Folklife Center News, Volume 7 Number 4

October-December 1984 The American Folklije Center at the Library oj Congress, Washington, D . C. Volume VII, Number 4 Square Dance To Be National Folk Dance? The Kalevala: 150th Anniversary Publications novels ofpioneer and ethnic romance, and that moral commitment. Further, my FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS with fi'nding quaint people. I havefound correspondent is certainly right that that people who romance about the past the wider public cultivation of nostal a quarterly publication of tbe and about "old times" often do not really gia is sometimes attended by exploita American Folklife Center care about the people they are romanticiz tion of old-fashioned traditions in a ing about. They have no desire to help condescending or self-centered way. at tbe these people but are more interested in ad But the letter also hints at a difference Library of Congress vancing a personal ideal-a patronizing between folklorists and much of our ideal. Simply, tradition-bearers are used society in their fundamental view of Alan Jabbour, Director to fuel a personal fantasy. The truth of what is past, what is present, and how the tradition is lost in the shuffle and the they are related. Ray Dockstader, Deputy Director tradition-bearer eventually realizes he is Discussion of how folklorists deal Elena Bradunas being used by someone he thought was with past and present is complicated, Carl Fleischhauer a friend. curiously, by consensus within our Mary Hufford I'm a romantic at heart - I spentyears field. I am reminded, in a season of Folklife Specialists working in western North Carolina and political campaigns, of the commen Peter T. Bartis, Folklife Researcher wrote most of my research papers on tator's remark that one could decipher Eleanor Sreb, Executive Assistant "dying" arts. And I was for years a a candidate's political point of view Brett Topping, Writer-Editor square-dance fiddler. But I guess I've only by studying the relation of depen Magdalena Gilinsky, Contracts Specialist tried to put my romance for the past and dent to independent clauses: "Although Doris Craig, Administrative Secretary Lisa Oshins, Staff Assistant for the oldtimer in check during my we must be sensitive to people's needs, work . Idolizing a person or the the deficit must be curbed" versus "Al Tel: 202 287-6590 past breeds false expectations. I think though the deficit must be curbed, we romantic approaches suffer the same con must be sensitive to people's needs." Archive of Folk Culture sequences. Don't you? Similarly, debates within our field are When an antiquarian impulse is often studies in adjustment to the pen Joseph C. Hickerson, Head Gerald E. Parsons, Jr., Reference Librarian rooted in a sincere desire to know the dulum that sways across the epicenter Patricia M. Markland, Indexer-Secretary truth, I think it is noble indeed. But . of broad consensus. Our rhetoric seeks Sebastian LoCurto, Staff Assistant Michael Licht, Staff Assistant more often I think there is a point to to correct what we perceive as an im make, an ax to grind, a fantasy to balance, and words at the poles are Tel: 202 287-5510 develop, or a thesis to write. Maybe the designed to pull the pendulum back Washington, D.C. 20540 word ''antiquarian''just hits me funny. toward the center. It sounds like an antique collector (which Unfortunately, there are different again I am) who feels an emotional pendulums for different audiences. Managing Editor: Brett Topping pleasure owning something very old. It When I am making presentations doesn't sound like a person interested in about folklife to various public audi helping a community better understand ences, I find I rarely need to assert a themselves and their traditions, which is, connection to the past. That is already for me, the joy of my work. Maybe the presumed, and my energies are de DIRECTOR'S antiquarian impulse is perfectly appro voted to reminding them that things priatefor a folklorist - I certainly think past can also be alive today; that pop COLUMN we have a responsibility to document ex ular fashion is not the only gauge of cellence in traditional expressions - but I believe this impulse is often complex My last column, which mused over andfilled with less constructive roots and the "antiquarian responsibilities" of biases. I guess . .. being an antiquarian, folklorists, has stirred up the sorts of or collectingfor the sake ofcollecting and lively responses that gladden an author's for the romance of it, is fine (and even heart. One correspondent in particular necessary) in one's personal life, but under has articulated a view that, if not the banner iffolklorist it can be prob downright opposite from the view I lematic. espoused, certainly takes a different tack. There is much to commend in this statement, particularly in its moral It