (Padmewan 2007). These entrenched food on Christmas has existed historically, December event that has grown from one dietary habits actually narrow the range of contemporarily, and functionally. As Noyes stand-up comedy showcase to eight. Then Chinese regional cuisines available to the notes, there are “three traditions”: tradition Chopshticks followed suit in Palo Alto. Now Jewish community and encourage restaurant as a communicative transaction, tradition as Meshugenah Christmas is making its debut” owners to adapt and develop more “Ameri- a temporary ideology, and tradition as com- (Vo 2006). This type of comedy event, held can Chinese” dishes, rather than bringing in munal property (2009). When traditions are in Chinese restaurants such as the Ming and more typically Chinese foodways. created by more than one cultural group or New Asia restaurants in San Francisco and As many researchers have noted, food expand beyond a national border, the inter- also in New York City, actually combines the plays a central role in Chinese life and action between two groups or cultures will two features of a Jewish Christmas: Chinese culture, and the Chinese restaurant is the not be simple or superficial, but complicated food and a light entertainment (similar to symbol of China and Chinatown to many or deep. In the case discussed in this article, a movie). Since the show is performed in foreigners and to Chinese themselves I would like to consider the communica- the restaurant, the newly emerged Kung (Simoons 1991). Hence, this acculturating tion between Jewish and Chinese groups in Pao Kosher Comedy makes the Chinese process of Chinese restaurants implies the a broad, comprehensive, and cultural way, restaurant a multiethnic and cosmopolitan emergence of a new Chinese diaspora in rather than at the individual and economic

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 31 level—even if I am taking a risk in doing so. National Jewish Population Report Se- Morgan, Ryan. December 17, 2007. Holiday It is clear that the developing tradition of ries, North American Jewish Data Bank. Traditions: A Lo Mein Christmas. http:// Chinese food on Christmas­ is shared by a http://www.jewishdatabank.org/Archive/ www.dailycamera.com/news/2007/dec/17/ small group of people—less conservative NJPS2000_American_Jewish_Religious_De- a-lo-mein-christmas/ (accessed March 2, Jews and workers in Chinese restaurants— nominations.pdf (accessed January 22, 2011). 2009). rather then embraced as an accepted custom Andrea, Cousin. December 25, 2008. Com- Mortart. August 29, 2006. The Jewish Love Af- by either all Jews or all Chinese in the United ment on Christmas Means Chinese Food. fair with Chinese Food. http://octogenarian. States. In contemporary North America, http://gitell.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/ blogspot.com/2006/08/jewish-love-affair- interethnic and interracial acculturation is christmas-means-chinese-food/ (accessed with-chinese-food.html (accessed March 2, significant and sensitive issue. A. L. Kroe- March 2, 2009). 2009). ber provides an insightful definition of B-Side. December 25, 2007. L.A. Chinese Padmewan. December 17, 2007. Christmas at acculturation: Dining on Christmas: A Modern Travesty. Shalom Hunan. http://www.youtube.com/ http://www.bsideblog.com/2007/12/la- watch?v=9ApHwQqLycg (accessed March Acculturation comprises those chinese-dining-on-christmas.php (accessed 2, 2009). changes produced in a culture by the March 2, 2009). Poole, Lisa. December 25, 2005. Chinese influence of another culture, which Gerard, Adam. December 28, 2004. Chinese Food is a Popular Choice of Holiday Din- result in an increased similarity of the two. The resultant assimilation Food and a Movie: The Jewish Christ- ner. http://www.usatoday.com/news/ may proceed so far as the extinction mas. http://www.voteprime.com/ar- nation/2005-12-25-chinese-food_x.htm, of one culture by absorption in the chive/2004_12_01_bloggerArchive.html (accessed March 2, 2009). other, or other factors may intervene (accessed March 2, 2009). Rich, Tracey R. 2007. What Do Jews Do on to counterbalance the assimilation and Jackel, Molly. December 21, 2005. Wonton Christmas? http://www.jewfaq.org/xmas. keep the cultures separate. When we Christmas. http://www.metroactive.com/ htm. (accessed April 3, 2009). consider two cultures bombarding each other with hundreds or thousands of bohemian/12.21.05/dining-0551.html (ac- Sobel, Bill. December 25, 2006. What Do Jews diffusing traits and appraise the results cessed March 2, 2009). Do on Christmas? http://nymieg.blogspot. of such interaction, we commonly call Kraft, Jessica Carew. May 19, 2002. Don’t com/2006/12/what-do-jews-do-on-christ- it acculturation (1923, 425). Ask, Just Eat. http://www.newvoices.org/ mas.html (accessed March 2, 2009). features/dont-ask-just-eat.html (accessed Vo, Kim. December 24, 2006. Oy, Christmas The case of Chinese food on Christmas March 2, 2009). Tree! Chinese Food, Jokes a Respite for Jews. presents an example illustrating how cultural Lehrer, Lia. June 15, 2007. Seinfeld, Jdate, and http://www.mercurynews.com/religion/ assimilation or ethnic acculturation is ac- Chinese Food: New Definitions of Ameri- ci_4896334 (accessed March 2, 2009). complished by the efforts of active people can Judaism. http://www.uscj.org/Koach/ Walker, Brandon Harris. December 1, of small groups representing different eth- koc_5767_tamuz_llehrer.htm (accessed 2007. Chinese Food on Christmas. http:// nic and cultural backgrounds. The process March 2, 2009). www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1uZ_ is communicative, ideological, artistic, and Liprap. December 24, 2008. Comment on Ian W7atDE&feature=related (accessed April unique. As Zilla Jane Goodman, a professor McNulty, Traditional? http://blogofnewor- 4, 2009). of religious studies at the University of Colo- leans.com/blog/2008/12/24/traditional/ Wong, Brad. December 23, 2006. A Growing rado, remarked in an online article, a Chinese (accessed March 2, 2009). Christmas Tradition—Chinese Food. http:// repast on Christmas was not something she Mizducky. March 14, 2008. Why Jews Like www.seattlepi.com/local/297050_restau- “practiced growing up Jewish in South Africa. Chinese Food. http://forums.egullet.org/ rant23.html (accessed March 2, 2009). The trend appears to be a uniquely American index.php?showtopic=113757 (accessed phenomenon” (Morgan 2007). April 2, 2009). Published Sources Modern Girl. December 5, 2008. Comment Carnes, Tony, and Fenggang Yang, ed. 2004. References on The Jewish Love Affair with Chi- Asian American Religions: The Making and Re- Blogs and Other Online Sources nese Food. http://octogenarian.blogspot. making of Borders and Boundaries. New York: Aaron. January 19, 2009. Comment on From com/2006/08/jewish-love-affair-with- New York University Press. Flanken to Fortune Cookies: Jews and Chi- chinese-food.html (accessed March 2, 2009). Cohen, S. M. 1984. American Modernity and Jewish nese Food on Christmas. http://jwablog. Mooselet. December 29, 2008. Comment on Identity. New York: Tavistock. jwa.org/jews-and-chinese-food-on-christmas Christmas Means Chinese Food. http:// Heilman, S., and S. M. Cohen. 1989. Cosmo- (accessed March 2, 2009). gitell.wordpress.com/2008/12/24/christ- politans and Parochials: Modern Orthodox Jews Ament, Jonathon. February 2005. American mas-means-chinese-food/ (accessed March in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Jewish Religious Denominations. 2000–1 2, 2009). Press.

