The Conservation of culture: folklorists and the public sector 9780813116358

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Acknowledgments (page vii)
Introduction: Folklorists and the Public Sector (Burt Feintuch, page 1)
A Keynote: Stitching Patchwork in Public (Archie Green, page 17)
Public Sector Precedents
The Bureau of American Ethnology: Folklore, Fieldwork, and the Federal Government in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (Erika Brady, page 35)
Cultural Pluralism and Applied Folklore: The New Deal Precedent (Jerrold Hirsch, page 46)
Three Contemporary Public Sector Folklife Programs
Folklife Programs in Florida: The Formative Years (Peggy A. Bulger, page 71)
Public Sector Folklore in Vermont (Jane C. Beck, page 83)
Birth of a New Tradition: A City Folklorist for Baltimore (Elaine Eff, page 95)
Programming Formats and Issues
State Folk Art Exhibitions: Review and Preview (Robert T. Teske, page 109)
The Tendency to Ritualize: The Living Celebrations Series as a Model for Cultural Presentation and Validation (Jack Santino, page 118)
Occupational Folklife in the Public Sector: A Case Study (Robert McCarl, page 132)
Unshared Visions: Folklife and Politics in a Rural Community (Jean Haskell Speer, page 154)
Folklore and Authenticity: A Myopic Marriage in Public Sector Programs (Shalom Staub, page 166)
Cultural Conservation, Historic Preservation, and Environmental Resources
Links between Historic Preservation and Folk Cultural Programs (Ormond H. Loomis, page 183)
The Realm of the Tangible: A Folklorist's Role in Architectural Documentation and Preservation (Michael Ann Williams, page 196)
The Folklorist and the Highway: Theoretical and Practical Implications of the Vine Street Expressway Project (Miriam Camitta, page 206)
Stalking the Native View: The Protection of Folklife in Natural Habitats (Mary Hufford, page 217)
A Tougher Politics
Public Sector Folklore as Intervention: Lessons from the Past, Prospects for the Future (David E. Whisnant, page 233)
Appendix: A Historical Archive
Letter from John Wesley Powell to S.F. Baird, April 2, 1880 (page 251)
Archive of American Folk-Song (Robert Winslow Gordon, page 253)
WPA and Folklore Research: "Bread and Song" (B.A. Botkin, page 258)
Preservation of Indian Lore in Oregon (Dell Hymes, page 264)
P.L. 94-201--A View from the Lobby: A Report to the American Folklore Society (Archie Green, page 269)
Contributors (page 282)
Index (page 284)

Citation preview

THE CONSERVATION , OF CULTURE

_ BLANK PAGE

THE _W SS CONSERVATION OF CULTURE Folklorists and the Public Sector

Edited by BURT FEINTUCH

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

To ARCHIE GREEN : from all the rest of us

The Conservation of Culture has been selected as a Publication of the American Folklore Society, New Series, Larry Danielson, General Editor.

Copyright © 1988 by The University Press of Kentucky

scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine College, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Club, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,

University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, } and Western Kentucky University. Fditorial and Sales Offices: Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0024

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Conservation of culture: folklorists and the public sector / edited by Burt Feintuch. p. cm.—(Publications of the American Folklore Society; new ser., V) Papers from a conference entitled ‘Folklife and the Public Sector: Assessment and Prognosis,” held at Western Kentucky University in Apr. 1985. Includes index.

Burt. II. Series. ISBN 0-8131-1635-X

1. Public Folklore—United States—Congresses. [. Feintuch,

GR105.C66 1988 398’ .0973—dc19 87-24866

Contents

Acknowledgments Vii Introduction: Folklorists and the Public Sector. Burt Feintuch i

A Keynote: Stitching Patchwork in Public. Archie Green 17 Public Sector Precedents The Bureau of American Ethnology: Folklore, Fieldwork, and the Federal Government in the Late Nineteenth and Early

Twentieth Centuries. Erika Brady 35

Jerrold Hirsch 46

Cultural Pluralism and Applied Folklore: The New Deal Precedent.

Three Contemporary Public Sector Folklife Programs Folklife Programs in Florida: The Formative Years. Peggy A. Bulger 71

Public Sector Folklore in Vermont. Jane C. Beck 83 Birth of a New Tradition: A City Folklorist for Baltimore. Elaine Eff 95

Programming Formats and Issues State Folk Art Exhibitions: Review and Preview. Robert T. Teske 109

Jack Santino 118

The Tendency to Ritualize: The Living Celebrations Series as a Model for Cultural Presentation and Validation.

Robert McCarl 132

Occupational Folklife in the Public Sector: A Case Study.

Jean Haskell Speer 154

Unshared Visions: Folklife and Politics in a Rural Community.

Folklore and Authenticity: A Myopic Marriage in Public Sector

Programs. Shalom Staub 166

Cultural Conservation, Historic Preservation, and Environmental Resources

Ormond H. Loomis 183

Links between Historic Preservation and Folk Cultural Programs. The Realm of the Tangible: A Folklorist’s Role in Architectural

Documentation and Preservation. Michael Ann Williams 196

The Folklorist and the Highway: Theoretical and Practical Implications of the Vine Street Expressway Project.

Miriam Camitta 206

Stalking the Native View: The Protection of Folklife in Natural

Habitats. Mary Hufford 217

A Tougher Politics Public Sector Folklore as Intervention: Lessons from the Past,

Prospects for the Future. David E. Whisnant 233

Appendix: A Historical Archive Letter from John Wesley Powell to S.F. Baird, April 2, 1880 251

Archive of American Folk-Song. Robert Winslow Gordon 253 WPA and Folklore Research: “Bread and Song.” B.A. Botkin 258

Preservation of Indian Lore in Oregon. Dell Hymes 264

Index 284 P.L. 94-201—A View from the Lobby: A Report to the American

Contributors 282

Folklore Society. Archie Green 269

Acknowledgments

So many people had a hand in this book that it’s hard to know where to begin expressing my gratitude. Certainly, I must thank sixteen stalwart essayists, each of whom faced, and ultimately weathered, my editorial inexperience with goodwill and good sense. At the very most, I am the conductor; they are the composers and the orchestra, and the music is theirs. This book grew out of a conference entitled ‘Folklife and the Public Sector: Assessment and Prognosis,” which I organized at Western Kentucky University in April 1985. Hank Willett shared the responsibilities for

the program. His experience and good judgment were indispensable. It was a pleasure to work with him. Two graduate assistants did the lion’s share of the administrative work for the conference: Ann Taft helped with the initial arrangements, and Cindy Royden Houston spent a great deal of time and effort patiently shepherding the conference to fruition. Other

graduate assistants—among them Sharli Powell Lyne and Luanne Glynn—pitched in willingly. The staff at the Florence Schneider Continu-

ing Education Center helped the three-day meeting go smoothly and comfortably. A grant from the Kentucky Humanities Council supported Archie Green’s invited lecture. I must single out David Whisnant for a note of appreciation. David's work has been a powerful influence on many of this book’s contributors. For that reason I was especially pleased that he was willing to write an essay for the book, although he had not been able to participate in the conference. Additional notes of thanks are also due Erika Brady, for putting me onto the Maj. John Wesley Powell letter reprinted in the appendix and for other good advice; Dell Hymes, for permission to reprint his letter first published in the Congressional Record; Archie Green, for his last copy of “A View from the Lobby”; Michael Ann Williams, for her expertise on historic preservation; and both Ray Allen and Neil Rosenberg, for supplying public sector bibliographies. Tom Hulsey, Janet Tracy, and Donald Hulsey handled most of the word processing chores on the manuscript. Larry Kinder helped out by converting disk files from one format to another. Luanne Glynn pitched in

Vili ACKNOWLEDGMENTS again with proofreading and with some of the library work. Rosalie Stafford assiduously checked citations. The book and I both have benefited greatly from the counsel of Archie Green. Archie’s invited conference lecture has become for this book the written equivalent of a keynote lecture. The appendix of historically significant documents was his idea. His good advice and his sense of the volume’s importance helped keep the project on track, just as his behind-thescenes encouragement to a number of contributors yielded results in the form of several of the book’s essays. Although it is unorthodox to dedicate

a volume to one of its contributors, the other essayists unanimously agreed that in this case such a measure is singularly appropriate. Archie’s cultural vision should be almost palpable to the book’s readers; for that we all owe him our thanks.

BURT FEINTUCH ~~ Introduction Folklorists and the Public Sector

An exhibit stood in a small-town Kentucky library not long ago. Vivid panels portrayed the region’s folklife, its deep-seated and profoundly expressive cultural traditions. Planned by a folk arts specialist from the state’s performing arts center and a university folklorist and researched by two young, academically trained folklorists, the exhibit created a stir in that small, handsomely restored library building.! The library’s staff extended the exhibit with displays of traditional artifacts from the community. Books complementing the themes and substance of the exhibit featured

prominently throughout the library. A local string band played old-time dance music, exhibit panels serving as backdrop. But that small exhibit did more than attract curious viewers drawn to bright colors, striking patterns, and familiar scenes and faces. The day I visited, the exhibit was the focal point of a dialogue. Local people spoke of the wealth of community resources in traditional agricultural practices, in

music, in crafts. In the spirit of a town meeting, community members wondered if such common, but uncelebrated, aspects of local life—and the crucial cultural continuities they signified—might deserve more attention. In a building meticulously restored to its earlier splendor, citizens reflected on the value of conserving less tangible but deeply significant aspects of their culture. That small exhibit had become a tool for thinking about matters close at hand and close to heart. A small but growing movement is flourishing in the United States, developing a variety of tools for thinking about the significance of cultural pluralism, about conserving cultural continuities, about the encourage-

ment and preservation of the diverse cultural heritages that comprise American society.? Described by various neologisms—cultural conservation, folklore and the public sector, and public folklife programs come immediately to mind—it is a movement stressing public responsibilities derived from both academic discipline and social concern. A recent publication

offers the following definition: ‘Cultural conservation is a concept for organizing the profusion of private and public efforts that deal with traditional community cultural life. It envisions cultural preservation and encouragement as two faces of the same coin. Preservation involves plan-

2 BURT FEINTUCH ning, documentation, and maintenance; and encouragement involves publication, public events, and educational programs. In application, cultural conservation means a systematic, coordinated approach to the protection of cultural heritage.’ Public sector folklore is not alone in using an academic discipline as the staging ground for civic work. Other coinages such as public history and applied anthropology suggest similar developments in other fields and the

concomitant growth of a cadre of university-trained cultural specialists.

Public sector folklore programs have burgeoned in the last decade, stemming from roots that were planted in the nineteenth century.°

Milan Kundera, the dazzling Czech novelist exiled in Paris, has written that the human struggle against power is “‘the struggle of memory over forgetting.”© For Kundera power signifies more than government; elsewhere he has said that he is concerned more with anthropology than with politics.” In a world that finds it increasingly easy to forget, public sector folklorists are playing a modest role in reminding us to remember. Convinced that cultural diversity is not only a virtue but a necessity for the

survival of our species, that cultural continuity must balance or even anchor change, and that all communities have remarkable propensities for esthetic expression, for expressing shared values and experiences, public sector folklorists are helping us think about the conservation of culture, about remembering in the face of forgetting.®

Public agencies have played a central role in the history of public sector folklife programs. In the last decade, three federal agencies have

worked in partnership with a considerable number of state and local agencies.’ Those agencies have strengthened the institutional base for a set of concerns that predate the 1888 founding of the American Folklore Society, issues that run through much nineteenth century dialogue about what should constitute a distinctive American culture. The Smithsonian

Institution, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the American Folklife Center are primarily responsible, sometimes directly and at other times indirectly, for the majority of contemporary public sector folklife activities. The Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife, discussed elsewhere in this essay and in this book, plays a very public role, serving as tangible evidence of thinking about cultural continuity. Essentially a new format for presenting and interpreting culture, the Festival, which began in 1967,

has inspired countless other public presentations of local and regional expressive culture.!0 Other endeavors sponsored by the Smithsonian’s Office of Folklife Programs include films, research, exhibits, and publications. Taken together, such undertakings compel us to redefine the notion that museums are primarily passive storehouses.

The Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, which began in 1973, eight years after Congress founded the sister

Folklorists and the Public Sector 3 endowments for the arts and humanities, is one of NEA’s most successful programs.!! The Folk Arts Program has legitimized the traditional arts in

the eyes—and budgets—of agencies around the nation, democratizing and pluralizing the concept of the arts. One tangible outcome of NEA Folk Arts’ particular kind of arts advocacy is that many state, regional, and local arts agencies now employ a folklorist; folklorists have become a familiar

part of the bureaucratic landscape. A decade ago, six state folklife programs existed on the frontiers—periphery might be a better word—of state agency turf. Now more than forty state programs are established, most of them in state arts agencies and many of them viewed as central to

agency mission. According to a recent study, the average state folk cultural program receives 12 percent of its sponsoring agency’s funds, evidence that such programs are far from token efforts.!22 NEA seed money rooted most of the state programs, resulting in a national network of public sector folklorists who, in turn, began to till the soil of their own states. Today, many local agencies—arts, historic, educational, cultural, environmental—sponsor public folklife programs, evidence of the success of our national folk culture support network. The American Folklife Center, established by act of Congress in 1976,

is the product of concerted lobbying for a national folklife agency, lobbying spearheaded by Archie Green. Perhaps most importantly, the Center stands as a symbol of federal commitment to folklife; the American Folklife Center is the United States’ first national agency solely devoted to folk culture. Not a grant-making agency, the Folklife Center is engaged in

documenting, preserving, and presenting American folk cultures. From its vantage point in the Library of Congress, it oversees the Archive of Folk Culture (originally the Archive of American Folk-Song, founded in 1928).18 It provides various kinds of technical assistance to cultural specialists in the field. It organizes model documentary projects, projects as varied asa

documentary folklife survey in Montana and a national field study of ethnic schools. The Center’s report, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United States, mandated by the Ninety-sixth Con-

egress, is the first systematic discussion of the conservation of intangible

aspects of culture, providing tangible evidence of the merging of the concerns of historic preservationists, anthropologists, environmentalists, archaeologists, and folklorists.'4 Just as the National Endowment for the Arts’ Folk Arts Program has engendered a network in other arts agencies, the American Folklife Center is building bridges to other agencies con-

cerned with conservation.

It would be easy to dismiss the festivals and exhibits, the folklife-ineducation programs and technical assistance efforts for traditional craftsworkers, the documentary projects and publications produced by public

sector folklorists as interesting ephemera were it not for two matters. Public folklorists’ efforts have effectively reached constituents previously

4 BURT FEINTUCH not served by the agencies and organizations that sponsor their programs. And the work is urgent.

Two simple examples illuminate the first point. The Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife, initiated by Ralph Rinzler, has

become the largest cultural event in our capital city. Indisputably a national treasure and point of pride, the Smithsonian has chosen to honor other national treasures, less visible but no less deserving of our collective recollection. The 1985 Festival program was edifying in its diversity, portraying an America of many voices and identities. A sample of Festival offerings includes Seneca splint ash basket making, Cajun cookery, black gospel quartets, New Orleans jazz, Kmhmu refugees from Laos demonstrating crafts traditions, cowboy occupational culture, Afro-American cornrowing, and Italian-American pasta making.!¢ Our national museum has devised a remarkably appealing means of presenting and interpreting far-too-frequently overlooked cultural practices and artifacts. Attendance at the Festival is counted in the millions. In Chicago a program sponsored by the state arts agency has begun to bring technical marketing assistance to Hmong immigrants. Tribal people from Laos, the Hmong have a needlework tradition of astonishing beauty and complexity. In the transition from the mountains of their homeland to a new life in this country, Hmong women have begun transforming their needlework into a source of income. The Chicago program developed to serve a constituency decidedly new to the world of arts councils, galleries, grants, craft shows, and the American marketplace. A folklorist works at the crossroads where ethnic tradition and the larger society intersect, her object to map new territory for each constituency. !”

But it is the work’s urgency that should demand our immediate attention. It is ironic that we live in an era convinced of the fragility of our

natural environment while we are less aware of the vulnerability of culture. Alan Lomax has argued eloquently for the importance of the little traditions that make up larger societies. According to Lomax, our planet is an agreeable and stimulating habitat because of the diversity of the lifestyles our species has created. Their sum is humanity’s most important achievement.!® But cultural systems, like natural ones, represent delicate balances. Two examples, the first short and evocative, the second horrific, illustrate. “Developers come in and roll over whoever is there. We have given up on trying to protect the shrimp and crab because we, the black native population of these [Georgia Sea] islands, have become the new endangered species.’’!9 Sea Island activist Emory Campbell’s remark points out

the impact of resort development upon the African-American communities of the Georgia Sea Islands. Campbell knows well that in the uneasy

balance between development and continuity, between forgetting and memory, local cultures can vanish. Robert Cantwell writes: “A culturally

Folklorists and the Public Sector 5 diverse society based upon the principle of individual right must be a society dedicated to the conservation of cultures. . . . We have seen what happens to people when they are robbed of their way of life, and how utterly nugatory is the idea of individual rights when there is no culture in and through which to exercise them.’”’*° We recognize the fragility of the California condor; a sea island fishnet may symbolize an equally fragile cultural system. Connections between the concerns of the environmentalist and the cultural conservationist are obvious. Our ecological stewardship must extend to cultural policy, just as our concern for those intang-

conservation. ,

ibles we call the quality of life must direct our thoughts to cultural

And to return to the Chicago Hmong community, cultural dislocation

can have tragic results. Young Hmong men are dying suddenly in the night for no apparent medical reason. Originally an agricultural people, largely self-sufficient, the Hmong have contended with powerful sorts of dislocation, a set of passages that reverberate long after the journey has ended. No one can explain these deaths. But at least one major study has concluded that cultural factors are involved, in the stress related to the trauma of cultural dislocation. One pattern in the deaths is that each victim had been convinced by missionaries to adopt Christianity at the expense of Hmong traditional religious practices. With a deity who is not always a protector and with its concept of sin, two beliefs unparalleled in Hmong religious belief, Christianity is likely to have added considerable strain to the immigrants’ experiences in their new land.*! Evidence mounts that

such cultural stress can have profound effects on human groups. It is imperative that we recognize the importance of our work. That urgency is being acknowledged around the world. For example, the Sub-Programme on Non-Physical Heritage in the Cultural Division of UNESCO has been developing means to preserve and protect intangible aspects of culture. According to Finnish folklorist Lauri Honko, many developing nations feel the need to draw new intellectual strengths from

indigenous folk cultures as a means of countering the hegemony of colonialism, western commercialism, and the mass media. At the same time, according to Honko, developed nations are acutely aware of controversies and polarities derived from tensions between nation and locality, mass society and folklife. Forty-nine nations sent representatives to a January 1985 conference on the subject of the preservation and protection of folklife.” It is both ironic and unfortunate that the United States, where the public sector folklife movement has grown recently and considerably,

has withdrawn from UNESCO and can no longer participate in that agency’s folklife work.

