Fall–Winter 2002 Volume 28: 3–4
The Journal of New York Folklore
Blue-Ribbon Pie A Decade of North Country Legends
Images from AFS–Rochester
The Güira Maker of Queens
Upstate’s Steel Guitar Tradition
The Dance of the DiDinga
Catskill Women From the Director
The 2002 American State Council on the Arts worked with program cent nominees Bruce Buckley and WFH Folklore Society meet- committee members Beverly Butcher and Lee Nicolaisen, both elected in 1991. ing, held in Rochester on Haring to organize the hundreds of papers into October 16–20, had as a cohesive conference program. 2002 Wrapup its theme “Image, Ob- The American Folklore Society conference ject, and Processes of NYFS 2002 Annual Meeting was a major preoccupation of NYFS staff in Documentation.” More The annual meeting of the New York Folklore 2002, but not to the exclusion of other projects. than 650 folklore schol- Society took place on Sunday, October 20, at Dale Johnson and consultant Kathleen Condon ars gathered from around the world for four days the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Rochester. Elected have been working on a curriculum project to of AFS paper sessions, plenary speeches, and to two-year terms were returning board mem- encourage the use of folklore materials that will meetings. Much of the meeting was sign-lan- bers Mary Zwolinski, Ladan Alomar, Beverly satisfy state teaching standards for the fourth guage interpreted through the generosity of TAP Butcher, Pamela Cooley, Jim Corsaro, Eniko grade. With support from the Documentary Plus funds of the Theatre Development Fund, Farkas, Nancy Johnson, Stanley Ransom, Bart Heritage Program of the State Archives, NYFS and there were several papers on the theme of Roselli, and Lynne Williamson. Newly elected is once again working with Urban Think Tank, deaf folklore, organized by Simon Carmel, pro- board members are Midge Stock of Salamanca, Inc., to document the early days of Hip Hop in fessor emeritus of the Rochester Technical Ted McGraw of Rochester, and Hanna Griff New York City through a survey of archival Institute for the Deaf. Carmel and Jo Radner of New York City. New officers are Mary records. NYFS also received support this year also produced a storytelling concert that included Zwolinski, president; Hanna Griff, vice-presi- from the Schenectady County Planning Depart- deaf storytellers. The Music and Song Section dent; and Ladan Alomar, secretary-treasurer. We ment for a series of folk art demonstrations in of the American Folklore Society worked with said a fond farewell to outgoing board members the gallery at 133 Jay Street in Schenectady. Rita the Country Dancers of Rochester to present a Cecily Cook, Elly Shodell, and officers Todd Chrisjohn Benson (traditional Iroquois art), square dance, and the meeting ended with a gala DeGarmo (now past president) and David Beverley Carhart (woodcarving), Barry Irving dinner and dance at the Macedonian Church of Quinn, treasurer. We appreciate their many years (West African drum making), Everett Hartman West Henrietta with music by the Campbell of service to the Folklore Society and the wis- (marketry), Nefisa Khanshab (mehendi), and Brothers Sacred Steel, Karamfil, and the Rod dom and support that they have shared with us Mark Swanberry (stone carving) presented their Nickson Project. See pages 4–7 for Marty over the years. work in August and early September. Cooper’s photos from the conference. In other NYFS business, George Ward and the The New York Folklore Society was heavily late Vaughn Ward were elected as honorary vice- Plans for 2003 involved in the AFS meeting. Dale Johnson, di- presidents of the Society. As stated in the bylaws, We anticipate the continuance of gallery demon- rector of services, organized several miniconcerts “The Board of Directors, at their discretion, may strations and our successful forum series. We are showcasing upstate New York traditional musi- elect honorary vice presidents of the Society. Such planning new initiatives for technical assistance, cians, with support from the New York State honorary officers shall not have responsibilities in and we envision the release of at least ten radio Council on the Arts. NYFS also sponsored and the governance of the Society, nor shall they exer- documentaries that will air on public radio sta- organized an audio digitization workshop with cise voting rights at the meetings of the Board of tions across New York State. Our annual meeting Matthew Barton of the Lomax Archives and Directors.” George and Vaughn Ward join a se- will be held jointly with Traditional Arts of Up- Ted McGraw of Rochester. Cochairs Ellen lect group of honorary vice-presidents who have state New York (TAUNY) in Canton in early McHale and Robert Baron of the New York used folklore in literature, including Carl Carmer, October 2003. Samuel Hopkins Adams, and Walter D. Edmunds We look forward to your support in 2003 and (1944). Other honorary vice-presidents were no- hope to see you in Canton next October! Erratum table for their promotion of New York State Ellen McHale, Ph.D. In the article about Camp Woodland in the folklore and involvement in the New York Folk- Executive Director, New York Folklore Society Spring-Summer 2002 issue, Neil Larson’s name lore Society, including Louis Jones and Ben Botkin [email protected] was misspelled. Voices regrets the error. (1949), Harold Thompson (1955), and more re- www.nyfolklore.org
“Knowledge of a nation’s folklore is knowledge of the creative workings of the minds of its folk. It is key to a nation’s values, a highway that leads into the heart of its people.” —Carl Carmer, New York Folklore Quarterly vol. 9, no. 1, 1953 Contents Fall–Winter 2002
4 Features 4 Music and Art to Remember: The 2002 American Folklore Society Conference Photographs by Martha Cooper 10 Pinto Güira and His Magic Bullet: A Dominican Instrument Maker in Corona, Queens by Sydney Hutchinson 18 Salute to North Country Legends: Ten Years of TAUNY’s Heritage Awards by Jill Breit
26 Sacred Steel and the Empire State by Robert L. Stone
32 Emerging Traditions: Dance Performances of the Sudanese DiDinga in Syracuse by Felicia Faye McMahon 38 Celebrating Catskill Mountain Women: Family Stories, Community History by Melissa Ladenheim 10 43 Alan Lomax, 1915–2002 Departments and Columns 18 3 New York Folklore Society News 8 Upstate by Varick A. Chittenden 9 Downstate by Steve Zeitlin 16 Eye of the Camera by Martha Cooper 17 Foodways by Lynn Case Ekfelt
24 On Air Bea Reynolds won more than forty by Mary Zwolinski et al. blue ribbons and was named Grand Champion Cook at the Franklin County Fair before her death in 37 Archival Questions 2002. She was also among the by Nancy Johnson “North Country Legends” honored by TAUNY for mastering and conserving community traditions; 44 Lawyer’s Sidebar see page 18. In the Finger Lakes, by Paul Rapp another champion baker wins a title for “the world’s greatest grape Book Reviews pie.” See page 17 for that story, 45 plus a recipe from the mother of 26 all grape pies. Photo:Martha 48 Announcements Cooper
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 1 scripts submitted as articles. The review process Submission Guidelines for takes several months. Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore Deadlines permitting, authors read and cor- Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore rect galley proofs for typographical errors. Authors receive two complimentary copies of the Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore is a spond; both pieces may be published together. issue in which their contribution appears and may membership magazine of the New York Any subject may be addressed or rebutted once purchase additional copies at a discount. Authors Folklore Society (www.nyfolklore.org). by any correspondent. The principal criteria for of feature articles may purchase offprints; price The New York Folklore Society is a nonprofit, publication are whether, in the opinion of the information is available upon publication. statewide organization dedicated to furthering editor or the editorial board, the comment con- cultural equity and cross-cultural understanding stitutes a substantive contribution to folklore Submission Deadlines through programs that nurture folk cultural ex- studies, and whether it will interest our general Spring–Summer December 31 pressions within communities where they readers. Fall–Winter issue June 30 originate, share these traditions across cultural Letters should not exceed 500 words. Manuscripts should be sent by regular mail (not boundaries, and enhance the understanding and e-mail) to Voices at the following address: appreciation of folk culture. Through Voices the Style society communicates with professional folklor- The journal follows The Chicago Manual of Style. New York Folklore Society Publications, 133 Jay ists and members of related fields, traditional Consult Webster’s Third International Dictionary for Street, Schenectady, NY 12301. artists, and a general public interested in folklore. questions of spelling, meaning, and usage, and Voices is dedicated to publishing the content avoid gender-specific terminology. of folklore in the words and images of its cre- Footnotes. Endnotes and footnotes should be ators and practitioners. The journal publishes avoided; incorporate such information into the research-based articles, written in an accessible text. Ancillary information may be submitted as style, on topics related to traditional art and life. a sidebar. It also features stories, interviews, reminiscences, Bibliographic citations. For citations of text Fall–Winter 2002 · Volume 28: 3-4 essays, folk poetry and music, photographs, and from outside sources, use the author-date style artwork drawn from people in all parts of New described in The Chicago Manual of Style. Editors Karen Taussig-Lux ([email protected]) Language. All material must be submitted in and Sally Atwater ([email protected]) York State. Columns on subjects such as pho- Photography Editor Martha Cooper tography, sound and video recording, legal and English. Foreign-language terms (transliterated, Design Mary Beth Malmsheimer ethical issues, and the nature of traditional art where appropriate, into the Roman alphabet) Printer Digital Page, Inc. and life appear in each issue. should be italicized and followed by a concise Editorial Board Varick Chittenden, Amy Godine, parenthetical English gloss; the author bears Kate Koperski, Cathy Ragland, Kay Turner, Dan Editorial Policy responsibility for the correct spelling and orth- Ward, Steve Zeitlin Feature articles. Articles published in Voices ographics of non-English words. British spellings represent original contributions to folklore stud- should be Americanized. Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore ies. Although Voices emphasizes the folklore of is published twice a year by the New York State, the editor welcomes articles Publication Process New York Folklore Society, Inc. 133 Jay Street based on the folklore of any area of the world. The New York Folklore Society holds copyright P.O. Box 764 Articles on the theory, methodology, and geog- to all material published in Voices: The Journal of Schenectady, NY 12301 raphy of folklore are also welcome, as are purely New York Folklore. With the submission of mate- New York Folklore Society, Inc. descriptive articles in the ethnography of folk- rial to the editor, the author acknowledges that Executive Director Ellen McHale lore. In addition, Voices provides a home for he or she gives Voices sole rights to its publica- Director of Services Dale Johnson “orphan” tales, narratives, and songs, whose con- tion, and that permission to publish it elsewhere Administrative Assistant Deborah Mustico must be secured in writing from the editor. Al- Web Administrator Patti Mason tributors are urged to provide contextual Voice 518 346-7008 information. though the editor welcomes inquiries via Fax 518 346-6617 Authors are encouraged to include short per- electronic mail, please use regular mail to submit Website www.nyfolklore.org sonal reminiscences, anecdotes, isolated tales, manuscripts. Board of Directors narratives, songs, and other material that relates For the initial submission, send three paper President Mary Zwolinski to and enhances their main article. copies and a PC-formatted disk (preferably pre- Past President Todd DeGarmo Total length, including citations, should not ex- pared in Microsoft Word and saved as Rich Text Vice President Hanna Griff Secretary-Treasurer Ladan Alomar ceed 4,000 words. Format). Beverly Butcher, Karen Canning, Pam Cooley, Reviews and review essays. Books, record- Copy must be typed double spaced, on one James Corsaro, Eniko Farkas, Nancy Johnson, ings, films, videos, exhibitions, concerts, and the side of a sheet only, with all pages numbered con- Madaha Kinsey-Lamb, Ted McGraw, Stan Ransom, like are selected for review in Voices for their rel- secutively. To facilitate anonymous review of Bart Roselli, Greer Smith, Midge Stock, Lynne Williamson evance to folklore studies or the folklore of New feature articles, the author’s name and biography York State and their potential interest to a wide should appear only on a separate title page. Advertisers: to inquire, please call the NYFS 518 346-7008 or fax 518 346-6617 audience. Persons wishing to review recently pub- Tables, charts, maps, illustrations, photographs, lished material should contact the editor. captions, and credits should follow the main text Unsolicited reviews and proposals for reviews will and be numbered consecutively. All illustrations Voices is available in Braille and recorded be evaluated by the editor and by outside refer- should be clean, sharp, and camera-ready. Photo- versions. Call NYFS at 518 346-7008. ees where appropriate. Follow the bibliographic graphs should be prints or duplicate slides (not The programs and activities of the New York Folklore Society, and the publication of Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore, are made style in a current issue of Voices. originals). Written permission to publish each im- possible in part by funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. Reviews should not exceed 750 words. age must be obtained by authors from the copyright Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore is indexed in Arts & Humanities Citation Index and Music Index and abstracted in Historical Abstracts and Correspondence and commentary. Short holders prior to submission of manuscripts, and America: History and Life. but substantive reactions to or elaborations upon the written permissions must accompany the manu- Reprints of articles and items from Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore are available through the ISI Document Solution, Institute for material appearing in Voices within the previous script (authors should keep copies). Scientific Information, 3501 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. 215 year are welcomed. The editor may invite the Materials are acknowledged upon receipt. The 386-0100. ISSN 0361-204X author of the materials being addressed to re- editor and two anonymous readers review manu- © 2001 by The New York Folklore Society, Inc. All rights reserved.
2 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore NYFS NEWS New York Folklore Society News
Mentoring Program proaching foundations, and collaborative to practitioners of folk arts and introduces For more than ten years, with assistance fund-raising projects. them and their traditions to a wider audience. from the New York State Council on the Arts • Comite Mi Gente Latino, based in Bea- The gallery is also a place where folklorists and the National Endowment for the Arts, con, New York, received funding for staff from around the state can feature the arti- the New York Folklore Society has provided members to meet with Ladan Alomar, direc- sans they have worked with over the years funds for organizations and individuals in- tor of Centro Civico of Amsterdam, Inc., to and share their work with society members volved in folk arts or folklife programming. receive mentoring in Centro Civico’s success- and people from other regions of the state. The Mentoring and Professional Develop- ful model in growing a community-based It has been gratifying to see the enthusiasm ment Program for Folklife and the Traditional Latino organization in New York. generated by artists and colleagues for this Arts provides small awards to hire a mentor • Ted McGraw, a proponent of Irish music project. who can assist with specific skills needed to in Rochester, was mentored by web consult- This past year, we celebrated the work of further the field of folk arts in New York State. ant Mick White in creating and choosing individuals by sponsoring demonstrations at The program also assists in professional de- formats for materials gathered from traditional the gallery. Spotlighted were Xrystya Szyika velopment and other kinds of consultancies. Irish musicians in New York State and the (pysanky egg decorating), Rita Chrisjohn The following mentoring applications were international Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann Benson (Iroquois art), Everett Hartman (mar- approved in 2002: organization. quetry), Barry Irving (West African bata • Brad Shope, folklorist working with the • The Brooklyn African American Heritage drums, ancestor and Oya masks), Nefisa Queens Council on the Arts, received fund- Preservation Committee received funding for Khanshab (Pakistani mehendi, decoration of ing to consult with three mentors, folklorists cookbook author Jessica B. Harris to consult hands and feet), and Mark Swanberry (native Mary Zwolinski, Kay Turner, and Jean with the organization in developing a culinary New York bluestone carving). Crandall, in assessing the folk arts program- arts project. For contributions and questions about art ming and needs of the borough of Queens, • Catherine Schwoeffermann of the Rob- in the gallery, go online at www.nyfolklore.org, New York. erson Museum in Binghamton was approved or call the office of the New York Folklore • Adirondack Carousel Inc. Funds were to meet with Steve Zeitlin of City Lore to dis- Society, (518) 346-7008. provided for a master woodcarver, Carl Borst, cuss ways of incorporating sound and music to mentor woodcarvers in Saranac Lake. The into the museum’s Voices and Visions exhibit. Folk Arts Forum project features a carousel with animals na- Guidelines and applications are available The New York Folklore Society co-spon- tive to the Adirondacks carved by community upon request or can be downloaded from our sored a forum on vernacular architecture in members. website, www.nyfolklore.org. Applicants are the Hudson Valley and Catskill regions of New • Ellenville Public Library and Museum. The encouraged to contact NYFS before submit- York State with the Huguenot Historical So- library received funding for archivist Brian ting a proposal. ciety in New Paltz on November 9. Keough of the Special Collections Library at Presentations at the day-long event in- the University at Albany to mentor staff in Gallery of New York Traditions cluded Neil Larson on stone houses of Ulster basic cataloging and preservation techniques The society’s Gallery of New York Tradi- County; Jack Braunlein of the Huguenot for collected materials, including recorded tions is celebrating its second year of providing Historical Society on structures at that site narratives of community members. a venue for folk and traditional artists to show dating to the 1680s; a tour of local National • Jean Crandall was approved to have Long and sell their work on a consignment basis. Register houses; Nancy Solomon on the Island folklorist Nancy Solomon consult with We welcomed many new artists to the gallery study of vernacular architecture; and Peter her on presenting maritime and farm culture in 2002, notably woodcarver Anthony Gaudio Sinclair of the Society for the Preservation in Dutchess County, including the identifica- (walking sticks), Ferenc Keresztesi of Hudson Valley Architecture on the work tion of appropriate artists. (Transylvanian grave markers), Helen Giulietti of the Dutch Barn Society. • Varick Chittenden of Traditional Arts of (quilts), Robert Bernardi (wooden bowls), Jim The Folk Arts Forum is a series of infor- Upstate New York was awarded a mentoring Petrillo (birchbark frames), and Joe Bruchac mal but stimulating meetings held throughout grant; Steve Zeitlin and Marci Reaven of City (Abenaki elmbark berry baskets and ceremo- the state that bring people together to discuss Lore in New York City will share strategies in nial bark rattles). issues related to folklore and folk arts. If you cultivating new sources of funding for The gallery is more than just a venue for or your organization would like to sponsor TAUNY, including grants, finding and ap- artists to sell their work: It gives recognition one, please contact the NYFS staff.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 3 Music and Art to Remember The 2002 American Folklore Society Conference
Photographs by Martha Cooper
Native American Marketplace time Canada, the most extensive practice of The Native American Marketplace at the Native basketmaking takes place on 2002 AFS conference in Rochester provided Akwesasne, the Mohawk homeland that an opportunity for attendees to meet Na- spans the St. Lawrence River in New York, tive artists from upstate New York, learn Ontario, and Quebec. The Akwesasne Cul- more about their work, and purchase high- tural Center Library and Museum estimates quality traditional arts made today. Ash that more than a hundred Mohawks have a splint basketry, beadwork, silver ornaments, knowledge of basketmaking, and many ac- and lacrosse stick making were among the tively produce baskets for sale and family historically important Haudenosaunee tra- use. Men and women participate in all stages ditions represented. Most of the of the process, which includes identifica- participating artists were Haudenosaunee tion and harvesting of ash trees, preparation from the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, of splints, gathering of sweetgrass, carving Oneida, Mohawk, and Tuscarora nations. of basket molds and handles, and the weav- Following customary Haudenosaunee prac- ing of baskets. Akwesasne Mohawk baskets tice as prescribed by the Grand Council of are made in many forms, from large pack Chiefs, no sacred objects or spiritually sig- baskets strong enough for hunters to use in nificant art forms were displayed or sold. transporting game, to delicate one-inch bas- The Native peoples of upstate New York kets woven from sweetgrass to hold and southern Ontario and Quebec call Henry Arquette, Mohawk basketmaker, thimbles. More than an artistic exercise, the themselves the Haudenosaunee, or People Akwesasne Reservation, shown with his wife. traditions of basketmaking provide income, of the Longhouse. Their clan systems, po- knit families and generations together, and litical and spiritual structures, oratory, express a profound sense of Mohawk iden- musical forms and repertoires, and mate- tity. Bride and groom exchange baskets at rial culture productions continue in active traditional Mohawk Longhouse wedding practice. Haudenosaunee cosmology, rheto- ceremonies, and Mohawk people often ric, oral history, and expressive culture are honor dignitaries by presenting a basket. In extraordinarily poetic and symbolic, and recognition of their excellence, the cultural literacy in their metaphors and sto- basketmakers of Akwesasne have received ries exists among the Haudenosaunee to a the New York State Governor’s Arts Award high degree. and the Traditional Arts in Upstate New The process of weaving utilitarian and York North Country Heritage Award. fancy baskets from gathered and prepared Beads and beadwork played an important black ash splints and sweetgrass remains one role in Haudenosaunee life for many gen- of the more widespread and complex tech- erations before European settlement. nologies used by Haudenosaunee and During the mid-nineteenth century, Hau- Algonkian Indian groups in areas of New denosaunee artists developed new types of York State, New England, and southeast- beadwork items made to appeal to tourists ern Canada. Although basketmaking visiting Niagara Falls. Called whimsies, the continues today in other Haudenosaunee beaded pincushions, picture frames, table
communities and also among the Wabanaki Dan Hill, Cayuga flute maker and player and coverings, wall hangings, and clothing ac- people of northern New England and mari- silversmith, Tuscarora Reservation. cessories gained tremendous popularity
4 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore In my community there is a relationship between all the objects that we create and the words that surround us. The words are here to teach and guide us through life; the objects are here to serve the memory and meaning of the word. The practice of looking at things to remember is our way…What we create, tourist item or not, serves as a reminder of our spiritual, economic, and cultural survival. —Jolene Rickard, Tuscarora artist and art historian
as souvenir items. Beadwork production role of marketing, for instance, sometimes soared and became a vital source of income thought to adulterate a tradition, has served for Haudenosaunee families during the mid to inspire Haudenosaunee women to cre- to late 1900s. Like their ancestors, ate items encoding their beliefs and sense Haudenosaunee artists continue to make of identity while at the same time feeding beadwork items for their own use and for their families. sale. The multifaceted nature of Hau- denosaunee beadwork and its continuing Other Native American artists at the popularity and resonance suggest the need conference • Henry Arquette, Mohawk basketmaker, for a sophisticated understanding of com- Above: Ronnie Reitter, Seneca cornhusk doll maker, plex and changing interactions between Akwesasne Reservation; Rochester. Below: Dan Hill, silversmith and flute cultures and also within cultural groups. The maker and player; Katie Thompson, basketmaker; continued on page 6 and Robin Lazore, Mohawk basketmaker, Akwesasne Reservation.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 5 • Sue Ellen Herne, Mohawk painter and curator at the Akwesasne Mohawk Mu- seum and Library, who brought many Mohawk baskets and other artworks from Akwesasne to sell and who organized the basketmaking forum; • Kevin White, Mohawk, representing the Iroquois White Corn and Pinewoods Community Farming Project based on the Cattaraugus Seneca Reservation; • Tonia Loran-Galban, Mohawk basketmaker, Rochester; • Michael Galban, Washo-Paiute artist in quillwork, woodwork, fiber, basketry, and educator at Ganondagan State Historic Site, Rochester; • Ronnie Reitter, Seneca cornhusk doll maker, Rochester; and • Rosemary Hill, Dorothy Printup Jackie Hobbs was born into the fiddling tradition of the Tug Hill region of upstate New York. Her Winden, Dorene Rickard, Ann Printup, grandmother, Alice Clemens—three times New York State Lady’s Fiddling Champion—gave Sarina Printup, and Anita Ferguson, all Hobbs a fiddle when she was five, and throughout her childhood, Hobbs traveled with her grandmother to fiddle events across the Northeast and eastern Canada. Hobbs plays several Tuscarora beadworkers from the Tuscarora styles of fiddle music, but her main influence has always been her grandmother, who mixed New Reservation. England and Canadian styles. She was accompanied by pianist Jesse Gotham. —Lynne Williamson Lynne Williamson (lynne.williamson @icrweb.org) is director of the Connecticut Cultural Heritage Arts program at the Institute for Community Research in Hartford.