32 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Jones, Michael Owen. 2007. Food Choice, Sym- Noyes, Dorothy. 2009. Tradition: Three Simoons, Frederick J. 1991. Food in China: A bolism, and Identity: Bread-and-Butter Issues Traditions. Journal of Folklore Research Cultural and Historical Inquiry. Boca Raton, for Folkloristics and Nutrition Studies. Journal 46(3):233–68. FL: CRC Press. of American Folklore 120:129–77. Pleck, Elizabeth H. 2004. Who Are We and Tuchman, Gaye, and Harry Gene Levine. Kosmin, B. A., Sidney Goldstein, J. Waksberg, When Do We Come From? In We Are What 1993. New York Jews and Chinese Food: N. Lerer, A. Keysar, and J. Scheckner. 1991. We Celebrate: Understanding Holidays and Rituals, The Social Construction of an Ethnic Highlights of the CJF National Jewish Popula- 43–60. Ed. Amitai Etzchi and Jarel Bloom. Pattern. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography tion Survey. New York: Council of Jewish New York: New York University Press. 22(3):382–407. Foundations. Roth, Philip. 1969. Portnoy’s Complaint. New Kroeber, A. L. 1923. Anthropology. New York: York: Random House. Mu Li is a Ph.D. candidate in the Harcourt. Schlechter, Aaron. 2007. The Great American Department of Folklore at Memorial Li, Li. 2002. Cultural and Intercultural Func- Christmas Book. New York: Overlook Press. University of Newfoundland, Canada. His research centers on ethnicity, tions of Chinese Restaurant in the Mountain Siegel, Donald. 2005. From Lokshen to Lo Mein: diaspora, and online community, West: An Insider’s Perspective. Western Folk- The Jewish Love Affair with Chinese Food. Lyn- with a current focus on Chinese in lore 61(3–4):329–46. brook, NY: Gefen Books. Newfoundland.

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 33 Sailmaker BY PAUL MARGOLIS

Long before engine-powered vessels floor full-scale, and it was cut to came on the scene, the wind provided pro- conform to the design that had pulsion for boats and ships of all sizes, and been hand-drawn to the shape sailmakers designed and stitched together and size. “Today, that’s all done fabrics to catch the wind. The art and craft— by computer.” and now the science—of sail making date Materials have changed dra- back thousands of years. The Chinese were matically over the past sev- probably the earliest sailmakers; their slatted eral decades: “Sails are made of bamboo sail designs date back to 3000 BC. Kevlar—the material of bul- Around 2000 BC, Arab sailing vessels used letproof vests—and other high- sails as they traded between ports in the tech materials. They are more Persian Gulf. In Europe, Greek sailmakers inelastic than canvas or Dacron provided the square sales for trading and sails of 30 years ago. Sometimes

G STI LL G OIN STRON military vessels that plied the Mediterranean there will be some hand finish- around 1200 BC. Sails, as we know them ing, but mostly it’s a computer- today, started to appear around 1600, when ized process,” said Butch. He ships became larger and seaworthy enough showed me a rigid piece of a to explore the as yet uncharted parts of the sail that was a semi-transparent, world. high-tech fabric with a mesh of Charles “Butch” Ulmer, the President of carbon fibers running through UK-Halsey Sailmakers, is the second genera- a Mylar “sandwich.” The new, tion of Ulmers in the sail-making business. high-tech sails are made in one His father, Charles, Sr., founded the business piece and “cooked” in a heat Butch Ulmer, president of UK-Halsey Sailmakers, in in 1946, after having worked for another chamber so that all of the ma- his City Island sail loft. Photo by Paul Margolis. City Island loft. Butch went to work for his terials bond together. father in 1965, after he got out of the Navy. Butch doesn’t consider himself a sail- unchanged for the better part of a century, Forty years ago, there were a half dozen maker in the strictest sense of the word. along with “palms”—leather straps that go places on City Island that made or repaired “I’m a sailmaker in that I’m conversant in around the hand and have steel-reinforced sails and did canvas work. Today, UK-Halsey the ways that sails are designed and made.” sections for pushing needles through sail- is one of two remaining sailmakers. Their So, what has remained the same, or at least cloth—are still part of the sail loft’s equip- facility on City Island, at the northern end somewhat recognizable, from the old days? ment. Sections of tree trunks are still used of the Bronx on Long Island Sound, is It is still possible to have sails made from to receive the pounding of the male and across the street from the site of a former Dacron; there are even polyester fabrics female parts of a grommet, the eyelets in boat yard that turned out America’s Cup dyed to look like canvas sails, made for clas- sails and canvas. contenders and built wooden minesweep- sic sailboats that have no need for the latest “Sails,” said Butch, “do the same thing as ers and other small vessels for the Navy in high-tech products. While those sails are also always; they just do it better, since rigs and the two world wars. Butch’s business is part computer-designed, they are still sewn by boats are far more sophisticated now.” Even of an international group has sail lofts in hand-operated machines, and the finishing though today’s sails are made of high-tech Hong Kong, South America, Europe, and is done on them with waxed thread pushed materials, they still serve the same purpose the Middle East. through the stiff fabric by hand. as they always have: to catch the wind and “As an industry, sail making has gone Butch showed me a Dacron sail, laid out propel sailing vessels. through a total change,” Butch said, reflect- on the floor of the loft, that was being sewn ing on the four and a half decades that he’s together on a sewing machine located in a Paul Margolis is a pho- been in the sail-making business. “When I pit that allowed the operator to sit at floor tographer, writer, and educator who lives in was a kid, sails were made out of cotton, and level and move the fabric along under the New York City. Examples the work was done by eye and hand. They needle of the machine. That was certainly of his work can be seen on his web site, www. were weak materials, given to rotting and handwork, even if it was done with an elec- paulmargolis.com. ripping under high wind loads.” In the sail trically-powered sewing machine. loft, the entire sail was laid out on the loft The sewing machines, which have been

34 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore VIEW FROM THE WATERFRONT Fishing Partners: Remembering

Cory Weyant BY NANCY SOLOMON

One of the reasons that folklorists like me over 20 years, I, too, learned many things. and after Cory’s visits, as they related to his choose to bring local fishermen and baymen Cory would ask for things he felt would help adventures on the water. to schools is because we believe that the him tell his story, such as a chart of fish Eventually the school programs became best education comes from interacting with caught in local waters, or some clamshells Cory’s programs. However our work con- rich knowledgeable tradition bearers who from different types of clammers (we have tinued, as regulations began to affect the can teach us about their tradition. I first five types of clams on Long Island). He ability of fishers and baymen to make a began working with bayman Cory Weyant also knew what he expected the students living year round. We advocated on his of Freeport, New York, in 1987, first as an to know before his visit, so we prepared and other baymen’s behalf, especially when ethnographer and then as a partner with the a student maritime magazine with glos- public hearings were held during the time Freeport school district. Cory, who passed sary terms, stories we had collected from when fishermen were on the bay working. away in March 2011, was a natural born sto- other fishers, and word games to help them When the Village of Freeport tried to move ryteller and educator, regaling any audience, remember terms Cory would use in his the traditional docking area to another part young and old, with stories about crabbing, presentation. of town, I was able to gather a group of eeling, clamming, and trawling—traditional We also learned how much more mean- working and retired fishermen to protest at activities he learned as a boy growing up on ingful the science curriculum became to the Village Hall meeting and also to contact the “Nautical Mile” of Freeport. After a students. Often the teachers would say that local and regional newspapers. Eventually year of learning about the bay, we decided they had little understanding of the fishing the plan was defeated. When the Town of it might be a good idea to teach the children seasons and migratory patterns of wildlife Hempstead planned to remove the remain- of Freeport how baymen continued the and fish before Cory came into their class- ing bay houses where baymen like Cory traditions of their waterfront community. room. They also said the programs opened stored their traps and gear, it was through Cory mastered the art of presenting to students’ minds to the natural world in a research on the house’s cultural significance, schoolchildren and began photographing way that the students could connect to. and media and advocacy that the houses more activities of his fellow fishermen and They also commented that sometimes a shy were preserved. With these continued ef- baymen. From this partnership which lasted boy or girl would express themselves during forts, our work as folklorists becomes more than just school-based “show and tell” and leads to long-lasting commitment by com- munities to preserving tradition. Sadly, my partnership with Cory ended in March, when he died in a tragic boating ac- cident. In reflecting on our work together, I am reminded that the best partnerships are those where both parties learn from each other and grow in their appreciation of each other. We also ask you to get to know your local fishermen and become their advocate.