No folklorist would claim that public folklife programs are social panaceas. Nor does critical thought suggest that a festival, a folklife-ineducation program, or an exhibit provides answers to complex cultural

6 BURT FEINTUCH issues. Instead, such programs are most valuable because of the questions they raise; they are most successful when they lead to thinking about the

appropriate place of the past in the present, about the maintenance of distinctive identities in the face of the globalization of culture, about the transformation of democratic and pluralistic social ideals into matters of

cultural policy. If public folklife programs can function as tools for thinking in many communities, they will have served the significant task of breeding dialogue on the fitting balance between memory and forgetting, an issue of crucial importance for the well-being of humankind. About a hundred cultural specialists convened at Western Kentucky University in April 1985 for a meeting entitled ‘Folklife and the Public Sector: Assessment and Prognosis.”” Mostly young, academically trained folklorists, the participants came from all over the nation. They represented state and local arts councils, museums, school systems, the Library of Congress, universities, the National Endowment for the Arts, historical societies, not-for-profit state and local folklife centers, state historic pres-

ervation agencies, humanities councils, the Smithsonian Institution. Their titles included folk arts coordinator, folklife specialist, scholar-in-restdence, naturalist, curator, director of folklife-in-education programs, professor.

The conference was an attempt to expand the critical examination of the history and present status of public folklife programs. During those three

days, participants began to use the phrase “coming of age” as they listened to and discussed fifty-three presentations analyzing the role of folklorists in the conservation of culture.

Most of this book is based on the presentations given at that conference, although it is by no means a mechanical transcription of the conference proceedings. Instead, the volume is composed of selected essays

substantially rewritten, along with one article solicited after the conference and an archive of historical documents. Some of the essays provide historical context of enduring significance. Others freeze the moment, serving as reports from the field. They, too, should last, eventually becoming measures of where we once were. In the best tradition of ethnography, the volume presents a mix of perspectives, some from insiders—from public sector folklorists, that is—and some from academics who have studied the public sector movement and, in some cases, trained the students who became insiders.

Archie Green’s essay opens the book. Derived from his invited conference lecture, Green’s article masterfully explores the concept of the

public sector and the role of folklorists in cultural programs. Long an activist who joins scholarship with a deeply felt dedication to the communities folklorists study, Green merges personal experience with a vision both pluralist and profoundly democratic, articulating values and linking

them to long-standing American cultural issues. In doing so, he helps

Folklorists and the Public Sector 7 clarify the public role and responsibilities of cultural specialists, connecting esthetic tradition to national mission, private values to social obligations. As we seek an appropriate balance between memory and forgetting, Green’s model of particularity, preservation, and pluralism can provide

a scale upon which to weigh our responsibilities. | The record of federal involvement in the conservation of culture is largely unwritten.” In the two essays following Green’s article, the first by Erika Brady, the next by Jerrold Hirsch, two scholars examine early federal

endeavors. The first national agency to work systematically with ethnographic materials, the Bureau of American Ethnology, was founded in

1879. Under the leadership of Maj. John Wesley Powell, the BAE spearheaded federal research in native American cultures. The legacies left by Powell and the BAE are now given mixed reviews, but what is both clear and crucial is that the Bureau embodied a federal recognition of the

necessity of linking cultural documentation to cultural conservation. As Brady tells us in her essay, BAE fieldwork was motivated by concern that native cultures were in danger of massive assimilation into mainstream American culture. Consequently, Powell and his associates saw a pressing

need to build a documentary history in the form of a collection of ethnographic data about native American life. In Powell's view that documentary effort not only would form an important resource for future research but would also help ease the stress of cultural dislocation for Indian peoples caught in the tension between heterogeneity and homogeneity. In spite of their use of theoretical models now considered naive, Powell and the BAE staff were pioneers, using Washington, D.C. asa base camp for the exploration of cultural frontiers. Jerrold Hirsch’s essay examines the role of folklorists during the New Deal. That period saw an unprecedented growth of federal activities in the realm of grass-roots cultures. Hirsch’s analysis of the philosophical underpinnings of the Federal Writers’ Project’s folklife work and the role of its folklore editor, Benjamin A. Botkin, connects a period of federal social and economic experimentation to a series of quintessentially American concerns. The FWP folklorists—among them Botkin, Herbert Halpert, Alan Lomax, and Charles Seeger—saw their work framed by issues of nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and cultural pluralism. As they shaped programs and projects, they created an important set of philosophical and pragmatic

precedents. Hirsch’s essay suggests convincingly that today’s public folklorists should examine those precedents as a step toward articulating the objectives of present-day public sector programs. State folklife programs, generally lodged in state arts agencies but

also found in a variety of other agencies, represent a contemporary strategy for institutionalizing the conservation of culture.24 Most of the host agencies are in some way the result of a combination of state and federal initiative and funding. In little more than a decade, many such

8 BURT FEINTUCH agencies—arts councils, historical societies, museum commissions—have included folklife within their purview. Pennsylvania was first, establish-

ing the position of state folklorist in 1966. Tennessee and Maryland followed in 1975. Now more than 80 percent of the states have some sort of state folklife program. State programs vary widely in staffing, budget, and

responsibilities, but the contours of their histories and the range of their

activities combine to yield a set of similar profiles. Typically such programs repeat on a smaller scale the histories of their host agencies. Most are the result of a federal-state partnership, the Folk Arts Program of

the National Endowment for the Arts providing seed money, the state agency providing additional funding and other support. The agency hires a folklife specialist—usually a young, academically trained folklorist. He

or she has two or three years of initial federal support to develop a program, build networks, and demonstrate the value and appropriateness of its mission, thereby carving out a niche in the state’s budget.

Two essays in this volume provide case studies of state folklife agencies, adding significantly to the critical evaluation of anow common form of public folklfe endeavor. Peggy Bulger began as Florida’s folk arts coordinator in 1976. In her ten years in the Sunshine State, Bulger has seen the program grow into the largest state folklife program in the nation, a separate agency. In her essay Bulger examines the early years of what is now the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs. She pays particular attention to the dissonance between her early expectations and the reality of work in a public agency, as she discusses the shaping of one of the nation’s most successful state folklife programs. In 1977, when Jane Beck began her position as state folklorist at the Vermont Council on the Arts, such positions were still on the cultural

frontier. It was her job to prove her mettle, to change her status from liminal to central in the Council’s mission. It is clear that she did so. As she

discusses the challenges she faced and her often resourceful responses, Beck also reflects on the lessons she learned. Her essay will resonate for virtually anyone who has been involved in state folklife programs. Baltimore city folklorist Elaine Eff embodies another of the tangible

results of state folklife programs, the creation of local and regional programs staffed by cultural specialists. Eff’s purview is a large city; Baltimore, Los Angeles, and Washington are among the first to establish urban folklife offices.*¢ In a city that values the texture of life in an acutely

multicultural urban setting, Eff’s turf ranges from the sidewalks of neighborhoods to the halls of city government, as she attempts to balance

memory and forgetting while serving as a representative of an urban planning and development agency.

Public sector folklorists have had to work creatively in order to transform what in the academy would be considered field data into public presentation.”” Five essays offer close examinations of program formats

Folklorists and the Public Sector 9 and issues. According to Robert T. Teske, in the last ten years survey exhibitions of folk art have become a common presentational form, especially exhibits sponsored by state folk arts programs. Folk art is a loaded term, carrying different meanings for different constituencies, dif-

ferences readily observable when folklorists, art historians, museum curators, and folk art collectors convene. For the most part, folklorists connect folk art to community esthetics, the two being so intertwined that it is impossible to refer to artifacts without heeding the complex cultural web by which objects and communities are related.78 Each of the folk art exhibitions Teske examines was conceptualized, researched in the field, and mounted by a folklorist, a phenomenon so recent that the form should be considered emergent. Increasing public understanding of community-

based esthetics and bringing recognition to little-known artists, such exhibitions have been among the most popular public folklife program formats. We know less than we should about the consequences of our programs, largely because we are so new to the endeavor. In the next two essays, Jack Santino and Robert McCarl each write ethnographically about

a new form of public presentation. In his years as staff member of the Smithsonian Institution’s folklife program, Santino developed and administered a variety of inventive presentations. Here he reflects on the Smithsonian’s Living Celebrations Series. With that agency’s sponsorship, the Series attempted to transform private ritual into public event by inviting groups to hold their celebrations and observances in a museum hall. This is potentially dangerous stuff because it makes local belief and practice public, changing social setting and adding new layers of complex-

ity to the dynamics of what were in many cases sacred events. But according to Santino, the Living Celebrations served as a means of cultural

validation. That is, by casting local ritual into public program, the Smithsonian program intensified the events’ significance for their practi-

tioners. In a general sense, then, recognition by a national agency had the effect of adding dignity to private traditional events. Remarkably, the transformation to public presentation seems to have served as an endorsement of cultural continuity. As coordinator of another Smithsonian program, the Working Americans component of the Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife, Robert McCarl was faced with the task of translating occupational culture—the culture of the workplace—into public presentation. Folklorists have long been involved in the study of working lives, but we are relatively new to

the complexities of presenting working people’s culture. As McCarl recounts his experiences, we gain a number of critically important insights into the delicate balances entailed in programming culture. Clearly, it is impossible to transcend context so as to present culture whole cloth in a new milieu. We cannot view culture as an object to be moved temporarily

10 BURT FEINTUCH into a display case. Instead, the interpretive presentation of folklife inevitably entails delicate cultural sensitivities, negotiations, and compro-

mises. Our programs are inventions; we must ensure that we are cognizant of our responsibilities, sensitive to our constituents, and well aware

of our objectives. | Jean Speer’s case study of a three-year oral history and folklife program further demonstrates the complications of public programming. Like McCarl, Speer suggests that cultural conservation is in large measure

political. Public programs are cultural intervention molded by diverse motivations, goals, institutional pressures, and a variety of other social forces. In her analysis of what was largely a success, Speer chronicles the project’s unanticipated complications as well as its surprisingly far-reaching effects. The project had the seemingly innocent goal of attracting more

residents to a local library and a university extension learning center. Before it was over, it had led people to think about racism and regional politics. Such programs are far from trivial. Santino, McCarl, and Speer illustrate that cultural conservation pro-

gramming often involves transformation. Local esthetics, beliefs, and practices are somehow transformed into interpretive performances or forums, and the resulting translation of private codes into public discourse is a dangerous business. We must think long and hard about that danger. Certainly we must be sure not to underestimate the nuances and risks inherent in such programs. To do less would be to engender cultural intervention of the worst kind.

Shalom Staub considers the matter of authenticity in public programs, finding ita slippery concept made more difficult by the demands of our programs themselves. As public sector folklorists grapple with pre-

sentational modes and goals, they sometimes find themselves on the horns of a number of dilemmas. Is the distinction between genuine and spurious relevant to culture? Do public folklife programs carry rhetorics that reinforce stereotypical notions of “folk,” and do those rhetorics fly in the face of academic perspectives on folklife? Do our analytical models

make sense to communities and translate intelligibly into public programs? Does our insistence on authenticity serve the constituents we wish

to reach? Staub makes an important contribution by reflecting on the relationship between academic concepts and “real world” programs.” Although state and municipal folklorists are among the most visible public folklife specialists, they are certainly not the only folklorists working in public agencies. For example, folklorists are finding that their eth-

nographic orientation and their expertise in working with vernacular culture make them increasingly welcome in museums. School systems employ folklife-in-education specialists as a means of sensitizing students to the complexity of our social fabric and the value of local forms of story, ritual, song, and art.?! Folklorists continue to move outward from their

Folklorists and the Public Sector 11 comparatively comfortable academic anchorages; perhaps half of our graduate students now find employment in the public sector. Thus, as we continue to explore public agency—public project networks, we forge new linkages, connecting folklife advocacy to other social and cultural agendas. Such cooperative efforts are beginning to include folklorists and other specialists with responsibilities for the cultural and natural landscape. Three essays address relationships between folklife stewardship and historic preservation.** Those are followed by a pioneering examination of the protection of folklife in natural habitats. The historic preservation movement began primarily as an attempt to preserve unique structures of national historical significance—a Mount

Vernon or a Monticello, a plantation house or a Vanderbilt mansion. Today, many preservationists are becoming convinced of the importance of preserving a more complete historical picture—the slave quarters that stood behind the plantation manor—or the structures characteristic of place—a southern shotgun house, a Baltimore row house, a Pennsylvania coal tipple. Folklorists enter preservation networks not only arguing for the preservation of the ordinary and overlooked but convinced that the human legacies, ongoing and historical, that gird the foundations of built

structures must be preserved. Recent historic preservation legislation supports that view. Specifically, 1980 legislation directed attention to the preservation of “cultural intangibles’”—the conservation of culture.°5 Ormond H. Loomis discusses connections between historic preserva-

tion and folklife programs. He demonstrates the gradual evolution of shared perspectives in what had been two separate networks, as he chronicles the growth of the concept of the preservation of intangible aspects of culture and reviews the developments leading to the American Folklife Center’s report, Cultural Conservation, which he coordinated.*4 He

the built environment.

then provides case studies, connecting folk culture to the preservation of But that linkage is not simple to forge. Certainly it mandates that pres-

ervationists attend to culture and that they do so with sophistication. Drawing on her experiences in historic preservation projects and her ethnographic work with vernacular buildings, Michael Ann Williams demonstrates that buildings have meanings that are not always apparent to well-intentioned preservationists and that the sensitivities of a trained cultural specialist must be part of the preservation network’s conceptual toolbox. One of Williams’s most striking observations is that in local consciousnesses old buildings may be reminders of a past best forgotten. Because buildings are expressive forms, it follows that the study of local esthetics, local views of history, and local senses of community must precede outside intervention in the name of historic preservation or any other rationale for “messing with” place. Miriam Camitta’s case study of the impact of an expressway project on a Philadelphia neighborhood is a

12 BURT FEINTUCH clarion call for thinking about the consequences of change. Although federally initiated development projects include a set of steps designed to

weigh the benefits of undertakings such as highway and dam construction against their frequently deleterious local consequences, such protective measures are far from perfect, as Camitta shows in her impas-

sioned essay. In spite of mitigation mechanisms and the drafting of environmental impact studies, an old and vital community was essentially cut in half and left to wither. Forgetting outweighed memory, diminishing us all. Mary Hufford adds another link to the chain when she claims that in order for environmental impact assessments to be informed by cultural

considerations we must first identify the common ground shared by specialists in folklife, historic resources, and natural resources. What vocabularies are needed in order to discuss cultural resources? How can the unquantifiable and cultural be counted in environmental conservation? Drawing on an American Folklife Center-sponsored study of folk cultural resources in the New Jersey Pine Barrens, Hufford weaves a richly textured consideration of the place of largely invisible cultural resources in environmental planning and policy. A particularly important conclusion

of Hufford’s article is that cultural conservation and environmental

protection are two sides of the same coin—and our responsibilities extend to both. Indeed, as planners and policymakers grow more sophisticated in their deliberations, cultural and environmental heritages are likely to be seen as inextricably bound up in each other. To any reader of this volume, it will be clear that David Whisnant’s work has profoundly influenced folklorists’ thinking about their public roles. Whisnant’s All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region is an analysis of frequently well-intentioned but culturally

naive intervention in Appalachian culture.* It is a cautionary tale for anyone contemplating public sector folklife work. Cultural conservation is unavoidably a species of political act and a form of cultural intervention; to

date, public folklorists have tended to concentrate more on the development of programs than on the implications of their work. And probably because the enterprise is comparatively nascent—if we define the venture by its contemporary cast of academically trained folklorists and the roster of recent institutions—platitudes have often substituted for hardheaded cultural analysis. In fact, many of our goals and programs are hypotheses yet to be tested. We must not forget, Whisnant reminds us, the broader context of our work, the concentric cultural, economic, and above all political circles in which we move. That requires both critical analysis and, to use Whisnant’s phrase, a tougher politics. Many public sector folklorists do not view their work politically, and

_ others will not agree with Whisnant’s stance. Consequently, this article is bound to be controversial. But we should realize that advocacy of cultural

Folklorists and the Public Sector 13 conservation is in itself a kind of culture change; cultural conservation is not a celebration of the status quo. Whisnant’s essay also brings the book full circle, addressing from a complementary perspective many of the

same themes and issues Archie Green raises in his keynote article, Green reflecting and assessing, Whisnant analyzing and projecting.

An appendix closes the book, presenting an archive of historical documents to flesh out the contemporary essays that form the main texts of this volume. The 1880 letter from Bureau of American Ethnology chief John Wesley Powell to S.F. Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, supplements Erika Brady’s article on Powell and the Bureau of American

Ethnology. Powell’s letter is a status report on the study of native American cultures and a request for funding from the Smithsonian for cultural documentation in the face of imminent cultural dislocation. Robert Winslow Gordon’s fourth report to the librarian of Congress is an early overview of the activities of the Archive of American Folk-Song.