Music from the Empire State Noontime concerts each day of the con- ference featured traditional musicians from New York State. Musicians also performed at receptions and special events. The AFS Music and Song Section, the Dance and Movement Analysis Section, and the Coun- try Dancers of Rochester hosted a square dance at the Coventry United Methodist Church. The callers represented regional traditions: Dudley Lauffman from New Hampshire, Randy Wilson of Kentucky, and from upstate New York, Jim Kimball, Dick Bolt, Richard Castner, and Ken Lowe. They were accompanied by Kelly’s Old Timers, a multigenerational family band The Trinidad and Tobago Steelband is led by Alfred St. John, a native of Trinidad who came to from the Genesee Valley. the United States in 1964 and worked as an electronics designer at Eastman Kodak for nearly twenty years. When he first moved to Rochester, there were few other Caribbean musicians, so he began teaching. His band has grown over the years and now performs several times a week in Other musicians at the conference the summer throughout western New York. He has also mentored local musicians on the steel drum and has several recordings to his credit, including the newly released Caribbean Romance II. • Finnish-American button accordianist Richard Koski with Carl Rahkonen on fiddle and mandolin;
6 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Sterl Van Arsdale is a traditional hammered dulcimer player and fiddler living in Frewsburg, New York. His grandfather, Jesse Martin, taught his older brothers to play the hammered dulcimer. Van Arsdale started playing fiddle around age fourteen and was inspired to pick up the hammered dulcimer by watching his brothers. He has performed at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife, and today, continuing a family musical tradition, he plays for concerts, square dances, and round dances in western New York.
• Comhaltas Ceoltoiri Eireann musicians Ted McGraw on button accordion and concertina with Cathy McGrath on flute, whistle, and guitar, Pat Carey on flute, gui- tar, and vocals, John Walker on fiddle, and Brian Coughlin on flute; • the Campbell Brothers, presenting Af- rican-American gospel music with electric steel guitar and vocals; • a rhythm-and-blues band, the Rod Nickson Project; and • Karamfil (“Carnation”), presenting tra- ditional village songs and dance music from Macedonia and Bulgaria on kaval, an end-blown wooden flute; tambura, lutelike instruments; gadulka, a rebec-like bowed instrument; gaida, bagpipe; tupan and dumbek, drums; plus clarinet, trumpet, and Marcos Santiago performs jibaro music with Jesus Gracia and Ruben Orona, who make guitar. up the Trio Los Arpegios. In the central mountains of Puerto Rico, traveling folk musicians playing jibaro bring aquinaldo, “the gift of music,” from early December until the feast of the Three Kings on January 6. Santiago learned the basics of the style while a young teen and continued to play guitar for traditional holiday celebrations after moving to Rochester in 1963. He eventually took up the cuatro, a ten-stringed guitar that is the lead instrument in jibaro. He is well versed in many styles of traditional Puerto Rican guitar and dance music and also performs on the requinto and tres.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 7 The Power and Eloquence of Everyday Speech BY VARICK A. CHITTENDEN
My father used to tell [my wife] Vera (I’d When I was a student, their work was informative but inspiring. I get great joy be makin’ a decoy for huntin’) and he’d say, described as “local color.” They included from listening to them speak—with humor, “Vera,” he’d say, “If you take a two by eight Bret Harte, Hamlin Garland, William passion, enthusiasm, sometimes with UPSTATE plank eighteen inches long and put a nail Faulkner, Mark Twain, and Sherwood sadness or remorse. But in any case, they in it and stick a potato on it, you got a pretty Anderson. I’ve especially liked Southern speak from the heart, and they speak in good decoy.” And you have, really. By the writers, like Eudora Welty, William the rhythms and the intonations we find time they see eyes in ’em and them fancy Faulkner, and Flannery O’Connor. They, in families and communities here in the shape, it’s good night ladies, that’s it! like our own North Country’s Irving North Country. —Bill Massey, St. Lawrence River decoy Bacheller or Russell Banks, have captured carver, Waddington, St. Lawrence County a sense of place and the idiosyncrasies of The most important thing to me [about characters, especially in their dialogue. It the annual Feast of Our Lady of Mount I love words. I always have. From the is that folk speech, those special idioms and Carmel] is everything being centered days when I’d hide under my bedcovers and grammatical interpretations by local around the procession…It used to be a read stories by flashlight after my mother’s people, that give real life to these stories longer route and it was very impres- curfew or listen to some of my Dad’s very for me. sive…Years ago we used to have the band unusual old expressions, I have been leading…We used to have the Blessed fascinated with language. That’s probably Mother, she had a long ribbon and the why I studied literature in college and For me, the language of the people older people who could never come out to taught it all those years. While my friends we work with is not only the feast would wait in the corners or in in math or physics have sometimes seemed front of their homes and come out and amused by this, I really do believe that there informative but inspiring. I get pin the traditional money on the is an exactness in words that is almost great joy from listening to them statue…Sometimes it would bring tears to scientific in nature. Just try to find the right speak... your eyes, because they could hardly walk, thing to say when the loved one of a friend but this was a big thing for them. It meant dies or when you are so angry that you only so much. see red! If you’re like me, the words come Years ago I used to make such an effort —Ida Jane Alteri, St. Anthony’s eventually…an hour later…or on the ride to—to do anything, like playin’ the guitar parishioner, Watertown, Jefferson County home. And then there is the occasional turn or the fiddle or rifle shooting. I did all of of phrase—the perfect combination of this after I lost my hand…’course it’s In the process of listening and reading, words for the moment—that a good poet actually a lesson to anybody. If you want I am frequently moved by the power and or novelist creates, which makes you think to do something bad enough and try hard eloquence of simple, everyday speech. I long after you’ve closed the book. enough and—and pray a little, the Guy don’t have to go to great writers to find it. Upstairs will help you to do whatever you I can hear it in the oral traditions of my We have one lady…she brings in an want done. neighbors and local shopkeepers and apple pie and on the top of the pie after —Dick Richards, fiddler and country music friends. she gets it made, there is an apple drawn performer, Lake Luzerne, Warren County on the top of the pie, and she does it with a cutter of some kind. Puts it right on the I’ve been reminded of all of this in top of the pie. It’s very attractive. So it’s recent months, as I have pored through Varick A. Chittenden almost appliquéd, as in a quilt. You’d dozens of interview transcripts and is professor emeritus of English, SUNY appliqué a piece of pastry right on top. It’s listened to the original tapes as I was Canton College of just the way she does it. It looks lovely. writing a small book about various Technology, and executive director of —Eunice Southworth, Bangor, Franklin traditional artists in the North Country. Traditional Arts in County Fair official And it always comes back abundantly clear upstate New York (TAUNY). Photo: when we develop scripts for radio Martha Cooper My favorite American authors have most documentaries. For me, the language of the often been closely associated with place. people we work with is not only
8 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore The Human Unit of Time BY STEVE ZEITLIN
In her memoir, Blackberry Winter, Margaret we are often referring to traditions and time encompasses much more than twenty- Mead devotes a chapter to the joys of histories passed on in living memory. We five years, however. becoming a grandparent. Gazing at a child privilege stories passed down by word of The human unit of time might be useful as one’s grandchild, she writes, makes it mouth over historical episodes learned from in conceiving cultural policy for many of suddenly possible to “visualize that same books. A human unit for thinking about time the local establishments that continue to child as a grandparent, and with the eyes of might become a useful tool as folklorists, resonate for the cultures that created them another generation…see other children, just preservationists, and other cultural activists even after they have moved out particular as light-footed and vivid, as eager to learn take on roles in cultural policy. For instance, urban neighborhoods. On the Lower East and know and embrace the world, who must the Human Unit of Time might be applied Side, for instance, establishments like Yonah be taken into account—now.” in arenas such as copyright law. Corporate Schimmel’s Knishery, Katz’s delicatessen, Grandparenthood inspired her to consider interests led by Disney and the Gershwins and Russ ’N Daughters still mean something how we need “a human unit in which to think have continually argued for extensions of to New Yorkers, even though Jews are no about time.” This span cannot be as short as the copyright law beyond the current 75 longer a majority in the neighborhoods. a human lifetime, and yet it cannot rely on years. This means that descendants continue Little Italy is no longer an Italian the scientist’s notion of time stretching back to receive royalties from people who are neighborhood, but Italians flock to its millions of years to the Big Bang, or even often not connected to the creative artists restaurants and shrinking strip of stores on the historian’s notion of time spanning in living memory, preventing art from weekends. These places flourish because centuries and dating back to Colonial returning to the public domain. The human Jews and Italians continue to patronize America or the Middle ages. A friend of unit of time may even serve as a meaningful them, in some cases bringing their Mead’s defined this human unit of time as measure as folklorists become involved in grandchildren to hear stories of the “the space between a grandfather’s memory wrestling with issues of intellectual property. neighborhood from grandparents. A few of his own childhood and a grandson’s Similarly, historic preservation has generations hence, the need for protection knowledge of those memories as he heard favored places of architectural rather than may no longer be pressing, and cultural about them.” This human time span, based cultural distinction because bricks and policy could allow for a new generation to on experiential reckoning rather than mortar can be preserved for hundreds of remake the neighborhood and its scientific exactitude, stretches from ourselves years. As history unfolds across centuries, establishments after its own image. as children to our grandparents’ memories certain community-based sites need to be There is no clock that measures the of their own childhoods, encompassing five landmarked with permanent designations human unit of time, except, of course, our generations. Elders bracket the human unit that mark the contribution of a particular beating hearts. Listening to that fleeting tick, of time, with their memories on one side and ethnic or labor group, or the dramatic we can sense the importance of the five- their legacies on the other. contribution of an individual to our generation span, of an intergenerational unit As folklorists, we often present the work collective memory. The process of of time. Places are containers of memory, of elders and advocate intergenerational landmarking needs to be broadened to fulfill and attention to sustaining the places that exchange, encouraging young people to its mandate to preserve sites important to harbor the stories is one way to encourage interview their grandparents, to stretch the our “historic, cultural, and aesthetic intergenerational exchange. Attention to the measuring tape of time beyond their own heritage.” human unit of time can motivate us to think DOWNSTATE lives—not an easy task for Americans, who In addition, we consider employing the beyond our own brief lifetimes and take our continually embrace the new. A boy once human unit of time to craft designations grandchildren’s world into account—right told Mead that “long ago was before his that foster a sense of living memory in the now. grandfather’s grandfather’s time.” It’s city. Perhaps these designations might, for occurred to me that we need the human unit simplicity’s sake, demarcate sites for a of time not only to extend the way we think hundred years (even though Mead’s human Steve Zeitlin is about families and time, but in some cases, measure is often a bit longer). In New York executive director to limit it; to distinguish what happened in Newsday, Jimmy Breslin poked fun at the of City Lore and living memory from what happened “long name of Haggerty Park on 201st Street and codirector of the Place Matters ago,” when an individual’s human unit of Jamaica Avenue in Hollis, Queens. “There project, 72 East time fades into the historical record. hasn’t been a kid with the name and face of First Street, New York, NY 10003; Folklorists echo Mead’s notion when we a Haggerty in that park in a quarter of a [email protected]. speak of a living cultural heritage because century,” Breslin wrote. A human unit of
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 9 PintoPinto GüiraGüira andand hishis magicmagic bulletbullet A Dominican instrument maker in Corona, Queens
BY SYDNEY HUTCHINSON
rancisco Javier Durán García just great love has always been the güira. He finds shape of the particular model of güira onto F turned thirty-three and is already at it more comfortable to play than other the metal, then cut it out with shears. the top of his trade. He is well known among instruments because it is portable and is Dominican musicians not only for his showy played standing up. In addition, he feels a It takes me a long time to do this because I do it very carefully. If one performance style but also as one of the few personal attachment since every one of his tries to go back after making the cut, instrument makers who still produce güiras güiras has his own name worked into the the work is already lost. That is to say, entirely by hand—from start to finish. These design. one has to have great accuracy, to measure very exactly. One has to do it metal idiophones are occasionally also known Durán believes that his trade cannot truly first in the mind, and after the mind, to as guayos, or graters, because of their resem- be taught. He attributes his talent to a higher do it with the hand. Of course, if the mind doesn’t function, the hand can’t blance to the kitchen tool. source, and that makes it even more special do the work. Durán set up shop in Corona, Queens, in to him. 1997. Although most of his business is done Pinto often puts his name and the name on a person-to-person basis and he gets new One doesn’t study this. It’s like of the instrument’s future owner into the something from nature, a nature that customers through word of mouth, he has God gives to human beings. Every sheet, using a set of small metal letters that also sold wholesale through New York Latin artisan that figures out something, it’s can easily be stamped onto the steel with a music chains Rincón Musical and Disco an ability that God gives him. It comes like a magic bullet. hammer. When making a “standard” model, Mundo. Justifiably proud of his work, he he then makes the burbujitas—the little notes that his instruments are in demand Making a güira bubbles that produce the sound—in a regular across the world and are used by groups as Though Pinto has been a great innovator pattern. Using a straightedge and a far away as Hong Kong. in his field, he still uses the tools of his screwdriver, he etches lines on the back of Better known as Pinto Güira, a name Güierro forefathers: tree stump, hammer, the metal to divide it into little boxes. In each derived from his freckles, or pinto, and his nail, metal tube, wood block. The surface box he then hammers a bump in the center instrument (in merengue, instruments are often of the stump must be very smooth so as and onto each corner using a centrapunzón, or used as last names), he has played with many not to damage the metal. Pinto uses a tree centerpunch. Güira makers used to do this great musicians in merengue típico, or traditional stump made from a felled tree a cousin entirely by sight, without guidelines, but Pinto merengue, including Rafaelito Román, Fary found in New Jersey; bent nails attached in “discovered that making it this way, the güira Henríquez, Lydia de la Rosa, La India Canela, a circle hold down the metal sheet. The gave me a better sound and the work would Diógenes Jiménez, Francisco Ulloa, and metal must also be of high quality: Pinto turn out more exact.” Ricardo Gutiérrez. Showmanship earned him buys stainless steel in large sheets from a If it is to be a güira con diseño—one that yet another nickname: Bronx supplier. features motifs created from the future An announcer in Santo Domingo called owner’s name, flowers, crosses, or other Ever since I began, I always tried to take images—Pinto instead creates a paper me El Güirero Show because I was a lot of care to get good metal…Because always putting the güira on my head, in if a good quality of metal is used, the pattern, traces the design onto the back of my mouth, and making a show of it. sound quality is good. That’s why my the metal, and then outlines it with burbujitas güiras have such value. Pinto also plays timbales, bongos, congas, using the hammer and centerpunch. and the two-headed tambora drum, but his The first step in the process is to mark the Once the design is finished, Pinto makes a
10 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore insists its correct name is the onomatopoeic richi. It consists of a wooden handle with eight, ten, even twelve or thirteen thick wires on one end. Pinto makes them with eight unless a customer specifies differently. He uses either umbrella ribs or bicycle spokes for this purpose, hammering them directly into a handle made of soft, straight-grained wood. Making the standard design takes Pinto about a day; such an instrument usually sells for $200. Güiras featuring specially com- missioned designs may take two days or more and sell for $300 and up. Demand is so high for his work that Pinto can be found in his workshop almost any day of the week—as long as he isn’t performing.
Form and function To give perspective to the many innovations Pinto has contributed to the güira’s manufacture, we must understand the forms it has taken in the past. Besides the tambora, there is no instrument more emblematic of merengue than the güira. Its distinctive sound and shape reflect its unique history, as well as that of merengue típico. Salsa and cumbia fans will be more familiar with the güiro, a scraper made from a gourd with ridges and finger holes cut into it and Francisco Javier Durán García, known as Pinto Güira, creates his namesake instruments in his Corona, Queens, basement workshop. All photos © 2002 by Sydney Hutchinson played with a stick or a metal comb. Pinto believes this is the earliest form of the special fold called an inversa that will allow the güira strength and improves its sound. instrument and says its name is botanical in the two sides of the güira to be joined into a Finally, the handle, or mango, must be origin: cylinder. One edge is folded toward the front, created and attached to the body of the The original güira is called güiro because one toward the back, so that “when you instrument. To make the grip, or puño, the it’s a plant, a gourd that comes from Puerto Rico. It’s taken from there and present them, the two hold each other as if artisan returns to the angulal, folding and made into a güiro, and they use it for they were two hands, two hands when they hammering the metal repeatedly until the salsa. greet each other.” These folds are made by proper shape is reached; four rivets hold it Popular wisdom maintains that this hammering the metal over a metal rail called together. Sometimes Pinto puts a marble instrument is one of the few survivals from an angulal. inside the hollow handle, adding yet another the Taíno people, who inhabited the island Now Pinto’s güira just needs form. To sound to the güira’s repertoire. Instead of of Hispaniola before the Spaniards arrived. make it round, he places it around a thick soldering, a process that Pinto found No one is sure where or when the metal güira metal tube and beats it with a block of soft adversely affected the sound, he drills holes was invented, but we do know that its shape wood. The two sides are joined at this time, a and attaches the handle with metal rivets, and materials have changed over time. Before process Durán calls engrampar, or stapling. The three on each end. the advent of amplified sound systems, güiras engrampe forms the base for the handle. One last item must be made separately. The were made with cones over both ends to Next Pinto turns the tube on end, the güira sound of the güira is produced by scraping a dampen the sound. still around it. He creates a rim, or borde, by comb over the surface pattern of burbujitas. The güira that my dad played was a güira hammering the edge of the metal to the This comb is known by various names, made of sheet tin. Then time passed inside, over the lip of the tube. This gives including gancho, peine, and peineta, but Durán and they started making güiras from
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 11 zinc, then from peanut oil cans…The de Herrera. Because both his father and güira had cones. Later the cone güira ceased to exist because the sound grandfather were güireros, he thinks the systems became more sophisticated. affinity for the instrument “runs in the Because of the sophisticated blood.” Though he is the only professional equipment, they had to implement the uncovered güira. musician among his five siblings, several cousins are involved in folkloric music and Today, many güiras are made in factories. his uncle is a tambora maker. Pinto and his faithful customers say there is Pinto attended school infrequently as a no comparison: child, instead working with his father and brothers at the local sausage factory, You can tell them apart by the sound Embutido Santo Domingo. Beginning at age because the güira from a machine, they don’t give it the same number of strikes eight he would get up in the early hours of as I do. The point [the burbujita that the morning to clean factory floors. His produces sound] isn’t as live as the father was the sausage stuffer, his brother the point that I give it. I can specify the sound. seasoner; their mother tied casings. The money he earned was given to his father to Güiras are now made of either tin or buy Pinto’s clothes. “They also put me to stainless steel. The use of stainless steel was dance there in the factory…on top of the one of Pinto’s many contributions to the table. They’d always throw money to me there art, but other güira makers have followed on the table.” Pinto hammers out the burbujitas, bumps, with a suit because it offers better durability and But Pinto knew factory work wasn’t his centerpunch. When scraped with a wire comb, the guira sound quality. Even though stainless steel true calling. As early as age seven, he began a produces the rhythmic rasp characteristic of Dominican merengue. makes the instrument too expensive for career in music while playing in the kitchen, some, Pinto still hopes to continue “messing up my mother’s graters.” Soon after, improving the quality of his work: he realized that the güira was his destiny with a literal flash of illumination: Since I write my name in big letters on my güiras, after doing what I do so well, I got inspired when I went to work with I wouldn’t like to go back after having my brother. I saw a piece of zinc that moved ahead. Better that from being was very shiny, very beautiful. It seems ahead [in my field], I try to take it still that when the sun was hitting it, the sun further. had to do with the illumination of my life, with my güira. That’s when I got Pinto has in fact made numerous other the idea. innovations in güira design and manufacture. He is able to regulate the Having been hit by the magic bullet, he pattern of sound-producing bumps by began to play with brothers Ramón and graphing, a process he invented. He was the Américo on tambora and accordion. They first to sell custom-designed güiras, using performed in the street, going from house the burbujitas to create pictures and words. to house earning tips. Even then, he was a He invented the new method for attaching popular performer because of his humorous handles using a riveter. He has experimented style, putting the güira on his head or with the form of the instrument, making contorting himself into unusual positions. old-fashioned coned instruments as well as Pinto soon started playing with two of his completely new shapes, and has come out uncles, who had to ask his father for with one new design in each of the past permission to take him away—a difficult four years. This year’s model is the “arrow”; matter. Ever since Pinto’s mother’s death next year’s, the “pyramid,” is already in the when he was five years old, his father had works. found happiness impossible without Pinto by his side: The burbujitas can form a geometric design, words, or The making of a güira maker custom motifs; the Statue of Liberty and the Twin My dad was very jealous with me. My Towers were the inspiration for one of Pinto’s recent Durán was born in a part of the güiras. dad sometimes liked to drink and would Dominican capital called Barrio Enriquillo get a little intoxicated. He would get
12 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore jealous when he’d drink and I wasn’t At thirteen, Pinto decided the time had would put on the handles on my own, there, so he would start to cry and all and I tried and I tried until I succeeded. that. My uncle felt bad about it. I’d tell come to realize his dream of moving to my father, “But this is what I like; you Santiago, the home of merengue típico and Durán stayed in Santiago until a tour with have to let me, you have to help me.” the largest city of the Cibao region. But accordionist Ricardo Gutiérrez brought him because he hadn’t yet finished his studies on Eventually his father relented, and at age nine, to the United States in November 1997. His güira making, he encountered problems. Pinto was already searching out groups to güiras were already being sold in New York perform with. The first formal group he joined through music stores, so it was not difficult When I was starting out, I didn’t know was that of Basilio Martínez, from Tenares; next how to put the handles on the güira and to find a market for his work. He returned to he played congas with Luis López of Puerto this was a big worry in my mind…I was the Dominican Republic in 2000 but came suffering inside because I saw how they back to New York on another music tour Plata. He also played folkloric Afro-Dominican would put the handle on the güira, and music with three cousins. They accompanied I saw how beautiful they’d make the the following year. well-known folk dancers like Casandra fold. I’d say, God bless those people Like many other Dominican musicians, who learned how to do that, when I only Damirón, and Pinto learned to dance as well. knew how to make the little bumps. Pinto splits time between New York City and His interest in instrument making con- Right then, finding myself so far away, Santo Domingo, and he maintains güira I felt so uncomfortable having to go workshops in both countries. (An apprentice tinued to grow. Pinto learned to make from Santiago to the capital, from the tamboras (the principal drum used in capital to Santiago to be able to finish called Zacarías, or “El Buty,” runs the merengue) from his uncle but never found my güira. It was something that really Dominican shop in his absence.) It appears had me inconvenienced. I nearly didn’t them as interesting as güiras. He learned the have time to eat or anything. I even lost that Pinto’s son, Luis Francisco, may carry basics of güira making by working with two gigs, because I was also a musician at on the family tradition. At five years old, he that time. I was going to play one already plays a mean güira. other artisans, known to him only by first Saturday [in Nagua] with a gentleman, name: Guillermo and Buchi. The latter’s two now passed away, named Siano Arias, sons, Elpidio and Juan, taught Pinto the most, very good in música típica…[But Playing the güira because of] ten güiras that I had to though indirectly: “I’d watch; then I’d try to deliver they took another guy to play in Today, Dominican musicians use the retain it in my gray matter.” my place. From then on I decided I güira in four main styles of music: salsa,
Pinto hammers the güira’s edge over an angulal to prepare its two sides for joining
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 13 The güira must be tapped with a soft wood block into a perfect cylinder.
bachata, merengue de orquesta (big band as if you were playing cumbia style, or sounds like a horse’s clopping hooves and is salsa style, or merengue style. But in the merengue), and merengue típico, or perico orquesta you pretty much just use not terribly difficult to play. Pinto explains ripiao. But Durán was always most inspired caballito rhythm, it’s called. One doesn’t that it is used in particular with orquestas use the repiques, as they are called in by the last: típico ensembles. because the size of the ensemble requires a steady rhythm to hold the players together. What inspired me to take up the güira Caballito, or little horse, is a rhythm—one On the other hand, a güirero típico is was the traditional music. That’s what I’ve always carried inside me, what I or two eighth-notes and a quarter-note—that expected to improvise more, using repiques have in my blood.