seems to me that romance for the past commitment to tradition-bearers and andfor "the country life" is at an all-time to the cultural communities they arise high these days, and, frankly, this from and speak to. We can draw con romance movement causes me marry prob siderable hope from the fact that a lems in my work. There is a fascination whole generation of folklorists has not with getting back to the country, with only embraced but debated and refined 2 FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS presentness and pastness; that folklore val" section of the textbook (and hence tunes as a boy from Quincy Dillon, and folklife comprise cultural expres the lectures). Folklorists may fulminate who was in his 80s and 90s at the time sions that are always present in some that the traditional ballad does not and had learned tunes in the early 19th form. belong in the medieval section of the century. Thus as I play certain tunes Conversely, when I am speaking to survey, but moving it to "the Renais I am conscious that, with only one per my fellow folklorists, I seem to per sance" or "the Romantic Period" is no son as our cultural intermediary, I am ceive a need to re-emphasize the time better. Ballad singing has been going wondrously close to the Jacksonian dimension in tradition; to remind us on, in one form or another and within era. all that we have a responsibility to the one group or another, for half a mil The third problem with periodicity past as well as to cultural groups in the lenium or so in the English-speaking is that it gets applied, as a metaphor, present; to assert the importance of a world. To assign it to anyone literary to things that are present. Thus some historical dimension in our studies. period is to fall prey to periodicity as people, when listening to the music of The tilt of my comments reflects my a VIce. a splendid oldtime fiddler, can enthu judgment that our professional field The second problem with periodic siastically epitomize his art as "the way has tilted too far in recent years toward ity is that, as an organizing principle it used to be" - denying, by implica emphasizing the ethnographic present for thinking about history, it has the tion, the evidence of their own senses and stressing the group-factor over the effect of boxing off the past from the that this fiddling is the way it is now. time-factor in tradition. present. Using period categories tends Describing cultural expressions that It has occurred to me that the pen to overemphasize differences between are present as if they were past is a dulum swing of folklorists toward the periods as critical factors in evaluating widespread phenomenon in American present just might represent, by some the cultural history of a group, region, society today. I often think it is a com preternatural instinct, a collective or nation. Change defines; continuity forting device for people confronted effort to countervail the public swing is ignored. Thus "theJacksonian Era" with things that are culturally unfa to dwelling upon the past. Be that as seems far away from the 1980s, sepa miliar. Boxing that living expression it may, folklorists are at their best, as rated from us by a host of intervening mentally into the periods of the past a profession, when their interest in periods. Yet in the mid-1960s I learned . "the islanders still speak Elizabethan present and past is in balance. As indi old time fiddle tunes from Henry Reed English" - may help people account viduals they may of course prefer one of Glen Lyn, Virginia. He was in his for an unanticipated encounter with or the other emphasis, but when the 80s at the time and had learned many cultural diversity, but it simultaneously whole network tilts too far in one distances the categorizer from the direction or the other, we obscure one encounter. of our field's most important contribu Folklorists are interested in the peri tions to society. BOARD OF TRUSTEES odicities of history, too, but one of That contribution, put simply, is their special contributions, I believe, connecting past and present through the Ronald C. Foreman, Jr., Florida, is heightening society's sensitivity to concept of tradition. Most people in our Chairman history's continuities. Tradition, one society deal with history by applying David E. Draper, Louisiana, Vice of the key concepts in the study of to it a frame of periodicity. The past Chairman folklore and folklife, is a concept that . emerges as a row of consecutive Edward Bridge Danson, Arizona crosscuts the boxes of periodicity and periods, each characterized by its own Jeanne Guillemin, Massachusetts reconnects the past and the present. identifying traits. Periodicity works Bruce Jackson, New York Perhaps my espousal of our "antiquar well enough as an intellectual approach William L.

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