Founded in 1928, the Archive was a pioneering endeavor, the first federally sponsored ‘‘folk agency.” Experimenting with cultural documentary techniques and compiling a treasure trove of cultural materials, the Archive concentrated first on musical traditions. Now administered by the American Folklife Center and renamed the Archive of Folk Culture, it serves as a national repository of a broad range of ethnographic folklife

materials. |

Benjamin A. Botkin’s “Bread and Song” should be read with Jerrold Hirsch’s historical analysis of Botkin’s role in the New Deal folklife activities. First published in 1939, Botkin’s article reveals his vision of what today might be described as the dialectic between folklife and national culture. Grounded ina deep esthetic appreciation of traditional expressive culture and a recognition of the social realities of the Great Depression, Botkin reports on the structure and goals of Works Progress Administration folklore research, on what he asserted was “the greatest educational as well as social experiment of our time.” The final two documents relate to the American Folklife Preservation Act, the 1976 legislation that established the American Folklife Center, discussed in Archie Green’s “Stitching Patchwork in Public.” A 1973 letter

from Dell Hymes, then president of the American Folklore Society, to Oregon senator Mark Hatfield on the necessity of a national folklife agency so impressed the senator that he had it entered in the Congressional

Record, from which it is reprinted. Hymes’s letter is both a moving rationale and a gentle manifesto, reminding an elected representative of the need to attend to the preservation of folk culture, alloying an internationally respected scholar’s personal experence and vision with responsibilities that are public and governmental. Archie Green’s report to the American Folklore Society, ““A View from

the Lobby,” is a legislative history of the American Folklife Preservation

14 BURT FEINTUCH Act, but it is more than a chronology of congressional acts and actions. Instead, it ranges over the history of what we now term cultural conservation, a confluence of intellectual currents that have long been with us. ‘Ten years after his lobbying led to the passage of the legislation, Green’s report

has increased in value, having become at the same time an important primary document and a signal guide to the best of the spirit that pervades public folklife work. When I organized the conference that led to this book, it seemed to me

that public sector folklorists had devoted a disproportionate amount of their own thinking to discussions of the administrative and technical facets of the field. They tended to focus their talk on such pragmatic concerns as how to distribute a documentary radio show or cultural alchemists’ formulas for converting soft money into hard. Many of the agencies and programs are new, many of the practitioners young; such nuts-and-bolts concerns make very good sense. But it seemed essential to

me that we turn a portion of our attention to the critical analysis of our work and of our history. It also struck me that because folklorists are typically drawn to the little picture—to the local or regional—we had neglected to think about building a national agenda based on what we have gleaned on the local level. If this book serves those ends—if it helps folklorists and other specialists concerned with the conservation of culture reflect on the intellectual underpinnings of their craft, the consequences of

their programs, and the broader social, political, and environmental contexts in which the work is done—it will have helped make public a set of dialogues on critically significant cultural matters. To do so, we must

first recognize a semantic irony. Cultural conservation is a progressive endeavor, intimately bound up in the quality of life in all communities, at

the center of cultural equity. If the center cannot hold, if forgetting outweighs memory, we will have become far less than we might be. NOTES 1. Funded by the Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts, the exhibit was titled Patterns between the Rivers. Richard Van Kleeck, of the Kentucky Center for

the Arts, and I were the project’s codirectors. Greg Hansen and Ann Taft were the researchers. 2. Expanding on Claude Levi-Strauss’s famous phrase, Robert Darnton writes about things that are “good to think with.” See his The Great Cat Massacre: And Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984), pp. 4, 89.

3. Charles Camp, ‘Public Folklife Programming: Notes toward A History,” Practicing Anthropology 1 and 2 (1985): 6, 8.

4. Ormond H. Loomis, coordinator, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United States, Publications of the American Folklife Center, no. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1983), p. iv.

Folklorists and the Public Sector 15 5. Alan Jabbour writes on the origin of the term cultural conservation in his “Director's Column,” Folklife Center News 8:4 (Oct.-Dec. 1985): 2. See also Marjorie Hunt and Peter Seitel,

“Cultural Conservation,” in Thomas Vennum, Jr., ed., 1985 Festival of American Folklife (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 1985), pp. 38-39; Archie Green, ‘Reflections on ‘Keywords’ in Public-Sector Folklore,” Practicing Anthropology 1 and 2 (1985): 4-5. On similar developments in anthropology, see Erve Chambers, Applied Anthropology (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1985). 6. Milan Kundera, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (New York: Knopf, 1980), p. 3.

7. See Antonin J. Liehm, ‘“Milan Kundera: Czech Writer,” in William E. Harkins and Paul I. Trensky, eds., Czech Literature Since 1956: A Symposium (New York: Bohemica, 1980), p. 44.

8. Particularly important are Alan Lomax’s “Appeal for Cultural Equity,” in Vennum, 1985 Festival of American Folklife, pp. 40-46; and Dell Hymes, “’Folklore’s Nature and the Sun’s Myth,” Journal of American Folklore 88 (1975): 345-69.

9. Bess Lomax Hawes, “‘Aspects of Federal Folklife,” Practicing Anthropology 1 and 2 } (1985): 7-8; Linda Coe, Folklife and the Federal Government: A Guide to Activities, Resources, Funds,

and Services, Publications of the American Folklife Center, no. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1977). 10. Robert Cantwell, ‘The Midway on the Mall: Twenty Years of the Festival of American Folklife,” in Thomas Vennum, Jr., ed., 1986 Festival of American Folklife (Washington, D.C.:

Smithsonian Institution, 1986), pp. 7-11. 11. Ibid. See also Alan Jabbour’s “Director’s Column,” Folklife Center News 9, no. 1 (Jan.March 1986): 2-3, which provides an overview of the arts and humanities networks in which many public sector folklorists move. 12. Henry Willett, ““A Survey of State Folk Cultural Programs,” unpublished manuscript report prepared for the Public Programs Section, American Folklore Society, Jan. 1986. I owe a note of thanks to Hank Willett for supplying me with a copy of this most useful document. 13. See Robert Winslow Gordon’s 1932 report on the Archive reprinted in this book’s appendix. 14. Loomis, Cultural Conservation. 15. For example, Carl Fleischhauer and Charles Wolfe, The Process of Field Research: Final Report on the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project (Washington, D.C.: American Folklife Center,

1981) describes a project involving the Folklife Center and the National Park Service. 16. Vennum, 1985 Festival of American Folklife.

17. Egle Victoria Zygas, ““Marketing Hmong Arts: A Case Study,” unpublished manuscript presented at the ‘Folklife and the Public Sector Conference,” April 1985. See also Marsha MacDowell, ‘“Hmong Textiles and Cultural Conservation,” in Vennum, 1986 Festival of American Folklife, pp. 91-93; and the essays in Rosemary Joyce, guest ed., ‘“Marketing Folk Art,’” New York Folklore (special section) 12 (1986): 43-112.

18. Lomax, “Appeal for Cultural Equity,” p. 40. 19. As quoted in “Cultural Activity in the Sea Islands,” Highlander Reports (Nov. 1984). Thanks to Dale Rosengarten, from whom I first learned of this quotation and its source. 20. Cantwell, “Midway on the Mall,” in Vennum, 1986 Festival of American Folklife, p. 11.

21. ‘Between Two Worlds,” a video documentary on Hmong shamanism (distributed by Kati Johnson, P.O. Box 6123, Evanston, Ill. 60204) examines what is being termed the Hmong sudden death syndrome.

22. Lauri Honko, ““Do We Need an International Treaty for the Protection of Folklore?” “The UNESCO Process of Folklore Protection: Working Document,” and ‘List of Documents,” NIF Newsletter (Nordic Institute of Folklore) 12:3 (1984): 1-31; idem, ‘“What Kinds of

Instruments for Folklore Protection?” NIF Newsletter 13:1-2 (1985): pp. 3-11; “UNESCO Folklore Effort,”” American Folklore Society Newsletter 15:2 (April 1986): 8.

16 BURT FEINTUCH 23. Notable exceptions include Susan Dwyer-Shick, ‘The Development of Folklore and Folklife Research in the Federal Writer’s Project, 1935-1943,” Keystone Folklore Quarterly 20 (1976): 5-31; Anne R. Kaplan, “The Folk Arts Foundation of America: A History,” Journal of the

Folklore Institute 17 (1980): 56-75; Deborah G. Kodish, “’ ‘A National Project with Many Workers’: Robert Winslow Gordon and the Archive of American Folk Song,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 35 (1978): 218-33; and Norman R. Yetman, ‘The Background of the Slave Narrative Collection,” in Life under the ‘Peculiar Institution’: Selections from the Slave Narrative Collection (New York: Holt, 1970), pp. 339-55.

24. Charles Camp, ‘Developing a State Folklife Program,” in Handbook of American Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 518-24; idem, “State Folklorists and Folklife Programs: A Second Look,” Folklore Forum 10 (1977): 26-29; George Carey, “State Folklorists and State Arts Councils: The Maryland Pilot,” Folklore Forum 9 (1976): 1-8.

25. Willett, “A Survey of State Folk Cultural Programs.” 26. These are funded with public monies. City Lore in New York is a private, not-for-

profit organization that may represent a movement complementing public programs by establishing non-profit alternatives. 27. See, for example, the following assessments of folklife festivals: Charles Camp and Timothy Lloyd, ‘Six Reasons Not to Produce Folklife Festivals,” Kentucky Folklore Record 26 (1980): pp. 67-74; Leslie Prosterman, ‘’Folk Festivals Revisited,” Practicing Anthropology 1 and

2 (1985): 15-16; David E. Whisnant, “Folk Festival Issues: Report from a Seminar,” JEMF Quarterly (special series) 12 (1979); Henry Willett, ‘“Re-Thinking the State Folk Arts Program (Or, Altenatives to the Festival),”” Kentucky Folklore Record 26 (1980): 12-15; Charles Wolfe, “Folklife Festival: A Debate over Effect,” Tennessee Folklore Society Bulletin 49 (1983): 24-28.

28. John M. Vlach, “American Folk Art: Questions and Quandaries,” Winterthur Portfolio 15 (1980): 345-55.

29. Of relevance is Thomas Vennum, Jr. and Nicholas Spitzer, ‘‘Musical Performance at the Festival: Developing Criteria,” in Vennum, 1986 Festival of American Folklife, pp. 101-4.

30. Robert Baron, ‘Folklife and the American Museum,” Museum News 59 (1981): 46ff.;

Elizabeth Harzoff, ‘The Role of a Folklorist in a Government-Sponsored Living History Museum,” Kentucky Folklore Record 26 (1980): 79-82; Howard Marshall, ‘Folklife and the Rise

of the American Folk Museum,” Journal of American Folklore 90 (1977): 391-413; Gordon McLennan, ed., Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies: Annual Review, 1974, Canadian Centre for Folk Culture Studies Mercury Series 12 (Ottawa: National Museum, 1975); M. Jane Young, “The Value of Things: Folklore and the Anthropological Museum Exhibit,” Practicing Anthropology 1 and 2 (1985): 19-20.

31. Deborah Bowman, “Folklife and Education,” Practicing Anthropology 1 and 2 (1985): 10-11.

32. See also Charles Hosmer, “The Broadening View of the Historic Preservation Movement,” Material Culture and the Study of American Life, ed. Ian Quimby (New York: Norton, 1978), pp. 121-37; Alan Jabbour and Howard Marshall, ‘Folklife and Cultural Preservation,” in New Directions in Rural Preservation, ed. Robert E. Stipe; Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service Publication No. 45 (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Interior, 1980), pp. 43-50; Loomis, Cultural Conservation. Applied anthropologists are also interested in historic preservation. See Chambers, Applied Anthropology, pp. 106-10. 33. National Historic Preservation Act Amendments of 1980, Title III, Section 502 (P.L. 96-515, 94 Stat. 2987, 16 USC 470). 34. Loomis, Cultural Conservation. 35. David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983).

ARCHIE GREEN ~~ ee A Keynote Stitching Patchwork in Public

In the United States, we live with a sense of contrast between special and common interest. Although boundary lines remain unclear in dividing zones—margin from center, section from nation, private from public—we invest the public zone with awesome power. The word public holds strong associations: commonweal, general welfare, service to others, selflessness. Historically, this key word refers to those people who constituted the Hellenic city state. Over time, this then narrow body politic came to include Greek and barbarian, man and woman, master and helot. Further,

within the modern state, the many children of helots, putting stigma behind, assign to each other the quality of constituting the whole and wholesome public.

We understand the term public domain to cover the people’s land, unencumbered. Similarly, songs and stories in the public domain belong to all people, not to private copyright holders. Today, the locution public house seems quaint when applied to an inn or saloon. By contrast, the modern terms public service and public sector are extended from supplying utilities and guarding health to new functions: conserving endangered forms of expression, advocating minority rights, placing cultural equity

on the political agenda, seeking links between natural conservation, historic preservation, and ethnographic documentation. Who accepts such present-day duties as central to professional life? The answering phrase public sector folklorist emerged but recently. For a decade these innovative agents have stitched their skills and ideals into figurative patchwork. During 1975 teachers and students in a graduate seminar at the University of Texas used ‘folklore and the public sector” as a course title.! By 1981 the compressed public-sector folklore/folklife had become a compass pointing to employees within governmental agencies, as well as to their demarcated skills. New names do seem stiff; one does not casually roll into ordinary speech “public-sector folklore/folklife” to identify governmental activity. Fortunately, others share our responsibilities if not full titles. Arts agency coordinators, cultural resource managers, park rangers, museum curators, library storytellers, and festival fieldworkers hold similar jurisdiction

18 ARCHIE GREEN in the public area. Together, we and they thread folk expression into public-policy discourse.

These new workers in folk programs cannot estrange themselves from ideological dispute nor escape the tension built into governmental action. Much of the political debate engendered by President Reagan

centers on whether or not his administration enlarges or diminishes American differences. Is the president’s public singular or plural? Does he speak for all or a few of our citizens? In stark terms White House staffers present issues: sunbelt against rust belt, rich against poor, white against black, moral majority against secular humanist. Folklorists hardly address these polarities directly, for our disciplinary experience has not been shaped at the convention rostrum nor during the

torchlight parade. Rather, in complementing past teaching, we mainly have collected and commented upon discrete items of lore. Even when sensing the connection of quilt or ballad to social issue, we have felt more

comfortable with the quilter or balladeer than with the legislator or bureaucrat. The contrast touched here bases itself in intimacy and articulation. Folklorists are drawn initially to quilt pattern or purpose, to ballad tune or text. Like countless other creative forms, folk constructs carry a high affective charge. Familiarity with admired shapes or symbols becomes circular. The quilt’s beauty or song’s quality appears too obvious to need explication beyond a limited circle of disciples. We seem especially at a loss to join personal esthetic pleasure to public issue. Long training on campus helps one accept this sheltered site as “‘natural” turf while distancing self from Capitol Hill, statehouse, and city hall. Like a prince transformed into

a toad, a folklorist may become diminished in the bureau chamber. Who helps cultural explorers in their own transformations? I have long maintained linkage in teaching lore and engaging in its preservation and presentation. As well, I have asserted that folklorists should accept service to those from whom they gain kudos. This sense of parallelism joined to the welfare of others has shaped my views of tasks in public cultural projects. Field collectors have had the freedom to return to the laboratory with trophies caught by camera and tape recorder. Members of folk society often have been left stranded to face bullhorn and TV dish, bulldozer and tank. It seems but a matter of justice for teachers and officials to articulate their responsibilities to folk communities. Public folk service, at its best, can be felt as an exciting calling—in spirit, aligned to the work of forest lookout and ghetto nurse. In this vein, one can do folk displays as one does literary criticism for a metropolitan newspaper or oral history for a neighborhood center. Essentially, fresh tasks and bold visions alter internal guides as we focus upon the complex traditions with a multicultural society. The word public dominates the new workplace. Surely, it signifies

Stitching Patchwork in Public 19 more than a physical site removed from campus grove. In deciphering this very old word, we ask: How do we aid the large public by concentrating on groups set apart by region, ethnicity, occupation, language, religion, and

similar institutional forces? Is it our main purpose to support a host of clashing identities or to assist individuals’ and groups’ subordinate dif-

ferences in the quest for national unity? | Young professionals in the years ahead will address these concerns as they prepare objective reports on their museum exhibits, craft demonstrations, film showings, and festival happenings. Wise servants will match

highs and lows in their accounts and close glowing papers with openended questions. Inevitably, public folklorists will develop special strategies as well as distinct rhetorics. We can assume, before long, a gathering of self-contained reports into a sequential history of public sector folklife—

origins, pioneers, monuments, emblems. A historian might well begin with the metaphor of patchwork coverings, bewildering in size and shape and not always congruously patterned or colored. I can best assist colleagues in opening that history by calling up two experiences which stood behind congressional lobbying for the American Folklife Preservation Act. My formal report to members of the American Folklore Society, ‘““A View from the Lobby” (1976), had outlined the

enactment of initial legislation. Dual anecdotes at this juncture illuminate this “‘view,” as they add footnotes to my sense of the public I then served. At year’s end, 1962, the American Folklore Society met at Austin, Texas. Our Sunday morning closing session, sparsely attended, includeda paper on the National Folk Festival by Sarah Gertrude Knott, the event's

founder. An indefatigable and strong-willed crusader for public programs, she had come to vernacular culture by participating in the Carolina Playmakers. This group of student actors and writers at Chapel Hill had stimulated interest in regional folk drama in the early twenties. As well, she had worked with Bascom Lamar Lunsford after 1928 in his path-breaking folk festival at Asheville. Many academic folklorists questioned Miss Knott’s credentials. Un-

daunted by raised eyebrows and pedantic criticism, she plunged into festival politics and publicity. In Washington she had learned of early plans for an arts and humanities foundation. Intuition told her that folklore belonged within the yet-unborn endowments. Pleas to enlist academic support, both for lobbying and fund-raising efforts, fell on deat ears. Rejecting naysayers, she marched directly to the Folklore Society’s annual gatherings. In 1962 some members of the Austin audience were put off by her style; others dismissed her as an outsider. MacEdward Leach, presiding at the AFS meeting and ever the gentleman, appointed a committee to respond to Miss Knott's challenge, for he was conscious that editors, publicists, and legislators had encircled the

20 ARCHIE GREEN discipline and had defined our Main Street roles. The spectre that haunted the AFS sounded like the Kingston Trio and resembled a Life magazine art extravaganza. Professor Leach selected me as committee chairman—my first formal assignment to carry the word beyond ivy towers, to ward off the popularizer’s spell. Following the annual meeting, I visited Mac in his University of Pennsylvania office. Eager to start, I asked him for an agenda, an action plan.