Although the same instrument is used in all four musical styles, the way it is played changes from genre to genre. Pinto notes, “Típico…is played with the whole hand. To play with an orquesta, you have to play with the wrist; you don’t use the whole arm.” Playing with the wrist produces a softer sound, whereas in a típico group the güira plays a more central role. This means that perico ripiao requires a wider range of abilities from the güirero and a larger rhythmic repertoire than does orquesta merengue.
A típico musician can play more easily with an orquesta than can an orquesta with a típico. Because…you vary the Traditionally, the instruments were made of tin, but Pinto prefers stainless steel for its rhythm in música típica. You can play durability and sound quality.
14 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Merengue típico Merengue típico, or traditional merengue, has been around since at dance done to it, with little success. It continued to be played in the least the 1840s. It comes from the rural, northern valley region around Cibao into the 20th century, along with other dances like mangulina, the city of Santiago, called the Cibao, so it is sometimes known as carabiné, polka, guarapo, and zarambo. merengue cibaeño. The original group consisted of stringed instruments Merengue experienced a sudden elevation of status when dictator like guitar, tres, or cuatro as well as the güira and tambora drum. Rafael Trujillo came to power in 1930. Since he himself was from a Sometimes a bass instrument called marimba joined the ensemble. rural area and a lower-class family, he decided that merengue music This direct descendant of the African mbira is a large wooden sounding should be the Dominican national symbol. He used perico ripiao bands box with five to eight metal keys. The instrumentation is considered during his campaign and soon had it playing on the new medium of emblematic of the three main cultures in Dominican history: European radio. Once it was being heard in urban middle-class living rooms, it guitar or, later, accordion; African marimba and tambora; and the güira, was only a short step from there to the ballroom. This transition paved which some consider to be of native Taíno derivation. the way for the next major innovation in the genre: big bands. Though the güira has played an important role in merengue since During the Trujillo era, Dominican musicians adopted the its inception, the rest of the ensemble has been through some changes. instrumentation then popular in the United States, replacing the A significant innovation occurred when Germans came to the island in accordion with saxophones and trumpets and initiating a split between the 1870s, trading their accordions for tobacco. The instrument quickly mostly urban merengue de orquesta and mostly rural perico ripiao. Since gained popularity and soon replaced the strings as leader of the típico then, the two styles have developed along separate but parallel ensemble. The two-row diatonic button accordion continues to be trajectories. Típico musicians like Tatico Henríquez, the godfather of used by most típico musicians, preferably made by Hohner; sometimes modern perico ripiao, updated their sound during the 1960s after the one-row version is also seen. Also, though today the tambora is Trujillo’s assassination. They replaced the marimba with electric bass played with one stick in the right hand and the flat palm of the left and added a saxophone to harmonize with the accordion. In the 1970S hand, according to legend it was not always so. A turn-of-the-century or 1980s, the now “standard” lineup was completed with a bass drum, musician dropped his left-hand stick during a performance but had to played with a foot pedal by the güirero. keep going; others soon latched on to the new sound he had created Orquesta merengue now rivals salsa in popularity in New York City, by accident. but típico artists seldom get airplay in the States. Although this creates As with many other kinds of rural folk music, merengue típico was a difficult economic situation for the latter group, it also gives them originally considered disreputable. Its more descriptive and colorful some measure of freedom. While many big bands have been name, perico ripiao (literally, ripped parrot), is said to have been the commercialized to the point of inanity, perico ripiao retains its fresh, name either of a house of ill repute where the music was played or a improvisatory sound. Some younger band leaders have added congas dish served there. The lyrics were often suggestive, and sometimes and keyboards in an attempt to close the gap between típico and political. Predictably, moralists tried to ban the music and the provocative orquesta and increase their listening audience.
(literally, chops or stings) to vary the rhythm. Caribbean and South America. New Brunswick: Durán notes that over the past forty years, That’s what I most love in life. My Transaction Publishers. three major alterations in the típico ensemble Durán García, Francisco Javier. 2002. Personal güira, first! interviews conducted 6 February, 28 February, have changed the rhythms and thereby and 4 April. Stored in the Long Island affected the güirero’s job. First, when congas Traditions archive. Translated by the author. and saxophones were introduced, new rhythms appeared and were mixed with the as [the rest of] the music, on top of the notes.” Pinto now aspires to make the largest and older ones. Second, in response to listener Sydney Hutchinson demands, típico musicians now play more the smallest güiras in the world and earn ([email protected]) mambo—the section of a salsa or orquesta himself a world record. Until then he will is staff ethno- musicologist at merengue song where the horn section plays keep performing with accordionist Berto Long Island precomposed, catchy, repetitive riffs. Third, Reyes, with whom he recently recorded a CD. Traditions, 382 Main Street, Port the addition of the bass drum complicated But most of the time, Durán will stay in his Washington, NY the rhythm still further. Now the güirero must dark basement workshop under a Dominican 11050. She documents ethnic cultural traditions, play a rhythm with his foot in contratiempo restaurant on 103rd Street, Corona, focusing on recent immigrants from Asia (countertime) to the güira in his hand. hammering his name into sheets of steel. and Latin America, and assists in program development. She has completed her thesis Every musician has his own style, but a on Mexican American quebradita dancing great one must have the two qualities of References for an M.A. in ethnomusicology from Indiana University; she also holds a B.M. in experience and rhythmic precision. Pinto’s Austerlitz, Paul. 1996. Merengue: Dominican music and Dominican identity. Temple University Press. piano performance from the University of favorite güireros “fit very well with the Davis, Martha Ellen. 1994. Music and black Arizona. She recently created the first website dedicated to merengue típico, musicians that are playing. They do it well, ethnicity in the Dominican Republic. In Gerard www.merengueripiao.com. almost perfectly…they have the same rhythm H. Béhague, ed. Music and black ethnicity: The Photo © 2002 by Heather Ordover
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 15 Please Don’t Mess with My Photos! BY MARTHA COOPER
When it comes to using my photos in In their eagerness to come up with a impossible color scheme. Designers should publications, museum exhibits, or on the dramatic layout, too many designers are work with the photos in hand when they are web, designers and I are often at odds. oblivious to content. They should remember deciding how to use them. Text, headlines, Whereas I feel I’m handing them a finished that photographers, like writers, have captions, and other graphics can then be laid product, they act as though I’m giving them reasons for including information. We out to enhance the photo. raw material. The gulf has widened in recent photographers should give designers a 7. Tinting black-and-white images. Magazines years as Photoshop and other computer choice of photos by shooting verticals and that can’t afford full-color reproduction often programs have made it irresistibly easy to horizontals, at different angles and focal try to enliven their pages by tinting black- manipulate photos. lengths, of the same subject. and-white photos in a single color. Now that There may be some photographers who 2. Eliminating the background. My own this can be accomplished with a single click don’t care how their photos are used—but specialty is shooting subjects in context— of the mouse, tinted photos are rampant. I I don’t know any. Some purists won’t permit an approach important for folklore have recently observed black-and-white their photos to be cropped or changed an documentation. I want my foregrounds and photos tinted yellow, blue, brown, and iota from the way they shot them. I often backgrounds to work together aesthetically reddish-pink—yuk!
EYE OF THE CAMERA EYE OF think my photos are stronger with a little and intellectually. The background often Good black-and-white photo repro- postproduction tweaking, but I want to be contains important information about the duction is hard to achieve. At its best, there in charge. foreground, so it’s upsetting and insulting is a range of tones from bright white to pure A good designer will combine my photos, when a designer silhouettes a subject and black. Although tinted photos may make a as I have submitted them, with text and floats it on white. page look more colorful, the content of the graphics in an aesthetically pleasing layout 3. Overlapping, montaging, and inserting. photos will be harder to read. Designers can that best presents the subject matter. Many Sometimes, to fit more pictures on a page, use line drawings, type, or other graphics in photo alterations and mutilations are com- designers overlap images. Photos work best color to spruce up the page, but the photos mitted in the name of design. In the hands aesthetically if they stand alone without should be reproduced in the richest black and of a talented designer such changes can other images cutting into them and vying white the printer can manage. work—but rarely. Here are a few of the for attention. The most dynamic layouts use 8. Ghosting a photo behind text. Using a most common. fewer photos larger. Like fine art prints, desaturated or blurred photo as a back- 1. Severe cropping. Good photographers some subjects need space around them. This ground for text makes both hard to read. choose their subject matter carefully and should not be an invitation to fill that space Editors, curators, and web designers who precisely compose it in their viewfinders to with another photo. have a strong vision for their finished products fill the frame of whichever camera format 4. Reducing photos to postage stamps. Photos should choose photographers whose style best they are using. If we have done our job well, need to be large enough to “read.” If you fits. Publishers should hire designers who have our pictures work best in terms of both can’t see their details, there’s no point in worked with, and understand, photographs. content and aesthetics in the format we have using them. Layouts with many small photos As a documentary photographer, I want my shot them. Rectangular photos should not look cluttered and are illegible. It’s better to photos to communicate, not decorate. be cropped to square, nor horizontal photos print fewer photos larger. Photographs are my life’s work and I want to verticals. 5. Cutting photos into shapes. Please do not them treated with respect. If you must alter Judicious cropping can often strengthen cut photos cut into circles, triangles, stars, my photos, please ask first. an image (hey, we’re not perfect), but when keyholes, exclamation points, or apples. Well, a photo needs a lot of cropping to fit into a OK, maybe an oval once in a while, if you Martha Cooper is the director of layout, it’s probably the wrong photo to use. want to give a photo a vintage look. photography at City Designers who are tempted crop a picture 6. Wrenching photos into a preconceived design. Lore. Her images have appeared in radically should consult with the Some designers, both web and print, create museum exhibitions, photographer first. Perhaps together they an inflexible layout or template before they books, and maga- zines. If you have a can find a better image. Now that we can e- have even seen the photos. This leads to question that you’d mail photos and layouts, this kind of photos squeezed into awkward spaces with like her to address, send it to the editor communication is quick and easy. too much surrounding white space or an of Voices.
16 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore FOODWAYS
The World’s Greatest Grape Pie BY LYNN CASE EKFELT
We park on the outskirts of town— her stands. Winner of last year’s contest, she Now it’s time to make my way into the necessary on Grape Festival Weekend when has set up booths at each end of Main Street, judging room where nineteen numbered the usual population of twelve hundred both with signs proclaiming her status as pieces of pie await three teams of two judges. swells to one hundred thousand in tiny world’s greatest grape pie maker. When Pie crusts and fillings are each to be judged Naples, at the southern tip of Canandaigua Jennifer won her prize last year, she had been on appearance, texture, and taste. The judging Lake. As we wend our way downtown past making her own pies for only two years, is blind; only one person knows who made purple fire hydrants and the blandishments though she had been helping her mother each pie, and she’s not telling. Slowly the of 250 craft vendors, we pass up make filling for seven years. She tells me she judges circle the table. There are no chefs or opportunities to purchase grape kuchen, is hoping to sell 600 pies this season. The cooking instructors among them, just local filled grape cookies, grape jelly, grape next day I learn that after selling 855 pies the people who like pie. For a while, all I hear cheesecake, grape bread, frozen grape first day of the festival, she pressed everyone are snatches of conversation: “too corn- custard, and grape sundaes. I’m saving myself in her family into service and made 125 more starchy…too perfect and commercial- for the main event, that hour when I’ll watch that night for day two. looking…this tastes like Smuckers…it’s too a team of judges choose “the world’s greatest There is no one correct way to make a jammy…that filling was gnarly.” Now the grape pie.” grape pie. Irene thickens her filling with contest takes a high-tech turn, as the tallier Irene Bouchard is universally recognized tapioca; Jennifer uses flour. Most bakers sprawls on the floor with his laptop to total as the mother of Naples’ grape pies, if not prefer Concord grapes, but sometimes they the ballots on a specially designed their actual inventor. In the early 1960s, Al fall back on the thicker-skinned but earlier- spreadsheet. While he works, I sneak tastes Hodges, owner of the Redwood Restaurant, ripening wordens. Some even use the green, of what remains on some of the plates. Good decided to introduce a novelty to lure champagne-flavored Delawares. The grape call: that filling is indeed gnarly! This year a customers: pies made from abundant local pulp is always boiled to loosen the seeds. clear winner has emerged—no need for the grapes, using a recipe he learned from an old Usually that’s the only cooking the grapes get taste-off that has settled some past contests. German woman in the area. Soon people until they bake in the pie. Some bakers, I peek at the name and am delighted to see were coming from miles around, asking to though, prefer to cook filling ingredients that it is Jennifer again, then head back to buy whole pies to take home. Hodges and together on the stove before putting them the car with a sack of grape tarts, a small his chef could not handle the demand and into the crust, a step that gives their pies an loaf of grape bread, and—of course—a called on Mrs. Bouchard, who lived across almost jamlike consistency. grape pie. the street and had opened a small baking business in her home. By the 1980s, she was Grape Pie buying two and a quarter tons of grapes every fall and turning out six thousand pies, baked Even though they may be perfectly willing to share their recipes, the bakers of Naples have trouble letting outsiders in on the secret of the twelve at a time in her regular oven and an perfect pie because they never bake just one: they prepare pies in quantity. auxiliary wall oven. At eighty-four, she now After much consideration, Irene Bouchard worked out the following bakes only for a few favored customers, but for me: she has inspired other local cooks to follow in her footsteps. Most bake just during grape 5 1/2 cups Concord grapes, washed season—about seven weeks during the fall— about 1 cup sugar, depending on the sweetness of the grapes and sell their products from stands in front 1 tablespoon tapioca Pastry for a 9-inch pie of their homes. Others, though, freeze enough filling that they can sell pies year- Pop the skins off the grapes by pinching them at the end opposite the stem; set them aside. Put the pulp round, and some have even begun to sell over (without water) into a heavy pan, bring it to a boil, and let it boil 5 to 6 minutes. Put it through a colander the Internet. It is estimated that twenty or food mill to remove the seeds. Pour the hot pulp over the skins and let the mixture sit for 5 hours. thousand pies change hands during Grape (“This colors the pulp and makes it pretty.”) Add the sugar and tapioca, then pour the mixture into the pie crust and dot with butter. Put on the top crust. (Irene uses a “floating” top crust—a circle of dough Festival Weekend alone. slightly smaller than the top of the pie—because it is easier than crimping top and bottom together and I meet one of the younger generation of it also makes a pretty purple ring around the edge.) Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes. Lower the bakers, Jennifer Makepeace, when I stop by temperature to 350 degrees and cook 20 minutes more until the crust is browned and the juice begins to her stand—or to be more accurate, one of bubble up.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 17 Salute to North Country Legends BY JILL BREIT Ten Years of TAUNY’s Heritage Awards
n September 22, Traditional Arts generations in the North Country and who made to honor the recipients but always O in Upstate New York (TAUNY) actively practice them today”; we would include music; initially, we were reluctant to celebrated the tenth anniversary of the present North Country Heritage Awards ask the musicians being honored to “play North Country Heritage Awards at its each September at an event we would call for their supper,” but we’ve come to realize Annual Salute to North Country Legends the Salute to North Country Legends. The that’s exactly what they want to do. in Canton. Recipients were a knitter, a rustic criterion for selection, created by a com- Sometimes there are stories, sometimes furniture maker, a harmonica player, and a mittee of folklorists and applied to readings, sometimes dance, and occasionally Champlain Valley dance band, bringing the individuals and groups, was “evidence of a bit of video. total number of North Country Heritage traditionality, mastery, and creative com- A favorite part of the program for the Awards presented over the decade to forty. mitment to their art form over time and a recipients is the slide show with which I The salute was a program of music and commitment to their community and the introduce each of them to the audience. stories, followed by a public reception for teaching of others.” And we determined From the moment we decided to create the the honorees and audience. We’ve come to that portraits of the honorees would be North Country Wall of Fame, we decided expect a certain vibrancy in the event, and displayed in a permanent exhibit at our that high-quality photography would be a this year was no exception. The North gallery as the North Country Wall of Fame. priority for the program. Each year, Country Heritage Awards program has far That first year, we were concerned about photographer Martha Cooper has traveled exceeded the expectations we had for it at the advanced age of some of the obvious to the North Country to photograph the outset, evolving in ways we hadn’t candidates for the award and decided to recipients at their homes or studios, in their anticipated. present six, though our plan thereafter was churches or community halls. We also ask When I joined the staff of TAUNY in to choose three or four recipients each year. recipients to permit us to copy photos from 1993, it was a fledgling institution, poised The first six honored were Adirondack their family albums, especially those that to establish its public identity. Founding storyteller Ham Ferry, the Big Moose establish the context of their ongoing Director Varick Chittenden and I were the Community Chapel balsam bee, fiddler involvement in a tradition. In the past few only staff, concerned foremost with Alice Clemens, Mohawk elder and teacher years, Marty has done copy work right on opening TAUNY’s first gallery. Varick also Ray Fadden, St. Lawrence River decoy site after she has finished her own shoot so had in mind establishing a signature event carver Bill Massey, and sculptor Veronica that we do not have to borrow photographs. for the organization that would serve to Terrillion. (Our concerns were justified; just The slide show is created from her original explain what we do and spotlight our months after the 1993 salute, Ham Ferry work and those copied images. region’s traditional artists. Looking at the died.) People love to see themselves as children National Endowment for the Arts’ National The format we created for the salute that or with their families on the large screen, Heritage Fellowships and inspired by first year worked so well that with minor and they are always so impressed by the CityLore’s People’s Hall of Fame, Varick adjustments, it is the format we have stayed stunning photographs Marty has taken. For suggested we bestow awards to recognize with. On the third Sunday in September we the audience, the slide show offers an those members of our region who had invite family, friends, and the general public opportunity to share interesting facts about “mastered and conserved a variety of family to an awards program that includes a mix the honorees one wouldn’t include in a and community traditions over several of entertainment. The choices are carefully program biography. For example, fiddler
18 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Kermit E. Saxton, Brushton, Franklin County, ox driver and storyteller. 1998 award winner.
Don Perkins suffered from asthma as a child Award, which was created by the TAUNY the Mohawk basketmakers at Akwesasne and often played lying down, an ability he board of directors in 1997; it is presented and asked the Mohawk Choir of St. Regis still has even though he has outgrown the occasionally to acknowledge and honor the Mission Church to offer a sweetgrass asthma. Blue-ribbon baker Bea Reynolds’s contributions of individuals, community smudging ceremony. The women set the secret for carrot cake was to use a jar of groups, or businesses “for continuing sweetgrass afire, creating enough smoke that carrot baby food in the mix. I’ve taken to interest in and generous support of Varick and I suffered anxious moments asking each recipient to speak to the traditional cultures, arts and artists of the expecting the sprinkler system in the audience about some aspect of one or two North Country of New York State and of auditorium to activate and shower us all. The slides in the show so that their voices are programs which increase public Brier Hill Fire Department was also being heard. This year, furniture maker Tom understanding and appreciation of them.” honored that year, for a bullhead supper they Phillips explained that early on, his wife Past recipients of this award are the put on each spring. They could have jumped helped weave the ash splint seats on his Sweetgrass Foundation, Niagara Mohawk, into action, but instead they joined the rest yellow birch chairs. “One day I came home George and Vaughn Ward, Dr. Robert of the audience in inhaling the smoke as and Judy had this long length of splint Bethke, and journalist John Golden. part of the smudging ceremony—surely stretched across the room and, bless her, Many of those who attend the salute each unaccustomed behavior for firefighters. she’d been working at it for a while. She year are there as friends or family of a At this year’s salute, knitter Barbara asked me what I thought of the result. I particular recipient. The audience usually Klemens, who has run a yarn shop in poked the seat and said kind of off-hand, has no prior knowledge of TAUNY or the Canton since 1951, received a knitted aran ‘Could be tighter.’ [Pause.] I’ve done every sort of work we do. We consider the afghan. Approximately eighty knitters seat since then.” entertainment at the salute one more participated in making it and managed to To honor Martha Cooper and her work, opportunity to showcase traditional talent keep their project a secret from Barb, even we presented her the 2002 Evergreen from our region. One year we recognized though they bought all the yarn for it from
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 19 man and warned us that he wouldn’t be able to speak a word when he came forward to accept his award. Not deterred, Varick asked him at the salute whether he had ever seen Champ, Lake Champlain’s very own monster. Before you knew it, Earl was recounting sightings of the monster. When Varick asked him why he thought Champ had not been seen in a while, he responded, “Dunno. Musta drowned.” TAUNY’s board of directors present the actual award—an etched glass plate. Our board president loves traditional music and plays the fiddle himself, so he usually presents to the musicians. Another board member, who lives near the Thousand Islands and is familiar with activity in that Cecilia [Kaienes] Mitchell, Akwesasne, traditional herbalist and medicine woman. 2000 award winner. region, usually presents to recipients from his area. When we honored the Redford Picnic, put on annually for one hundred her. The two women who presented the invited him to tell stories at the Salute, and years by the Church of the Assumption in afghan emphasized the value of a shop since I’d only known him to tell stories in Redford, board member Stanley Ransom owner who regularly opened after-hours for small private settings, I worried. Varick performed an original composition about knitting emergencies. laughed. “Just watch,” he said. Kermit stood the event. The year Edith Cutting was I’ve learned a lot from Varick over the at the lectern and recited poetry in a honored, a board member read from her years about trusting the tradition bearers we booming orator’s voice, at the conclusion work, Whistling Girls and Jumping Sheep. honor. He has absolute faith that given the of which he thanked the audience for Folklorist Jane Beck once advised us that opportunity to be in the limelight, they will “listening to an old ox-driver from Moira.” the best way to respect material from shine. One of the 1998 North Country He was rewarded with a standing ovation. extensive research projects is to use it in as Heritage Award recipients was Kermit Another year, Earl Sprague, builder of ice many ways as possible. For TAUNY, the Saxton, an ox driver and storyteller. Varick fishing shanties, was honored. He’s a shy annual North Country Heritage Awards is an ongoing research project as much as an annual event. In the search for candidates, we regularly invite nominations from the public but have received few over the years; the majority of candidates are put forth by TAUNY staff. Candidates come to our attention in a variety of ways—tips from other folklorists, interesting articles in newspapers, friends’ mentioning something in passing, board members’ nominations. As we network with professionals throughout the state, can- didates from communities of which we have no first-hand knowledge have come to our attention. Even recommendations that don’t fit our criteria are useful as opportunities to educate ourselves about traditional artists and define what we mean by that term. Throughout the year, the staff develops a Carl B. Hathaway, Saranac Lake, Franklin county, Adirondack guideboat builder. 1994 pool of names to draw from. Geographic award winner.