Nancy Solomon is executive direc- tor of Long Island Traditions, located in Port Washington, New York. She can be reached at (516) 767-8803 or info@ longislandtraditions. Bayman Cory Weyant on his garvey with his eel traps. Weyant died in a tragic boating ac- org. cident on March 2, 2011. Photo by Nancy Solomon, 2003. Courtesy of Long Island Traditions.

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 35 Essere Vecchi é Brutto

BY FRANK CAMPAGNA

was born in East Harlem—then Ital- was always up on politics, especially local Flannery O’Connor spoke a simple but I ian Harlem, now Spanish Harlem—in politics and politicians. profound truth when she said, “A story is 1937. I went to Catholic school in East My father, “Papa,” as we affection- a way to say something that can’t be said Harlem. We lived there until I was fourteen ately called him, was born Domenico any other way. . . . You tell a story because years old, and then my parents sold their Campagna. Despite having only a fourth a statement would be inadequate.” One tenement house, and we moved to Somers, grade education, he was able to pass on folktale that my father often told at the New York, in northeastern Westchester to his children sound advice and a clear dinner table remains with me to this day. County. Many of my father’s stories that I understanding of life: its joys and respon- It is the story of an aging, widower farmer: recall were told while we lived in New York sibilities. As the youngest of his eleven City, because my married siblings lived in or children, I lived alone with my parents As the aging farmer grew older, he could no longer handle the chores near our tenement house and, by tradition, after the last of my siblings married, and of the farm, so he asked his son and always came for Sunday dinner. When we I became more attentive to them as they daughter-in-law to move in with him moved to the country, it was a distance to were approaching old age. Life was not to help care for the farm. The old travel, and my older siblings came to dinner easy for my father as he began to age. I farmer lived at the house, and over on Sunday far less often. can remember, as a teenager, my father time, became what the daughter-in-law My father was born on November 30, rising from his chair and muttering in perceived to be a burden and at times a nuisance. She often complained to 1894, in Corleone, Sicily. He came to “Essere vecchi é brutto” Sicilian, (“Being old her husband about her father-in-law’s America in 1899, when he was four years is ugly”). He often used this expression interference with her housework. old. He went to school here in America when maneuvering gave him difficulty or The son and daughter-in-law agreed only to the fourth grade, or so he said— pain. It was a clear reminder to me of his to send the old man to a convent that means he started work at ten years aging. His fear of aging and possibly being where the nuns would care for him. old, and not at fourteen, the legal age at a burden to his children weighed heavily The son explained to his father their decision and soon afterwards made that time. According to the 1910 census, on his mind. plans to take his father to the nearby he was a full-fledged mechanic repairing When I visited my parents’ homeland convent. With no means of trans- sewing machines, with tool and die making in Sicily in 2008, I was impressed by the portation and his father too old to experience, by age sixteen. fact that old age had its place. Families walk the distance, the son carried his In 1916, he started his own business pro- we visited eagerly shared their homes and father on his back. Halfway on the ducing macaroni on a mass scale and made hospitality with their grandparents and journey, the son decided to rest by a large rock. He placed his father on the a good deal of money. He sold the business other aged relatives. What has happened to rock and once again began to explain and went into real estate in 1923. The 1929 our culture here in America? Often looked the reason for both his and his wife’s stock market crash took its toll, and after upon as a burden, senior citizens are many decision to leave the old man in the trying several business ventures without times ignored and distanced from family— care of the nuns. success, he drove a private limousine for filling our nursing homes, assisted living The old farmer’s only reply was, “I Bainbridge Colby, who had served as sec- quarters, and adult day care centers—when will miss my home, but I understand.” The old farmer remained quiet for retary of state under Woodrow Wilson. My they could be a source of comfort, bringing the rest of the journey and lived out his father returned to tool and die making in their support and experience to family life. days in the convent. Years passed and 1940, working in a defense plant. My father It concerns and saddens me. the son, now in his twilight years, faced loved reading newspapers. He was a district It is the memory of my father at the the same situation as his father—be- leader of the Democratic Party in New dinner table commenting on life’s lessons, ing a widower, too feeble to take care of the farm. He, too, had his son and York City, but turned to the Republican often punctuated and embellished with daughter-in-law move in with him to Party when we moved to Somers. My father folktales, that makes me long for his wis- help care for the farm. He, too, contin- believed in the candidate over the party. He dom and company. The American writer ued to live at the house, and over time,

36 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Papa at the head of the table with his family, circa 1948, in his home at 165 East 107th Street, in the neighborhood now known as Spanish Harlem. Photo courtesy of the author.

he, too, became a burden and a nuisance theme of respecting old age. According others in the family were concerned with to his daughter-in-law. His son, faced to Fansler, my father’s story may have had Papa’s impulsive decision. Papa wanted with the same problem as his father had its roots in the thirteenth-century French my thoughts on his decision to marry. I faced with his grandfather, decided to fabliau “La Housse Partie,” with a vari- did have some reservations, but I decided take his father to the same convent to live the remainder of his life. ant given by Ortensio Lando, an Italian to support him. I’m sure Papa’s story of Midway there, by the same rock his novelist of the sixteenth century. One can the widower farmer played a role in my father had rested at on his journey, the extract many arguments for and against the decision. Papa married his lady friend, son began to explain again his decision moral of this folktale and even say it no my stepmother, and lived out his life in to have his father leave his home and longer has any meaning in today’s society. his country home. I will always remember live in the care of the nuns. The father But to me, it brings to mind my father Papa—especially his ability to express his interrupted his son and explained, “Resting on this same rock, on a simi- rising from his comfortable chair and la- thoughts with a simple folktale to bring me lar journey, I spoke the same words to menting, “Essere vecchi é brutto.” Being old to a place of understanding. my father, so explain no more.” is unpleasant—and oftentimes filled with The son thought about what his difficult decisions. Frank Campagna retired in 1987 from father told him, and realizing he, too, When Papa became a widower, he IBM, where he worked as an advisory had a young son and that someday he process engineer, and became a decided to live with my sister, with the may be faced with the same situation, consultant to his family’s marketing and promise of her care. Although she fulfilled publishing services business, Tri-State carried his father back to the farm and Associated Services in Kingston, New never again spoke of having his father her promise, Papa felt lonely and missed York. He has devoted his retirement years leave the farm. his home in the country and its familiar to genealogy, self-publishing three books on his family’s history. He is an avid surroundings. Not long after that, Papa woodworker and member of the Friends In Filipino Popular Tales (1921), Dean met a lady friend and, after a short court- of the Red Hook Public Library in Red Hook, New York, where he has lived for S. Fansler noted similar tales with the ship, asked her to marry him. My sister and thirty-five years.