Kindly, he informed me that he could provide no funds, no space, no paraphernalia, no troops; only good cheer. Needless to say, I returned to my prairie library post, and the “action” committee died of inactivity. However, the vivid lesson of Sarah Gertrude Knott, embattled in Washington and isolated from the academy, remained in mind. On March 20, 1969, in the Ninety-first Congress, Sen. Ralph Yarborough, chairman of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, introduced the first folklife bill. Next, Jim Hightower, a feisty Texas populist, and I formed a citizens’ lobby tied together by a proverbial shoestring.

Ralph Rinzler, then heading the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife, worked as closely with us as his federal position permitted. Learning from past experience, I made a special attempt to enlist university people in the Citizens’ Committee for an American Folklife Foun-

dation. Senator Yarborough scheduled hearings on his bill for May 18, 1970, and called a number of persons to testify, including Richard Dorson from Indiana University.? Sadly, Professor Dorson used the opportunity to criticize the bill, asserting that its proponents debased the coin of scholarship. Further, he charged that activists would lead the discipline into totalitarian darkness. I was dismayed but undaunted by these fears. It seemed to me then (as it does now) that folklorists in the United States were committed to a democratic polity and worked within Jeffersonian traditions. In fact, lacking an overt political stance, we seemed better prepared than many university colleagues to explore matters of cultural pluralism. Field experience among isolated and marginal groups had helped us raise nettlesome questions about their relationship to the na-

tional state. 7 Memories from 1962 and 1970 surface to suggest that one does not

come to public work out of philosophic abstraction alone. Before a Yarborough aide dropped the first folk bill into a Senate hopper, several of the bill’s partisans had been drawn to folk expression: cowboy lament, street jive, Mormon myth, Blue Ridge pottery, bluegrass music, frontier tall tale. (Patchwork quilt, duck decoy, shrimp gumbo, jump-rope rhyme, or rain dance could well have played similar emblematic roles.) Both Sarah Gertrude Knott and Richard Dorson enjoyed aspects of folk culture. One connected affection for song and dance with the political process; the other could not tie local legend and personal narrative to pub-

Stitching Patchwork in Public 21 lic issue. Standing between Knott and Dorson, I tried to bond festival tone and seminar spirit in order to see political codes structured into cultural enactments. As a youngster I had never in my wildest dreams anticipated lobbying. Yet in the sixties circumstance permitted me to nudge folklorists toward the public arena. The full story of the American Folklife Preservation Act belongs in

thesis and monograph. I have employed impressionistic anecdotes to touch upon one folklorist’s vision of public service, as well as to note one individual’s move from campus to congressional corridor. A committee’s failure and negative testimony by a colleague placed temporary barriers

upon a difficult road. With time’s perspective we see that our path to legislative victory and the articulation of large purpose was neither easier nor rockier than that of other citizens in pursuit of public interest. Notions of public interest date back to popular debate in Athens and its sister states. During Washington years I never questioned that folklor-

ists had important contributions to make to large society; nor did I feel disloyal to the academy as I sought fresh venues for graduates. Instead, I urged students to ground their abstractions at the Potomac’s edge and, by extension, at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area or Huey Long’s State Capitol-building-mausoleum on the Mississippi's banks. In seeking folklife space in governmental bureaus, I judged a colleague’s correspondence to Congress to be as meritorious as a learned journal article. Someone had to open legislators’ eyes. Dell Hymes’s letter to Sen. Mark Hatfield stands out.* The linguist had called for the retention of tribal language in Oregon and the necessity for scholars to participate in this cause. Professor Hymes knew that the native people with whom he lived and studied formed but a small American band. Regardless, he knew

that the strongest wall could crash when even the tiniest stone frag-

mented. I shall not pause to name the many individuals who lobbied for and

built early folk programs in federal, state, and local agencies. Rather, Ilook

back to a few central paradigms that helped collector, curator, archivist, teacher step across the public threshold. Formulaic speech and mnemonics store energy and comment upon transformations. Accordingly, in triadic mode | suggest that folklorists have been, and will continue to be, partisans of particularity, preservation, pluralism. One: The identification of cultural particularity. Massive tomes picture

the American grain, its pitch pockets and knots. Portraits of New Jerusalem abound from Plymouth Rock to Missouri’s Hannibal, to HaightAshbury, to Cape Canaveral. Essentially, assertion of the nation’s independence in 1776 from the mother country necessitated a decolonization of arts and letters. Not only did James Fenimore Cooper transfer Scott’s heath to our forest and prairie, but Irving, Hawthorne, Melville, Twain, and their peers took the King’s English out of royal hands.

22 ARCHIE GREEN Religious dissenters, fleeing Britain to the Continent before undertaking the wide Atlantic crossing, complained that Dutch syntax had

corrupted their children’s speech. In short, before any pilgrim met a Massachusetts Bay native, colonial language had begun to distance itself from received English. John Witherspoon, Princeton’s president, coined Americanism in 1781 to provide an emerging language’s label. A century

later, laymen and scholars joined together to form both the American Folklore Society and the American Dialect Society whose members gathered regional speech, homespun locutions, backcountry yarns, native poetry, and local song. Each discovery of an indigenous song or story marked particularity.

In time, scholars questioned whether or not our letters were inferior to those of England or any other European power. Early in the twentieth century, Harvard professor Barrett Wendell had asserted that American literature was derivative and unformed. One of his students, Van Wyck Brooks, deflected such criticism by suggesting a need for a “usable past” and by asking aspiring writers to search for particular or native roots. Among the critics and documentarians who sought strength in useful

traditions, Constance Rourke’s name shines. In books and reviews or from open platforms, she declared American lore to be abundant, various,

subtle, and sinewy. Rourke drew spirit from great-grandfather George Mayfield, a frontier child raised by Creek Indians. In her own days, she taught at Vassar, accompanied lumberjacks to the first National Folk Festival at St. Louis, served as editor of the Index of American Design, and

perfected a confident writing style designed to make our cultural roots accessible to a wide public.° During the thirties ballad scholars merged notions of usable past and

particular present by attention to Huddie Ledbetter’s prison chants and Aunt Molly Jackson’s coal-mine laments. For a century song-catchers from

the Atlantic to the Pacific had declaimed that they heard Americans singing in wondrous tones. Lucy McKim, George Pullen Jackson, James

Weldon Johnson, Langston Hughes, and others directed attention to spirituals, black and white, and, ultimately, to the many folk religions thriving in the United States. Path breakers from Henry Rowe Schoolcraft and John Wesley Powell to Elsie Clews Parsons, Zora Neale Hurston, Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, Holger Cahill, Ben Botkin, and Alan Lomax championed American vernacularity in dramatic ways.

One could not establish the worth of rank-and-file culture within

national letters and avoid black shantymen on the Gulf, brown vaqueros

in the Southwest, or red hunters on the Great Plains. In a nutshell, folklorists helped discrete groups intrude their wares into literary anthology, national museum, and public festival. To be a folklorist meant to resonate to the myriad contours of American experience. Two: The linkage of cultural documentation to preservation and conservation

Stitching Patchwork in Public 23 movements. The word preservation appears in the earliest statements of the American Folklore Society, referring to the folk’s retention of its special lore, as well as to scholarly attention to this lore by outsiders. We can best ~see folklorists as preservationists by understanding the charge within the

word tradition, constant in discourse. Pioneer folklorists believed that songs and stories preserved themselves upon entering the stream of tradition. In collecting, folklorists helped a “‘natural’” process with formal preservational tools: archive, anthology, disc, film. Conservationists today join documentarians in attempts to recapture

portions of the American past. The verb capture is deliberate; one must battle to deflect a highway around a shrine or to appreciate a nasal song style subordinate to ubiquitous network tones. The shibboleth, “you can’t stop progress,” seems more American than apple pie. When engineers drain swamp, nesting birds give way to autos nested on asphalt. Is there a brackish essence that leads to the parking lot? Why do we believe that water nymphs design concrete culverts? Tropistic force may help direct a flower or leaf to follow the sun, but tropism neither drains swamp nor develops a continent. We make pragmatic decisions about technology within human ethical frames and then are amazed that this technology helps situate our culture. Conveniently, conservation and preservation overlap as terms linking organic life to the constructs of human hands.° Because we had no Rhine castles or hallowed cathedrals, preservationists turned to symbols of nationhood—Independence Hall, Mount Vernon, Gettysburg. The Antiquities Act of 1906 extended this umbrella of patriotism to pre-Columbian and living Indian site and eventually to slave cabin or work tenement. Such progression from natal hall to Ohio’s Serpent Mound, to Lowell’s textile factories parallels growth in cultural sensitivity to the achievement of muleskinner or cropduster. Within our discipline we know that George Lyman Kittredge explored New England rural beliefs, John Lomax gathered Afro-American worksongs, and Americo Paredes extended our knowledge of Tejano border corridos. We do well to ask: What animated John Muir’s fascination

with the high Sierras? What drew Ann Pamela Cunningham to preserve Mount Vernon? What led Rachel Carson to salty tidal pools? When did guardianship of a wilderness area also protect the inhabitants for whom mesa or canyon spirit were sacred? Who first articulated this connection of site to belief system? Answers to such queries come from the Sierra Club

and the Audubon Society as well as the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the American Folklife Center. Three: The assertion of cultural pluralism. At inception in 1812, the

American Antiquarian Society faced a dilemma, still troublesome. Its

founders shared the English language and citizenship in the United States, but what forms did antiquarians seek—Scottish ballads alive in

4 ARCHIE GREEN . Virginia, arrowheads in Ohio’s forests, mission relics in California? Fortunately, some collectors of Indian artifacts learned tribal languages as others joined tribal elders in resisting efforts to annihilate or assimilate native people.

The antiquary’s step across the line from collector to partisan, not always articulated consciously, is crucial in picturing the lineage for public folk projects. This step, made in a day or stretched out to decades, must be framed by our historical understanding: English colonists carried dogmas of savagery to American shores; soldiers, settlers, and legislators attacked

Indians on their homelands; courts have been slow in reasserting even

partial sovereignty for native people. Somehow, in this dreary progression, a few collectors paused long enough to assess stereotypes and to form some association with native language and legend. Deliberately or not, the antiquarian who had the capacity to appreciate Indian expression began to play a counterhegemonic role in public life. The shapers of national goals saw Huron and Apache as enemies of progress. Early ethnologists veered between formulas of a singular destiny for the United States and tentative commitment to emerging statements of pluralism. We need to focus spotlights on pioneer pluralists—Moravian

sect missionaries, expedition artists, myth seekers—who put aside images of native barbarism. Facing all the implications in present-day ethnography, we help ourselves by attention to the contributions of philosophy teacher Horace Kallen.” Out of his experience as a Jewish immigrant child in Boston and from his teacher William James’s description of a pluralistic universe, Kallen came to value diversity, openness, and experimentation within the polity.

Reacting against the anti-immigration policies of zenophobes, he developed a conceptual key, cultural pluralism. Unable to draw a precise blue-

print to refashion the state, he did help public debaters see traditionary groups, native and foreign-born, as sacred.

Kallen, as a Harvard graduate student, reached to the concept of cultural pluralism about 1906. Entering the arena of public debate, in 1914 he published a paper, ‘‘Democracy and the Melting Pot.” In an attack on Ku Klux Klan kultur, he placed his locution cultural pluralism in print in

1924. During the thirties anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead championed a similar formulation, diversity. B.A. (Ben) Botkin, in his long commitment to intercultural education and liberal social action, drew upon Kallen’s ideas to help push folklorists into public directions. Significantly, in the fifties Ben made common cause with Sarah Gertrude Knott upon the festival platform. Cultural pluralism conveys varied meanings to scholars. Some focus upon black music as the most visible aspect of minority culture. Others champion the crafts of our newest refugees from Cambodia or Laos. Still others return to Indian beliefs found on the reservation and in the urban

Stitching Patchwork in Public 25 ghetto. Directly stated, folklorists do plug pluralistic messages into political circuits. In the act of commenting upon many cultures, we reveal the capacity to slow down assimilative as well as technological progress. Imaginatively, we reach under the melting pot to retard its flame. This skill in decoding expressive life helps fellow citizens make sense of tags in public discourse—coat-of-many-colors, mosaic, patchwork quilt. Ihave pulled a conceptual set (particularity, preservation, pluralism) out of the past and linked it to patchwork. Obviously, Americans have long struggled to stitch together one quilt of many pieces as they have also puzzled over the old motto, E Pluribus Unum. ‘Ten thousand events in our

chronicle reveal how difficult it has been to forge unity, whether by imposition or consent. Generally, folklorists in the United States have worked within mainstream norms, accepting them as part of the natural order. We have been comfortable with dominant ideology—empiricism, pragmatism, parliamentary democracy, progressive reforms, the free market.® Only a handful of folklorists, using radical theses, have challenged majoritarian consensus. In this past decade of advance by folklorists, some have worked to clarify their public roles. They have looked at the connection of daily tasks—netting a song or displaying a basket—to large statements of American identity. In rhetorical modes: Do folklorists best thread separate patches to the national cover, or do they best aid discrete groups to stitch

their own small coverings? No facile answer presents itself; a single flashback to an episode in Pres. John Quincy Adams’s career offers perspective on the cultural dynamics built into such political questions. In the War of 1812, as in the Revolutionary War, tribal people allied themselves with rebellious backwoodsmen as well as with the Crown’s

redcoats. At Ghent in 1814, Adams helped negotiate a treaty shaping American sovereignty. The English, unprepared to abandon their frontier allies and desiring to hem in the upstart nation, had suggested a neutral corridor at the Appalachian rim. Adams bristled at this proposed barrier, for he believed that Indians would benefit by Washington’s territorial expansion to the West. Adams equated savagery and wilderness, seeing both as antithetical to national progress. We need ponder this enlightened statesman’s rhetoric about Indians as ‘“wandering hunters,” for it underlies much of America’s challenge to subject and subordinate people. Reporting from Ghent to Secretary of State James Monroe on September 5, 1814, Adams wrote: Their [Indians’] only right upon land was a right to use it as hunting grounds; and when those lands where they hunted became necessary or convenient for the purposes of settlement, the system adopted by the United States was by amicable arrangement with them to compensate them for renouncing the rights of hunting upon them and for removing to remoter regions better suited to their purposes and

26 ARCHIE GREEN mode of life. . . . Tlocondemn vast regions of territory to perpetual barrenness and solitude, that a few hundred savages might find wild beasts to hunt upon it, wasa species of game law that a nation descended from Britons would never endure. It was as incompatible with the moral as with the physical nature of things. . . . The proposal of dooming a large extent of lands, naturally fertile, to be forever desert

by compact, would be a violation of the laws of nature and of nations, as recognized by the most distinguished writers on public law. It would be an outrage upon Providence.’

This flashback to Ghent should not suggest that Adams's views are lost in history. On September 3, 1985, Bill Moyers, in a CBS television program, asked, ‘““Whose America Is This?” Reporting on illegal aliens in Florida, Texas, and California, Moyers gave doomsayers—some from the Federal Immigration Service—a chance to verbalize fear that “in ten years we will not have an American nation as we know it today.’’!° The Spanish language aroused his interviewees’ anxiety as did the sight of ‘““wetback”

workers on demanding construction jobs. Clearly, in the year 2000, we will not have a singular state made up of citizens only in the image of John Quincy Adams. Perhaps the main task of today’s folklorists, by document and display, is to ease the transition from Adams to Moyers and beyond to the children of cotton pickers and hod carriers. Teachers of folklore, planners of festivals, and advocates of folklife

funding have experienced frustration in explaining the word folk to political figures doling funds to cultural agencies. Americans hold no simple definition of the signifying folk, for it covers, alike, guitarist in Stetson, pioneer-day celebrant in sunbonnet, and ironworker in hard hat. Our very key remains problematic because a thousand years of babel have worn it to shapelessness. Germanic marauders first carried folk to Britain; Beowulf’s narrators voiced folk as did King Alfred’s scribes; it was hoary when it came down to Chaucer and Caxton. In early usages folk denominated a single tribe, race, or nation, as well as an inner subgroup of retainers, followers, or serfs. The connotative span runs from horizon to horizon—from a tribe unified in custom and vital in spirit, to an inferior set of beings enclaved in the state. Obviously, our naming label folk lumbers under a semantic overload as it accommodates notions both of power and marginality, strength and weakness, all or some. Afrikaners in Pretoria declaim Die Volk in its oldest emotive sense (singular, wholesome, mystical), while American journalists often reduce

folk to the zany conduct of motley folk heroes—bank embezzlers, aging rock stars, sports titans, centerfold queens. No folklorists in the United States and few public officials of consequence have fallen back recently on folk to justify belief in an all-powerful

people, bonded by one soul. Instead, folklorists have operated with notions of diversity and contributed to dialogue on regionalism and

Stitching Patchwork in Public 27 community empowerment. Oriented to expressive culture’s dazzling range, they have shored up the claims to attention by all the totem carvers, all the patchwork stitchers.

Americans are well acquainted with the now-magic wand public relations. Constantly, messages (seen and heard) extol product, person, place: buy this, enjoy that, fear them, join us! Few governmental folklorists seek personal publicity, but each festival brochure or exhibit catalog we edit makes known our documentary and presentational skills. In this

sense, we are defined by that which we picture and report. A public folklorist brings a stonemason to the National Mall, a sail maker to the Hyde Street Pier, a bead worker to the Academy of Science, a quilter to the State Fair at Columbus. Even when the presenter mutes formal message, the craftsworker’s hands trumpet legitimacy: Not every product is plastic;

not every skill, robotized; not every craft object, uniform. As folklorists enter public service, their academic colleagues, too, seek new publics.” Newspaper columnists and TV editors have relished the comments by university-based teachers about consumer response to Procter & Gamble’s logo, acrescent moon against a field of stars. Folklorists have not been surprised that the firm, facing business loss, has withdrawn its trademark

and denied that this design stood for the ‘‘Church of Satan.” Similarly, bizarre tales of poodles in microwave ovens and alligators in city sewers have generated considerable publicity for explicator and analyst. I confess ambivalence over such attention to our discipline; folk studies deserve wide attention, yet I am troubled by press and screen preoccupation with trivia, nostalgia, and latrinalia. Clearly, scholars must be free to examine all human experience, as their peers in government

treat the expressive life within bounded communities and this life’s ideological dimension. The alligator-in-the-sewer story and the Church-of-Satan belief become useful when interpreted as political metaphor. Demons do inhabit my cosmos; they subjugate native people, destroy time-tested lore, abuse

political consent, and poison physical and moral environments. They inhabit Washington and Moscow, Santiago and Kabul. They flaunt titles: President Marcos, General Jaruzelski. Hence, I am wary of all the giants and goblins who oppress the vulnerable. Elsewhere in this book, individual folklorists describe public projects. As an audience member at museum display and park performance, I have enjoyed such events. In varied sites neighbors now show folklife in its infinite variety, unencumbered by sensationalism. Their offerings defuse notions of exotica, as they open eyes and ears to everyday life’s sustaining

symbols. In a narrow sense, the specific setting for these public folk displays is a tax-funded agency. In a large sense, such events are framed by journalistic reports that comment upon power relationships throughout the world.