20 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Brier Hill Volunteer Fire Department Bullhead Feed, St. Lawrence County, annual fish fry and public supper. 1994 award winner.
distribution and genre are two traditional activity in northern New York. Some of the questions students were asked considerations. As a small organization In addition to the North Country Wall of to answer after seeing the exhibit were, serving fourteen large counties, it is difficult Fame, which serves well as an introduction “What is the traditional menu for a shore to regularly offer programs or run fieldwork to TAUNY for visitors to our gallery, Varick dinner?” “What materials do Mohawk in the far corners, but the North Country has used North Country Heritage Award women use to make baskets?” “What Heritage Awards are one way to include the material to create a traveling exhibit, a series musical instruments were played at old-time entire region. To date, twelve counties are of radio programs, a permanent interactive house parties?” After finishing its run represented in the forty awards we’ve exhibit at our gallery, a recording, and a through the schools, “Living Legends” granted, honoring a total of twenty-four publication. opened at the TAUNY Gallery and several individuals and approximately six hundred “Living Legends: Masters of the North other galleries in the region. group members. This program allows us to Country Way of Life” was a multimedia TAUNY has also been collecting conduct in-depth documentation of at least exhibit designed to travel through the public extensive broadcast-quality interviews. a few individuals each year we would not school system. The core of the exhibit was Working with Lamar Bliss, Varick has otherwise encounter in ongoing TAUNY a series of panels combining photographs conducted two- to five-hour interviews with projects. and text. Organization was by theme: farm each of the recipients, sometimes with the Recommendations are thoroughly ex- and home, woods and water, religion and help of James Moreira, Robert Bethke, and plored before names are put forth as ethnicity, small towns, and music and dance. Vaughn Ward. A good archival record was candidates. Decisions are made in the spring (We have continued to use those themes for the first goal, but having found a way to and voted on by TAUNY’s board of subsequent projects, finding that those we make use of photographs and objects directors. Following the announcement of honor fit comfortably into one of those associated with North Country Heritage selections, Varick extensively documents the categories.) Along with these panels, we sent Awards, we next turned to finding a venue honorees. He writes a program booklet, a collection of touchable objects, a binder for the interviews. TAUNY’s main office is which is distributed to everyone who attends containing additional information on each in the same town as that of North Country the salute. Over the years, this annual effort of the artists featured, selected cassette Public Radio, whose eclectic approach to has amounted to a virtual survey of recordings, and a teacher resource guide. programming and commitment to local
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 21 content made it an obvious partner. Initially, the radio station simply agreed to air the programs if we produced them. Working with audio engineer Lamar Bliss, Varick created a series of twenty-two half-hour programs called “Meet the Masters: Con- versations with North Country Traditional Artists.” Listeners got to hear auctioneer Roger Huntley at work, a ballad sung by Colleen Cleveland, and the atmosphere of the Zwangzwigsteinfest put on by the Lewis County Mennonites. The programs were well received locally and won a Certificate of Commendation from the American Association for State and Local History. After “Meet the Masters” ran, North Country Public Radio staff created five- minute programs from it, which were then Erwin K. Quigley, Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence County, stone wall builder. 2001 award winner. aired as slots came available (shorter programs being easier for a station to schedule). Currently, Varick and Lamar are working on another radio series featuring artists honored since the initial series ran, this time creating five- to eight-minute programs. The plan is to continue collecting in-depth interviews. The interactive exhibit in TAUNY’s Gallery—“[email protected]”— combines the above two projects. Using photographs to create a slide show, interview clips, and video clips, we’ve developed a permanent display in an iMac unit, which can be updated as new artists are honored. A table of contents appears in the form of thumbnail sketches of artists, which viewers select by touch. That artist’s page comes up and the viewer can choose James Earl Sprague, Jr., Port Henry, Essex County, builder of Champ and ice fishing shanties. 2000 award winner. from a menu of interview and video. North Country Public Radio has adapted this exhibit for its website. Most visitors to our unplugging the computer, putting it in the He enthralled patrons with his recitation gallery limit their experience of this exhibit back of the car, and plugging it in at the of Robert Service poems and tall tales of to one or two selections, but it has been a destination. pesky black flies. Most of the recordings great tool for the staff to punctuate guided Since we were working with recorded used in the final product were collected by visits. Viewers can tour an ice palace at the material, we thought, “Why not produce folklorist Robert Bethke, long before Saranc Lake Winter Carnival, or they can recordings to sell to the public?” Our first TAUNY presented Ham with a North hear the women of the Altar/Rosary release was a collection of stories and poetry Country Heritage Award. Robert had just Society of St. Anthony’s Church, recited by Ham Ferry, one of the best- donated to TAUNY his collection of Watertown, describe the procession for the known storytellers to come out of the Adirondack material and graciously agreed Feast of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Adirondacks. His little bar at Sevey’s to let us use that material for the recording Portability is one great virtue of this exhibit. Corners was a gathering place for locals, we produced. He also wrote a fine essay Taking it on the road is a simple matter of sportsmen, students, and summer residents. about Ham for the liner notes. “Where’d
22 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore impact it has on how they value their work or their role in the community. The firemen of Brier Hill took to advertising their bullhead supper as “North Country Heritage Award–winning.” The award has been listed in the obituaries of deceased recipients. And some recipients prominently display the engraved glass plate we present to them. Veronica Terrillion displayed hers in her entry hall, the Akwesasne Museum has put theirs in the case with their basket collection, and the Hammond Fair built a special display case for theirs. Receiving his award this year, harmonica player Fred V. Higby thanked the TAUNY staff for their careful research. “They came to see me several times, and when they came they Donald Woodcock, Kendrew Corners, St. Lawrence County, St. Lawrence river valley dance didn’t come to give me a hard time. They fiddler. 1997 award winner. came to give me a good time.” Perhaps because he was raised in an orphanage, Fred especially cherishes recognition of his abilities. The consistency of this event has provided a focus for the media, and one local newspaper devotes a full-page color story in the Sunday paper to announce the selections each year. Using the event as the launching pad, we’ve been able to disseminate our archival material widely in various formats. We’ve attracted a broader audience. The North Country Wall of Fame gallery serves double duty as a meeting room, and people attending meetings there have commented on the powerful experience of being surrounded by those many faces. Ray [Tehanetorens] Fadden, Onchiota, Franklin County, Mohawk elder, teacher, and “Celebrating the customs and creativity storyteller. 1993 award winner. of everyday life in northern New York” is one of TAUNY’s slogans. Our primary You Get That Hat?” attracted an eager artists and an introductory essay. From the motivation in presenting North Country audience right after its release and continues hours of interview available, Varick selected Heritage Awards has been to draw attention to be sold not only by TAUNY but by the one quotation for each artist. We plan to to those activities of ordinary people who Ferry family as well as shops in the region. use this publication in soliciting funding by their efforts contribute to the region’s Finally, when we considered that 2002 requests and sell copies in our museum distinct identity. In this we have been marked the tenth year of presenting North shop. successful. Country Heritage Awards, we felt it would How do the recipients themselves feel be appropriate to publish a commem- about the recognition? Usually it comes as Jill Breit ([email protected]) is assistant director for operations at Traditional Arts of Upstate oration. Legends of Our Time: Masters of North a complete surprise…though one person New York, 2 West Main St., Canton. Country Traditional Life is akin to having the did say he wondered when we would get to Currently, she is researching knitting in northern New York, for an exhibit that will North Country Wall of Fame in your hand, him! Most are modest about the recognition. open at the TAUNY Gallery on February 8, with the addition of quotations from the It is difficult to gauge how significant an 2003.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 23 Quinceañera! ON AIR A celebration of Latina womanhood The Quinceaños, or la fiesta Quinceañera, is a rite of passage for fifteen- Davila: I was kind of born with the year-old Latina girls. It is a community and family celebration full of tradition idea of being a sewer, or better, a designer, and meaning when a young girl is symbolically escorted into womanhood but I did not have the opportunity to be a by her family and the event is witnessed by her community. The word designer. I used to see my mom sewing. itself comes from the Spanish quince, “fifteen,” and años, “years.” The That’s how little by little I learned how to origins of the Quinceañera are often attributed to the ancient customs of sew. When I was going to turn fifteen, I the Aztecs, but the ceremony and meaning behind it are similar to other did not have any plans to celebrate my ancient cultural initiation rites that occurred throughout the world. Fifteen fifteenth birthday because we were poor was the age when many young women left their family home to become and we were a big family, but all my friends wives and then mothers, and almost as though passing through an invisible from school came into agreement that I door, a Latina enters her Quinceañera as a child but emerges as a young should celebrate my sweet fifteen. They woman with new responsibilities. Those who know and love her will see collected five or six dollars, which in that and treat her differently from that day forward. time was a lot of money. With that money For Latinas from Latin American and Puerto Rico, this is an old and I was able to go to a warehouse where revered tradition. The celebration as we know it today in the United States they sold materials and that’s how I did became popular in the 1930s and continues, even flourishing in communities the first sweet fifteen dress. Then people where custom and ritual rekindle ethnic and family ties. But Quinceañeras, started asking me to design dresses to go like mostly strongly held traditions, is not a static event, and the ways it is to parties, but my favorite was making celebrated are changing with the times. Now many girls have combined dresses for the sweet fifteen. the “American” concept of “sweet sixteen” with what would have been The Quinceañera has two parts—the mass their Quinceañera. A Barbie Quinceañera doll in some cases replaces the and the fiesta—and both events are filled with handmade ultima muneca, and families are beginning to celebrate the symbolic gestures and moments. Like most “coming of age” of their sons, too. These blendings of cultures can be celebrations, the extent to which the Quinceañera found in many aspects of our traditional lives. Some have to do with the is celebrated has as much to do with social class breakdown of traditional life, and some with a world of changing cultural and family status as the individual wishes of mores. In whatever form it may take, a Quinceñera is a very special event the birthday girl. But there are some aspects that happening only once in a girl’s life, so it is a time for rejoicing in the are common to all Quinceañeras. miracle of life and reaffirming one’s commitment to family, friends, tradition, Davila: For the ceremony in the and community. church, the sweet fifteen girl most of the On the banks of the Mohawk River is the town of Amsterdam, home to times comes with seven to eight young one of the oldest and largest Latino communities in upstate New York. couples, symbolizing the number fifteen. Francisca “Panchita” Davila was one of the people who made the trip to Two little kids are chosen to carry the Amsterdam in 1960 from her rural home in Salina, Puerto Rico. Her parents pillows. The boy carries a pillow with the were farmers who grew sweet potatoes, yucca, yams, corn, beans, coffee, shoes, her first high heels, and the little and breadfruit. She learned the arts of crochet and tailoring from her mother, girl carries a heart-shaped pillow with the Mercedes Torres. They worked together at home, embroidering and sewing crown. for the family but also for other people in the village. The most symbolic act during the Today Panchita Davila is a dressmaker and planner of the traditional Quinceañera is the changing of the shoes. The Quinceañera. In most urban areas, dresses for the event are bought at girl’s father switches her shoes, from the flats she stores, but Davila’s dresses are custom made, reflecting the traditions arrived in, to the high heels she will leave in. inherent in Puerto Rican society; they are meant to be handed down to the Shoes and crowns play a pivotal role in the next generation. Davila’s own experiences prepared her for her current birthday girl’s transformation in the eyes of the role as community seamstress and Quinceañera planner. community from girl to young woman.
24 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Davila: At the fiesta, the father Davila: When I came to Amsterdam Davila: I’m always trying to talk to dances with his daughter and then the there were many Spanish-speaking people the girls when they are fourteen, and if I mother takes her and dances with her until so I made many sweet fifteen dresses. know them or the parents know me, I tell they get to the make-believe throne. The After a while, the daughters didn’t want the parents, “Next year your daughter is crown is put on her head by the mother, to celebrate the sweet fifteen any longer. going to be fifteen. Are you going to and when the girl is sitting, the father They wanted to celebrate the sweet sixteen. celebrate her sweet fifteen?” Sometimes comes and takes off her sandals and puts But I coordinated the events with a they may say, “Oh, but she wants the new on the high heels. Then the father takes broken heart because I wanted people to generation style.” I say, “She is pure his princess out to dance again and from keep celebrating the sweet fifteen and to Hispanic and in our culture it is important there the party continues. keep the culture alive forever. when they turn fifteen. We should keep Maintaining tradition takes work and To Panchita Davila the Quinceañera is more the culture and not let it die.” I’m always Panchita does what she can to make a girl’s sweet than just a birthday party. talking to the parents and tell them, “I’m fifteenth birthday a special one, including working Davila: The Quinceañera is here. I can help you in all you’ll need.” So closely with the girl and her family. important because from that day on the there can always be a few girls that want Davila: It costs a lot of money to sweet fifteen girl can find a good path to to celebrate their sweet fifteen. Anyway, I go to a store and buy a dress for a sweet become a better person with new ideas, will keep doing what I believe until the fifteen; it is like going to buy a wedding because until that day everything was day that I die. dress. When the family come to me, they made easy for her, everything was This interview was conducted by Ladan bring more than one style, and here I help beautiful. Now she will grow up to be a Alomar and Mary Zwolinski and recorded them combine. For example, let’s take the matured person with many respon- by Dale Johnson, with translation by Ladan Alomar, and narration by Mary Zwolinski. bottom part of this dress and the top of sibilities. Little by little, the sweet fifteen The documentary was produced by Robert the other one. If they are satisfied, I’m celebrations are becoming history for Brown of WMHT Public Radio, Schenectady, who also produced the radio satisfied myself. many of our people. documentary on chain saw carving (Voices In the past few years Panchita has noticed For Panchita it is a personal quest to keep 26:3-4). Executive producers of The Voices of New York Traditions series are Dale some fundamental changes creeping in. this tradition alive. Johnson and Lamar Bliss.
Quinceañera capia made by Francisca “Panchita” Davila. Photo: Mary Zwolinski
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 25 Sacred Steel and the Empire State
BY ROBERT L. STONE
The Empire State has played a significant role in the history of the House of Worship Services God steel guitar tradition. The tradition began early in the twentieth century, House of God worship services typically as skilled musicians helped preachers arouse congregants to states of spiritual last about two and a half or three hours but ecstasy. For nearly sixty years the vibrant and compelling steel guitar music may run five hours or more on special of the House of God was unknown to the general public. The interest created occasions. Services involve such standard by the Arhoolie releases and concerts by contemporary artists has recently elements of worship as prayer, hymns, encouraged an unprecedented level of participation in the steel guitar tradition offering, and sermon. The steel guitarist among younger House of God musicians, who bring their listeners closer to fulfills a variety of musical functions in a spirituality in secular as well as sacred venues. service. A guitarist may play a hymn as a soloist or as the lead in the instrumental arick Campbell wails away on his groups and church worship “praise” bands. ensemble, accompany either individual or Delectric lap-steel guitar. His deft use Yet the instrument is almost unheard of in choral singers, work with the preacher to of a wah effect pedal gives the instrument an African American churches, with the striking punctuate pauses between spoken lines, or eerie quality, like some half-human voice exception of the House of God and the provide a musical backdrop for processions crying from a primal place deep within. He related Church of the Living God, where the and periods of praise. has “taken over the service” as his music steel guitar as lead instrument has reigned Sermons generally last half an hour, but it transports five hundred worshippers ever supreme for decades. With thirteen churches is not unusual for one to extend nearly an higher on their journey of spiritual ecstasy. in the state and several historically important hour in length. Typically, a preacher begins a Dozens of congregants do their personal steel guitarists associated with New York, the sermon by reading selected text from the versions of the “holy dance,” in this instance Empire State figures significantly in the Bible. As the preacher pauses between a sort of medium-tempo boogie House of God steel guitar tradition. spoken lines, members of the congregation synchronized with Darick’s steel guitar and The steel guitar was introduced into respond with confirmations, such as “That’s the funky, pulsing groove played by the House of God worship services in the late right!” “Tell it, preacher,” or “Amen.” During church band. It is about 11 P.M. on 1930s and quickly became its dominant this phase of the sermon, the band is usually Saturday,March 14, 1998, the second of three instrument. Today it is an important element silent. After a few minutes the preacher leaves days of worship services and ceremonies. in worship services. Except for the steel the biblical text to begin the extemporaneous The occasion is the dedication of the guitar, House of God musical ensembles are portion of the sermon. As the energy builds, spacious new House of God Church in the typical of configurations found in most he or she strays from the pulpit and becomes Rochester suburb of Rush, the first African African American Holiness-Pentecostal increasingly dramatic in presentation. During American church in the largely white upscale churches: a drum set, a keyboard instrument this phase the steel guitarist and other community. Believers have driven from as far (nowadays most likely an electronic members of the band begin to work with as Florida, braving ice and snow, to show their synthesizer), a standard electric guitar, and the preacher to add dramatic emphasis to the support. an electric bass. The drum set is perhaps sermon by playing short, often percussive The term steel guitar usually evokes the the most important element and is usually riffs between the preacher’s vocalizations. plaintive sound and characteristic glissandi church property. Congregants often bring The steel guitarist watches the preacher very of the instrument played in country-and- their own percussion instruments— closely and takes cues from him or her. As western music. Pedal-steel guitars are tambourines, cowbells, marching band the sermon continues to build in intensity, routinely found in some white country gospel cymbals—which they play from the pews. the band becomes increasingly active in its
26 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore congregation is already spiritually aroused, the energy builds rapidly. Following an especially inspired sermon, the whole congregation is on its feet, and many are dancing with abandon. A team of male and female ushers begin protecting those so infused with the Holy Ghost that they have significantly diminished control of their physical actions. In especially crowded environments, several ushers may form a human barricade to protect the musicians, who are usually close to the dance area. Congregants not dancing are clapping, shouting, or raising their hands, usually with palms vertical, to feel the Holy Spirit. The preacher and band might lead the congregation through several attempted endings, each followed with a resumption of praise music. Even after the music seems to have ended, the preacher may begin to preach again, then at some point give the band a cue to play more praise music. The preaching, praise music, and dancing may continue through several cycles before finally concluding. The music played for the praise or “shout” sessions is some of the most distinctive in the House of God. In the classic praise music form established by the late Henry Nelson of Corona, Queens, there are no chord changes, but rather a number of phrases and rhythms played to “drive” the congregation.