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 37 A Report from an Embroiderers’ Gathering

BY Ellen McHale and Lisa Overholser

he New York Folklore Society, with traditional arts infrastructure, and to make a It was anticipated that an exchange between T the support of a Mid Atlantic Folk long-term artistic contribution through the these two master artists, who had been work- Arts Outreach Project grant, successfully exchange of practice and ideas by traveling ing in similar ways within their own communi- organized an Embroiderers’ Gathering in folklorists and traditional artists from home ties, would encourage them in their own work Ithaca, New York, on November 28–30, 2011, locations to host sites in other states or ju- and might spark inspiration for new ventures. at the History Center of Tompkins County. risdictions within the mid-Atlantic region. Themes which ran through the entire Over this three-day period, the New York This Folk Arts Outreach Program exchange exchange included the following: preserving Folklore Society hosted visiting textile artist arranged by the New York Folklore Society the history and variation of textile arts, issues Vera Nakonechny, as well as visiting folklor- was between two master embroiderers from of collecting and preserving textiles, exhibit- ist Amy Skillman, in an exchange with local the Mid-Atlantic Region who were both born ing work, and the impact of displacement of artist Enikö Farkas and host folklorists Ellen in Eastern Europe. It was designed to encour- cultural groups. Of particular value was the McHale and Lisa Overholser. Paul Kawam, age conversations about embroidery skills and discovery of the commonalities of experience Micro-Enterprise Coordinator at the Mohawk styles from two countries, to share experiences between Vera Nakonechny and Enikö Farkas Valley Resource Center for Refugees in nearby and techniques for preserving embroidery as post-World War II refugees from Soviet Utica, as well as four weavers from the Karen traditions, and to explore outreach possibilities Bloc countries, and with the recent refugee ex- refugee community, were also present as part for a next generation of artists. Both Vera and periences of the Karen. Friendships and link- of the Gathering. Enikö have devoted years to researching and ages were made between all of the individuals The Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s Folk preserving the differing techniques, clothing involved, and plans were made for continued Arts Outreach Program is an initiative de- styles, and regional variants within their respec- contact in the upcoming year. Besides being signed to strengthen the region’s folk and tive Eastern European needlework traditions. able to focus on an important part of women’s folklore, the outreach provided opportuni- ties to plan for a statewide textile program which can reach across ethnic and geographic boundaries. The New York Folklore Society, as a statewide service organization, found two of its mandates to be addressed in this exchange: the work of NYFS as a statewide agent drawing linkages from throughout the state, and the mission of the Society to be a service organization providing support to artists. This outreach project provided an im- portant professional development opportunity and an opportunity for the Society to reach outside its geographic borders to link together like-minded individuals.

Benefits of the Two-State Exchange The first day of the project was devoted to Enikö Farkas demonstrating an embroidery stitch for Vera Nakonechny. Photo by Sally a direct conversation between Enikö Farkas van de Water. Courtesy of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

38 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore and Vera Nakonechny. Enikö and Vera were able to show each other some of their work and discuss common techniques, motifs, and issues. The importance of regional differentia- tion and identity was also discussed, and both artists acknowledged the necessity of identi- fying regional motifs within their respective national traditions. Discussions in this first afternoon of ex- change also focused on archival techniques and preservation strategies. Vera, with the help of her husband George, had created a wonderful catalog of her items, compiled in a binder with samples of stiches, diagrams completed with specialized graph paper, and step-by-step instructions with illustrations for specific stitches. It was clear that Vera had thought long and hard about how her tradition Enikö Farkas and Vera Nakonechny study Vera’s notebook of embroidery patterns, with would be passed on in her absence, and that folklorists Amy Skillman and Lisa Overholser. Photo by Sally van de Water. Courtesy of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. she had devised a method of preserving what she saw as the tradition, which was very much Through a special initiative by the New York tional back-strap loom which is worked in a focused on the items and stitches themselves. Folklore Society, a group of weavers from the seated position, and both demonstrated and She had also clearly marked each stitch with a Karen community in Utica had been invited offered the opportunity to others to try their regional identification. Other points of discus- to participate in the exchange. This group of traditional weaving. The Utica-based weavers sion centered on the use of acid-free materials weavers from Myanmar (formerly Burma) is also brought samples of their work which they in storage and ways to publicize their work, sponsored by the Mohawk Valley Center for added to the exhibition of textiles. particularly in their respective homelands. Refugees’ micro-enterprise program and is As the afternoon progressed, the numer- As with every Artist Outreach Project, part working to develop a weaving cooperative in ous needle artists and the general public had of the exchange was designed to be open to a Utica. Attending the workshop were Master many opportunities to interact on several public audience. The public aspect of the out- weaver Ah Mu, her daughter Ta Be Than, levels: for example, Vera demonstrated weav- reach program was an exhibition of textiles and and two other weavers, Wah Mu and Paeray ing techniques on her eight-harness loom and a reception on the second day of the exchange. Htoo. Upon their arrival, they set up a tradi- worked with the Karen weavers to show them Held at the History Center of Tompkins County, the two embroidery artists mounted an exhibition of their work and developed a participatory aspect to the exhibition by offer- ing hands-on opportunities to try one’s skill at a particular embroidery stitch or to try Ukrainian weaving on Vera’s eight-harness loom. Out- reach to the public was made by the History Center of Tompkins County through press releases to local media, and Enikö invited her colleagues within the embroidery community, as well as her embroidery students enrolled in her class at the local community center. Atten- dance for the afternoon workshops numbered at least 40 persons. This public program pro- vided an opportunity for interested individuals to learn techniques of embroidery and weaving from the artists, and several individuals took the opportunity to do so. Sharing textiles. Vera Nakonechny and Enikö Farkas. Photo by Sally van de Water. Courtesy of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 39 Group photo from the Embroiderers’ Exchange. Pictured here are Ta Be Than, Enikö Farkas, Paeray Htoo, Micro-Enterprise Coordinator Paul Kawam, Ah Mu, Vera Nakonechny, and Wah Mu. Photo by Sally van de Water. Courtesy of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.

techniques of working on this type of loom; the level of both artist and collector was an and about other statewide programs. NYFS a young woman tried on clothing designed by important aspect to this exchange. has been planning for increased work with the Karen women and modeled them for her The Karen weavers benefited through refugee populations, and this exchange pro- friends; and Eniko conducted an embroidery finding common ground with other textile vided both models for future programs and lesson with a half dozen participants of all artists and especially with Vera and Enikö, an opportunity to reach out to the Mohawk ages. The atmosphere was congenial and who had also experienced refugee status. As Valley Resource Center for Refugees. In the celebratory as friends, family, and colleagues newly arrived residents of Utica, they were final session, folklorist Amy Skillman’s descrip- stayed for an extended period of time. pleased to learn of American interest in their tion of her work on statewide exhibitions in Karen cultural traditions, and Vera and Enikö Pennsylvania provided an important model Benefit to All Partners clearly expressed to them the importance of for similar work in New York. Based on their This outreach project was successful on preserving and maintaining traditional arts and experiences at the gathering, all of the artists several levels. Vera Nakonechny and Enikö culture even when faced with the difficult task were able to engage in planning for future col- Farkas, two senior master artists were able to of adjusting to life in America. As spokesper- laborations of a regional or statewide nature. connect and share like experiences. The two son for the group, Paul Kawam expressed This exchange reinforced the knowledge of women soon also found commonalities within that the four Karen weavers were thrilled to the importance of artist-to-artist mentoring as their personal experiences, exploring these participate and experienced renewed purpose a professional development opportunity. Dur- experiences informally over several shared towards their own micro-enterprise endeavor. ing this outreach program, the power of the meals during the two-day exchange. These two The Karen sold several of their woven items shared artistic experience became perceptible accomplished needle artists have taken their during the public presentation portion of the and transformative. passion to a higher level to become collectors exchange, providing an opportunity for them

of historic textiles and techniques. Both have to see that their weaving might be attractive Ellen McHale is the executive director of returned to their countries of birth to seek to an American market. the New York Folklore Society. Lisa Over- holser is the New York Folklore Society’s out patterns, clothing variations, and textile The New York Folklore Society learned staff folklorist. techniques. That they were able to connect on of strategies and programming directions