28 ARCHIE GREEN In the classic trilogy, USA, John Dos Passos brought experimental techniques (biographical portrait, camera eye, newsreel) to expand his narrative. Folklorists, too, need a constantly running newsreel as supplement to catalog, program book, or annual report. In this vein, I select a few vignettes from the press in the period during which this essay has jelled. These selections describe neither item nor process of folklore. Instead, they report on the shaping of our identities. Gentrification’s Price—San Francisco Moves: Yuppies In, the Poor Out (Los Angeles Times, April 3, 1985)

In recent years, there has seemed to be a new consciousness and fear spoken and

unspoken—that America is losing its white, English-speaking identity. The nativist movement, or set of backlashes, also explains “the new patriotism.” (New Yorker, October 29, 1984, page 132) Ozark Lead Mine Strikes Turn Bitter Amid Violence. Striker Gary Priest, 41, who has

followed his father, grandfather and great-grandfather into the St. Joe mines [said] ‘I’m going to be the last generation of Priest to work here. It used to be like a family. It isn’t any more.” (Los Angeles Times, October 18, 1984) Indiana family faces loss of a farm where its roots go back 200 years. Someday the Clarks of

Hamilton County could vanish much like their predecessors on the land, the Delaware Indians, victims of the changing times and government policy. (San Francisco Examiner, March 3, 1985)

Libyan leader Moammar Khadafy offered yesterday to arm a black army in the United States to create a separate state and destroy white America. (San Francisco Chronicle, February 25, 1985)

American Indian Movement leader Russell Means said yesterday at Bogota, Columbia he will try to recruit U.S. Indians to battle with Nicaraguan Indians against Nicaragua’s government. (San Francisco Chronicle, May 24, 1985) Schools Are Becoming the Battleground In the Fight Against Secular Humanism. One teacher in Georgia says she hesitated before assigning The Scarlet Letter because of its references to witchcraft and adultery. (Wall Street Journal, August 6, 1985) Raisa [Gorbachev]: No frumpy babushkas for this svelte socialist. She’s not a peasant, clearly she’s a paid-up Russian folklore princess. (San Francisco Chronicle, November 19, 1985)

[Dispatch from National Party meeting at Silkaatsneck, South Africa]: Several thousand whites gathered here for prayers, songs and a historic pageant. [Carel Boshoff, guiding light of the Afrikaner Volkswag (People’s Sentinel), warned, ] What we are undergoing is the darkest hour of our nation’s existence. (Washington Post, October 10, 1985)

Stitching Patchwork in Public 29 In the journalistic pastiche above, I have selected items highlighting this essay’s conceptual elements. Readers can provide other newsreel bits. Of concern here is not the pungency of any given selection, but the role of daily reportage in marking intergroup sensibilities. One hears, as chaff, an eccentric tale about franchised food; one learns, as news, a report of death in Belfast or Beirut. In the classroom a professor may explain an urban legend as a strategy to take the edge off catastrophe, to cope with threats beyond personal control, to exorcize hidden anxiety. Such functional and psychological analysis of narrative serves scholars well. Public folklorists, in presenting quilters or balladeers and their sisters

and brothers, depart from classroom techniques, for the move from academy to bureau alters rhetorical modes. On campus, to develop a thesis, the teacher reads a text, retells a tale, shows a slide, plays a tape, or runs a film. In the park or museum, traditional narrators offer their own stories, craftsworkers demonstrate their own competence. Wise interpreters respect the integrity of those they introduce and are circumspect in framing analysis. Inviting a guest to a display event or public performance in order to enhance professional standing is not the folklorist’s ultimate purpose. Beyond the invitation, some sense of the community in which traditional expression lives must guide the outsider’s vision. By connecting artistic act to nurturing setting, by striving constantly to explicate meaning within enactment, folklorists lay bare the ideological underpinnings of their choices. Folklorists volunteer to collect within the

city slum, upon the eroded land, or at the Appalachian mine mouth; hence, they accept a special relationship to subjects. No matter how much one balks at terms folk society or traditionality, the sight of fellow citizens at the margins of privilege cannot be blotted from view. Such comprehension does not imply that all the people with whom we work are unlettered

or downtrodden. However, to know this fact does not excuse one from seeing alienation and exploitation. Lest I seem to picture tradition carriers as living only in the shadows

of dismal tracts, I can report a warm visit to a Florida public library display.!* There, anet mender, neither poor nor unhappy, plied his craft in

the lobby. Browsers and borrowers paused at this unusual sight. Net mending is not strange ina harbor town; but why the library setting? What message did the folklife specialist intend in bringing the craftsman to the lobby? I suggest several possibilities: to preserve the net maker’s access to

tools and twine; to honor his craft; to comment upon continuities from sailing and fishing to the library’s educational purpose; and, in this paper’s imagery, to see the net as yet another bright patch on the body politic.

If one folklorist can comment on microheated poodles and subterranean alligators, another can comment on the scarred landscape of ideological conflict. We do well to mute esoteric analysis in introducing a

30 ARCHIE GREEN festival or library guest, but such understatement need not diminish acceptance of the public’s stake in our showing and telling. A thousand routines within folklife, throughout the land, make graphic the citizenry’s interest in traditional culture. Returning to the example of the net maker’s public role, obviously, he reveals traditional techniques to new audiences.

Simultaneously, folklorists in libraries, upon festival grounds, and at interagency conferences metaphorically plait nets and stitch quilts. We strengthen public sector folklore by sharing the stage with our guests and, importantly, by seeing ourselves as actors in an analogic drama. In stepping back from the stage, we return to statements of professional intent as well as to multiple definitions for the word folk. lam aware

of such multiplicity after working with the rainbow of American folk groups. Some cling to the past; some buttress community walls; others accept change passively; others engage gleefully in their own transformations. In helping those who value autonomy, I reject singular notions of

nationhood. I do not see America flowing only in the Hudson or the Columbia. Nor do I cleave to a monolithic formulation of a homogeneous folk from Point Barrow to the Rio Grande, Diamond Head to Kitty Hawk. Thoughts on the word mainstream bring my stitching to a close. While lobbying for folklife preservation, I heard many cynics say that the public didn’t want to retain fossils: custom, belief, song, story, patchwork. Ina ludicrous simile, one representative’s aide told me that preserving folklife was akin to recalling dinosaurs to life. He admonished me to leave lore in museums and to bring backward people into the mainstream. The tag mainstream has served journalists as a synonym for place and person—hypothetical residence for Middle American, Main Streeters all. Folklorists know that the man-in-the-street, as well as the common man,

long beloved in political rhetoric, is neither common nor only of one gender, color, humor, or locale. This knowledge flows from the city: state’s

long march—philosopher king to helot and the latter’s sisters, cousins, aunts. Perhaps the anecdote is apocryphal that tells of the brave mountain girl whose dialect had been corrected and who told her teacher, “I don’t want to be mainstreamed.” This defiant youngster brings intensity to my underlying queries: Does the president open or close national doors? Where do cultural administrators find models other than those stamped out in White House media events? Do folklorists serve large society best by bringing people into America’s dominant current or by encouraging them to swim against the current and even to bob in the shallows? Fortunately, we are not required to make final political choices for the many individuals whose artistry we document and display. However, in our attraction to expressive life of all groups within the nation, we gaina sense of the modern state’s cruel puzzles. The technological wizards, who deploy weapons into space, cannot always help aged residents displaced

Stitching Patchwork in Public 31 by instant condos. The masters of satellite communication, who beam programs over the globe, cannot always hear the fiddler at the village square. Surely, the tested rubric public still includes the displaced and the quiet. Some folklorists are unhappy with notions of neglect, marginality, enclavement, ambiguity, powerlessness. Secretly, they wish for the folk’s

bewildering differences to disappear. Recently, a few teachers in the humanities have discovered corporate culture and have sought positions in managerial realms. When populism runs strong in the United States,

monopolies are pictured as juggernauts. When populism runs thin, private enterprise throws off negative cloaks and casts doubt on governmental duties. Itis well to note in the eighties that public servants continue

to warn of hurricanes and earthquakes, guard against disease, control toxic waste, educate for citizenship, and highlight expressive diversity. Coming to the academy after seasoning ina bicultural family and after learning a waterfront trade, I could help articulate a legislative agenda for folklife. While tramping congressional halls, I began to shake out disci-

plinary guides—particularity, preservation, pluralism. Reflecting on folklore’s keywords and relishing pictures from America’s corners, I enjoyed connections in teaching and preaching. Above all, I avoided anxiety over being stranded at the mainstream’s edge. My apprenticeship

in public sector activity revealed that our tasks are endless and our threads, limited; the patchwork we stitch, vivid and vital. NOTES 1. Archie Green, ‘““The Naming Tag ‘Public-Sector Folklore,’ A Recollection,” Public

Programs Newsletter 3 (Sept. 1985): 16-17. |

2. “P.L. 94-201—A View from the Lobby” reprinted in appendix to this book. 3. U.S. Senate, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, American Folklife Foundation Act Hearings, 18 May 1970. 4. Dell Hymes’s letter to Senator Hatfield reprinted in appendix to this book. 5. Joan Rubin, Constance Rourke and American Culture (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1980); Samuel Bellman, Constance M. Rourke (Boston: Twayne, 1981). 6. See Ormond Loomis, Cultural Conservation (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1983).

Horace Kallen, Culture and Democracy in the United States (New York: Boni and Liverright, 1924); Cultural Pluralism and the American Ideal (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsy]lvania Press, 1956). 8. Archie Green, “Interpreting Folklore Ideologically,” in Handbook of American Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 351-58.

9. Worthington C. Ford, ed., Writings of John Quincy Adams (New York: Macmillan, 1915) 5:115. See also Charles F. Adams ed., Memoirs of John Quincy Adams (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1874) 3:28. 10. Moyers’s quote from CBS press release. See Terence O’Flaherty’s TV column in San Francisco Chronicle, Sept. 3, 1985, p. 50. 11. See, for example, three articles in the New York Times: ‘The Once-Simple Folk Tale

32 ARCHIE GREEN Analyzed in Academe,” March 5, 1984, p. 15; ‘‘Folklore Thriving in Cities,” Feb. 25, 1985, p. 30; “Folklore Mirrors Life’s Key Themes,” Aug. 14, 1985, p. C1. 12. I attended ‘folk days” in the St. Petersburg Public Library, March 30-31, 1984. Having observed similar events elsewhere, I note the lack of published reports on such closeto-home presentations. 13. Thanks to Burt Feintuch for helping to turn an “after-dinner keynote talk” into an essay.

Public Sector Precedents

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ERIKA BRADY ~~ The Bureau of American Ethnology

Folklore, Fieldwork, and the Federal | Government in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Reporting to members of the American Folklore Society on the legislative background of the American Folklife Preservation Act, folklorist Archie Green envisioned the spirit of Maj. John Wesley Powell happily observing Gerald Ford sign the bill into law in early January 1975.1 Although Powell had been dead for seventy-three years, Green was surely right in imagining that the major’s restless and autocratic soul would not willingly pass

up the opportunity to witness the event. For although the American Folklife Center created by the Folklife Preservation Act in 1975 would undertake programs and projects very different in means and result from those sponsored by Powell’s Bureau of American Ethnology founded in 1879, both offices came into being in response to their era’s demand that the federal government play a role in the preservation and documentation of cultural expressions threatened by a multitude of social, economic, and historical pressures. The Bureau of American Ethnology was the first U.S. government agency to engage in a sustained and systematic effort to collect and publish ethnographic material. Green is virtually alone among contemporary scholars, however, in assigning Powell and the BAE a significant role in the

history of American anthropology and folklore. One searches in vain for references to the BAE in histories of the discipline of folklore, although the early numbers of the Journal of American Folklore abound in articles by individuals linked to the Bureau such as Jesse Walter Fewkes, John Reed Swanton, Washington Matthews, and John Peabody Harrington. The Bureau receives even shorter shrift today among anthropologists. In The Rise of Anthropological Theory, a standard graduate-level introduction to anthropology, author Marvin Harris dismisses Powell, the Bureau’s founder and figurehead for its first sixteen years, as ‘a hayseed and a bumpkin” in comparison to Franz Boas and “‘a distressingly undisciplined dabbler.” In addition, in the one explicit reference to the BAE in the work, Harris calls it the ‘““American Bureau of Ethnology.”* The agency was

36 ERIKA BRADY called simply ‘The Bureau of Ethnology” until 1894, but it was never called

the American Bureau of Ethnology. This careless misnomer indicates, even more clearly than his expressed contempt for Powell, how lightly Harris regards the importance of the agency. Admittedly, Powell and his staff were often far from conceptually

rigorous in the pursuit and presentation of their investigations, uncritically embracing both evolutionist constructs and their ethnocentric and racist implications. Nevertheless, it is not too much to say that Powell was the premier ethnologist of his day. He may have had an indifferent and undisciplined grasp of the ethnological issues that in later years would become the criteria by which major figures in the field are evaluated, but his grip on the purse strings of the ethnological research of his time was firm and sure at a time when Franz Boas was still making an uncertain transition from geographic determinism to the study of culture.4 This article will examine in broad terms the organizational objectives and procedures characteristic of the Bureau’s first fifty years—what may be considered the era of its peak activity in the areas of fieldwork and

publication, and the era in which the agency was dominated first by Powell and then by his disciples W.H. Holmes and Jesse Walter Fewkes. In

addition, I will examine ways in which the objectives and procedures espoused by the Bureau affect, for better or worse, the latter-day usefulness of its work for folklorists and others.

The BAE during its first years merits the attention of any scholar concerned with public sector folklore, both as the progenitor of federal involvement in ethnographic research and as the sponsor of an extraor-

dinarily active group of field workers who broadcast their extensive findings in series after series of publications: 81 Annual Reports, 193 Bulletins, 8 Contributions, 4 Introductions, and 14 Miscellaneous Publications,

all devoted to the ethnographic study of American Indian language, culture, and archaeology.° In his history of the BAE, Neil Merton Judd estimates that in the course of its eighty-five years the Bureau disseminated over one hundred thousand volumes on virtually every phase of

American Indian life and culture to libraries and private scholars throughout the nation and the world,® imbuing countless readers with an image of the Indian world as seen by the investigators sent out by Powell and his successors. Whether or not this image was an accurate one, it was an influential one and for that reason alone deserves attention today. Not only did the Bureau’s publications define for many the nature of American Indian life, but its highly publicized activities also defined the educated public’s understanding of who folklorists and anthropologists were and what they were after when “‘in the field.” The BAE began as an offshoot of the federal government’s geological and geographical surveys of the Rocky Mountain region.” Major Powell, a fiery veteran of the War Between the States who had lost an arm in the

Bureau of American Ethnology 37 Battle of Shiloh, initiated his civilian career as the head of these geological expeditions. But his final report to the Department of Interior in 1877 in this capacity makes it clear that his activities as a geologist were broadly

defined. ‘Under instructions from the Interior Department my parties were also engaged in general ethnologic work in the Rocky Mountain region. One of the special items in these instructions was the classification of Indian tribes, such classification being not only of scientific interest, but of great importance in the administration of Indian affairs.’”® From this

statement one may infer that, in intention at least, these geological expeditions from which the BAE was formed represented an early experi-

ment in applied folklore and anthropology. The Bureau of Ethnology, renamed the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1894, was established in 1879 as a bureaucratic by-product of the congressional combination of four different agencies’ geological operations into the single U.S. Geological

Survey. Ethnographic research that had been undertaken by these surveys previously was now to be performed by the Bureau as part of the omithsonian Institution, operating under instructions from the Department of Interior and funded by an annual congressional appropriation.° It is worth noting in passing that research concerning Indian culture undertaken in the course of geological investigations was by no means simply a matter of accident or propinquity. The study of non-European peoples, especially those designated “primitive,” routinely fell into such categories as “natural history”; the legacy of this pattern remains with us in the collections of Indian materials held by such institutions as the American Museum of Natural History and the Smithsonian’s Museum of Natural History. The popular understanding of Darwin’s theory of evolution gave sanction to the pseudoscientific comparison of members of cultures perceived as less evolved with, for example, large apes. This link between the study of natural history and ethnology found expression in displays not only in museums but also in one tragic instance in a zoo. Left stranded in 1906 in the wake of the St. Louis Exposition, an

unfortunate pigmy man named Ota Benga was caged for a time in the monkey house of the New York Zoological Park with an orangutan as a companion exhibit. An editorial in the New York Times meditated archly on what Ota Benga’s people might make of this event “if the race of African

bushmen ever grows into a history, with its running roots of tradition and legend.’’!° Powell’s background was in natural history, and he located the Bureau within the administrative context of amuseum, but he never made the grotesque mistake of assuming the peoples under investigation were merely specimens of advanced primates, and he placed great value on what he recognized to be their highly complex histories, legends, traditions, and languages. Powell had no formal training in the study of Indian culture—neither did anyone else at the time. (The first individual to take an American de-

38 ERIKA BRADY gree in anthropology was A.F. Chamberlain under Boas’s tutelage in the 1890s.)!! Powell derived most of his ideas concerning the proper approach to such study from the works of Lewis Henry Morgan. Powell called Morgan’s ground-breaking work, League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, the study of an

Indian tribal culture based in part on firsthand observation, ‘‘the first scientific account of an Indian tribe ever given to the world.’”!2 But it was above all Morgan’s 1877 publication, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, that

caught and held Powell’s imagination.!3 This was an immensely influential work, not only in the United States but in Europe as well—Karl Marx

had intended to write a book on it, and Friedrich Engels did so.14 The interest of Marx and Engels indicates the programmatic message implicit in the book—if the progress of man through evolutionary stages can be successfully deduced, then, by making use of knowledge of that process, necessary next steps in a society’s evolution can be induced. Powell, old soldier though he was, took to heart not the implicit call to arms heard by Marx and Engels but the explicit call to the field contained in the preface of Ancient Society:

When discovered, the American Indian tribes represented three distinct ethnical periods, and more completely than they were elsewhere then represented upon the earth. Materials for ethnology, philology and archaeology were offered in unparalleled abundance, but as these sciences scarcely existed until the present century, and are but feebly prosecuted among us at the present time, the workmen have been unequal to the work. Moreover, while fossil remains buried in the earth will keep for the future student, the remains of Indian arts, languages, and institutions will not. They are perishing daily, and have been perishing for upwards of three centuries. The ethnic life of the Indian tribes is declining under the influence

of American civilization, their arts and languages are disappearing, and their institutions are dissolving. After a few more years, facts that may now be gathered

with ease will become impossible of discovery. These circumstances appeal strongly to Americans to enter this great field and gather its abundant harvest.!5

Through the influence of John Wesley Powell, Ancient Society power-

fully shaped the direction of government-sponsored ethnographic research among Indian tribes. In an 1880 letter to Spencer F. Baird, secretary

of the Smithsonian Institution, the BAE’s sponsoring agency, Powell described eight major areas of research that the newly formed bureau should pursue: somatology (later to be called physical anthropology), philology, mythology, sociology, habits and customs (including religion), tech-

nology, archaeology, and history of Indian affairs.¢ In all of these areas, with the exception of somatology, his interest had been shaped by the work of Lewis Henry Morgan. Each member of Powell’s professional staff received a copy of Ancient Society and was expected to pursue his or her field research in the light of its contents.!”