Beginnings Evangelizing first in Tennessee and Kentucky, “Mother” Mary Magdalena Lewis Tate established the Church of the Living God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth, a Holiness-Pentecostal church, in 1903. Chuck Campbell plays pedal-steel guitar at the dedication services for the new House of God in Rush, New York, March 1998. Photo: © Robert L. Stone Following Tate’s death in 1930, the church was reorganized into three “dominions.” The role in helping the preacher heighten the down into the dance area or, if using a cordless largest is, formally, the Church of the Living energy. The musical interludes between microphone, into the congregation. God, the Pillar and Ground of the Truth preached phrases become longer and more If the sermon is going well, by this time without Controversy, Keith Dominion, Inc., intense. The steel guitarist may play several congregants are on their feet, shouting but commonly called the House of God. extended slurred moans on the bass strings, responses to the preacher or holding Today there are House of God churches in similar voicelike passages on the treble outstretched arms to feel the Spirit. The twenty-six states, the Bahamas, Haiti, Jamaica, strings, or even imitate a woman’s scream. preacher then gives the band some sort of and Africa. As the sermon approaches its climax, the cue—which might range from a mere glance Beginning in the 1910s, a Hawaiian music preacher becomes highly animated, moving or nod to a more obvious waving of the arm— fad began to sweep the mainland United throughout the pulpit area and even coming to begin playing praise music. Because the States. Hawaiian music maintained a
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 27 musical instruments covered by a tarpaulin. The Gospel Feast Party held services in tents and churches throughout Florida and other states where conditions were favorable. Troman was also the first to play the Hawaiian steel guitar at the annual House of God General Assembly in Nashville, probably in 1938. The powerful electric instrument, with its voicelike sound, was a hit with congregations and musicians alike. After about two years, Troman quit playing for Lockley and moved to Brooklyn, where he led a group of three or four pieces that played both sacred and secular music. Troman had separated from his wife and children to live with a woman he had met while traveling as a musician. He is said to have died The two most influential steel guitarists in the House of God tradition: Henry Nelson (left) and Willie Eason at the author’s home, Gainesville, Florida, December 1998. As a boy of mysteriously, without any worldly eleven, Nelson took up the instrument after seeing Eason play and sing at the church in possessions, in Brooklyn in 1949. Although Ocala, Florida, where his father, Bishop W.L. Nelson, served as pastor. Eason’s first wife was Henry’s sister, Alyce. Photo: © Robert L. Stone his exact birth date has not yet been established, he was probably less than fifty significant presence in the American popular Lockley, whose dioceses included New York, when he died. Among House of God music milieu well into the 1940s. Troman Philadelphia, and parts of Florida, drafted members, the story of Troman’s early demise Eason (c. 1900–1949), after hearing a Troman to join his Gospel Feast Party Band, is told as a cautionary tale to warn musicians Hawaiian steel guitarist who played regularly a troupe of musicians and preachers who of the price of womanizing. over the radio in Philadelphia in the mid- traveled from New York to Miami each For the 1940 trip south, Lockley engaged 1930s, called the radio station, talked to the winter. Lockley owned a used-car lot in Troman’s brother Willie (1921–), who had steel guitarist, and arranged to take lessons. Brooklyn and is remembered for driving late- graduated from high school that spring. Troman quickly gained competency on the model black Cadillacs. The entourage would Troman had played in the straightforward instrument and began to play it in the House travel in two or three vehicles, Lockley’s Hawaiian style, but Willie developed his own of God church in Philadelphia. Bishop J.R. Cadillac pulling a small trailer piled high with technique, consisting of extended slurred passages often executed on a single string and punctuated by rhythmic backbeat strums. Willie was also a powerful, charismatic singer. He often used the steel guitar as a second voice to answer a vocal phrase or complete a sentence. His passionate musicianship and magnetic personality quickly made him an important member of the Gospel Feast Party, but Lockley did not compensate him monetarily. After two trips south with Lockley, Willie struck out on his own to play street-corner music ministries for tips as well as for worship services in House of God churches. His influence among aspiring House of God musicians spread far and wide as he traveled. His popularity and stature were boosted by seven 78 rpm records he recorded on popular gospel labels. In 1947 he made Phil (left), Darick (center background), and Chuck Campbell (right), wreck the house as they two of his most successful recordings singing perform “Jump for Joy” at the second annual Sacred Steel Convention in Sanford, Florida, March 2001. Many of the young men in the audience are budding steel guitarists. Photo: © lead and playing steel guitar while the Soul Robert L. Stone
28 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Stirrers, arguably the most popular male gospel quartet of the day, sang backup: Aladdin 2018, “Why I Like Roosevelt,” Parts 1 and 2; and Aladdin 2025, “Pearl Harbor,” Parts 1 and 2. Both are topical ballads performed in a melodic “rap” vocal style. Though not strictly gospel songs, both contain spiritual messages. For example, “Why I Like Roosevelt” includes this lyric:
When your burden get heavy and you don’t know what to do, You can call on Jesus, he’s a president too.
Willie Eason says he made as much as $500 a weekend playing on the street corners of large cities like New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia in the 1940s and 1950s— several times weekly wages for a working man. In March 1951, as Eason played for a large crowd on a corner in Harlem, in the vicinity of Lenox Avenue and 125th Street, Lonnie “Big Ben” and Cherlyn Bennett of Rochester at the first annual Sacred Steel Convention, a representative of Savoy Records was Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida, April 2000. Photo: © Robert L. Stone driving by. “The guy jumped out the car and come runnin’,” recalled Eason. A few days Henry Nelson’s Influence music consisting of voicelike lines played on later at the Savoy recording studios, Eason As a young man, Henry served as the treble and bass strings punctuated by a was pressured to record blues by chauffeur and musician for Bishop Nelson variety of driving, rhythmic “frams,” or strums, substituting “baby” for “Lord” or “Jesus” as father and son traveled throughout the under which the band played without chord in the lyrics of some of his sacred songs. South to play for large assemblies and for changes. His praise music became the Holding steadfastly to his deep religious the annual General Assembly in Nashville. foundation of what is accepted by many as beliefs, Willie refused to sing blues and the Local House of God congregations were true House of God music. To this day, his Savoy session was aborted. small, typically twenty to forty members. At riffs and rhythms are played at many House During the winter months Willie Eason large assemblies and revivals attendance of God worship services. traveled to warmer climes to ply his street- might number in the hundreds, or in the case Nelson was adept at regulating his guitar’s corner trade. In the north Florida town of of the General Assembly, well over two volume and control knobs with the little Ocala, he met his first wife, Alyce Nelson. thousand. The presence of the Holy Ghost finger of his right hand to reduce the initial Alyce’s father was Bishop W.L. Nelson, a seems to increase dramatically as con- attack on a note and make it swell, in imitation powerful figure in the House of God who gregation size increases. Playing steel guitar of the human voice. Though probably not did much to establish the church in Florida with Bishop Nelson gave Henry the the first in the House of God to use this and South Carolina. Bishop Nelson’s son, opportunity to become associated with the technique, he was definitely a master of it, Henry (1929–2001), was just a boy of eleven most spirited services, held in the most frequently moving congregations to tears when he heard and saw Eason for the first prestigious settings, in which the greatest with his poignant playing. time in 1940. “I wanted to do everything I numbers of people participated. In 1959, Nelson moved to Queens, New saw,” he recalled. Bishop Nelson bought his Henry Nelson cultivated what some have York, where he worked for Berger Machinery. son a lap-steel guitar and, laying his hands called a Liberace persona. He was a sharp He continued to play for church services, on Henry’s, told the youngster that he would dresser and made it a habit to charm the revivals, and conventions, usually accompanied learn to play if he kept his music “within congregation—especially older women—with by his wife, Johnnie Mae, who played the the anointing.” Soon young Henry was personal greetings before he sat down at his organ. He recalled that when Mahalia Jackson making music in his father’s church. “I don’t instrument to play. He built on Willie Eason’s heard him play in Chicago in 1959, she wanted even remember rehearsing at home,” he technique and took it a step or two further. to know who was playing the “talking remembered. “It was just a gift from God.” He developed a style of “praise” or “shout” machine.” Within a few days, she had him in
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 29 Columbia’s New York recording studio to back her up on “To Me It’s So Wonderful.” On August 22, 1968, Nelson was seriously injured in an industrial accident. The memorial pamphlet for his funeral in 2001 describes how he then dedicated his life to making sacred music:
His working years for man was put to rest while lying in New York Hospital. His father, the late Bishop W.L. Nelson, told him to do like Abraham and make a covenant with the Lord. His covenant was if the Lord let him live, he would play for him and tell what God had done for him everywhere he would go. He kept his covenant and began traveling with his father to different assemblies and conventions playing his Hawaiian guitar and telling how God healed his body. He also played and chauffeured for the Chief Overseer, Bishop J.C. Elliott and he assisted many others during revivals, assemblies, etc. nationwide.
Nelson served as a steel guitarist in the House of God for more than fifty years until a series of strokes, which began in the spring of 1994, curtailed his playing. Willie Eason laid the foundation for the House of God steel guitar tradition, but Henry Nelson probably did more than any other steel guitarist to establish the stylistic elements that Darick Campbell plays praise music on the steel guitar as his nephew, Carlton Campbell, characterize much of the steel guitar playing beats the drums at the Georgia State Assembly, Macon, August 1998. Darick travels extensively with his father, Bishop Charles Campbell, to play to play at assemblies and heard in the House of God. The extent of special services at churches within the bishop’s dioceses, which include the state of New his influence on House of God steel guitar York, most of Georgia, and north and west Florida. Photo: © Robert L. Stone music cannot be overstated. a little too soon. “They told me to take it Chuck and his father watched with awe, Day The Campbells home. But I wasn’t discouraged,” he recalls. laid the steel bar aside, picked up a whiskey Charles T. “Chuck” Campbell (1957–) of When Campbell was thirteen, veteran Detroit bottle with his left hand, and played “What a Rochester is the son of Bishop Charles E. steel guitarist Calvin Cooke (1944–) and Friend We Have in Jesus” while drinking, Campbell, who is the state bishop of New Cooke’s cousin, Charles Flenory, began to using only the instrument’s pedals—without York and responsible for dioceses in north and teach him. the bar—to render the melody. Chuck west Florida and most of Georgia. An He quickly progressed through a series of remembers thinking all the way home on the innovative and highly skilled musician, Chuck instruments, from the six-string lap-steel to long drive to Rochester about what he had has played a significant role in the increased double-neck eight-string nonpedal models. In seen and heard Jimmy Day do back in use of the pedal-steel guitar among House of Nashville for the annual General Assembly, Nashville. Soon his parents and grandparents God members during the past three decades. Bishop Campbell took fourteen-year-old helped him purchase his first pedal-steel. Chuck first heard the singing sound of the Chuck to Sho-Bud, then the Music City’s Although Campbell was not the first in the steel guitar when Elder Luther Robinson foremost steel guitar manufacturing facility House of God to play pedal-steel, he was played in the Rochester House of God. He and showroom. When they arrived, country probably the first to fully understand the admired Robinson’s playing and longed to pedal-steel great Jimmy Day was there. The instrument and apply its technical advantages have his own instrument. When he was bishop asked Day if he would play for them. to the church’s music. When he was just twelve, his father bought him a six-string lap- Day tried a couple of lesser instruments and fifteen, Campbell was invited by his mentor, steel for Christmas. About a year later, he cursed them, then sat down at a Sho-Bud Calvin Cooke, to Cooke’s home in Detroit played in church for the first time, evidently instrument, saying, “Come here, son.” As to help him set up his new pedal-steel. “I
30 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore knew I was on my way to being accepted as a was healed.’ When you can get it on that by his teenage sons Levi, who plays the drums good player,” he recalls. level,” Chuck asserts, “now you’re talking.” (and is rapidly becoming an accomplished steel In his quest for innovation in the 1990s, Chuck, Phil, Darick, and Carlton billed guitarist), and Daric, the group’s electric bassist. Campbell experimented with effects. “I made themselves as the Campbell Brothers and The males are often joined by mother Cherlyn up a suitcase that had a phase shifter, fuzz- teamed with legendary House of God power- and daughters Sierra (named for the brand of unit, flanger, compressor, and guitar house vocalist Katie Jackson of Baltimore to pedal-steel her father plays) and Sherrie, who synthesizer. I tried to use all the effects in record their debut album for Arhoolie Records belt out fiery vocals. The Bennetts perform one service.…it got a little past the tradition.” in 1997. Following the success of their for concerts and festivals as “Big Ben and the Despite criticism from the clergy, Arhoolie release, they began to tour, primarily Family.” Three or four times a year Lonnie congregation, and other musicians, some of at festivals and colleges on the “cultural and Cherlyn drive east to share the power of his experimentation was eventually accepted. circuit.” Initially unsure what to expect when their music with inmates at Marcy Correctional “One day I came into church and saw Henry playing for predominantly white audiences in Center. Nelson with a phase shifter. That made me secular venues, they were soon pleasantly In addition to the tradition bearers discussed accept that what I was doing was not surprised. Chuck explains, “The music above, other New Yorkers of significance ridiculous.” transcends the church. People jump just as include George Wright, a mature pedal-steel Today Campbell uses a single-neck, twelve- much outside of the church as they do at church. guitarist who plays regularly for services in string instrument with seven pedals and five We are now experiencing another side of Utica; brothers Otis and Walter Blue of knee levers, which he plays in a special tuning. spirituality outside of church. We’re finding Syracuse, older men who contributed to the He has programmed the pitch-changing that this music celebrates not only the way we shaping of the tradition; and Elder Mac Dillard pedals and knee levers of his instrument to look at things spiritually, but the way everyone of Rochester, also of historical significance. suit his tuning and his playing needs. Like looks at their inner self.” many House of God steel guitarists, The release of the Arhoolie Sacred Steel CD Campbell believes his tuning, pedal setup, and The Bennetts series, which began in 1997 and totals nine musical ability are gifts from God. Lonnie “Big Ben” Bennett is a steel guitarist albums today, created a level of national and Chuck is always accompanied by his from Rochester who brings an uncommon international interest in the music that brother Phil, five years his junior, who picks combination of influences to the House of continues to increase. After only a year and a the standard guitar with driving rhythm and God steel guitar tradition. He was born in half of performing at clubs and jam band melodic invention, and Phil’s teenage son, Hartford in 1959 and raised in an eclectic concerts, young New Jersey House of God Carlton, on drums. Chuck and Phil Campbell musical environment. His parents were fond steel guitar prodigy Robert Randolph has risen live in Rochester and play for one or two of classical, opera, country, and jazz in addition meteorically to mainstream national popularity. services a week at their father’s church in to the sacred music of the House of God, He recently signed a rock star–magnitude Rush, when they are not touring. Darick, the where his father served as a minister. As a contract with Warner Brothers. The vitality of youngest of the three Campbell brothers, young man he played in country and rock the tradition seems ensured. How the plays an eight-string nonpedal-steel for bands. He began to play the steel guitar in increased popularity will affect it remains to services in his hometown of Macon, Georgia, church at an early age, learning largely by be seen. when he is not traveling with his father. In watching other local steel guitarists. “By the addition to playing steel guitar for his father’s time I was thirteen or fourteen, I heard Calvin Robert Stone assemblies in New York, Georgia, and Cooke play [at the General Assembly] in ([email protected]) is Outreach Florida, Darick does much of the driving and Nashville and he just blew my mind. The way Coordinator for the helps with administrative matters. Darick’s he played just pierced me. So I forgot Florida Folklife Program, a position steel guitar playing reflects considerable everything I had learned and I went home and partially funded by an influence from Henry Nelson. I wanted to play like Calvin.” Infrastructure Grant Although good technique, musicianship, As the years passed, Bennett absorbed many from the NEA Folk and Traditional Arts and artistic excellence are pursued by House of Cooke’s musical ideas and continued to Program. He began to of God musicians, in church the measure of develop his technical skills as well his ability document the House of God steel guitar tradition in Florida in 1992 and expanded his their success is simply their ability to “move to play for worship services. Cooke eventually research to other states in 1996. He has the service”—to help the congregation be- became Bennett’s brother-in-law; they are produced seven Sacred Steel CDs for Arhoolie records and directed the Arhoolie come filled with the Holy Spirit. Today, the married to sisters. Today Bennett is a highly Foundation’s Sacred Steel documentary Campbell family band has achieved a high regarded musician. He and his family attend video. His current projects in documenting the tradition include a book to be published level of Holiness-Pentecostal musicianship. the Rochester House of God No. 1, at the by the University of Illinois Press and a “People have come up to us and said, ‘Hey, I corner of Jefferson and Bronson. He is joined traveling photo exhibit. Photo: Judy Trotta
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 31 Emerging Traditions Dance Performances of the Sudanese DiDinga in Syracuse
BY FELICIA FAYE MCMAHON
Young male Sudanese refugees in Syracuse constantly improvise during their publications were attempts by linguists to performances of danced songs. An initial study of their recontextualized classify DiDinga language. Faced with a traditions seeks to elucidate how group members draw on traditions in new paucity of published information on the situations, how the emerging traditions change in form, and when form remains DiDinga culture in general, scholars like the same, what these traditions now mean for the young men who perform myself have to rely on early published for an American audience unfamiliar with the richness of DiDinga culture. accounts written by missionaries and by Jack Herbert Driberg (1922–1935), the only y relationship with the DiDinga I found only a handful of studies on this anthropologist to work with the DiDinga. In M refugees from the Sudan began little-known tribe from a remote area in 1933, Archibald Tucker had published Tribal while I was teaching a symposium course, southeastern Sudan. The majority of these Music and Dancing in the Southern Sudan at Social “Beauty in Cross-Cultural Contexts,” at Syracuse University. Prior to this project, my goal had been to introduce my American students to the rich culture of refugees now living in our city. As a folklorist, I wanted to honor the living traditions of the newest residents in the neighborhood surrounding the university by inviting traditional artists from Bosnia, Burma, and the Sudan to be a part of the symposium. After meeting a group of nine young DiDinga men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-two who were part of the larger Sudanese group known as “the Lost Boys,” I recognized the importance of honoring their group’s traditions, which are evolving in a new context—a new country. Part of my purpose has been to understand the process by which a group comes to consensus about appropriate and meaningful traditions performed outside their original cultural context. How is the negotiation process related to aesthetics and identity, as the DiDinga men select, discard, and recombine traditions learned as children in their tribal villages, as refugees in camps in Kenya, as students in missionary schools in Nairobi, and as residents of Syracuse? It is the kind of question with which I have been grappling for many years, since I first began ethnographic work as a folklorist The DiDinga “Lost Boys” performing ngothi, the jumping step during the nyakorot (Didinga (McMahon1992). for the dance proper). Photo courtesy of Faye McMahon with permission of Charles Lino (group leader).
32 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore and Ceremonial Gatherings, the first the theory that was to inspire textual studies occasional hand-held rattles or bells worn on documentation of dance songs of other little- of oral literature for decades to come. Since the forearms and thighs. Percussion is known tribes in the southern Sudan, but his then, recent scholars of oral literature, such produced by stomping the feet and jumping book is not specifically about the DiDinga. as Richard Bauman, Dan Ben-Amos, Charles in rapid sequence. The DiDinga themselves No further work on song traditions in the Briggs, Dell Hymes, Dennis Tedlock, and first brought this characteristic to my southern Sudan has been published, with the John Miles Foley, have shown the relationship attention while we were listening to a cassette exception of The Dinka and Their Songs, of Lord’s theory to more developed theories, tape of traditional DiDinga music, which they Francis Deng’s 1973 seminal study on a such as performance theory, ethnography of had brought with them from the refugee culturally related tribe. speaking, ethnopoetics, and immanent art. camp in Kenya. There is a comprehensive study on Even a combination of these approaches, “Do you hear that beat?” one young man DiDinga culture, published in 1972 in however, could not adequately account for asked. “The shakers [bells]? We tie them on German, by Andreas Kronenberg, as well as the processes I was observing in the DiDinga the legs or we tie them on the waists and a 1992 doctoral dissertation by Marilyn Harer performances. some on the wrists.” Fetterman, who lived among the DiDinga in Consequently, I began by focusing on As in the culturally related Nilo-Hamitic the Sudan during the 1970s and 1980s. Yet improvisation in the emerging traditions of tribes, a favorite dance-song genre among the neither was accessible to my students or to the dance songs of these young DiDinga young men in Syracuse is the gyrikot, the the public at large. Using these two men, who had lived together for a decade in mocking and often lewd song whose tempo publications, I tried to unravel the ways that refugee camps in Africa before arriving in increases until the culminating insult is made. these young men, wearing the label of Syracuse in 2001. Capturing the danced songs It is a song type favored by youths both in refugee, maintained dignity and expressed a in text form is not easy. The group’s lively the Sudan and here in the United States, and viable group identity within an American and highly repetitive antiphonal music, based it lends itself to many performance oppor- framework. Although I had many oppor- on the pentatonic scale, is composed spon- tunities. As one young DiDinga explained, tunities to observe first-hand the continuity taneously and possesses unique musical “Gyrikot is all based in love stuff.” and discontinuity in their traditions as they characteristics, such as a frequently changing But the genre of song held in highest evolved in Syracuse, my dilemma was how time signature. The songs in their original regard is the olé, the male bull song. In to adequately interpret these traditions village context are tied to specific incidents DiDinga language, olé can refer to the bull as performed outside their Sudanese context, or specific people and always in flux. well as to the bull song. None of the young which I had never observed. “Generative theory” supports the nature of men whom I met had progressed through Because of the civil war in the Sudan—a such mutable songs, described by Bruce A. initiation to warrior status, and thus none war that has ravaged that country since Rosenberg in his work on black sermons: wore the black feather indicating the status 1955—it was impossible for me for visit these that gave a man the privilege to sing a fully young men’s villages. Although DiDinga Lord ties the creation of new formulas composed olé. Nevertheless, some did recall [metrically governed utterances] to the history remains oral, the collective memory singer’s recollection of “the commonest the beginning stage. of these young men was vivid and available. ones.” Actually, the singer is freed from During adolescence, a son is given a bull such “memory” and such hydraulic It was necessary, therefore, to rely on their reliance. He has at his command not calf to raise, for which he alone is res- descriptions and to note shifts in song several score or even several hundred ponsible. This includes composing a song to performances both synchronically and formulas which can be altered by a word his animal—the song that will soothe the bull or phrase substitution but rather a diachronically since the DiDingas’ arrival in metrical deep structure enabling the throughout its lifetime, the song that the man the United States. This approach would, by generation of an infinite number of will use to call his bull to follow him home sentences or utterances in the meter of necessity, diverge from the text-centered his native language (1990:147). after grazing. The importance of the olé to a methodology used by Albert B. Lord and man’s identity and the centrality of the bull Milman Parry, an analytical approach known The DiDinga singers demonstrated a in DiDinga culture may be difficult for as the oral-formulaic theory. similar facility with “metrical deep Americans to understand but was elucidated In 1951, Lord copublished with Béla structures,” through which a distinct style was for me and my husband John during a lengthy Bartók Serbo-Croatian Folk Songs, which apparent. The singers were constantly exchange with several of the young men at presented texts and transcriptions of seventy- improvising during their dance per- our home: five folk songs from the Milman Parry formances. Unlike the Murle and other Faye: Do you have one? Olé? collection and a morphology of Serbo- neighboring Surmic-speaking tribes, the Lino: Oh, no, maybe if we would have Croatian folk melodies. This publication laid DiDinga traditionally did not use the drum. stayed for some time we would have had one. the groundwork for Lord’s magnum opus, For the most part, their songs are unac- If I had stayed there, I would have composed The Singer of Tales, in which he introduced companied by instruments, except for one, maybe. But it is not really hard.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 33 Faye: I heard Andrew and Anthony sing the poets developed this tradition into Oli cani ci marini oo ci homina Oo! oli cani ci marini oo ci haminia their [Dinka] bull songs once. It sounded very poetry. It is fascinating that you would have Lochia eet, oli cani ci marini oo ei hard. engaged with your bull in a poetic way, and haminina. Ci ica aduot ci homina Lino: Oh, yeah, being creative…you have the rest of you knew the kinds of traditional Lochia eet, oli cani ci marihi oo ci your bull and nobody can touch your bull. If response. hamina it is dead, it is a matter of life and death. If Dominic: The song that I sung was about Illale, oli cani ei makihi oo ci hamina. Lochia eet, oli cani ci marhihi oo ci someone comes, you defend it. Nobody my bull’s red head and black sides and that hamina. should do anything to it. no one will touch until it is gone bigger. That Faye: Is this like your identity? is brief about it. [I love my bull with its red head. I love my bull, with its red head. Lino: Oh, yes, identity…very important. Dominic L.: He liked the color of the bull, My bull, which no one will stone. Dominic: Oh, yes, very important. so that is why he sang about the color of Thank you, I love my bull with its red head. Faye: If you went back to the Sudan, after the bull. Son of my uncle, I love my bull with you have had an education—and not John: How long did you have this bull its red head.] everyone has an education—would you still when you were young, and how long do be able to have the bull and sing the bull song? people traditionally stay with one particular But I learned that songs such as this are Lino: Oh, yes! It is our culture! It is our animal? not usually performed separately from dance. culture. You can’t just say no, because it is Dominic: You know, when I started getting One young man explained, “Our songs are your culture. that bull as mine personally, when…the like proverbs.” I interpret this to mean Dominic: I had my bull there. And when I mother give birth to it, then it was smooth “danced proverbs”—that is, a few words, each was playing, it was still very very young. I and heavy and very beautiful and from that pregnant with meaning in a kind of shorthand. was really in love. So I composed one of the point, I was also very involved in taking care Applying Lord’s concept of a universal oral songs to watch it. of it and taking it home with my friends formula in Western tradition to fit a non- John: Do you perform this song? Do you and milking its mother. Suppose I was still Western performance was inadequate, so I have it in your head? in Sudan, I should love that bull until it’s looked to Robert Farris Thompson (1974) Dominic: Yes, I created it and when I was gone bigger and maybe I sell it and get and, more recently, Michael C. J. Echerou with my friends, taking it to grazing, so I was money or maybe I [go to] someone to (1994), who suggest that the concept of just singing to soothe my young love, my bull. slaughter or do something in a special aesthetics, which originated in the West, be I can sing it…That is why, when we were way…in a different way. expanded so that it is applicable for non- discussing this, in my head, I said, Oh, I am Faye: So you have a special relationship Western cultures. From this perspective, very much happy to hear this and I had it in with this animal? aesthetics is understood as processual, with my heart. Dominic: Exactly. the focus on expression or performance of Faye: Now, how did you other fellows know Faye: Named? Do you have a name for it? the arts, which Thompson calls art in motion. when to sing [in refrain]? Is this something Dominic: Actually, I was supposed to come Both theorists note that unlike premodern that you have worked with? with a name for it but because of coming Western art, which is representational, African Dominic: No, it is our language. over here, that was the problem. And it was art is performed, nonmimetic, and nonrepre- Lino: He is kind of leading you, you listen still very young. sentational: “The term expressionism, to what he says. After several repetitions, you Faye: So you and this animal were kind of commonplace enough in Western art history get it. bound together? and theory, may be used here in the sense of John: It was very rhythmic. Is this a Dominic: Yeah, because its mother was a nonmimetic, nonrepresentational fictional traditional rhythm or pattern of sound? bought from my uncle, so my uncle brought statement” (Echerou 1994: 139). In addition, Much of the Latin and Greek poetry from its mother to the cattle I was taking care of, evaluative responses from perceiving events the ancient world derived from the kind of and from there its mother gave birth, then performed in space or time become an cultural things that you were just talking the young bull just came out very beautiful important part of the aesthetic process. about. Pastoral poetry actually started from and I took from there. Performing the danced proverbs in an the songs of shepherds taking care of their Charles: When you make the program, you American context suggests a new approach sheep. The poems in Latin and Greek are can put Dominic’s bull song at the end? for understanding traditions as emerging. highly developed as written down by poets Because the bull songs come at the end. That is, we can validate the dance songs as but they come from the kind of tradition Because I then expressed an interest in they emerge and are performed in an that you were singing, where someone hearing Dominic’s bull song, he stood up expressive manner outside their original would sing with or to the animals that they suddenly, paused, and after making a context. To do so, we need to discard the were taking care of, as shepherds. Later on snorting sound like his bull, he sang: view that old and new traditions are
34 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore sometimes I tape conversations like the one included here. For example, during a conversation prior to the first nyakorot, the dance proper sponsored on July 21, 2002, by the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center at the Thompson Memorial AME Church in Auburn, New York, one man explained:
So these people gather together and prepare everything for us to go there and come and dance for them in their place, so then they also prepare so when we go [at] the time we are going, as we dance, they dance along. Then we dance our own song, they dance their own song. Now the competition is going! In that process, now they will follow the other people, and then they join in the same thing. It is like uniting. Now when these songs stop, the ladies are in a circle, so it is very funny…the ladies are there and the mens are there in a kind of circle [he draws two semicircles]. So the other men, they are clapping their hands…they are dancing. So the ladies will come and choose one person…It’s funny, like so they come over and they come together like [he claps once] but not together and then [he claps once to indicate bodies coming close and retreating]. After that, when the soloist starts the song, so that these people go and clap their hand and these people go and dance around. So the song is sung twice.