40 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore son g s

New York and the Sea BY DAN MILNER

The retreat of the continental ice sheet that Oh, you New York gals, can’t they dance the Some drunken shells in the corner, more once lay 1000 feet thick upon Manhattan re- polka! swilling at the bar, And Larry was supplying them from his sulted in the deposition of a terminal moraine As I walked down through Chatham big five-gallon jar. and the formation of the outwash plain below Street it, creating the landmass that would eventually A fair maid I did meet, Now one glass of Larry’s beverage will become the vast bulk of Brooklyn, Queens, Who kindly asked me to see ‘er home, make your heart to ache, She lived on Bleeker Street. And when you get keeled over your cash and parts of Staten Island. This new land he’ll surely take; formed a barrier that can sap the strength of Says I, “My dear young lady, But when you wake next morning, you’ll wild ocean waves, sheltering ships from Atlan- I’m a stranger here in town! be far outside the bar, tic gales. In doing so, it vastly increased the size I left my ship just yesterday Removed away to Liverpool by gallus And for Boston I am bound.” Larry Maher. of the New York shoreline and created one of the world’s greatest natural harbors. “Now, if you’ll only come with me, You may talk about Jamaica rum, and Burrows and Wallace estimate in their You can have a treat, Monongahela too, You can have a glass of brandy, dear, Or all the poteen whiskey made from Pulitzer Prize-winning history, Gotham, that And something nice to eat.” Cork to Killaloo: “by the second or third decade of the 18th  For, it’s a mere cypher, and far below century…perhaps one out of every four or When we got inside the house the par; five adult male residents of New York earned The drinks were passed around. For, it can’t come up to Larry and his The liquor was so awful strong big-five-gallon jar. his livelihood as a mariner.” Shortly after the My head went round and round! dawn of the 18th century, New York surpassed  Now this jar is inexhaustible; for, when Philadelphia both in population and shipping. When I woke up next morning it is all done, In 1818, the Black Ball Line commenced sailing I had an aching head. Larry can replenish it, in the snapping There was I, Jack, all alone, of a gun; between New York and Liverpool on a specific Stark naked on the bed. Some camphene and laudanum, alum- schedule throughout the year, the first shipping  water and coal-tar, company committed to predictable departures. With a flour barrel for a suit, Composes this good beverage of, gallus, I wandered most forlorn. Larry Maher! Till Martin Churchill took me in The Black Ball ships are good and true And sent me round Cape Horn. I took one glass of Larry’s stuff, and my To me way-aye-aye, hurrah! heart was up for fight, They are the ships for me and you When an M.P. took a run at me and Hurrah for the Black Ball Line! “Larry Maher’s Big 5-Gallon Jar,” a song knocked me higher than a kite; about another Manhattan trickster became He slipped the darbies on me, and the Just take a trip to Liverpool, Tombs not being far: To Liverpool, that Yankee school. popular during the Civil War era after Chatham Street printers published it on song sheets. I bid farewell to Larry and his big five- gallon jar. The Yankee sailors you’ll see there, Larry, according to a lyric from the pen of G.W. With red-top boots and short-cut hair. Watson, was an innkeeper who sidelined as a Maher may have been an actual shanghaier sort of personnel recruiter and travel agent. Even at that point, Philadelphia could have or, perhaps, a well-liked local publican—and caught New York but the opening of the Erie Come, all you jolly sailors bold, that lives the song just a joke. In either case, he was a Canal in 1825 meant that the City of Brotherly both near and far; certainly a known character in old New York. Love would forever be in Manhattan’s wake. I’ll sing you a short ditty concerning Larry Don’t go looking for his tavern, though. It rests Maher: very deep underneath the Manhattan anchor One of the most endearing of all New York He keeps a slop-up boarding house, and sailor songs appeared shortly afterwards, as sells rot-gut to tars, of the Brooklyn Bridge! William Main Doerflinger notes in Songs of And the scourge of New-York City is his big five-gallon jar. the Sailor and Lumberman, “the new dance, the Dan Milner teaches So, if you want chain-lightning, step into Larry Storytelling in Song at polka, came out of Bohemia and became the Maher’s, NYU and Landscapes craze.” And he’ll serve you with abundance from his big of New York City at St. five-gallon jar. John’s University. A cultural geographer and Shipmates, if you’ll listen to me, When first I came to New York, I came former ranger in the I’ll tell you in my song National Park Service, he Of the things that happened to me here on a spree, recorded “Larry Maher’s When I came home from Hong Kong. And hearing tell of Larry’s place, I went Big 5-Gallon Jar” for the To me way, you Santy, my dear honey! the sights to see: Smithsonian Folkways CD, Irish Pirate Ballads in 2009.

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 41 The New York Folklore Society Features “Legends and Tales” at Its 2011 Annual Conference

BY LISA OVERHOLSER

On Saturday, November 12, 2011, the New and legends that she had collected over panelists, Dr. Kay Turner and Dr. Constance York Folklore Society hosted its Annual Con- the years. Sullivan-Blum, to contribute to the public ference around the theme of “Legends and Next, novelist Jaimee Wriston Colbert, sector folklore panel “Collecting Narratives Tales.” The conference was held at Bingham- also on the faculty at Binghamton University after Disaster Strikes.” Since 9/11, Dr. Kay ton University and included graduate student as professor of English and creative writing, Turner has been documenting the spontane- presentations, a public sector folklore panel, read from her work, Shark Girls. The novel, ous memorials which have dotted New York’s storytelling, readings, and great discussions. set in Hawaii where Colbert grew up, weaves urban landscape. Her ongoing documenta- The morning began with two graduate stu- bits of local folklore into a story about a girl tion has resulted in her most recent program dent panels, “The Fabled and the Fabulous,” attacked by a shark. on the 10th anniversary of the attack on and “Legendary Transformations.” The pa- We were pleased to invite two esteemed New York’s Twin Towers. Dr. Constance pers presented were thoughtful explorations into a range of topics, including folkloric perspectives on Shakespeare, the blues, film narratives, and legends, both historical and urban. Each paper session was followed by a lively question-and-answer period. The keynote for the conference was pre- sented by Dr. Elizabeth Tucker, folklorist and professor of English at Binghamton University. “Haunted Halls, Mansions, and Riverbanks: Legends of the Southern Tier” drew upon Tucker’s wealth of research into the folklore of the Southern Tier, and she shared many local hauntings, sightings,

Publish in Voices! See page 43 for submission guidelines.

Jaimee Wriston Colbert reading from her work, Shark Girls. Photo by Ellen McHale.