Bureau of American Ethnology 39 The nature of the fieldwork and publications of the BAE must be understood in view of the special objectives of the Bureau, particularly as perceived by Powell. Bureau fieldwork presupposed all Indian culture to

be in a process of imminent assimilation into mainstream American society: in Morgan’s terms, evolving from savagery to civilization. This process was considered not only inevitable but desirable. The collection of information concerning American Indian culture served both a scientific

and a practical purpose: a record would remain of the nature of these cultures for the Indianless future which could also be used meanwhile to facilitate a humane and efficient transition to that future. The objectives cited for Powell’s future ethnological work in his final report as director of the geological survey quoted above were twofold; the classification of Indian tribes was “‘not only of scientific interest, but of great importance in the administration of Indian affairs.’’!

“Administration of Indian affairs” by the government in the late nineteenth century was almost universally considered a sunset affair, not likely to require more than the few generations estimated to remain before the full assimilation of Indian with mainstream American culture would be complete. Throughout the first fifty years of the BAE, the dissolution of expressive aspects of Indian culture remained a dramatic leit-motiv in the Bureau’s Annual Report.

The result sought by the Bureau is the completion of a systematic and wellrounded record of the tribes for historic and scientific purposes before their aboriginal characteristics and culture are too greatly modified or are completely lost. (1907)'9

The Indians form one of the great races of mankind, and the world looks to the government for all possible knowledge that is still available concerning the race before it shall have vanished by assimilation in the great body of the American people. (1910)° The Indians of the United States are undergoing cultural changes which will in a short time so modify their material culture that little will be left in that line for the ethnologist to study. It is imperative that the bureau exert itself in every way to

record the material culture and cult objects before the final changes occur. (1921-22)!

The fundamental idea which led to [the annual BAE appropriation] was the recognized necessity for reliable information for a proper appreciation of the Indian, as an aid to legislation. . . . The aim of the Bureau of American Ethnology

is to discover and to disseminate correct ideas of the Indian as a race, that our people may better understand and appreciate his history, language, sociology, music, religion, and various arts and industries. . . . The work is imperative, for within the last few decades a great deal of information of this kind has disappeared

unrecorded, and the probability is that this generation will witness the death of most aboriginal survivals in culture. (1924)4

40 ERIKA BRADY It should be remembered that the demise of American Indians as ethnically distinct was not only taken for granted by the U.S.government, but it was also looked for, albeit with regret, by many educated tribal members as well.23

Because the documentation of Indian culture by the BAE was meant to serve as a window into the savage phase of a people’s evolution, those areas of life which had been “tainted” by the “‘civilizing” influence of mainstream American culture were selectively ignored in BAE publica-

tions. This selectivity has come in for considerable, and justifiable, criticism in recent years. Bernard L. Fontana is particularly harsh in his article, “Savage Anthropologists and the Unvanishing Indians of the American Southwest.”24 Much of the criticism from anthropologists and Indian activists such as Vine Deloria Jr. leads the reader to assume that the

unreal picture of Indian cultures built up from archaic details as it was portrayed by the BAE ethnologists and their contemporaries was solely motivated by personal self-aggrandizement: the more “untouched” and primitive the group, the greater glory to the investigator who penetrated its mysteries. A great deal of the work of the BAE ethnologists was indeed ethnocentric by today’s standards and presented a potentially misleading image of the groups they studied, but the problem lay not with individual collectors’ malice or ego but with the conceptual constructs they accepted. The Morganian approach to the reconstruction of evolutionary phas-

es encouraged reconstruction of a vision of an earlier untouched Indian life—it was considered no more unprofessional or unrealistic than the visualization of an entire pot from the evidence of a small shard. Indeed, the staff and consultants of the BAE habitually drew on archaeological metaphor when describing their ethnological pursuits. Both areas of research were pursued by the Bureau as a matter of course, some staff members such as Fewkes being involved in both realms at once. Frances

Densmore described her ethnological study of Indian music as “an archaeology of the mind”; only the nature of the specimens differentiated the two areas.6 Intrinsic to the Morganian approach as applicable in ethnology and archaeology was the value of the artifact—the physical object that would provide a clue to the level of technical development of a people. Consequently, the BAE fieldworkers were intensely thing-oriented, a preoccupation no doubt encouraged by the BAE’s sponsoring agency, the Smithsonian. The prevalent nineteenth century notion of amuseum was a place in

which a variety of interesting historical and scientific things could be classified and stored. This item-centered attitude carried over into fieldwork concerning aspects of tribal life that could not be measured with calipers or weighed on a scale. Indian language, for example, was record-

Bureau of American Ethnology 41 ed in lists of words and grammatical constructs rather than in actual patterns of conversational speech. Practically speaking, the difficulties in tackling the ambitious task Powell set for the agency were immense within this acquisitive, itemcentered, and museum-defined milieu. The BAE was never a large office,

seldom exceeding the size of the first staff, which consisted of six ethnologists, two philologists, one librarian, two photographers, a stenographer, and four clerks. Staff ethnologists engaged in some fieldwork,

of course, but, in fact, most of the extensive collecting was done by unsalaried individuals operating as consultants to the agency. All the early

staff and consultants were self-educated in ethnology, coming from academic backgrounds as diverse as zoology, music, and history of art.27 It

was always a tumultuous blend of temperaments; throughout its existence the BAE was plagued by bureaucratic difficulties from without and staff conflict from within. John Wesley Powell suffered his first stroke in the wake of a stormy session with staff consultant Matilda Coxe Stevenson, who was just as dictatorial and hot-tempered as he was.)?8 Under the circumstances, the achievement of the Bureau in the sheer amassing of data in its eighty-five-year history is extraordinary. From the BAE fieldworkers’ standpoint, perhaps the most felicitous technological development in their own culture during this period was the invention of the cylinder phonograph. This device allowed them to record music, language, and religious ceremonies on wax cylinders, providing

precise documentation from which they could later make written tran-

scriptions in phonetic and musical notation, and providing as well impressive concrete (or at least paraffin) evidence of the extent of their activity in the field. The collectors who chose to use the cylinder phonograph valued the machine for the accuracy and efficiency with which it created records of sound events. With the exception of Alice Fletcher and Frances LaFlesche,

most BAE fieldworkers seldom spent more than a month at a particular site. They needed to amass as much data as possible from highly diverse sources in unfamiliar languages. Frances Densmore, for example, collected cylinder recordings from more than forty different Indian groups.” The phonograph facilitated this process considerably; it was far quicker to make cylinder recordings of a song or ceremony than to transcribe the

linguistic or musical aspects of the event by hand phonetically in an unfamiliar tongue. On the whole, informants welcomed the phonograph not only because it eased the transcribing process, but also because it produced an immediately verifiable aural record that they themselves could check and approve. More than is generally realized, the informants , had a stake in the accuracy of the fieldwork and cared deeply that the material they shared be properly preserved.*°

42 ERIKA BRADY Folklorists, anthropologists, and ethnomusicologists can be grateful that the phonograph was well received by BAE fieldworkers and their informants. Although BAE collectors considered the cylinder recordings

primarily as a means to achieve accurate written transcriptions, the extensive collections of cylinder recordings which survive represent a major primary resource for study and appreciation of Indian music and ceremony. Because they are relatively free of the subjective inferences that

flaw the original published transcriptions, these mechanical recordings are of the utmost interest to scholars of Indian music today. The collectors anticipated that their materials would be of value to this audience, the contemporary academic community; what they failed to foresee was that the recordings are increasingly precious to the unvanished descendants of the original informants, providing a whole new arena for public sector programs today. In 1979, exactly a century after the founding of the BAE, the American

Folklife Center established the Federal Cylinder Project to preserve, document, and disseminate field cylinder recordings made by government agencies and other institutions. By far the preponderant number of

cylinders handled by the Project were made under the auspices of the BAE. The main impetus for the establishment of the Federal Cylinder Project was the number of increasingly insistent requests for access to the ethnographic material on cylinder, not primarily emanating from folklor-

ists and ethnomusicologists, but rather from tribal organizations, archives, and individuals.3! Those informants who had shared their traditions in the hope that they would be a valued legacy to their descendants have been vindicated. The very collections gathered in desperate haste and firm conviction of the disappearance of Indian culture are now being

made available to the public by another government office in direct response to the vigorously expressed desire of the far-from-moribund American Indian people. Private and public sector folklorists of the future will be obliged to take

into account the effect of the reintroduction of traditional material into a community by this means. It is important to heed the implications in, for

example, the thoughtful description of the impact of the return of old recordings as perceived by Dennis Hastings, Omaha Tribal Archivist. When I heard the cylinders, they led to thoughts about what songs were still alive and what songs we had lost. . . . They managed to survive this long and to go

back to the people. I think now that we have them we will never lose them again. . . . If you listen to the words of them, they mean involvement with nature and our being and our surroundings. It’s a tie, a connection to every living thing— man’s power of growth and movement, the ability to think, to will, and to bring to

ass. ...

° We shall not be false to any great truths that have been revealed to us concerning the world in which we live, if we listen to the olden voice, an unseen

Bureau of American Ethnology 43 heritage of our bounteous land, as it sings of our unity with nature. That’s what I mean by the tie. Without that we have broken the circles of nature itself, which flows in one circular motion. I didn’t know quite what to expect when the songs on the cylinders came back. After a year or so now it has affected people in different ways. For some of the

older singers and the older people that remember those songs, it is renewing, it brightens them up, because it supports what they have been saying and standing for all along. During the last pow-wow the singers started singing songs that no one had heard before. It was like a supernatural or spiritual gift that has been given back to the people again.”

The fieldworkers of the BAE were far from exemplary collectors by almost any standard—unlikely instruments for conveyance of this “‘supernatural or spiritual gift.” Matilda Coxe Stevenson was celebrated in the popular press for having adjusted the attitude of one recalcitrant ‘‘savage” by beating him about the head with her umbrella.*3 Alice C. Fletcher, a

gentlewoman with a genuinely devoted attachment to the Omaha and Osage peoples, inadvertently did them and other groups incalculable harm by promoting the Omaha Allotment Act of 1882 and the Dawes Severalty Act of 1887, thrusting them into an agrarian role for which they were utterly unprepared and through which they were cruelly exploited .*4 J.P. Harrington, a tireless seeker of soon-to-be-lost Indian languages, was said by his colleagues to have worried more “last survivors” to an early

grave by his attentions than any other of his profession. But an irony emerges: although the assumptions which provided the incentive for the establishment of the BAE have been proven misguided, its hardworking staff virtually despite themselves provided materials essential for later public-sector programs that would be based on very different aims and agendas. Like the spiralling groove on a spinning cylinder, the tie that represents “‘one continuous motion” described by Hastings finally circles us back to Major John Wesley Powell, whose implementation of the aims and

objectives of the BAE have in one sense so fortunately failed, and in another sense so unexpectedly succeeded. If, as Archie Green imagines, Powell is still keeping an eye on us, let us hope that the thought of his silent presence reminds us that, in pursuit of our own aims and objectives in the development of folklore programs in the public sector, it is both salutary and humbling to devote some attention to the early years of an institution now long gone. We too may someday be seen to have succeeded—despite ourselves. NOTES 1. Archie Green, “P.L. 94-201—A View from the Lobby,” Report to the American Folklore Society (Austin, Texas, 1976), p. 1.

44 ERIKA BRADY 2. Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co.,

1968), pp. 255, 257. See also Curtis M. Hinsley, Jr., “Amateurs and Professionals in Washington Anthropology, 1879 to 1903,” in American Anthropology: The Early Years, ed. John

V. Murra (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1976), pp. 36-68, in which Hinsley describes the Bureau

under Powell as the embodiment of a “concept of scientific anthropology that became a historical reject, a road not taken in the professional development of American anthropology” (pp. 37-38). 3. Neil Merton Judd, The Bureau of American Ethnology: A Partial History (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1967).

4. Wluminating correspondence between Powell and Boas and a discussion of the respected position held by Powell in the 1880s may be found in George W. Stocking, ed., The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911: A Franz Boas Reader (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pp. 57-60. 5. Judd, Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 78-112. 6. Ibid., p. 112. Judd calculates that in the Bulletins alone, 269 monographs were published, of which 143 were ethnological (as opposed to archaeological) in content, totaling

31,627 pages. |

7. Ibid., p. 15. 8. John Wesley Powell, ““Final Report: US Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region” (Washington, D.C., U.S. National Museum, 1877); quoted in Judd, Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 5.

9. Ibid., p. 15 10. The unhappy episode may be traced in the following articles: New York Times, Sept. 10, 1906; Sept. 11, 1906; Sept. 12, 1906; Sept. 16, 1906; and Sept. 23, 1906. 11. Stocking, Boas, pp. 57-58. 12. Lewis Henry Morgan, League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee or Iroquois (New York: M.H. Newman, 1851); John Wesley Powell, “Sketch of Lewis H. Morgan,” Popular Science Monthly 18 (1880): p. 115.

13. Lewis Henry Morgan, Ancient Society (New York: Charles H. Kerr and Co., 1877).

14. Friedrich Engels, Der Ursprung der Familie, des Privateigenthums und des Staats (Hottingen-Zurich: Schweizerische Genossenschaftbuchdruckerei, 1884); translated as The Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State, intro. and notes by Eleanor Burke Leacock (New York: International Publications, 1973). 15. Morgan, Ancient Society, pp. vii-viii. 16. Smithsonian BAE file 4677, p. 51; quoted in Judd, Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 3-4.

17. Carl Resek, Lewis Henry Morgan: American Scholar (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 150. 18. Judd, Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 5. 19. Annual Report of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution for the Year Ending 30

June 1907 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1908), p. 29. 20. Annual Report, 1910, p. 33. 21. Annual Report, 1922, p. 55. 22. Annual Report, 1924, pp. 62-63. 23. Note, for example, the ambivalence displayed toward the maintenance of Indian musical traditions implicit in Evelyn Two-Guns, ‘Notes and Queries: The Indian Fondness for Music,” Society of the American Indian Quarterly Journal 3 (1915): pp. 135-36. This journal

was permeated throughout its existence by a tense combination of nostalgia and progressiveness. Morgan’s influence was pervasive in publications for and by educated Indians; in a similarly constituted journal, see ‘“Lewis Henry Morgan,” American Indian Magazine 5 (1917): 77-78.

24. Bernard L. Fontana, ‘Savage Anthropologists and the Unvanishing Indians of the American Southwest,” Indian Historian 6 (Winter 1973): 5-8, 32.

Bureau of American Ethnology 45 25. Vine Deloria, Jr., Custer Died for Your Sins: An Indian Manifesto (New York: Macmillan,

1969), pp. 76ff; see also Alfonso Ortiz, ““An Indian Anthropologist’s Perspective,” Indian Historian 4 (1971): 12-13.

26. From a letter reprinted in Charles Hofmann, ed., Frances Densmore and American Indian Music: A Memorial Volume, Contributions from the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, vol. 23 (New York: Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation, 1968), p. 62. For examples of the use of the same metaphor by Franz Boas and Margaret Mead, see Rosalie Wax, Doing Fieldwork: Warnings and Advice (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 31. A brief but salient discussion of the roots of the relationship between museums, archaeology, and ethnology can be found in John R. Cole, ‘““Nineteenth Century Fieldwork, Archaeology, and Museum Studies: Their Role in the Four-Field Definition of American Anthropology,” in Murra, American Anthropology, pp. 111-25. 27. Judd, Bureau of American Ethnology, pp. 11-13, 34. 28. Nancy Oestreich Lurie, ‘‘Women in Early Anthropology,” in Pioneers of American Anthropology: The Uses of Biography, ed. June Helm (Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1966), p. 64. 29. Erika Brady et al., Introduction and Inventory, vol. 1 of The Federal Cylinder Project, ed. Dorothy Sara Lee, Studies in American Folklife, no. 3 (Washington, D.C.: American Folklife Center, 1984), pp. 42-58. 30. My dissertation contains a fuller discussion of informant and collector reaction to the phonograph and its influence on the fieldwork interaction. Erika Brady, ‘“The Box That Got the Flourishes: The Cylinder Phonograph in Folklore Fieldwork, 1890-1937” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1985). 31. Lee, Federal Cylinder Project, p. vii.