I came to recognize the paradox of DiDinga dance: nyakorot is held for the purpose of “uniting,” but competition was at the heart of a good performance. It was through this symbolic negotiation process that the best tradition won and then united the people because what was being expressed was the best of a group identity. The paradox of uniting through competition was at the heart of not only the large-scale nyakorot, but also the danced gyrikot and the young man’s olé, sung to his bull while it was grazing. Joseph Lomong (left) and Dominic Luka open the nyakorot at the Thompson Memorial AME Zion Church in Auburn, New York. Photo courtesy of Faye McMahon with In a sense, tradition, like all identity, was permission of Charles Lino (group leader). constantly changing, however subtly. Much of what is classified as tradition or invention definitively opposed. To conceptualize the of the traditions as they emerge in relation is affected by the rhetoric surrounding the relation as either-or creates an antagonistic to not only the new American context but event: “Of course, a song is not really the situation in which the dances and songs of also the young men’s memories of the original or innovative ‘composition’ of a these young men would be viewed from Sudan. And I include in my interpretation youth any more than the hymn is a really rigid categories—as either traditional or the dancers’ descriptions and explanations timeless and authoritative ‘tradition.’ Songs invented. From such a perspective, they for their choices. I collect these self-critiques can be formulaic and derivative and hymns would be “defective.” Instead, I try to honor in the form of oral commentary, as we can represent original and individual points their dance songs by focusing on the process review a video of earlier performance; of view. The point is that a song rests on
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 35 the rhetoric of a present creativity, where Nevertheless, it is anticipated that some New York Folklore XIX(3–4): 59–73. as the hymn rests on the rhetoric of timeless young women will arrive, and when they do, Meeker, Michael E. 1989. The Pastoral Son and the traditions” (Meeker 1989:167). During the it will be important to note changes in these Spirit of Patriarchy: Religion. Society, and Person process of recontextualization, traditions young men’s performances. among East African Stock Keepers. Madison: selected and reformulated by the group for University of Wisconsin Press. presentation of their group identity allow Literature Cited Rosenberg, Bruce A. 1990. The Message of the for affirming and valuing uniqueness and Deng, Francis M. 1973. The Dinka and Their Songs. American Folk Sermon. In Oral-Formulaic personal history. Like identity, tradition is Oxford: Clarendon Press. Theory, edited by John Miles Foley, pp. 137– always in flux—even when an outside Driberg, Jack H. 1922. A Preliminary Account of 68. New York: Garland. expression appears to remain the same. the DiDinga. Sudan Notes and Records, vol. Thompson, Robert Farris. 1974. Art in Motion. Because times and people change, no V. University of California Press. tradition, no identity can be truly static. The Echerou, Michael J.C. 1994. Redefining the Tucker, A.N. 1933. Tribal Music and Dancing in the only static tradition is a dead one. Ludic: Mimesis, Expression, and the Festival Southern Sudan [Africa] at Social and Ceremonial But who decides which traditions are tied Mode. In The Play of the Self, edited by Ronald Gatherings. London: New Temple Press. to this community, since issues of identity Bogue and Mihal I. Spariosu, pp. 137–56. are at stake here? To recontextualize Albany: State University of New York Press. Felicia Faye DiDinga dance, it is necessary to understand Fetterman, Marilyn Harer. 1992. Drought, Cattle McMahon how the dance songs relate to these young Disease, Colonialism and Lokembe: One Hundred ([email protected]) is a freelance men’s cultural values and the tribal identity Years of Change among the Pastorialist DiDinga, folklorist and that they share with DiDinga in the Sudan. Eastern Equatoria Province, Sudan. Ph.D. research associate in Understanding the relationship is important dissertation. Providence: Brown University the Program on the Analysis and so that anachronisms are not produced. Like Department of Anthropology. Resolution of language translation, staged public per- Foley, John Miles. 1995. The Singer of Tales in Conflicts at Syracuse University. Prior to formance involves the process of Performance. Bloomington: Indiana University completing her Ph.D. negotiating meaning from the original Press. in Folklore and Folklife Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, she was an art context into the new context. Going beyond Kronenberg, Andreas. 1972. Logik und Leben: teacher in New York State and in the classic work on oral literature by Milman Kulturelle Relevanz der DiDinga und Longarim, Karlsruhe, Germany. Her professional awards include a Fulbright Teaching Award Perry and Alfred Lord, combined with an Sudan. Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag and the American Folklore Society’s 1996 “ethnography of speaking,” I hope to GMBH. Opie Prize for best-edited book (Children’s Folklore: A Sourcebook, coedited with McMahon, Felicia Faye. 1993. Regional Sports: understand which internal and external Brian Sutton-Smith et al.). Photo: J.J. forces act on the aesthetics of this tra- “Playing” with Politics in the Adirondacks. Romano dition—including the role that nostalgia plays in performance— and my role as a folklorist. Recording the memories of these dance traditions in which the young men once participated as youth in the Sudan as well as the performances in the United States has become an important on-going project for me as a public folklorist. At this writing, no DiDinga women have emigrated to Syracuse. There have been outcries from the international community concerning the fate of “the Lost Girls,” and some have called refugee policies sexist. However, the young DiDinga men said that parents of girls would not allow them to emigrate alone to the United States: “I think the reason is from the ladies,” one said. “They don’t want ladies [girls] to go. But boys can go anywhere.”
36 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore ARCHIVAL QUESTIONS Finding a Home for a Private Collection BY NANCY JOHNSON
A friend who works for a folklore organiza- tioned above, his religion and culture are of carefully. What is the repository’s policy on tion recently e-mailed me about an interesting great interest to several museums, research deaccessioning? You may have to educate the man in Queens who has made it his life’s work organizations, and historical societies. The na- staff at the repository so that they understand to document his culture and heritage. He was ture of his collection—objects—lends itself the significance of the collection, and include eager to have his large collection of material to a museum connection, so a museum would a statement with the material when it is trans- culture organized and stored properly, and was be the logical place to start. ferred. looking for help. Among local repositories, historical soci- It is extremely helpful to begin thinking My first impulse was to tell this collector eties are often interested in folklore about these issues while the collector can par- about the usual archival process: survey or in- collections; public, college, and university li- ticipate in the decision making. And it is better ventory the material, arrange it into logical braries are another option. Farther afield, still to get an agreement in place to transfer groups, house it in acid-free boxes, create a regional, municipal, or state archives or even the collection at a specified time to a speci- finding aid that would tell users what is in the a major museum or collection, such as the fied repository. Such an agreement may take collection and how to find it. But I got stuck New York Public Library or the Library of care of some other problems, too. A reposi- on the word users. Who would be using this Congress, may be suitable. Most repositories tory may agree to arrange and describe the collection? What did the future hold for it? As are happy to hear from prospective donors, collection, or to provide archival folders and it turns out, the collector doesn’t have a real but they don’t often go out and solicit collec- boxes for storage and offer preservation ad- answer to these important questions. tions. vice. When a collection is in private hands, its fu- When looking for a repository, consider the If a collector is reluctant to give up his ma- ture can be a big question mark. Whether the following: terials during his lifetime, he still may be able collection was amassed systematically or ac- • Mission. Does the mission of the reposi- to get grant funding to arrange and describe crued during the course of a person’s life or tory make a good fit with the collection? his collection if there is an agreement in place research, private archival collections often have Would it make sense to a researcher that a with an eventual repository. It is likely, how- research value, and often the collector is inter- collection like yours would be found there? ever, that grants would be very hard to get for ested in sharing the wealth. But how? • Restrictions. Does the repository require a collection that remains in private hands: Private collectors must consider the dispo- that the collection be given without restric- funding agencies want to ensure access to the sition of their collections very carefully. There tions, and does this stipulation suit the material they have paid to preserve. are two basic options: keeping the collection collector? For example, will the repository take It is all too easy—and only human—to private, or shepherding it to a public reposi- a collection that its creator wants sealed until avoid dealing with these things. Few people tory. The collector’s wishes should be a specified time? like to consider what will happen when they’re ascertained right away, and in either scenario, • Access. Does the repository make new col- no longer around, and finding a repository is a caretaker should be named to oversee the lections available quickly and allow reasonable not always easy. But planning ahead takes away collection in case the collector becomes un- access? Does it have facilities and hours to the doubts and ensures that the collection will able or unavailable to manage it. accommodate people interested in using the live on. If the collection stays private, it will often collection? Ask to see the finding aids; are remain hidden away, subject to the fickle fin- they lucid and helpful? ger of fate: the flood in the basement, the • Personnel. Is the repository staffed by Nancy Johnson is a freelance disinterested heir, the disorganization that knowledgeable people who will give the col- archivist and a leaves material impenetrable. lection the treatment it deserves? member of the New York Folklore If the collection can be placed in a public • Physical conditions. Is the repository in good Society Board of repository, it will be accessible and cared for. physical shape, and is its archival storage safe Directors. She has worked with the The question is where. There may be a natural and sound, with a consistent temperature and society on its destination, such as the college where the col- humidity, without leaks or mold? archives project, as well as with the lector was a faculty member, the institution • Fiscal and administrative soundness. Is this re- Center for where she worked, or the museum where he pository likely to still be there a decade or Traditional Music and Dance, City Lore, the Calandra Italian American Institute, was a trustee. If not, the subject matter repre- more from now? and the Association for Cultural Equity/ sented in the collection may offer some leads. • Deaccessioning. This is a polite term for dis- Alan Lomax Archives. In the case of the man from Queens men- carding collections. Check the gift agreement
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 37 Celebrating Catskill Mountain Women Family Stories, Community History
BY MELISSA LADENHEIM
Celebrating Catskill mountain women is part of an international effort to point. No opportunity is missed to take an celebrate the drive, spirit, and diversity of mountain women everywhere. event and turn it into a narrative that, like a Born and raised in the Catskills, the author grew up hearing the stories of family photo album, is trotted out at every ordinary women who had lived there in the past. The stories themselves gathering. In fact, we use stories far more and the events they recall are, on the surface, unremarkable. Their impor- than photos to keep alive those who are no tance resides in the memories to which they give form, in the past they longer living, to remember that which has recall and make tangible in the present. This paper is drawn from a presen- passed. tation to a Catskill Mountain lecture series held in conjunction with the UN I am also drawn to stories as a folklorist, International Year of the Mountain. as one who studies traditional, expressive culture. Folklorists seek meaning in expres- here are many stories about famous tains and to evoke a sense of the lives of the sive culture and find value in everyday T men and women who made history. women who shaped that history in the simple events and activities. Stories are a wonder- I want to tell a few stories about a seem- acts of everyday life. ful vehicle for learning about past lives and ingly unremarkable person. The stories are I am drawn to the power of stories for a events because they can take the insignifi- entertaining, at least for me, but more im- number of reasons. First, I come from a cant and make it entertaining. They can take portantly they provide a window to the past, family in which stories are used to make a the ordinary and make it art. a way of telling the history of ordinary And finally, I am drawn to these stories people living ordinary lives. That doesn’t as a woman—one born here in the Catskills mean the history is ordinary. It is worth re- within half a mile of the land farmed by membering, it is worth repeating because my great-great grandparents—because such stories are where the majority of us these stories celebrate mountain women. can find ourselves. Much of our meaning- They celebrate their strength, their practi- ful past resides in local history, in family cality, their wisdom, and their spirit. These history, in the stories we tell about ourselves stories tell my history as an individual. But and those who lived before us. These are more importantly, they and the countless the stories that define us, give shape and stories like them in families throughout the meaning to our lives, guide and instruct us, region tell a history otherwise inaccessible, and provide for us a sense of place. but no less rich or worthwhile for it. The stories I tell are from my own family, My stories focus on my great-grand- a family whose roots run deep in the Catskill mother, Jeanette Cole Squires, known as Mountains. And although they are personal Nettie—and to me and my siblings, Little narratives, they are also, I contend, arche- Grandma. She was a petite woman whose typal ones because they deal with universal import and influence far exceeded her di- themes, concerns, and conflicts. My goal in minutive stature. She was born on August telling these stories is to communicate some- 16, 1883, and died on October 7, 1960— thing of the quotidian history of these moun- when I was one, long before I could form Nettie Cole, c. 1900.
38 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore petition at the 1893 World’s Columbian Ex- And though she couldn’t change her brother position in Chicago, bringing renown to both or people’s attitudes toward him, she could her family and her community. fix the problem with his clothes. And so she, Agnes served as a role model for her chil- being all of twelve or so, marched her brother dren in other ways as well, particularly in the up the stone steps of the Swartz store, the causes she supported. She was a suffragette local department store, where The Commons who actively campaigned for women’s right is now located on Main Street in to vote. And as a member of the Women’s Margaretville, and bought him a set of new Christian Temperance Union, she was a dedi- clothes, which she charged to her father’s ac- cated prohibitionist. Family legend has it that count. “It was a big deal,” recalled her grand- she participated in her fair share of barroom daughter Francine. “Her father was pretty destruction in the pursuit of temperance. upset about it, but he paid for them and didn’t Whether this story is apocryphal or not is make her take them back.” really beside the point. The point is that Of course, we don’t know how it changed Agnes was a woman of action, a woman who George’s life or even whether Nettie ever had
Nettie Squires with the author, summer stood up for what she believed in, and she to come to his defense again, which is likely. 1959. passed on this resolve to her daughter Nettie. What we do know is that it was a story that The strength of my great-grandmother’s Nettie, who was not one given to boasting, any memories of her based on personal ex- character was evident at a young age. Fol- told about her childhood experiences. For us, perience. But through the stories about her lowing her mother’s example, Nettie took what is worth remembering and relating is and the oft-repeated sayings attributed to action when warranted, even when the con- Nettie’s integrity and loyalty. We can only her, I feel as though I knew her. And per- sequences could have been severe, as the admire and emulate her resolve in her deci- haps when I am very old, I may think I did following story attests: sion to do right by her brother, regardless of know her, because she was such a strong Nettie’s older brother George was, as she the consequences. Such stalwart characters presence in my life growing up. She lives on described him, a bit inept and also slight of certainly fared well in these mountain com- in her sayings, in the stories about her, in build. Being a child from a poor family, he munities, where adversity and disappoint- the examples she set for her children and often ended up wearing his siblings’ hand- ment were all too common. grandchildren. In my living room sits an me-downs, which were patched and often On a more personal level, the story un- antique platform rocker that was a gift to ill-fitting. His build, his demeanor, and his derscores for me the value Nettie placed on my great-grandmother from her parents on clothing all made him a target for the school family ties and obligations—a value she prac- her sixteenth birthday. When I sit in that bullies, and they tormented him mercilessly. ticed throughout her life. My mother is fond chair, I feel the past condensed into a mo- Nettie regularly fought his battles, and one of saying, “We never lost a relative or an in- ment that mingles the lives of five genera- day she decided they both had had enough. law.” For my great-grandmother, when some- tions of my family—and when I hold my children, that makes six generations. The stories do the same. My great-grandmother was the daughter of John and Agnes Carr Cole, who worked a small farm just outside Margaretville. Her father’s family had deep roots in the region, but her mother was an immigrant from Ire- land who made her way with her two sisters to the Catskills from Massachusetts. Nettie was one of six children, and the family were by all accounts typical hardscrabble farmers. Nettie’s mother, however, did distinguish herself on a national stage as a butter maker. Delaware County was famous for its butter production in the latter part of the nineteenth century, in terms of both quantity and qual- ity, and Agnes won the butter-making com- Agnes Coles’s Women’s Christian Temperance Union Card.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 39 daughter found herself, at age sixteen, in the until she came home to Margaretville per- predicament referenced in the saying, but it manently to settle down and raise her own could only take on new meaning after that. family. When people would gossip about a woman Nettie married George Chauncey pregnant outside of marriage, my great- “Denny” Squires, a local man twelve years grandmother would say, her senior whose family had been in the area since the late 1700s. By her account they had The first one comes any time. The sec- a good marriage. She used to say, “We had a ond one takes nine months and it hap- pens in the best of families. lot of fun when we were young.” Nettie bore nine children, seven of whom lived to adult- And for those situations where you just hood. Her first child, Leone (born 1906), cannot fathom what one person sees in died at the age of two, her last was stillborn, another, cannot understand the basis for and she also had several miscarriages in be- the attraction, or don’t think it’s a suitable tween. Fertility was not an issue for her: she pairing whatever the reason, we say, used to say, “All Denny had to do was hang his pants on the bed and I got pregnant.” As Little Grandma used to say, “Love Nettie was a devoted mother and grand- goes where it’s sent even if it’s up a pig’s rear end. mother whose home was always open to her children regardless of age or marital status We find these sayings entertaining, (and to her grandchildren, of whom she Nettie and Denny Squires, c. 1930. even useful, but employing them dem- raised three). Ever the realist, she did ac- onstrates something about life in small towns knowledge that having a lot of children aged one married into the family, that was it. with intricate and often limiting social rela- a woman prematurely. Childbirth and rear- Nettie stayed in touch with her son Waldo’s tions. They allowed Nettie to offer comment ing took a physical toll on women, and after first wife Josephine until the day Josephine indirectly, to rely on prevailing wisdom rather my mother had her first two children, my died. Her daughter Emily’s first husband than personal beliefs in confronting a dis- great-grandmother urged her to stop: even continued to live in Nettie’s home af- tasteful situation. This is not to say her prov- “You know,” my mother recalled her say- ter the divorce—and it was there he courted erbs were always received warmly, but she ing as they sat together on the back porch his second wife. didn’t much care about that: she had neither snapping beans in preparation for canning, Nettie’s intolerance for the mistreatment the time nor the patience for such nonsense. “you have two lovely little boys. Enjoy them. of others in word or deed is also apparent She felt there wasn’t a family who went Don’t have a lot of children. Don’t get old in the story about her brother George. Per- through life unscathed by the consequences before your time.” haps it was just her nature, or perhaps it of a bad decision, and there was nothing to “And you know,” my mother said, “I put was witnessing the pain inflicted on her be gained from reveling in another’s misfor- a lot of stock in what Grandma said.” But brother or even her religious faith that con- tune. my mother was already pregnant with her tributed to Nettie’s firm stand against mean- Nettie did attend school, but we can only third child when the advice was proffered, ness and pettiness. She was respectful of guess how far she went in her education— and she went on to have a fourth. others, regardless of class or position, and eighth grade, perhaps a bit further, given Anyone who has had a child, however easy expected the same in return. When neigh- the age at which she went to work. At the the birth, can attest it is truly laborious to bors dropped in for a cup of tea and began turn of the century, opportunities for em- bring a child into this world. And Nettie gossiping—a pastime reaching an art form ployment for young women, particularly understood that as both a mother and a mid- in any small community with close social those coming from the many marginal hill- wife. Perhaps there is no greater testament relationships—she would stop them with side farms, were few. One source of jobs to her strength and forbearance than the fact any number of proverbial sayings. “People was the tourist industry, as the region has that she gave birth to two of her children who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw a long history of summer visitors. Some- on her own, all alone. Not by choice, just by stones” simply called attention to the skel- time in her midteens, Nettie went into ser- circumstance. And the second one she de- etons that exist in all of our closets. But vice working for a family from metropoli- livered alone, her eighth child, was a breech there were others that addressed more spe- tan New York who summered in Marga- birth. Nettie used to say, “There wouldn’t cific situations. The following are two of ret-ville. When they returned to the city at be any need for birth control if the woman my personal favorites. I’m sure she used the end of the season, she accompanied had the first one and the man had the sec- the first expression before her youngest them. She worked for them for a few years ond.”