42 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Submission Guidelines for Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore

Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore is Style a membership magazine of the New York The journal follows The Chicago Manual of Style. Folklore Society (www.nyfolklore.org). Consult Webster’s Third International Dictionary for The New York Folklore Society is a nonprofit, questions of spelling, meaning, and usage, and avoid statewide organization dedicated to furthering gender-specific terminology. cultural equity and cross-cultural understanding Footnotes. Endnotes and footnotes should be through programs that nurture folk cultural expres- avoided; incorporate such information into the text. sions within communities where they originate, Ancillary information may be submitted as a sidebar. share these traditions across cultural boundaries, Bibliographic citations. For citations of text and enhance the understanding and appreciation of from outside sources, use the author-date style folk culture. Through Voices the society communi- described in The Chicago Manual of Style. cates with professional folklorists and members of Language. All material must be submitted in related fields, traditional artists, and a general public English. Foreign-language terms (transliterated, interested in folklore. where appropriate, into the Roman alphabet) should Voices is dedicated to publishing the content of be italicized and followed by a concise parenthetical folklore in the words and images of its creators and English gloss; the author bears responsibility for the practitioners. The journal publishes research-based correct spelling and orthographics of non-English articles, written in an accessible style, on topics words. British spellings should be Americanized. related to traditional art and life. It also features stories, interviews, reminiscences, essays, folk poetry Publication Process and music, photographs, and artwork drawn from Unless indicated, the New York Folklore Society people in all parts of New York State. Columns holds copyright to all material published in Voices: on subjects such as photography, sound and video Kay Turner, folklorist at the Brooklyn Arts The Journal of New York Folklore. With the submission recording, legal and ethical issues, and the nature of of material to the editor, the author acknowledges Council, speaking about her work collecting traditional art and life appear in each issue. narratives of 9/11. Photo by Ellen McHale. that he or she gives Voices sole rights to its publica- tion, and that permission to publish it elsewhere Editorial Policy must be secured in writing from the editor. Feature articles. Articles published in Voices For the initial submission, send an e-mail attach- Sullivan-Blum has been documenting the represent original contributions to folklore studies. ment or CD (preferably prepared in Microsoft Word Although Voices emphasizes the folklore of New and saved as Rich Text Format). Southern Tier’s Flood of 1972, when Hur- York State, the editor welcomes articles based on Copy must be double spaced, with all pages num- ricane Agnes caused widespread flooding. the folklore of any area of the world. Articles on bered consecutively. To facilitate anonymous review the theory, methodology, and geography of folklore of feature articles, the author’s name and biography “Transformation from Tragedy: Survivors are also welcome, as are purely descriptive articles should appear only on a separate title page. Remember the Flood of 1972” is a local in the ethnography of folklore. In addition, Voices Tables, charts, maps, illustrations, photographs, provides a home for “orphan” tales, narratives, and captions, and credits should follow the main text and history project capturing the stories of the songs, whose contributors are urged to provide be numbered consecutively. All illustrations should be flood and will result in a documentary film contextual information. clean, sharp, and camera-ready. Photographs should be Authors are encouraged to include short personal in 2012. Both panelists discussed their work prints or duplicate slides (not originals) or scanned at reminiscences, anecdotes, isolated tales, narratives, high resolution (300+ dpi) and e-mailed to the edi- as public folklorists in documenting such songs, and other material that relates to and en- tor as jpg or tiff files. Captions and credits must be hances their main article. pivotal events and collecting the narratives included. Written permission to publish each image Typically feature articles range from 1,000 to must be obtained by authors from the copyright associated with them. 4,000 words and up to 6,000 words at the editor’s holders prior to submission of manuscripts, and the discretion. Following an informal reception, the written permissions must accompany the manuscript Reviews and review essays. Books, recordings, (authors should keep copies). conference concluded with an outstanding films, videos, exhibitions, concerts, and the like are Materials are acknowledged upon receipt. The selected for review in Voices for their relevance to performance by internationally known story- editor and two anonymous readers review manu- folklore studies or the folklore of New York State scripts submitted as articles. The review process teller Milbre Burch. “Changing Skins: Folk- and their potential interest to a wide audience. Per- takes several weeks. sons wishing to review recently published material tales about Gender, Identity, and Humanity” Authors receive two complimentary copies of the should contact the editor. Unsolicited reviews and issue in which their contribution appears and may highlighted the wealth and persistence of proposals for reviews will be evaluated by the editor purchase additional copies at a discount. Authors gender-bending folktales and cultural expres- and by outside referees where appropriate. Follow of feature articles may purchase offprints; price the bibliographic style in a current issue of Voices. information is available upon publication. sions around the world. Her engaging and Reviews should not exceed 750 words. energetic performance piece was provocative Correspondence and commentary. Short but substantive reactions to or elaborations upon mate- and underscored the power inherent in the rial appearing in Voices within the previous year are Submission Deadlines telling of tales. welcomed. The editor may invite the author of the materials being addressed to respond; both pieces Spring–Summer issue November 1 may be published together. Any subject may be Fall–Winter issue May 1 Lisa Overholser is staff folklorist at the addressed or rebutted once by any correspondent. New York Folklore Society, where she The principal criteria for publication are whether, Send submissions as Word files to Eileen manages the mentoring and profes- in the opinion of the editor or the editorial board, Condon, Voices Editor (e-mail preferred): sional development program and the comment constitutes a substantive contribution [email protected] contributes to many other projects and to folklore studies, and whether it will interest our or initiatives. She holds a PhD in folklore general readers. New York Folklore Society and ethnomusicology from the Univer- Letters should not exceed 500 words. P.O. Box 764 sity of Indiana. Schenectady, NY 12031

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 43 From Girl to Goddess: The Hero- Frankel’s use of tales is not exhaustive. Oral History, Oral Culture, and ine’s Journey through Myth and Tales were chosen for their relevance to Italian Americans, edited by Luisa Legend by Valerie Estelle Frankel. Jef- the step of the journey. The author returns Del Giudice. New York: Palgrave Macmil- ferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., to a previous tale several times if it is the lan, 2009. 288 pages, introduction by the 2010. 366 pages, introduction, appendix, best example to illustrate her point, rather editor, bibliographical information after