32. Dennis Hastings, ‘Reflections on the Omaha Cylinder Recordings,” in pamphlet accompanying Omaha Indian Music: Historic Recordings from the Fletcher/LaFlesche Collection,

Archive of Folk Culture recording AFC 71 (Washington, D.C.: American Folklife Center and Omaha Tribal Council, 1985), pp. 1-2. 33. Lurie, ““Women in Early Anthropology,” pp. 54-64. 34. For a full discussion of this episode, see Nancy Oestreich Lurie, ““The Lady from Boston and the Indians,”” American West 3 (1966): 31-33, 81-85. 35. Judd, Bureau of American Ethnology, p. 46.

JERROLD HIRSCH —_ Cultural Pluralism and Applied Folklore The New Deal Precedent

The movement of American folklorists into public sector work is not without precedent. And those precedents are deeper and more complex than a focus on legislation in the sixties and seventies can reveal. There is some

truth to Richard Dorson’s claim that “for better or worse, the genius of American folklore study has expressed itself in the wayward, individual collector.”! Dorson, however, ignores the attempt during the New Deal to establish national folklore institutions. More recently there have been efforts to assess the value of the Federal Writers’ Project’s (FWP) folklore work.? Little attention, however, has been given to the underlying goals of the New Deal folklore programs, the motivations of those who directed them, and the institutional pressures that helped shape them. An examination of these programs can illuminate an important episode in American folklore studies and deepen our perspective on the work of public sector folklorists. A history of public sector folklore would be broader than a history of folklore as an academic discipline. It would have to treat the wide range of goals students of folklore have had since the term folklore became common

in the United States, note the audiences students of folklore wanted to reach, and analyze their visions of the impact the study of folklore could have on public policy and culture. Because there is not yet sucha history, it is difficult to recognize the nuances that significantly distinguish related

ideas. Although New Deal folklorists used neither the term applied nor public sector folklore, they clearly saw themselves as working for the public

and thought of their “folklore research not as a private but a public function.”’3 The folklorists, however, who attended the meeting held at Point Park College in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the spring of 1971 tended to emphasize the application of academic folklore research to the solving of specific social problems.4 They did not necessarily envision a role for public sector folklorists whose work would aim to enrich American life by contributing to the nation’s understanding of its cultural diversity, what national FWP editor B.A. Botkin had described as “giving back to the people what we have taken from them and what rightfully belongs to them, in

The New Deal Precedent 47 a form which they can understand.”> Later, when Botkin began using the term applied folklore, he had in mind a broad program designed to promote intercultural understanding. Thus, the effort that led to the creation of the American Folklife Center in 1976 is closer to the vision of the New Deal folklorists than that of those folklorists who had focused on specific applications.’ Many recurring themes in recent writings on applied folklore are never explicitly developed, analyzed, or placed in a historical perspective. Those advocating applied and public sector folklore programs often talk

about breaking down stereotypes that make it difficult for different groups to understand each other.® Without indicating any conscious awareness of it, they usually share an old romantic idea that an essential unity underlies the diversity we should recognize and celebrate in the world around us. Others criticize the romantic assumption that the poor or the primitive, the slave or the worker, is more likely to utter the “truth” about the nature of life than other members of society. And both romanticism and applied folklore are criticized because they have been associated with nazism, fascism, and other militant forms of nationalism that distort and apply folklore to serve political ends. At the same time, others claim that by increasing awareness of diversity, of local, ethnic, and regional loyalties, applied folklore helps control nationalistic impulses. All share the view that the mixing of folklore and nationalism is bad, indeed evil. This outlook is buttressed by a tendency in researching the relationship between folklore and nationalism to focus on the most extreme twisting of folklore for political ends. Such studies are read as cautionary tales. Thus, while there are examinations of how Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and Soviet Russia treated folklore, there is nothing comparable to the contemporaneous New Deal and its relationship to folklore studies and national-

ism.’ Feelings, rather than careful analysis, buttress arguments that only the university can provide the setting for the exploration of purely theoretical concerns, for truly disinterested scholarship. From this point of view, the politics of the public arena distorts scholarship, and application leads to a focus on practical tasks at the expense of theoretical concerns. Such a view implicitly assumes that somehow the academy exists outside of politics and culture. On the other hand, advocates of applied folklore argue not only that ‘the ideological potential of even the most cautious folklore scholarship exists whether it is faced or not,” but also that work based in the public sector can result in a richer theoretical study than work confined to the university.1° Advocates of this position see a relationship between applied folklore and functionalist theory as opposed to what they characterize as the “taxonomic,” narrow, and relatively safe task of sticking to motif indexes, diffusion studies, and thematic analyses—and this

48 JERROLD HIRSCH reveals the bond between them and the New Deal folklorists whose public sector work was based on a functionalist approach.1! While the living presence of such folklorists as B.A. Botkin, Charles

Seeger, and Alan Lomax constituted a link between the New Deal and such recent advocates of applied folklore as Archie Green, Richard Bauman, and Bruce Jackson, the work of their predecessors has hardly been studied as part of American intellectual and cultural history, or the history of the involvement of American folklorists in the public sector. For the most part, the emphasis has not been on placing the history of American

folkloristics in as broad a cultural and intellectual context as possible. While folklorists have described the historical development of different schools of thought and clarified contending positions, they have hardly

begun to study the relationship between intellectual currents within folklore studies and those in the larger culture. An approach to the history of American folklore studies that focuses on the intellectual origins of particular theories, the contributions of various schools and individual scholars, and the debate over contending theories can help clarify issues that most immediately impinge on the concerns of working folklorists, but it is a history of American interest in its folk culture only in the narrowest sense. Employing a definition of what a folklorist is and of the folklore discipline that reflects the academic field that has been created since the Second World War anachronistically imposes contemporary definitions on a complex past. It blinds us to the wide variety of individuals who called themselves folklorists, the diverse issues and audiences they tried to address, and their participation in debates about the future of American culture, the place of tradition in modern life, and the challenge of attaining unity and social cohesion in a nation like the United States. Today folklorists echo earlier ideas about applied folklore and fighting the growth of a standardized mass culture; about folklore, modernity, and the need for roots; about folklore, romanticism, and nationalism; about folklore and cultural pluralism. Without a more conscious focus on past debates, their echoes can only create noise, not understanding. Reviewing past experience can open vistas for future work. While the relationship

between folklore, pluralism, and nationalism, cosmopolitanism and provincialism, the group and the individual, folklore and modernity concerns every student of American culture, the folklorist in the public sector constantly addresses these relationships whether conscious of it or not. These were the issues that were at the heart of New Deal folklore studies. That virtually all students of American folklore have had an agenda, ways in which they thought their studies could help create a better society, has been obscured by the relatively brief period in the fifties when folklorists based in the university sought legitimacy for their field by denying it

The New Deal Precedent 49 had an applied dimension. In the history of American folklore studies, however, interest in applied folklore has always loomed large, for one way

or another students of American folk traditions have been involved in bringing private traditions into public space. The only alternative would be to try to confine the diverse private traditions they study to an academic

ghetto. And as the New Deal folklorists argued, even then in a pluralist society that espoused democratic and egalitarian values private traditions would interact in public space. Therefore, folklorists such as B.A. Botkin and Charles Seeger talked about the need for what they called a cultural strategy, as well as for theory and interpretation, a philosophy and a vision about the function of folklore in a democratic society. ! Such distinguished folklorists as John Lomax, B.A. Botkin, Herbert Halpert, and Charles Seeger were involved in the WPA folklore programs.

The New Deal ethos contributed to their efforts to redefine the study of American folklore. The relief nature of the projects they worked on, however, contributed to the varying quality of the work collected. At the state and local level, few Federal Writers had any training in folklore. Thus,

folklorists employed in Washington, D.C. issued instructions and guidelines that had to be designed both to train local Federal Writers and to direct the work they did. By their own admission, they were not always successful. The WPA folklorists did not choose the circumstances ofa relief program for creating a national folklore project, but, despite problems, they seized the opportunity.

The very circumstances in which they worked encouraged WPA folklorists to contemplate the relationship between government and cul-

ture and between culture and democracy. In the process, they tried to redefine the study of folklore. The WPA folklore programs were part of the cultural component that complemented the New Deal’s program of political and economic reform. The Writers’ Project offers a clear illustration. All of the FWP’s programs addressed the question of how to define the term American. National FWP officials developed programs that they

thought would contribute to broadening the definition of who and what was American. Rediscovering, acknowledging, and celebrating the nation’s cultural pluralism, they thought, could provide Americans with the cultural understanding that would provide the basis for a new form of national integration that was inclusive, not exclusive, and democratic, not coercive. FWP officials thought new guides to America were needed and that ex-slaves, members of ethnic groups, urban workers, and ordinary southerners deserved an opportunity to speak directly to their fellow citizens. In this way, they intended to reopen social, cultural, and historical issues that had been covered over with clichés. They thought folklore studies would help achieve this goal. Botkin insisted the FWP had a duty to disseminate the results of its folklore studies as well as to collect material, for he believed folklore had an

50 JERROLD HIRSCH important role to play ina democratic culture. He wanted to make knowledge of a pluralistic American culture available to all Americans. ‘For the task, as we see it, is one not simply of collection but also of assimilation. In its belief in the public support of art and art for the public, in research not for research’s sake but for use and enjoyment by the many, the WPA is

attempting to assimilate folklore to the local and national life... . The WPA looks upon folklore research not as a private but as a public function, and folklore as public, not private property.”’ In his view, applied folklore made possible the link between research and democratic values. National FWP officials were part of an ethnically diverse, liberal intel-

ligentsia whose outlook was national, secular, and cosmopolitan. They developed programs that treated romantic nationalism and cultural pluralism as compatible. Disagreeing with those who maintained Americans had no folk traditions on which to build a national culture meant raising questions about the relationship between nationality, race, and culture. It would also lead to a questioning of the assumptions of an evolutionary anthropology while holding onto a romanticism that looked to the present as much as to the past for alternatives to the dominant modern culture. It meant that figures as separated in time as Emerson, Constance Rourke, and national FWP officials would make the democratic assumption that the sources of a society’s creative expression are in its ordinary citizens. National FWP officials addressed inherited as well as contemporary questions about the nature of American identity, culture, and nationality. 4 B.A. Botkin had been working on his own liberal variation on romantic nationalism even before he became national FWP folklore editor. His 1929 essay, ‘The Folk in Literature: An Introduction to the New Regionalism,” both outlined his own program for folklore studies and rejected the views of those who claimed America had no folk groups and those who found American diversity threatening. ‘There is,” he declared, “not one folk [in America] but many folk groups—as many as there are regional cultures or racial or occupational groups within a region.” Initially, Botkin approached folklore from a literary rather than an anthropological angle. However, his literary approach reflected that of the creative writer rather than that of the literary historian. He was not especially interested in the history of particular genres, nor did he think the contemporary context in which folklore was transmitted could be ignored on the grounds that the material was valuable only as evidence for reconstructing a remote past. Like other creative writers, he was interested in folklore in relation to contemporary culture. Botkin brought this point of view with him to Washington, but like his colleagues in the national FWP office, he was also influenced by the new developments in anthropology that were displacing the work of the earlier cultural evolutionists. !6 National FWP officials built on Randolph Bourne’s and Horace Kal-

len’s ideas about cultural pluralism, a “trans-national America,” and “a

The New Deal Precedent 51 federation of cultures.””!” The earlier emphasis, however, had been on an attack on genteel culture and on defending the rights of minorities to remain different. The cultural riches of diversity, they thought, undermined the argument that only in the future when an American race finally developed could a national culture be created. National FWP officials’ pluralistic and egalitarian values led them to reject the use of nationality, race, and culture as interchangeable terms. Instead they talked about ““composite America” and “the Negro as American” and “introducing America to Americans.” FWP officials were trying to define a national culture in which individuals and groups could participate as Americans while retaining their regional, ethnic, and racial identities. They saw cultural pluralism as a basis for national integration. They acknowledged and trea-

sured particular cultural differences in America—regional, ethnic, and occupational—as a counterweight to the standardizing forces of modern life. As they looked at it, for Americans of different regional or ethnic backgrounds to be interested in each other as fellow citizens was a form of cosmopolitanism. They were influenced by cultural relativism, the emphasis on a plurality of historically conditioned cultures rather than a hier-

archical evolutionary scheme of a universal culture in which different groups occupied higher and lower rungs—the idea of culture as an integrative force and the concept of acculturation, which characterized the work of Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and their students.!9 Employing definitions of culture both as high art and as an anthropological concept that stressed values and ways of living, something everyone possessed, national FWP officials concluded there was a rich indigenous culture that had grown out of the American experience. It was waiting to be rediscovered and documented. They deliberately blurred the distinction between culture as art and an anthropological view of culture. In sharp contrast to forms of cultural nationalism that were often racist, reactionary, and exclusive, the pluralist version of cultural national-

ism celebrated diversity as a source of vitality.2° Creating a climate in which cultural pluralism could be viewed as a positive American value was a triumph of a democratic and liberal New Deal nationalism.*! FWP officials conscious of developments abroad recognized the dangers of na-

tionalism. Botkin warned against chauvinistic and racist forms of nationalism with their “delusions of [racial] purity and superiority.” Nevertheless, FWP officials did not reject nationalism, but rather saw a choice between creating an inclusive national community that, as Botkin put it, sought to relate ‘the part to the whole” and an exclusive community that sought to create unity by eliminating racial and cultural differences.” It was a choice between cultural pluralism and totalitarianism. New Deal national folklore programs that embraced pluralism and democratic values were radically different from those developing in totalitarian societies. Recognizing folklore did not require purity and isolation to thrive, but that

52 JERROLD HIRSCH it could grow ina pluralistic society, national FWP officials suggested that romantic nationalism and democracy were reconcilable.

The American Guide Series is both the best known and the major published achievement of the Writers’ Project. Nevertheless, the major FWP experiments in studying folklore are in the ex-slave narratives, the life histories, the social ethnic studies, the living lore materials. The guidebook essays on folklore tended to treat folklore in America as vanishing, as dying out. Several guides published in the later years of the Writers’ Project did argue that folklore was more than survivals. The Alabama guide claimed the state was developing an industrial folklore that grew from the life and labor of working people, and the Texas essay argued that the state had a composite culture still in the process of becoming.*4 The guidebook essays on the arts were more imaginative and in their search for indigenous materials treated folk traditions and arts. For nation-

al FWP officials, an important part of the myth they were working out focused on expressive culture and was developed in guidebook essays on literature, music, drama, art, and architecture. Important figures in all the New Deal arts projects thought in the romantic nationalist terms of the dialogue about the arts they had inherited. Central questions were the artist’s relationship to his culture, the possibility of creating an indigenous American art, whether it could be made available and meaningful to ordi-

nary Americans, and the relationship between the fact of American regional and ethnic pluralism and the hope for a national art.» In the guidebook essays on the arts, these romantic nationalist aspira-

tions served as organizing assumptions and central themes but never emerged as issues to be examined. Van Wyck Brooks had often despaired that the American artist could ever be integrated into his community, that

a predominantly commercial society with a puritanical and pioneering past would ever create a national art, and that an organic culture uniting ideals and reality, theory and practice, could ever develop in America. The guidebook essays, however, look at the past and the contemporary scene in sucha way as to create optimism that the New Deal’s “quest for a cultural democracy” would lead easily to a future in which those problems had been resolved.#© The FWP offered no programs for achieving the ideal relationship described in their mythic view of the role the arts had played in the American past and could play in the future. Myths are visionary and unifying; programs, detailed and potentially divisive.2” The FWP was un-

able to face the issue of whether the revitalized American culture they hoped for could be created without changes in social and economic arrangements. The question this raises for public sector folklorists today is whether the values that underlie their efforts must be presented in the form of myths that can never address key problems and how to weigh what is lost as well as gained in such circumstances. The FWP guidebooks reflected traditional associations between trav-

The New Deal Precedent 53 el and the exploration of folk cultures, between tourist literature and a picturesque emphasis on folk cultures as exotic, quaint, and outlandish.”8 A superficial approach encourages the tourist to view folk cultures in a patronizing manner, to regard poverty as picturesque, and to miss the fact

that he, too, has folk traditions. The guides never completely shed this approach, and the class and status differences between the tourist-reader and the cultures described in the tours is embedded both in the tone in which local residents are described and in the assumptions implicit in the ways the guides address their tourist-readers. At the same time, the FWP encouraged middle-class Americans to travel not only on the grounds that America was colorful, but also because they needed to broaden their vision of the country, to develop a sense that much that they regarded as merely picturesque was something they had to know to understand their identity as Americans. This linking of diversity to national identity constituted what might be called the picturesque pluralism of the guidebooks.

Although it did not abandon the tourist approach to folk cultures and traditions, picturesque pluralism did require the traveler to relate what was described to his own identity as an American. This movement in the FWP materials between an older picturesque and a new picturesque pluralism still reflects the challenge of presenting diverse cultures to diverse audiences and discouraging the tourist response while promoting a recognition of shared identity. Although the Federal Writers gave much attention in the guide’s automobile tours to the folklife of the area the traveler would be passing through, materials are thrown together indiscriminately.*? For the most part, local Federal Writers had a better eye for folklife than they had an ear for folklore. Paradoxically, what often seemed a random juxtaposition of facts, bereft of any unifying theme or thesis, was offered as a way of demonstrating the importance of place and tradition in the modern world. Thus, it has been true for some time now that the presentation of even living traditions has a way of becoming a tribute to modernity.” Yet with this method the guides created a sense of the diversity of American landscapes in sharp contrast to an idealized Main Street that excluded many non-WASP Americans. National FWP officials worked hard to create guidebooks reflecting an ethnically and regionally diverse America. Unlike the Main Street symbol, the FWP guides did not equate American virtues, American identity, with any one group.?! While the FWP did not directly address political issues, FWP officials realized that a vision of America that encouraged guide readers to include in their definition of the

nation many that they had in the past excluded could help change the future. John Lomax, the first national FWP folklore editor, found it difficult to get state and local Writers’ Project units to understand what he meant by folklore. Genteel sensibilities were surprised at his suggestion that they

54 JERROLD HIRSCH talk with prisoners in state penitentiaries. It was an approach that grew out of the romantic nationalist view of American folklore, which was clearly stated in the folklore manual FWP workers were given. Those folklorists

who did not see that “creative activity is still functioning” the manual contemptuously referred to as snobs in search of a pedigree for a piece of folklore, people who thought culture was something only Europeans had,

and therefore, they valued “only what can be traced back to a past for which they have a nostalgia; a ballad to interest them must have an Elizabethan origin.’”” While the European origins of aspects of American culture were not denied, the FWP was more “interested in the mutations and developments wrought by transfer to a new and pioneer land.” And they valued “a recital of Clementine and her forty-niner parent above those of her Lady Claire.” This approach to folklore fitted the Project’s purpose: “The American Guide is being compiled primarily to introduce Americans to their own rich culture.’”’*?