40 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Nettie attended the births of her neigh- with theirs. By the time of my mother’s birth outside and, perhaps like other little boys bors’ children as well as assisting other mem- in the 1930s she was no longer a practicing exploring the possibilities afforded by their bers of the community. How she became a midwife, although she did attend the birth plumbing, did so flagrantly. In an effort to midwife, we don’t know. Certainly, giving of at least one of her grandchildren. discourage this behavior, Nettie would warn birth doesn’t automatically qualify one to My great-grandparents, who lived in the him that if he wasn’t careful, the rooster birth other people’s babies. However, she village, raised chickens and grew a large might think he had a worm. must have been good at it because even af- garden to feed their family. The rooster and And that’s precisely what happened. One ter doctors arrived in Margaretville in the hens ran freely around the yard, as did the day the rooster grabbed Irving’s penis in his 1920s, her presence was requested along children. Her son Irving liked to urinate beak and wouldn’t let go. And so my great- grandmother did what any mother would when faced with the situation. She whacked the rooster with a stick, killing him. She then chopped his head off—and probably cooked him for dinner. Irving wasn’t per- manently scarred by the experience, at least not physically, as he went on to marry and father children. In fact, before he married, Irving may even have been a bit of a ladies’ man: as a young man he was named in a paternity suit. Now the woman in question, it was told, was of dubious character and lifestyle. She had a “reputation.” The fam- ily could not afford a lawyer and so my great- grandmother represented her son Irving herself. When it came time for her to speak, my great-grandmother was succinct in pre- senting her case. As the story goes, she said to the court, “Judge, when a saw cuts through a piece of wood, can you tell which tooth does the most cutting?” The judge dismissed the lawsuit. Nettie was a practicing Methodist and devoted churchgoer, rarely missing Sunday morning service and taking in an evening service, regardless of the denomination, when possible. Bible reading was an every- day event, and the Commandments guided her actions. She continued to uphold the tenets of temperance in her house, where the only intoxicant on hand was blackberry brandy—for medicinal purposes only. Her generosity both in spirit and in deed were well known, perhaps never more so than during those leanest of years in the 1930s when hardship and deprivation were the norm. My great-grandmother’s house was a place where jobless men riding the rails knew they could get a meal and some- thing to take along when they went on their Nettie’s children Lester, Louise, and Elizabeth, c. 1921. way. My mother recalled,
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 41 The train came through Margaretville. put carbolic acid in the laundry, mopped the From the moment the weather broke until the moment the weather got cold, kitchen floor every day with bleach, and it was almost daily that people came regularly added kerosene to the water when by. They’d say, “Missus, can I chop rinsing her children’s hair. Every spring the wood? Can I bring some coal up? Is there any chore I can do for you?” bedsprings were cleaned with a kerosene Grandma would give them whatever solution and the woodwork washed with [job] she had and if she didn’t have anything, she’d [just] give them a meal. Lysol. And she was simply being, in today’s She baked on Saturday—rolls, cook- parlance, proactive. Her granddaughter ies, pie or cake—and when they left, Francine recalls, she always gave them something, a roll or a couple of cookies. It was like a pipeline—they always knew where they It’s a wonder I grew up, it’s a wonder could go to get a meal. They never any of us grew up. She wouldn’t let a went away from our house without box come in from area grocers, be- having something to eat for the next cause once one had a cockroach and day. And believe me, we were poor— that was it. It crawled out on the table. we were really poor. Uncle Louie used She killed it and then everything came to pilfer things from the CCC: peanut out from the cupboards, all the butter, flour, sugar, lard or dishes—everything in the damn house whatever.…The people who stopped got scrubbed. by weren’t bums, they were just down and out on their luck. There was never a week that there weren’t two or three Nettie’s approach to housekeeping to- or four who stopped by our house. Nettie Squires, c. 1960. day might be considered a bit obsessive. But it speaks to the sense of pride women Long after the Depression, my great- took in their homes and the value placed grandmother’s cookies and rolls continued less of the season, and irons heated on the both personally and culturally on good to attract a steady stream of visitors to her woodstove in the kitchen. No one who re- housekeeping. Cleanliness was the mani- house. And the one thing consistently re- calls my great-grandmother doesn’t at some festation of good management, the em- membered about them, aside from their point in the reminiscence make some refer- bodiment of control over the elements, taste, was their size. She made big cookies. ence to laundry. My mother recalled, and a demonstrated consideration for the After all, she didn’t have time to fuss with For as long as I can remember health and well-being of one’s family. anything delicate. Grandma did laundry. The most I can Among the women in my family high praise One of the reasons Nettie didn’t have remember my grandmother getting for is given when it is said, “You can eat off a load of laundry, if she collected a time to fuss is that she, like many other whole dollar, that was a lot of money her kitchen floors.” women of her time and place who struggled and then people complained. The only My great-grandmother left a legacy of to make ends meet, took in laundry. My time I can remember not having laun- dry on the line, or the washing machine strength and determination and gifts of great-grandfather was a trained plumber and going, or the ironing board set up was wisdom and compassion. In remembering he also worked on the railroad, but neither on Saturday or Sunday.…She did laun- her and the other Netties of the Catskills dry up until a year and half before she source of his income was steady or lucra- died. we garner a sense of what life was like for tive. And after his death in 1938, Nettie still ordinary women living ordinary lives in the had children and grandchildren to care for. Nettie’s deep faith infused all aspects of region’s past. She and countless other Doing laundry in those days entailed wash- her life, including her approach to house- mountain women led lives that passed un- tubs, washboards, and clotheslines regard- work: cleanliness was next to godliness. She noticed except by those whom they touched. Let us celebrate them in spirit and Now available for a limited time only story. If you take away nothing else, re- member this: The ARTS of Black Folk Love goes where it’s sent, even if it’s up a Papers presented at The Arts of Black Folk Conference for Community Organizations on African American Folk Arts, held on April 22-23, 1988, pig’s ass. New York, New York. Published by Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library, New York, New York, 1991. Melissa Ladenheim currently lives in Still- water, Maine, where she is a freelance Contributors include: Gerald L. Davis, Beverly Robinson, Gladys-Marie folklorist. She is the author of Birds in Wood: Fry, Phyllis M. May-Machunda, Worth Long, and Sharon V. King. The Carvings of Andrew Zergenyi. The author acknowledges the assistance of Francine Ladenheim, Vesti Snyder, Dorothy Archibald, Available now from the New York Folklore Society and Janis Benincasa in the preparation of this for $10.00; $8.00 members. paper.
42 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Alan Lomax, 1915–2002
Ethnomusicologist, record and concert producer, radio host, author, The Association for Cultural Equity at filmmaker: Alan Lomax was one of the preeminent folk song scholars of the Voorhees Campus of Hunter our century. Called the Father of the American Folksong Revival, he first College houses the Alan Lomax Archive presented Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, and others to (www.alan-lomax.com), which contains a national audience, influencing a generation of young pop-rock and folk thousands of audio and videotapes, rare revival musicians. His seminal article “Appeal for Cultural Equity,” excerpts vinyl recordings, 16-mm film, of which appear below, speaks of the passion and urgency he marshalled photographs, and papers documenting to preserve and make flourish traditional music around the world. folk music and dance from the United States and abroad, as well as a large uring most of man’s history contact …When country folk or tribal peoples body of research. A 150-CD collection Dbetween peoples did not usually hear or view their own traditions in the big of folk music and narrative drawn mean that one culture swallowed up or media projected with the authority generally from Lomax’s recordings is available destroyed another. Even in the days of reserved for the output of large urban through Rounder Records, at classical empire, vassal states were generally centers, and when they hear their traditions www.rounder.com. permitted to continue in their own lifestyle, taught to their own children, something so long as they paid tribute to the imperial magical occurs. They see that their ex- center. The total destruction of cultures is pressive style is as good as that of others, a largely modern phenomenon, the con- and, if they have equal communicational sequence of laissez-faire mercantilism facilities, they will continue it. On my last insatiably seeking to market all its products, field trip to the West Indies, I took along to blanket the world not only with its two huge stereo loudspeakers and, in every manufacture, but with its religion, its village where I worked, I put on a literature and music, its educational and thunderous three-dimensional concert of communication systems. the music I had recorded. The audiences Non-European peoples have been made were simply transported with pleasure. In to feel that they have to buy “the whole one island, the principal yearly people’s package” if they are to keep face before the festival, discontinued for a decade, was world. Westerners have imposed their revived the next year in all its richness. lifestyles on their fellow humans in the name …It seems reasonable, therefore, that if of spreading civilization or, more lately, as the human race is to have a rich and varied an essential concomitant of the benefits of musical future, we must encourage the industry. We must reject this cannibalistic development of as many local musics as view of civilization, just as we must now possible. This means money, time on the Above: Alan Lomax at the typewriter, c.1940. Photographer unknown, courtesy find ways of curbing a runaway industrial air, and time in the classrooms. of The Lomax Archive. system which is polluting the whole planet. Top: Alan Lomax recording in La Plaine, Dominica, June 25, 1962. Photo by Indeed, industrial and cultural pollution are From “Appeal for Cultural Equity,” Journal Antoinette Marchand, courtesy of The two aspects to the same negative tendency. of Communication, Spring 1977. Lomax Archive.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 43 The Sonny and Mickey Show BY PAUL RAPP
Every once in a while, the Supreme Court which grants Congress the power to give nothing more. And there’s nothing in the decides to consider a basic copyright issue. creators sole province over their creations for Copyright Clause, the Eldred plaintiffs argue, This causes intellectual property lawyers to get limited times in order to encourage creators that authorizes Congress to do that. all goofy—we’re like that, I guess, and besides, to create. The last argument involves the deleterious if the rules you operated by were about to The first challenge is that the current effect of the Bono Act on the public domain. undergo a big change, you’d probably get duration of copyright terms is not “for limited The Bono Act keeps all existing copyrighted somewhat goofy, too. times,” as allowed in the Constitution. Because works from entering the public domain for at In 2002 the Supreme Court took up the the lengths of copyright terms are ever least an additional twenty years. The Eldred copyright case Eldred v. Ashcroft. Eldred involves increasing, the Eldred plaintiffs argue that the plaintiffs argue that placing works in the public a challenge to the duration of copyright terms, Bono Act is unconstitutional in that Congress domain is a quid pro quo for the protections terms that Congress has repeatedly and provided by the copyright laws. They argue significantly lengthened over the past hundred …it’s difficult to imagine that that the Bono Act upsets this balance, because years. The latest extension came via the Sonny the Bono Act, by increasing terms for existing Bono Copyright Term Extension Act of 1998, someone would be more inclined to works, gives creators of existing works more LAWYER’S SIDEBAR LAWYER’S surely the late representative’s second most creativity if the copyright term was than they signed on for without the public’s important contribution to American culture, life plus seventy years rather than receiving any reciprocal benefit. It is also right behind “I Got You Babe.” argued that the Bono Act infringes the public’s The Bono Act lengthened the existing terms life plus fifty. “right” to have works available in the public of copyright of works created or published domain. This somewhat esoteric argument after 1978 by twenty years: to life of the author exceeded the power granted to it in the arises not from the Copyright Clause but rather plus seventy (instead of the previous fifty) Copyright Clause. Copyright terms, they say, from the First Amendment. There has been a years, or if the copyright is owned by an entity are just too long. nascent theory that the First Amendment rather than a person, to ninety-five (instead One cannot argue with a straight face that includes a right to information, and the Eldred of the previous seventy-five) years. For works the current copyright terms are “limited.” plaintiffs want the Court to expand, or at least published before 1978 that still had valid Indeed, the first Congress to provide copyright clarify, this theory. copyrights as of 1998, the act extended the protection, in the 1790s, decided that fourteen Those are questions the Supreme Court has copyrights to ninety-five years. Works created years was adequate. And now it’s seventy years never looked at before. The fact that the Court in 1923 that were about to fall into the public after the death of the creator? Despite this even took the Eldred case was a shock—and domain in 1998 suddenly had copyright absurdity, it is the business of Congress, for an indication that the justices considered one protection lasting until 2018. better or for worse, to decide what constitutes or more of the issues ripe for consideration. The Bono Act was pushed through Con- a “limited time.” And even though the current Commentators have been generally clueless gress with the “encouragement” of the Disney Supreme Court has a tendency to clip regarding what the Court is going to do, or Corporation. Apparently, the copyrights for congressional wings when the legislators why. The case was argued before the Court in the earliest Mickey Mouse cartoons were due exceed their authority, that is a very different October, and a decision is expected in early to expire in 2003, and the idea that Mickey thing from the Court’s second-guessing spring 2003. would be in the public domain was more than Congress on matters Congress is entitled to the corporate muckamucks at Disney could decide. bear. So Disney sought, and received, an extra The second argument is that extending the Paul Rapp twenty years to exploit its flagship character. copyright term for existing works (which the ([email protected]) is an attorney with Considering that some of Disney’s most Bono Act does) does absolutely nothing to the Albany law successful endeavors were based on public encourage creators to create. In theory, firm of Cohen Dax & Koenig. He also domain stories and characters—Pinocchio, extending the copyright term for future works teaches art and Beauty and the Beast, Snow White—Disney’s might give someone added incentive to create, entertainment law at Albany Law Herculean effort to keep a universally known although it’s difficult to imagine that someone School. Write to character out of the public domain is a little would be more inclined to creativity if the him or the editor of Voices if you sad, if not hypocritical. copyright term was life plus seventy years have a general- The act is being challenged, however. The rather than life plus fifty. But extending the interest question or topic you’d like most significant arguments are grounded in copyright term for existing works only rewards to see discussed in a future issue. Photo: Buck Malen the Copyright Clause of the Constitution, copyright owners for owning copyrights, and
44 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore BOOK REVIEWS
European Fairy Tales, African American Stories
Happily Ever After: Fairy Tales, proceeds via Basile’s “Pentamerone” (1674) ries of similar features from “Snow White” to Children, and the Culture Indus- to Disney’s early silent film (1922), and culmi- “Lion King,” before proceeding to filmmakers try. nates in the typically Zipean assertion that “in beyond Disney, such as Jim Henson, Shelley By Jack Zipes. New York and London: the literary and cinematic fairy tale tradition Duvall, and Tom Davenport. Fairy tales do not Routledge. 1997. 171 pages plus front matter. of ‘Puss in Boots’, cats have been manipu- begin or end with Disney, after all. Illustrations, bibliography, index. Paperback. lated to extol male prowess and to represent It is tempting the label the fifth essay, “Lion It is always with a keen sense of anticipa- the difficulties of middle-class writers and ad- Kings and the Culture Industry,” as the tion that I open a new book by Jack Zipes, ministrators in establishing a secure position author’s protest chapter. In the course of the and I have never yet been disappointed. This for themselves in societies that are dominated continual commodification of culture, he volume, which examines the relationship be- by display and force.” points out, the desire to sell is paramount, and tween the oral folktale, the literary fairy tale, The essay on “Hansel and Gretel” is, as its commercial television, movies, and videos, and the fairy tale as film, is no exception. Es- subtitle indicates, as much an investigation of apart from conveying fixed gender roles, leave says on “Puss in Boots,” Hansel and Gretel,” the “Rationalization of Abandonment and children with a “false sense of power and ag- and “Pinocchio” are followed by one entitled Abuse in Fairy Tales” as a close reading of gressive instincts that further competition in “Once Upon a Time Beyond Disney: Con- the Grimms’ “elaborate process of rewriting a capitalist market system.” Zipes spots “lion temporary Fairy-Tale Films for Children.” and reconceptualizing” tales as a part of a do- kings” not only in fairy tale films but also else- Another discusses lion kings and the culture mestication of the imagination for a bourgeois where, as in professional sports and in industry, and the final chapter revisits Walter reading public. In keeping with one of the per- universities, and foresees their spread for many Benjamin’s “The Storyteller.” Like Zipes’s pre- vasive trends of modern literary criticism, years to come unless “effective changes in the vious books, this collection of essays is Zipes attempts to link the story events to the early education or socialization of children” anything but dull, and the sparks fly off in brothers’ own lives, thus personalizing the can be devised. several directions, though occasionally the abandonment motif. Whether the infiltration Unfortunately, the final essay on Walter embers are allowed by smolder without being of such parallels is to be regarded as success- Benjamin’s “The Storyteller” does not dispel fanned into flames. ful or not, this reviewer cannot help bridling a the gloom in which we are left by the preced- In his introduction, Zipes briefly overviews little at the one-sided stress on the reinforce- ing chapter. Cast partly in the form of a (tragic) the developments that have taken place from ment of “patriarchal social and symbolical biographical fairy tale, it contrasts Benjamin’s oral storytelling as written and literary fairy order” when he has always regarded Gretel as concept of storytelling with what Zipes calls tales were translated into performance for ra- one of the strongest and most resourceful of the “commercialized, instrumentalized, or ar- dio, film and video, and contends that “the the Grimms’ fairy tale characters, as it is her tificial storytelling” of today that produces fairy-tale film as become the most popular actions and her advice that save her brother. stories for markets instead of acting as con- commodity in America.” Indeed, underlying Perhaps the “social history” that can be ex- duits for the exchange of experience and ideas. much of his argument is the concept of the tracted from this story contains not solely the This reviewer has always had a particular fond- “commodification of all art,” a process that selective elements that Zipes has chosen to ness for Benjamin’s profound essay, and it is the author believes has turned folktales as a emphasize in support of his basic concept of perhaps unjustifiably limiting to press it into means of socialization for children into a com- “Hansel and Gretel” as a “didactic Christian the ideological service of this circumscribed mercial enterprise. Thus the recent story.” line of thought. revitalization of storytelling has been subjected In the author’s pursuit of a “theory of the Happily Ever After is as ironic a title for the to the power of what Zipes refers to as the fairy-tale film,” the case of Carlo Collodi’s nine- book as it is apt. In Zipes’s vision this phrase “culture industry.” Much of the book is con- teenth-century “Pinocchio” and Disney’s is a passport to a realm of largely false values sequently devoted to examining and analyzing American film version of 1940 form a spring- in which lion kings reign and where the pur- the effects that this relationship has had on board of another kind, taking Zipes closer to suit of happiness itself cannot be detached the phenomenon of “story.” his goal. A detailed analysis of what he describes from the notion of a salable commodity. The Zipes centers his topics on particular tales as “Disney’s streamlined reduction of Collodi’s author’s vision may in places seem lopsided or tale types. “Puss in Boots” serves as a ve- novel” leads him to the conclusion that and refracted, but it is always challenging in hicle for a range of ploys from a “Pinocchio” is pivotal in the development of the missionary sincerity of its convictions, the (tongue-in-cheek?) portrayal of cats as agents the fairy tale film because “the content of the incisiveness of its analytical power, and the in the civilizing of humans to a demonstra- film and the film as product reveal major honest directness of its approach. One can- tion of its embeddedness in the sociohistorical changes in the institutionalization of the fairy not help responding to that challenge and origins of the literary fairy tale in the West. It tale as genre.” Zipes then moves into a critical would be foolish not to take it seriously be- also provides the author with an opportunity encounter with contemporary fairy tale films cause, like the author’s previous books, this to highlight the role of Giovan Francesco for children. At the center of his fourth essay collection of essays offers messages that can- Straparola (1480–1558) as the “father” of the are Disney’s standardized films from 1937 to not be ignored. Jack Zipes never fails to modern literary fairy tale, who in his “Le the present and their attempts to control con- ruffle—perhaps “pummel” is a better word— Piacevoli Notti” (1550) employs popular lore sumer tastes. Looking at Disney’s processes and our complacent insensitivities and to stir awake to represent it in his own fashion and as a com- productions with remarkable understanding our somnambulant social consciences. mentary on life in his own time. Zipes’s and sympathy for his desire to “celebrate the WFH Nicolaisen account of the history of “Puss in Boots” then technics of animation itself,” Zipes lists a se- University of Aberdeen, Scotland
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 45 Hush Child: Can’t You Hear the him she wanted to hear some stories of the As David Moltke-Hansen notes in the fore- Music: Stories from the Rural old times. word, the Gullah show more African South. “How old?” he asked. influences in their self-expression, behavior, Collected by Rose Thompson and edited “As far back as you can go.” and beliefs and are genetically less mixed with by Charles Beaumont. Athens: University of “I can go all the way back to the Devil. Is whites and native Americans than most other George Press. 92 pages, 23 photos, maps and that far enough for you?” African Americans. Until a generation ago, figures. $12.95 paper. Thompson’s own family tradition of theirs was the largest overwhelmingly African storytelling undoubtedly helped her collect the American area of the United States. They The Gullah People and Their Afri- tales of Georgia’s black poor, and she felt a helped build and survived the forced labors can Heritage. certain ease in relating to her sources. Just as of one of the richest plantation regimes in By William S. Pollitzer. Athens: University folklorist and writer Zora Neale Hurston the Americas, and their music, dance, basketry, of Georgia Press. 298 pages, 48 photos, ap- would note in her writings during the 1930s and other arts are powerful, beautiful, and pendixes, bibliography, index. $40 cloth. in Etonville and other parts of Florida, Th- evocative. ompson writes, Pollitzer covers not only African survivals Two volumes, both worthy of sustained at- but also African precedents of this African tention by ethnographers, anthropologists, I knew that they accepted me completely American culture and the later relationships and I accepted them. They knew that they folklorists, and historians, explore the worlds could be entertaining and that I wanted to between the two worlds. His fascinating and of African descendants in the southeastern be entertained by their stories…It was a fact-filled historical ethnography helps us un- United States—a rich trove of stories and relaxed situation and the blacks would delve derstand the African source populations of material culture. back into things they had heard…But the the Gullah, the relative percentages of these white people didn’t know the things blacks populations in the Gullah mix, and the influ- The stories of Hush Child! were collected knew. They don’t till this day. by Georgia native Rose Thompson, who dur- ences of the different ethnic groups on ing the 1930s and 1940s worked as a home The Gullah People is a comprehensive his- Gullah genetics, health, language, arts, belief supervisor with the Farm Security Adminis- tory of a people and their material systems, family structure, and daily lives. tration in central Georgia. Most of these culture—wrought iron, quilting, basketry, Pollitzer’s chronology of the development of stories were collected while she worked with burial patterns, graveyard decorations, and the Gullah as a population group takes us to farmers and their wives, teaching them to put carvings and sculptures. The Gullah, one of the present day, with the threats to the sur- up preserves, make cotton mattresses, and America’s most distinctive cultural groups, vival of these people and the continued build chick brooders. have inhabited the Sea Islands off the South challenges they face. The first story in the collection is “The Carolina–Georgia coast for nearly three cen- Bill Stanford Pincheon Devil,” by Wright Boyer, whom Thompson turies and developed a vibrant way of life that Washington State University met on an isolated dirt road in 1945. She told was as African as it was American. Pullman, Washington
Familiar Faces at the AFS Conference, October 16–20, Rochester, New York
NYFS director Ellen McHale with WHF Robert Baron (above) and Nick Spitzer won Nicolaisen, who won the first AFS lifetime the Benjamin Botkin Prize, awarded each Scholarly Achievement Award. year for outstanding achievement in public Jack Santino, AFS president, and Peggy folklore. Bulger, AFS past president.