reviews notes, bibliography, index, $35.00, paper. than attempting to highlight as many tales each chapter, appendix, $89.00, hardcover. as possible. Frankel did make an effort to Valerie Estelle Frankel begins the intro- include a diversity of tales from throughout There are many ways to tell a story, and as duction of From Girl to Goddess: Heroine’s history including: ancient myths, biblical editor, Luisa Del Giudice looks at oral his- Journey through Myth and Legend with her tales, and stories from around the globe. tory as an angle of convergence in her col- own journey of how she came to write this Literary tales of singular authorship were lection of essays, Oral History, Oral Culture, book. This journey begins like many of the included along with traditional tales of and Italian Americans.” Selected from the tales she presents, with a child of wonder, cultural genesis. 2005 Annual Conference of the American who sets out on an adventure to learn more This book is a fantastic resource for Italian Historical Association (AIHA), the about the stories she loves and eventually anyone interested in folktale scholarship, essays in the book convey Italian American gains the wisdom of understanding them. regardless of a desire to learn about the stories from both historical and cultural Inspired by Joseph’s Campbell’s theory of heroine’s journey. Those new to folktale perspectives. The volume is prefaced with the hero’s journey, Frankel assigns her- scholarship will gain an understanding gracious thanks to its 15 contributors and self the task of exploring the similarities of the history of this field, while trained presents an overview of their experiences and differences between the hero’s and folklorists will find this work to be a won- in academia, community, and the public heroine’s journeys and challenges herself derful refresher. Frankel demonstrates sector and their pursuits toward a greater to prove that the heroine’s journey is no how to properly recognize both tale types understanding of Italian American his- less important that that of the hero. Those and motifs and includes an appendix of tory, ethnography, and folk tradition. It unfamiliar with or rusty regarding Joseph Aarne-Thompson’s Folktale Types and continues with 251 pages of essays by Campbell’s theory need not worry, Frankel selected motifs for those unfamiliar with artists, musicians, cultural anthropologists, provides summaries of his theories as they these works. But this book goes far beyond and scholars of history and literature. The apply or contrast to the heroine’s journey. motif spotting to successfully combine the varied stories come together in a fascinat- The book is divided into two main sec- work of many scholars to show how myths, ing picture of the cultural practices of this tions: “Steps of the Journey” and “Arche- folk tales, and legends could and should unique, yet varied, ethnic group as Italians types.” These two sections are in turn bro- be analyzed. have migrated to live in the United States. ken down into sub-sections, chapters, and Yet, this book is more than a useful text Extensive bibliographies at the end of each sub-chapters. Each chapter begins with the for college students, or amateur and pro- essay are helpful for those who would like telling of a tale through the combination of fessional folklorists. It is an empowering to dig more deeply or follow each author’s quotes and the author’s own interpretation. book for women of all ages. I had previ- trajectory of research. A thorough index Frankel analyzes the myths, folk tales, and ous experience with the many myths and also makes this more possible. For scholars legends as they relate to the particular step folktales contained in this text, along with and lay people interested in pursuing the of the heroine’s journey by utilizing the most of the scholarship used by Valerie roots of a culture that has, for the most work of Joseph Campbell and other schol- Frankel. There was little in this book that part, been modernized, the book is ac- ars including: folklorists, psychologists, surprised me. What did surprise me was the cessible and authentic. Most of the essays symbolicists (author’s term), and feminists. sense of camaraderie I felt with the featured maintain the storytelling voice that they As each analysis is developed, variants of heroines. Like the women who have told present in their subjects, and some are tales and additional tales relevant to that these myths and folk tales throughout the so personal and direct that, to an Italian step of the journey are introduced. His- centuries and across the world, I recognized American, they may seem like a visit with torical and contemporary contexts are pro- myself within them. This book is a must family. To those in the field, the essays may vided to show how the tales reflect the lives read for all women and should be given to seem like a visit with a family of folklorists. of women in the past and present. For the all young maidens as they begin their own Many of the authors will be familiar names second section on “Archetypes,” Frankel heroine’s journey through life. to those who know today’s standard-bearers proffers her own list of female archetypes —Claire Aubrey of Italian American folklore and tradition. expanding on the popular triple-goddess: Independent folklorist The collection of essays is divided into maiden-mother-crone, and the less-known three sections, beginning with the intro- archetypes of Antonia Wolf. duction, by Del Giudice, an independent

44 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore folklorist and founder-director of the Italian the synthesis of culture that occurred, post Marie Saccomando Coppola tells her Oral History Institute, a California non- migration. own personal story of the reception of profit educational organization, which was Part II of the book deals with oral his- her work as a folklorist—by its subjects. established in 1994 and dissolved in 2007. tory. It includes five articles by Alessandro Her use of the first person narrative is a Del Giudice defends oral culture and oral Portelli, Ernesto R. Milani, Marie Sacco- deliberate nod to the feminist idea that the history, in recognition that the majority of mando Coppola, Sefano Luconi, and B. personal is political; but in Coppola’s case, immigrants during the mass migration from Amore. Portelli, Milani, and Saccomando the form had unforeseen consequences. the late nineteenth century to the immediate focus closely on the way the medium re- “As a student of oral history, I innocently post-World War II periods were illiterate. flects the message. Using the voice of a believed I was ennobling her life story,” Peasants and laborers who brought their storyteller, Portelli recounts the conflicting she says of the aunt in Sicily who is the religious and folk traditions to the United accounts gathered from survivors of the subject of her study and PhD thesis. “She States settled in tightly knit communities massacre at the Fosse Ardeatine in Rome. [her aunt], on the other hand, believed I where they re-created the culture of their The author argues that, unlike written his- had betrayed her and the entire family,” lives back home. Even as the rural villages tories, which are static, oral histories may says Coppola. After employing the feminist of their homeland emptied out as a result of change as people are influenced by the tradition of Tillie Olsen, Adrienne Rich, this emigration, Italian immigrants encapsu- popular press and other people’s telling of and others who tell the dark stories of a lated their regional cultures and dialects in an event. Through dramatic and riveting woman’s suffering, Coppola recounts the the neighborhoods they made in America examples, he shows how “mis-memory,” stinging backfire of those whose secrets in an effort to create a home away from or remembering a story as it was heard, she told. Rather than being destroyed by home. This collection represents a few of whether the telling of it was true or not, it, Coppola works with this accusation of the remaining stories of those who remem- becomes fact, or at least the dominant betrayal and argues that secrecy is another ber what life was like for new immigrants narrative. layer of the cultural narrative of Sicilian and for those who remained in Italy before In a similarly dramatic voice, “Breaking women. She does so in a powerful and and during World War II. It also addresses the Code of Silence Woman to Woman,” riveting story. Are you... New to the New York Folklore Society? Missing back copies of the journal?

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Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 45 Essays by Ernesto R. Milani and B. to the voting patterns of Italian Americans John T. La Barbera, speaks of his life’s Amore parallel the others in this chapter during the two decades from 1932–1952. work as a collector and a presenter of tra- as they look at the way the medium affects Today’s political analysts might do well to ditional Italian music. His testimony offers the message. Milani looks at “Il Corriere take note of some of Luconi’s points, as a fascinating perspective on the multicul- del Pomeriggio,” the newsletter of the they face the same issues of voting patterns tural influences of his upbringing in New Gruppo Lontanese of San Rafael, Marin in a poor economy and a high jobless rate. York City during the 1950s. Memories of County, California, and offers insights to Part III of Del Giudice’s collection puts his Italian grandfather playing music in his how, for 20 years, it has been a clarion for eight essays into the category of “Oral Cul- shoe shop on the Lower East Side evoked the people of Lontano who remain inter- ture.” “Cantastorie: Ethnography as Storys- something different from what people saw ested in their regional traditions. It offers inging,” by Christine F. Zinni, examines the in the Italian pop singers like Louie Prima a good example of how local efforts with effects of recording methods on the stories and his cohort. He describes Sicilian Puppet very low production value may provide being told. As in the articles of the previ- Theater and the displays of culture during the cultural markers that scholars need to ous sections, the focus is on methodology. feasts and processions that were common study the everyday lives of ordinary people. However, the subject is the cultural figure, in New York at the time and attempts to Amore, like Saccomando, personalizes her Maria Michela Tenebruso, rather than a his- put all these influences together with later study, “Twice-Told Tales: Art and Oral torical event as those studied in the previous experiences in Italy, where he joined native Histories from the Tenement Museum and section. Zinni engages the reader in a lively Italian puppeteers and musicians. The essay, Ellis Island.” She incorporates stories and narrative that, ironically, captures the very in- called “That’s Not Italian Music,” captures descriptions from what she found at both flection, performance, and emphasis that her that elusive period when what was consid- museums and in their archives. She also essay argues, is often lost in the written word. ered to be Italian transformed, as Italian offers descriptions of her own art project Her essay, combined with the films and Americans and Italians in Italy as well, that incorporated what she learned about interviews she describes, provides strong adopted the musical and entertainment the immigration experience into collage and advocacy for oral histories and recording as styles that were found in the United States. installations that were later displayed at the a mode of transmission of culture, and she Roberto Catalano and Enzo Fina also Tenement Museum in New York City and employs the voice of the personal narrative address the commercialization of tradi- at a SoHo gallery. How the art connects to to add fuel to her argument. tional music and the difficulty in relating the overall Italian experience is subjective, Joanna Clapps Herman also uses personal the music they played during 11 years of but the presentation of her research at the references, what she calls stories from her performing in Italy and the United States. museum and Ellis Island is a good entrée to “family’s myth cycle,” in an attempt to draw Their essay, “Simple Does Not Mean what one might find in those places. parallels to Homer’s Odyssey. While many Easy: Oral Traditional Values, Music and Luconi’s essay, “Oral Histories of Italian examples of stories of her family are cross- the Musicantica Experience” brings alive Americans in the Great Depression: The referenced with moments in the epic poem, direct experiences like making a clarinet Politics and Economics of the Crisis,” her essay lacks in allusion to a broader, out of a stem of wild oat, pointing out how while equally fascinating, stands alone in shared experience, among Italian Americans the common understanding of traditional this section in its more objective style as both within the body of the essay and in its Italian music does not pay homage to that. the author connects economic pressures bibliography. References to theorists like Gramsci and