46 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Join the New York Folklore Society today and become a subscriber to Voices
Join NYFS and become part of a community A Public Voice that will deepen your involvement with The NYFS raises awareness of folklore among folklore, folklife, the traditional arts, and the general public through three important Yes, I want to join the New York contemporary culture. As a member, you’ll channels... Folklore Society. have early notice of key events... Print. Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore, Name______Fall Conference. People travel from all over published twice a year, brings you folklore in the to meet in a different part of the state each words and images of its creators and practitioners. Organization ______year for the NYFS Fall Conference and The journal’s new look distinguishes it from other Address ______Annual Meeting. Professionals in folklore and publications in the field. Read Voices for news related fields join with educators and you can use about our field and legal issues, City, state, zip ______practitioners to explore the culture and photography, sound and video recording, and Country ______traditions of the area. Lectures and archiving. discussions are balanced with concerts, Telephone ______Radio. Voices of New York Traditions is a series of dancing, and tours of cultural sites. E-mail ______radio documentaries that spotlight the folklife of New York State Folk Arts Forums. Folk the state, aired on public radio. Stay tuned! arts professionals, colleagues in related $35 Basic member disciplines, and lay people come together each Internet. Visit www.nyfolklore.org for the latest $20 Full-time student year to address a topic of special interest– news on events in folklore. Updated weekly, the $20 Senior (65+) NYFS website is designed to appeal to the public whether it be folklore and the Internet, $50 Joint (two or more at the same address) as well as keep specialists informed. heritage tourism, cultural conservation, or $50 Organizations and institutions intellectual property law. Please add $5 for additional postage for foreign memberships. Advocacy New member. Help When You Need It The New York Folklore Society is your advocate for sympathetic and informed attention to folk Gift membership. Introduce a friend or Become a member and learn about technical arts... relative to the world of folklore! assistance programs that will get you the help • We represent you on issues before the state you need in your work. legislature and the federal government when Make a tax-deductible donation and help Mentoring and Professional Development public policy affects the field. Visit the advocacy support the organization that supports folklore! Program for Folklife and the Traditional pages at www.nyfolklore.org to learn what we’re Arts. Receive technical assistance from a doing and how you can help. My donation over and above my basic member- mentor of your choosing. You can study with • The society partners with statewide, regional, ship fee will entitle me to the following a master traditional artist, learn new strategies and national organizations, from the New York additional benefits: for marketing, master concert and exhibition State Arts and Cultural Coalition to the American $60. Supporting member. Book. production, organize an archive, or improve Folklore Society, and frequently presents its $100 and up. The Harold W. Thompson your organizational management. projects and issues at meetings of professional Circle. Book. Folk Artists Self-Management Project. If organizations in the allied fields of archives, you’re a traditional artist, you know the history, and libraries. importance of business, management, and 2002 2003 Membership dues $______$______marketing skills to your success in the So Join! marketplace. NYFS can help you with Become part of a community that explores and Tax-deductible workshops, mentoring, and publications. nurtures the traditional cultures of New York donation $______$______Folk Archives Project. What could be more State and beyond. Membership in the New York critical than finding a repository for an Folklore Society entitles you to the following Total enclosed $______$______important collection? The NYFS is a leader benefits: in the preservation of our cultural heritage. • A subscription to Voices: The Journal of New The amount of memberships greater than $20 and all donations are Attend our workshops and order copies of York Folklore. tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. NYFS books at a discount. • Invitations to conferences, workshops, and meetings. Make your check payable to New York Folklore Consulting and referral. The NYFS offers • Updates on technical assistance programs. Society and send it with this form to: informal counseling and referral services to • Opportunities to meet others who share your New York Folklore Society the members in the field. Contact us by interests. P.O. Box 764 , Schenectady, NY 12301 telephone, e-mail, or letter. • Discounts on NYFS books. Publications. Members receive discounts Plus the satisfaction of knowing that you support on all NYFS publications. Visit the only organization devoted to folklore across www.nyfolklore.org for current titles. New York State.
Fall Winter 2002, Volume 28: 3–4 47 Announcements
Music on Long Island Serphin R. Maltese and the Atlantic professor at the University of Notre Dame, will • Sunday, Feburary 16, 2 P.M.: The second Philanthropic Service Company, curated by the explore Italians’ encounters with race in Chicago concert in this year’s Latino Long Island series Calandra Institute’s Joseph Sciorra, and and focus on questions of identity and power at the Museums at Stony Brook will feature Los designed by visual artist B. Amore, the exhibit in the city’s developing structure, and the Hermanos Fernández, a Dominican bachata consists of three triptychs. This exhibit is consequences for Italians’ everyday lives, group led by three brothers from North available to community organizations, such as opportunities, and social relations. Babylon, Long Island. The event is free with libraries, schools, and social clubs, for the cost • Thursday, April 17: Peter Savastano, “The admission ($3–$5) to the Long Island Museum of shipping. Contact Francisca Vieira, 212 642- Many Meanings of St. Gerard Maiella: of American Art, History & Carriages, 1200 2042 or [email protected]. Devotional Practices, Symbolic Polyvocality, Route 25A, Stony Brook. and Marginality and Difference in Greater • Sunday, March 9, 2:30 P.M.: Eugenio and Writers Read, Scholars Speak Newark, New Jersey.” Savastano, a native of Juan Ortega of the vallenato group Los The John D. Calandra Italian American Newark, will explore the role that ethnic, sexual, Macondos will give a lecture-demonstration on Institute is sponsoring a new series featuring and racial identity plays in shaping personal Colombian accordion music at the Freeport Italian American writers, Italian writers, and devotion to St. Gerard for heterosexual Italian Memorial Library,144 W Merrick Rd., Freeport. authors on Italian and Italian American subjects Roman Catholics, Italian Roman Catholic gay
ANNOUNCEMENTS The father and son just completed an reading from their works. men, and Haitian Roman Catholics in the apprenticeship, funded by the New York State • Thursday, March 27: Louisa Ermelino, The greater Newark area. Slides will be shown. Council on the Arts, in which Juan studied both Black Madonna and The Sisters Mallone: Una Storia • Wednesday, May 14: Graziella Parati, accordion technique and vallenato song Di Famiglia. “An endearing portrayal of working- “Literature and the Law: Migrations in Con- composition. class Italian-American women, their sons, their temporary Italy.” Parati, of Dartmouth College, Both events are sponsored by Long Island families, their lives, their loves, and their dreams will explore the relationship between Traditions. For more information, call 516 767- in New York’s Little Italy. Ermelino writes with immigration laws and immigrants’ literature in 8803 or visit www.longislandtraditions.org. sensitivity and compassion and a signature contemporary Italy. She will focus on literature earthy charm.” —Louise DeSalvo as a means to talk back to the texts of the law New England Stories • Wednesday, May 21: James Sturz, Sasso. “As that regulated their lives. February through April: The Folklife Center this teasing, literate thriller gets underway, a team Lectures and readings begin at 6:30 P.M. at at Crandall Public Library, Glens Falls, New of sun struck foreign investigators arrives in the Calandra Institute, 25 W. 43rd St., 18th floor, York, will host “Family Stories, Family Sagas,” the hill town of Mancanzano in rural southern in Manhattan. Seating is limited. Call 212 642- a multimedia traveling exhibit produced by the Italy, where a gruesome mystery is unfolding. 2042 or go to www.qc.edu/calandra for further Vermont Folklife Center as a part of its New What haunts us after the mystery is solved is information. England Storytelling Project. Six contemporary the novel’s potent evocation of life in this sun- New England families of diverse ethnic bleached living purgatory…” —Boston Globe Book Reviewers Needed backgrounds share a powerful tradition of The John D. Calandra Italian American Voices is seeking qualified individuals who are storytelling to preserve their heritage. The Institute is also continuing its annual series of interested in reading folklore-related books and exhibit presents recorded family stories over a seminars in Italian American studies. The writing reviews. Books currently available are three-dimensional “scrapbook” of enlarged program for 2003 includes the following: listed below. Address your request to Editor, photos and heirloom objects. Among the • Wednesday, February 19: Jennifer Voices Magazine, 420 N. Jackson St., Media, memorable tales are a rescue at sea, a miraculous Guglielmo, “At the Crossroads: Italian Women, PA 19063, or [email protected]. Please healing, and an escape from a war zone. For Race, and Urban Politics in New York City, specify which book(s) you are interested in more information about the exhibition and its 1930-1950.” After World War II, Italians in New reviewing as well as your area(s) of expertise companion programs, call Todd DeGarmo, 518 York came to exemplify the quintessential blue- and interest. 792-6508 extension 103. collar conservatives, as the vast majority Requests will be filled on a first-come first- abandoned leftist politics to defend anti- served basis. Book reviews are due two months Traveling Exhibition communism, protest racial desegregation, and after receipt of book. The John D. Calandra Italian American support right-wing political leaders. Guglielmo, • Simon Bronner, Folk Nation: Folklore in the Institute, of Queens College, CUNY, has who teaches history and women’s studies at Creation of American Tradition (SR Books, 2002). prepared a traveling exhibition, “Evviva La SUNY–New Paltz, will examine this period of • Eddie Cass, The Lancashire Pace-Egg Play: A Madonna Nera! Italian American Devotion to transition from the perspective of Italian Social History (FLS Books, The Warburg the Black Madonna.” The exhibition explores immigrant women and their daughters. Institute). the devotion of the Black Madonna in Italy • Wednesday, March 12: Thomas Guglielmo, • Jeffrey A. Kroessler, New York Year by Year: and among Italian Americans. Funded by a “White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and A Chronology of the Great Metropolis (New York grant the office of New York State Senator Power, 1890–1945.” Guglielmo, assistant University Press, 2002).
48 VOICES: The Journal of New York Folklore Thank You, New York Folklore Society Supporters!
Governmental Support Public Library, Humboldt State University, Helen L. Cackener, Warder H. Cadbury, Karen National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Huntington Library, Indiana State University, Park Canning, Patricia Carey, Mary J. Carr, Richard Archives, New York State Council on the Arts Indiana University, Institute for Scientific Case, Anna L. Chairetakis, Varick A. Chittenden, Information, Iowa State University, James Katrina Clay, William M. Clements, Dr. Les Corporate Contributions Prendergast Library, Jefferson Community College, Cleveland, Patricia E. Clyne, Mitzie Collins, New York Times Capital, Inc. Johns Hopkins University, Knight Library, Leroy V. Kathleen Condon, Bernard Conn, Silvia Conzett, Good Library, Librairie Univ du Quebec metro, Pamela Cooley, Theodore Corbett, James Corsaro, Foundation Support Library of Congress, Long Island University Jean Crandall, Kathleen Cook Curtis, Frederick E. IBM International Foundation, Merrill Family Library, Louisiana State University, Loyola Danker, Pamela Dean, Todd DeGarmo, M. L. Charitable Foundation, Theatre Development University Library, Maison des Sciences de DeSarran, Kate Dudding, Patrick Egan, Lynn Case Fund L’Homme Bibl., Marshall University, MCN Library Ekfelt, Joe Elias, John Elter, David L. Engle, Dr. University of Detroit Mercy, Memorial University James Thomas Evans, Marion Faller, W. Margrete Memorial Gifts of Newfoundland, Mercy College, Metropolitan Falls, Eniko Farkas, Mary Ann Fitzgerald, Ellen Staff of the Arts Center of the Capital Region, Toronto Reference Library, Miami University Fladger, Dr. Kathleen Forrest, Jennifer Forsythe, Troy, New York, in memory of Eugene Zwolinski Library, Michigan State University, Middlebury Albert Fowler, Ann Githler, Toby Glickman, for production and printing of this issue of Voices College, Millersville University, Mount Allison Robert Godfried, Amy Godine, Andrew University Libraries, New York Public Library, Golebidwski, Sharon E. Gollnitz, Kathryn A. Individual Donors New York State Library Ser. Cont. Sec., New York Gorw McCormick, Jessie Gotham, Ann F. Green, Betty Barlyn, Virginia Bryan, Elsie DeGarmo- University, Newberry Library, North Carolina State Brian Gregory, Sylvia Grider, Hanna Griff, Dick Smith, Eniko Farkas, Barry Irving, Sylvia Jung, Lisa University, Northern Arizona University, NYSHA Hamilton, Jerilou Hammett, Kelsie B. Harder, Lee Kochik, Lee Ellen Marvin, Kathryn McCormick, Library, Ohio State University Library, Ohio Haring, Bess Lomax Hawes, William M. Healy, Mr. Kathleen McQuown, Kenneth Romanski, Margery University, Old Songs, Inc., Onondaga County & Mrs. Allen & Marjorie Hendrickson, Susan I. Spofford Public Library, Penn State / Capital Campus, Hengelsberg, Joseph C. Hickerson, Dr. Pandora Perkins Library Duke University, Philadelphia Hopkins, Lorraine Host, Douglas Houck, Linda H Harold Thompson Members Folklore Project, Plattsburgh Public Library, Port Humes, Shirley Husted, Barry R. Irving, Dale W. (Membership + $65 and above) Jervis Free Library, Port Washington Public Library, Johnson, Karen B. Johnson, Nancy Johnson, David Daniel Botkin, Anna Chairetakis, W. Falls ProQuest, Public Library of Cincinnati, Queens J Jones, Rosalie M. Jones, Donald L. Jordan, Carol Ann Githler, Richard Hamilton, Bess Lomax Borough Public Library, Richmond Memorial Kammen, Robert Kent, Ethel Keshner, James Hawes, David Quinn, Bart Roselli Library, Rochester Public Library, Siena College Kimball, Amy Kitchener, Emily Koch, Edward F. John Suter, Patricia Wells Library, St. Bonaventure University, St. Johns Koch, Lisa Kochik, Norma Koperski, Robert University Library, St. Lawrence University, Stadt Krebs, Kate Kruckemeyer, Melissa Ladenheim, Supporting Members (Membership + und Universitatsbibliothek Bern, Stanford Lamash/Hemzik, Karen LaMonte, Nancy $25–$64) University, SUC Oneonta, SUC Plattsburgh, SUNY Langford, Janet Langlois, Jeannine Laverty, Mary James Boylan, Pamela Cooley, Kathleen Condon, Albany Library, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Laverty, Michael D. Leach, James P. Leary, Joan Todd DeGarmo, Ann Green, Buffalo, SUNY College of Technology, SUNY Studer Levine, Laura Lee Linder, George R. Long, Joe Hickerson, Karen Brown Johnson, Nancy Geneseo, SUNY Potsdam, SUNY Rochester, Alison Lurie, Marsha MacDowell, Laurie Mackellar, Johnson, Lisa Kochik, Ellen McHale, Phyllis SUNY Stony Brook, Swets Subscription Service, Christina Martinez, Lee Ellen Marvin, Patti Mason, McNeill, Cheryl Rosen, David Smingler, Charles Syracuse University Library, Temple University Ruth Rothbary Mayer, Nan McEntire, Ted & Smith, Robert Summers, Karen Taussig-Lux, Peter Paley Library, Texas A & M University, Traditional Bridget McGraw, Mike McHale, Dr. Ellen McHale, Voorheis Arts of Upstate New York, Union College, Dr.Felicia Faye McMahon, Phyllis S. McNeill, Universites de Paris Bibliotheque, University of Kathy McQuown, Isa Kae Meksin, Paul L. Merrill, Joint Membership British Columbia, University of California Library, Nancy Metz, James Mitchell, Emily Moberg, Vicki Joseph and Carol Bruchac, Amy Godine, Nancy University of Chicago Library, University of Morgan, Barbara Mueller, Kathleen Mundell, Metz, Stanley Ransom, Pete and Toshi Seeger, Colorado Libraries, University of Connecticut, Michael L. Murray, Nicole E. Murray, Aprille Edwina and Thomas Unrath, Steve Zeitlin and University of Delaware Library, University of Charity Nace, Allan P. Newell, Prof. Wilhelm F. H. Amanda Dargan Houston, University of Illinois Library E., Nicolaisen, Adela Nowak, Carol O’Beirne, Sheila University of Kentucky, University of Michigan, Orlin, Patricia H. Park, Valerie Pawlewicz, Sally Institutional Members 2002 University of Minnesota Libraries, University of Pellegrini, Nancy Piatkowski, Dr. Preston E. ABC CLIO Library, Adirondack Museum, New Hampshire, University of North Carolina, Pierce,David P. Quinn, Stanley and Chris A. American University Library, Antioch College, University of Pennsylvania Library,University of Ransom, Dr. Allen Walker Read, Diane Rigo, P. Arizona State University, Arkansas State University, Pittsburgh, University of Southern California, Lina Rocchio, Bart Roselli, Cheryl Rosen, Paul Axinn Library, Ball State University, Bibliotek for University of Texas, University of Toronto, Rosenberg, Dorothy B. Rosenthal, John Roy, Dr. humaniora og samfunnsfag, Bibliotheque De University of Vermont, University of Virginia, Maurie Sacks, Suzanne Samelson, C. J. Satterwhite, L’Univ. Laval, Bloomsburg Univ. Andruss Library, University of Washington, Upper Hudson Library Virginia Scheer, Catherine Schwoeffermann, Boston Public Library, Bowling Green State System, USMA Library, Utah State University, Sandra Scofield, Pete Seeger, Eleanor Shodell, Nina University, Brandeis University Library, Brooklyn Utica Public Library, Vassar College Library, Wake Siegal, Kenneth Siegal, Dr.. Roberta L. Singer, Dr. College Library, Brooklyn Public Library, Brown Forest University, Wayne State University, Western Susan Slyomovics, David B. Smingler, Dr. Charles J. University, Buffalo Public Library, Buffalo State Kentucky University, William K. Sanford Library, Smith, Nancy Solomon, Peggy Spofford Wallace, College, Cardiff University, Castellani Art Winterthur Library, Yaffa Cultural Arts Inc., Yale Prue Stelling, Bob Summers, John Suter, Karen Museum, Chicago Public Library, Cleveland Public University Library. Taussig Lux, Katrina Thomas, Dare R. Thompson, Library, Colgate University, College of William & William & Joan Thompson, Matthew B. Thornton, Mary, Colorado College, Cornell University Library, Individual Members 2002 John Thorpe, Susan Trump, Elizabeth Tucker, Dr. Cortland Free Library, Crandall Public Library Peter Abate, Annon Adams, Ladan Alomar, Susan Rory Turner, Edwina & Thomas Unrath, Scott Center for Folklore, Crawford Public Library, Arbetter, Myra Armstead, Rich Bala, Eric L. Ball, Utley, Courtney Venable, Brenda J. Verardi, Abbie Detroit Public Library, Dowling College, East Andrea Barbieri, Laurie Baratta, Christina Barr, S. Verner, Peter Voorheis, Dr. Susan S. Wadley, Dr. Tennessee State University, Eastern Michigan Howard R. Bartholomew, Betty Bartoo,Sheri Bauer Daniel Franklin Ward, Dr. Patricia P. Waterman, University, Edith Cowan University, Ellenville Mayorga, Raymond A. Baumler, Jane C. Beck, Aviva Weintraub, Patricia Wells, Sherre Wesley, Public Library & Museum,Elmira College, Folk Art Louise Bement, Janis Benincasa, Dan Berggren, Malika Lee Whitney, Don Wilcock, Robert Willig, Museum Library, Genesee Community College, Dr. Robert D. Bethke, Donald F. Bishop, James & Daniel Wojcik, Dr. Anthony W. Wonderley, Mr. & Geneva Historical Society, George Mason Elizabeth Boylan, Jack H. Braunlein, Warren Mrs. Steve Zeitlin & Amanda, Carolyn Zogg, Mary University, George Washington University, F.Broderick, Prof. Simon J. Bronner, Candace S. Zwolinski. Hamilton College Library, Harmonie Park Press, Broughton, Ann Brouse, Marge Bruchac,Mr. & Hartwick College, Harvard College Library, Mrs. Joseph Bruchac, Prof. Jan Harold Brunvand, Haviland Heidgerd Historical College, Houston Mona Buckley, Beverly J Butcher, Moyra Byrne, The Library of Congress and its American Folklife Center invite you to join us in an important national project–The Veterans History Project Preserving Stories of Service for Future Generations
This project will honor our nation’s war veterans and those who served in support of them. How? By creating a lasting legacy of recorded interviews and other documents chronicling veteran’s and other citizens’ wartime experiences and how those experiences affected their lives and America itself.
The mission of the Veterans History Project at the Library of Congress is to collect the memories, accounts, and documents of war veterans from World War I, World War II and the Korean, Vietnam, and Persian Gulf Wars, and to preserve these stories of experience and service for future generations.
JOIN US! For Project Information: Veterans History Project Library of Congress American Folklife Center 101 Independence Avenue, S.E. Washington, DC 20540-4615 Email: [email protected] Phone: 1-888-371-5848 www.loc.gov/folklife/vets/
Nonprofit Org. US Postage PAID
P.O. Box 764, Schenectady, NY 12301 Schenectady, NY 518 346-7008 • www.nyfolklore.org Permit No.62