46 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Oriana Fallaci, as well as numerous other residence at Cathedral of St. John the scholars who have grappled with the phe- Divine in New York City. Belloni also nomenon of globalized culture, ground the became famous for her modern interpre- Send Your Story author’s personal story in academia. tation of the spirit of Tarantella in dance to Voices! Other essayists in this section also and performance and for her revival of employ the first person but make the the spiritual connection with The Black Did you know that Voices pub- personal connection to their argument Madonna and Italian women, both here in lishes creative writing, including less significant than it is for Zinni and the United States and in her native south- Herman. Di Virgilio’s “The Alms-Seeking ern Italy. Belloni was winner of the 2005 creative fiction (such as short Tradition of Sant’Antonio Abate in 1920’s Italian Oral History Institute Award, along stories), creative nonfiction (such Western Pennsylvania,” offers a poignant with John La Barbera, (also featured in this as memoirs and life/work stories), description of an agricultural tradition volume), and founder with La Barbera, of and poetry? We also publish ar- that disappeared in Italy as towns were I Giullari di Piazza, “the only fully profes- tistic and ethnographic photog- abandoned by their residents for America, sional U.S.-based folk music ensemble raphy and artwork, in addition to and tradition vanished, even in the United devoted exclusively to presenting the oral research-based articles on New States as industrialization ensued. The traditions of southern Italy,” according to York State folk arts and artists. respective works of Auguston Ferraiuolo the author. Del Giudice got to know Bel- If you are one of New York’s and Sabina Magliocco are further abstrac- loni’s interpretations of these traditions traditional artists or working in a tions of the cultures they describe, but as she featured the artist’s works in a live traditional occupation—including theirs are grounded in scholarly research. performance series at UCLA, and later fishing, boat building, traditional Ferraiuolo’s focus on the changing geog- traveled with Belloni to Italy, where Del healing, instrument making, fire- raphy of Boston’s North End would be Giudice was a participant in the troupe. The fighting, or nursing, to name a useful to those in urban studies, as well as original interview was recorded on audio- the ethnographer interested in the effects tape in 1998, and transcribed at the close few—please consider sharing that a changing landscape has on culture. of 2006. Of the transcription process, Del with our readers. For more in- It gives a fascinating account of how the Giudice says, “Listening at such a distance formation, see our Submissions North End was alternately connected to in time, to recover the actual words and Guidelines on p. 43 or contact and isolated from Boston proper at differ- intonation, inferable gestures, and other the Acquisitions Editor at nyfs@ ent points in history and makes the effects modalities, required the most acute sort nyfolklore.org. of landfill projects and highway construc- of attention—and sometimes conjecture.” tion palpable. Maguocco’s documentation This honest assessment of the process of of the roots of stregheria, or witchcraft, collecting and interpreting oral histories, among Italian Americans is an invitation along with Del Giudice’s intimate knowl- to those interested in New World and New edge of her subject, her accomplishments Age rituals among Italian Americans and as a scholar, and her excellent editing of this the origins of these “vernacular magicore- volume are evidence that the presentation ligious practices” in Old World society. The in this book represents the truth, beyond essay’s approach is similar to Ferraiuolo’s, reasonable doubt. It is also enjoyable read- in that extensive research, rather than his ing, as is the book as a whole, for anyone own personal narrative, gives way to the interested in Italian American culture or author’s theories about culture. the process of preserving the stories that The final piece in the book, “Alessandra have been told for generations in the past Belloni: In Her Own Words,” is an inter- and who care about them being told, for view with the artist and folk practitioner generations to come. who was an inspiration and mentor to the —Ann van Buren, MA, MLIS editor Del Giudice. Del Giudice provides Freelance writer and teacher in New Belloni’s original responses to questions York’s Hudson Valley in Italian and translates them into English as well. The interview is a sprawling and dramatic piece, which reflects the nature of Belloni, who was a former artist-in-

Fall–Winter 2011, Volume 37:3–4 47 Join the New York Folklore Society today and become a subscriber to Voices

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48 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Thank You, New York Folklore Society Supporters! The New York Folkore Society thanks the people and organizations that supported our programs and publications in 2011. Your help is essential to our work. If your local library is not listed among the institutional subscribers below, please urge it to join.

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“Music of the Erie Canal” A Public Symposium hosted by the New York Folklore Society and the Erie Canal Museum November 2-3, 2012 • Erie Canal Museum • Syracuse, NY Call for Proposals The Erie Canal was a magnificent feat of engineering and transportation in the history of the United States, but it also left a significant cultural legacy that was integral in shaping the American soundscape. New musical communities and institutions were developed as a result of new migration patterns, and thanks to the ease of mobility and communication that the canal fostered, it was also a prime catalyst in cultural transmission. Indeed, the Erie Canal not only created a whole new body of distinctly American musical forms, but it was also a prime example of the folkloric process in action.

The New York Folklore Society, in conjunction with the Erie Canal Museum, will be hosting a public symposium about the Music of the Erie Canal on November 2 and 3, 2012. We invite presentations, papers, and demonstrations on the Music of the Erie Canal. Possible themes include songs and the folk process; the creation of community; archives and collections; popular music of the Canal; and the Erie Canal as presented in music education, but we are open to other potential themes as well. Papers and presentations should be no more than 20 minutes in length; performances, demonstrations or lecture-demonstrations should be no more than 30 minutes in length. Poster presentations and other presentation formats will also be considered.

Individuals and groups are encouraged to apply; interested presenters and participants should complete the attached form.

Deadlines and Important Dates Proposals Due The final deadline for submission of proposals is June 29, 2012 Notification of Acceptance By September 14, 2012 Symposium date November 2-3, 2012

Questions? Please contact Lisa Overholser ([email protected], 518-346-7008) for more information. Download Submission Form at www.nyfolklore.org/progs/cfp-eriemusic.html This symposium is made possible in part thanks to a grant from the Erie Canalway National Heritage Corridor, and general operational support from the New York State Council on the Arts, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Council for the Humanities.