Nevertheless, there were serious limits to how helpful Lomax’s approach could prove to Henry Alsberg’s desire to undertake oral histories, social-ethnic studies, and black studies to explore American life in greater depth than the guide series allowed. Lomax thought there was a distinctive American folklore, but he also thought modern life was destroying folk traditions. In his view, folklore was associated with the isolated life of rural communities. He regarded the “‘spread of machine civilization” as a destroyer of folk traditions; it broke down isolation and exposed members of folk cultures to other traditions and to popular culture. He saw folklore surviving only when separated from the mainstream of modern American life. Diversity and change were folklore’s enemies. It did not disturb him that to preserve folklore he implicitly consigned those at the bottom of the social scale, such as southern blacks, to permanent poverty and low status. Thus, like those who viewed folklore as a remnant of Old World culture, he arrived at the conclusion that such materials were fast disappearing. His goal was to collect American lore before it died out. In a 1938 letter to Lewis Mumford, national FWP director, Henry Alsberg explained his desire to undertake studies that would examine American life in greater depth than the guides allowed. Alsberg saw the FWP as following in the steps of Mumford’s pioneering studies of American culture. The personal interview was the key aspect of the folklore, social-

ethnic, black studies, and creative writing experiments Alsberg supported. In these studies national FWP officials found themselves trying to reconcile pluralist ideas with modernism as well as romanticism.™ It was exactly this synthesis that John Lomax could not make. There was no rela-

tionship between folklore studies as Lomax defined them and modern American life. After Lomax had left the FWP in 1937, Alsberg complained to his WPA superiors that there was no adequate direction in the folklore area. In the

The New Deal Precedent 55 spring of 1938, he hired B.A. Botkin with the idea that Botkin would help the FWP conduct the studies that would “fill in the cultural picture sketched in the American Guide Series.” They hoped to publish an “American Folklore Guide,” “A Guide to Composite America,” and a collection of exslave narratives and other black studies.» As FWP folklore editor, Botkin made it possible for the Writers’ Project to take its studies of ethnic minorities, working Americans, and AfroAmericans in new directions. He saw ways to add a folklore perspective to the journalistic and sociological traditions associated with the life history. For him folklore was more than survivals from an earlier and inferior state of cultural development or material that was brought from elsewhere. He worked out an approach that rather than regarding American folklore as disappearing saw it as something still being created—in the city as well as in the country, in the factory as well as in the fields. He and other WPA folklorists found ways to be both cultural pluralists and romantic nationalists. In their view, American diversity contributed to the richness of American lore. Botkin insisted there was an American folklore, not just folklore in America, as the survivalist Alexander Krappe claimed.* Botkin argued

that “in the very process of transplanting, these imported cultures and traditions have undergone changes that make them a new creation.”°” In the modern world, Botkin claimed, not only geography but the social structure itself produces the isolation and separation out of which comes a

folklore of the educated as well as the uneducated.** Given these theoreti- , cal assumptions, Botkin, unlike Lomax, did not think modernity threatened folklore. Rather he thought the creative impulse was alive and wellin the modern world and that “for every form of folk fantasy that dies, anew one is being created, as culture in decay is balanced by folklore in the making.’’%?

In the FWP folklore studies Botkin directed, he drew a connection between what he earlier had termed folk and culture literature that fit with the FWP’s romantic nationalism.“ But beyond “‘folk-say” as literature and folklore as a component of the sociological life history, he moved toward an idea of folklore and life histories as a contribution to folk history.*! This

was a social history told from a folk perspective, for, as he put it after editing the FWP ex-slave narratives, he envisioned a new American history, “ahistory from the bottom up,” based on the assumption “‘that history must study the inarticulate many as well as the articulate few.” After becoming FWP folklore editor, Botkin set to work to create a Joint WPA Folklore Committee.** The committee’s first publication was Robert Winslow Gordon’s Folksongs of America (1938), which had first appeared as a series of articles in the New York Times Magazine in 1928 and 1929.44 Gordon argued that folk songs were still being created in America, that American folk songs consisted of more than ballads, that modern folk songs could be analyzed to determine the role of both an author and a folk

56 JERROLD HIRSCH group in creating them, and that popular culture influenced the creation and transmission of folk songs in modern America.® Publication of Gordon’s work honored a pioneering folklorist, provided arguments for the committee’s approach, and constituted a declaration of their values. Within the WPA informal discussions went on concerning the folklore material being collected. Experts on folklore, folk music, and the folk arts

exchanged information regarding collecting, preserving, and utilizing these materials. An equal emphasis on utilization meant that representatives from the WPA recreation and education division needed to be involved as well as those from the Writers’, Music, Theatre, and Art Projects. WEA officials regarded folklore as having a social and educational dimension. In this they built on progressive ideas about culture. Like John Dewey they thought of art as a social activity, an experience that should be made available to all citizens in a democracy. Botkin was elected chairman, and Charles Seeger, an ethnomusicologist with the Federal Music Project, vice-chairman of the Joint WPA Folklore Committee.*” The choice

of Botkin and Seeger can be viewed, in part, as representative of the cultural politics of left of center intellectuals. The Depression led Botkin to explore increasingly the social relevance of folklore and literature. Seeger, on the other hand, had held a firm set of leftist positions that led him to think of music as a propaganda weapon in the class struggle and to regard folk music with hostility because, in his view, it was a product of a bourgeois society, was not revolutionary, and was often defeatist. While working for the New Deal, he either modified or abandoned all these positions, while remaining on the left. An emphasis on cultural pluralism and relativism, and an insistence that music outside the high art tradition in the West had to be evaluated by standards other than those of western classical music, became his guiding principles.

The Joint Committee made arrangements for Herbert Halpert, a folklorist connected with the Federal Theatre Project (FTP), to undertake a

recording expedition in the southern states. The trip grew out of the work Halpert was doing with the FTP. It also reflected the intense interest the South held during the Depression for folklorists, liberal and leftist intellectuals, and New Dealers. Some individuals, such as Halpert, Seeger, and Botkin, fit all three categories. As head of the music research department, Halpert gave considerable

thought to the use of folk song in FTP productions. He shared national FTP director Hallie Flannagan’s belief that a government-sponsored theater should be “national in scope, regional in emphasis and American in democratic attitude.’”°° It would be a theater that would deal with contemporary issues as well as historical ones, and the latter as well as the former could utilize an appropriate folk music. Researching published folk-song material, Halpert discovered that collectors had concentrated on some regions at the expense of others.

The New Deal Precedent 57 From the FTP’s point of view, there were too few published melodies and

inordinate emphasis on English and Scottish ballads at the expense of indigenous American folk song. Theatre Project workers could find no appropriate music in any published collection for their Living Newspaper production Power. That play dealt with the Tennessee Valley Authority and the promise and impact of rural electrification. There had to be more songs sung than the published material indicated, for a program like TVA “had affected the lives of many mountain people. It was a part of their lives just as folksongs were part of their way of examining life.’’>! In his work with the FTP, Halpert discovered that many collectors had

not published the songs they had gathered because publishers were unwilling to take on the expense since they assumed there was little demand for folklore. Halpert, like other WPA folklorists, wanted to publish folk songs in inexpensive volumes that would be made available to the general public. The FTP published a mimeographed volume of Folk Tunes of Mississippt, which sold for twenty-five cents. It was the first of what Halpert Saw as a continuing series. George Herzog, a specialist in primitive and

folk music, edited the materials and employed a musical rather than a literary classification system. Halpert thought that this was probably the first time anyone in the United States had tried to classify songs in sucha manner. Herzog provided commentary, but this was confined to the foreward and the appendix. As Halpert phrased it, Herzog “did not forget that folksongs are for the people.”’*?

Along with the work of the Joint Committee, Botkin also saw the folklore manual he wrote as a step toward creating a national folklore archive. The manual reflected Botkin’s strong grounding in anthropological theory, his functionalist approach, his conviction that folklore was still being created, and his interest in urban and industrial lore. In it he developed his views of the relation between lore and the way of life from which it emerges and ideas about lore and its relation to creative expres-

sion. Botkin saw serious problems in the methodology of American folklorists who “are content to rest their claims for folklore as an historical science on the use of the historical method in general and on the geographical-historical method of the Finnish school in particular.’””°3 The question

was whether such a method fit American circumstances or if it did not indeed tend to create a false picture of American folklore, for it led primarily to the study of the survival in America of folklore from elsewhere.

Reed Smith, a ballad scholar at the University of South Carolina, warned Botkin to be careful not to straitjacket American folklore in a Euro-

pean-inspired classification system. ‘“What would be admirable for a small cohesive country like Denmark, Finland, or Scotland, would not,” Smith maintained, “‘suit what Whitman called ‘these United States’ in which the East, South, the Middle West, and the Far West are almost separate countries.” Smith stressed regional diversity, but his phrase, ‘’small

58 JERROLD HIRSCH cohesive countries,” suggests he also thought these European countries were more ethnically and racially homogeneous than America. In his view, “no small part of the value of the WPA work in the folklore field is the

discovery and recording of new and diverse material.’ Botkin shared Smith’s conviction that Old World categories obscured American cultural realities and created the illusion that the United States lacked an indigenous folklore, when, in fact, American folklore was something both new and diverse, something that would eventually force European and American folklorists to rethink the basic concepts that guided

their work. Aware of this, Botkin sought in his manual to alert fieldworkers to the kind of materials to look for, rather than how to classify what they found. Although Botkin thought FWP publications should aim for the general reader before the specialist, he advised fieldworkers to maintain “‘a high standard of accuracy as well as interest.’”” All material, Botkin instructed, should come from oral sources, and fieldworkers should record it “exactly

as heard.” Do not collect material, Botkin told fieldworkers, unless the reason for collecting it has been thought out. ‘Every collection,” he insisted, “should have a purpose and reason for existence. It should be tied up with the life of the community or group and of the individual informant as part of the community or group.” The manual instructed fieldworkers to submit complete field notes from every interview together with a personal history of the informant. Botkin’s manual also offered a definition of “Folklore: Its Nature and Study,” which can still stand scholarly scrutiny. Folklorist Kenneth Goldstein has called it one of the best short descriptive statements available

about the field. It was written, however, not for scholars, but to introduce relief workers assigned to the Federal Writers’ Project to the study of folklore. To capture the tone as well as the content of Botkin’s definition, it is necessary to quote from the manual. ‘Folklore is a body of traditional belief, custom and expression handed down largely by word of mouth and circulating chiefly outside of commercial and academic means of communication and instruction. Every group bound together by common in-

terests and purposes, whether educated or uneducated, rural or urban, possesses a body of traditions which may be called its folklore. Into these traditions may enter many elements, individual, popular, and even ‘literary,’ but all are absorbed and assimilated through repetition and variation into a pattern which has value and continuity for the group as a whole.” Botkin thought it was impossible in most cases to locate the origins of a piece of folklore. Instead, he stressed that Federal Writers try to learn as

much as possible about “its history and use in relation to the past and present experience of the people who keep it alive.” Informants were important not because they could help reveal the origins of their repertoire,

The New Deal Precedent 59 but because an item of folklore when examined in connection with its history and use helps reveal “the function and meaning which folklore has to

those who use it and enhances its interest and significance for others.” Therefore, collecting folklore should not be like collecting living butterflies who removed from their environment become dead illustrations of a classification system. The challenge as Botkin saw it was how to collect and publish folklore without killing it. The functionalist approach provided part of the answer: “Just as

a folk song or folk tale cannot be said to have a real existence apart from its singing or telling, so in all folklore collections the foreground, or lore, must be constantly related to the background or life.” A diverse American folklore would come alive for a diverse American audience when they knew enough about its relationship to American life to incorporate it into their sense of American identity, culture, and nationality. The FWP folklore program, Botkin hoped, would contribute to intercultural understanding, a revitalized American art, a deeper understanding of American history, and the creation of an inclusive and democratic community. The study of the existence and vitality of urban and industrial folklore and life involved not only the questioning of traditional concepts governing folklore studies, but also a statement about the possibilities of creating

a viable modern culture. Botkin, unlike Lomax, could welcome modern cultural developments, for in his variation on romantic nationalism, he held out the hope that though a cultural unity that had existed in the past could not be restored, a new form of unity could be attained by going forward. Botkin saw his role on the FWP as one not only of studying the process, but also of aiding it. Thus, it was natural for him to try to involve creative writers on the FWP in the study of urban and industrial lore with the goal of revitalizing their art, closing the breach between what he labeled folk literature and culture literature, and creating a literature that could

help bring about a healthier society. This was for him a logical step in applied folklore. He worked closely with Living Lore Units in New England, Chicago, and New York.*%

Botkin’s social concerns meshed easily with those of Sterling Brown, FWP Negro affairs editor, and Morton Royse, FWP social-ethnic studies editor, forin the oral history projects FWP officials conducted, they played on the theme that interviewing ordinary people had a democratic import

and that the reader needed to acknowledge both the importance of undistinguished individuals and that these individuals were fellow citizens. During the thirties the link between democratic values, a reformist outlook, and the life history method was firmly established. In a democracy, FWP officials maintained, everyone had a right to be heard. Such studies gave voice to points of view that had been undocumented. In the life histo-

ries, the FWP tried to create a sense of community between the person

60 JERROLD HIRSCH being interviewed and the reader and to suggest that the situation the interviewee was in was largely not of his making and demanded social and economic reform.*” Both Botkin and Brown rejected what they termed as the contributions

approach to the study of Negro culture and history. That approach, they argued, treated the Negro asa group set apart from the life of white America, thus reinforcing the idea of separateness. A focus on Negro problems led to a depiction of black culture as undergoing disorganization and decay as it tried to cope with modern life. The contributions approach reinforced the idea that distinguished individuals in the group being examined were contributing to a group with a superior culture. Those who emphasized social problems tended to assume a folk culture could not adapt to American life. In arguing for a view that stressed black participation in American life, Botkin and Brown were denying the validity of these assumptions. They focused on the Afro-American as a participant in American society, an integral part of American life. Whether as slaves or as a segregated group, blacks had participated in creating American culture, and their experience was part of the American experience.°’ Similarly, the focus in the social-ethnic studies Morton Royse directed was on participation and acculturation rather than on individual leaders and contributions. Both Brown and Royse worked closely with Botkin on integrating a folklore component into their studies, for all were interested in the relationship, as Botkin put it, between “ways of living and ways of making a living.””*? Work on such projects, Botkin thought, would provide training for creative writers as well as produce a new type of social history. For Botkin applied folklore always had both a social and a scholarly dimension, an artistic as well as a historical aspect. The value of the FWP oral history projects to historians and folklorists is beginning to be discovered. The value of these materials as literature is less clear. One problem is that the bulk of this material remains unpublished. In the scholarly work on American literature, the FWP hardly exists as an episode in American writing. There are occasional references, particularly to the fact that this or that important writer served on the Writers’ Project. There are no studies of FWP creative writing, nor are there bibliographies on the sub-

ject. Even the recent publication of some of the folklore research Ralph Ellison did while he served on the FWP’s New York City Living Lore Unit

has stimulated little inquiry.°! For the most part, it seems that while the Federal Writers contributed to the discovery of new materials, they developed no means for giving form to what they had uncovered and to their attitudes toward their materials. Ellison was an exception. In Invisible Man (1952), Ellison found a way to create a work of art that

in its very structure wrestled with all the issues that had preoccupied the FWP: the nature of the relationship between the individual and the folk

The New Deal Precedent 61 group, provincialism and cosmopolitanism, tradition and modernity, the fact of diversity and the need for unity. Ellison found, as Botkin had argued, that folklore was also a part of contemporary urban life. The Invisible Man achieves a cosmopolitan view of the world when he accepts his own provincial background, while at the same time celebrating his ties to other Americans. Like FWP officials the Invisible Man argues for pluralism as a way of preserving democratic liberalism in an increasingly totalitarian world. Ellison’s Invisible Man uses an image Franklin Roosevelt had employed: ““America is woven of many strands and I would recognize them and let it so remain. ’’®

From what many regarded only as fragments, evidence of cultural disintegration, national FWP officials envisioned the possibility of a new form of unity developing that allowed for differences. To attain this goal, they thought it was essential to let Americans speak to each other through their folklore and the recounting of their life histories. They focused on

cultural minorities and used individual members of the group as informants about cultures in a state of transition. Folk cultures, Botkin argued, were not merely a part of the American past, not something behind us, but below us, submerged. They were “not static but dynamic and transitional, on their way up.” Reading this, it is not hard to see Ellison’s Invisible Man residing underground, not behind us, “but right under us. Below the sur-

face.” At the end of the novel, he is on the way up, affirming pluralist diversity and life in America as possibility, as a process of becoming, reminding us that the black experience is part of every American’s experi-

ence.

In some ways, the use scholars will make in the future of the legacy of the FWP is becoming clearer. Both folklorists and historians are busy digging into and assessing unpublished FWP studies. The large number of American historians trying to answer questions about the life of ordinary people in the past almost guarantees that there will be an increasing exploration of the uses of FWP materials. The growth of social history itself reflects the breakdown in the sixties of a shared social consensus and the effect that had on the way a new generation of historians viewed studies that assumed an American mind, a holistic nationalism based on sources that did not reflect the nation’s class, ethnic, racial, and regional diversity. As one historian has noted: “The notion of America has become a matter of controversy. Many generalizations made about it in the past are now

felt to apply only to distinctive groups within American society.’ Such developments make it unclear whether scholars will find the vision that informed the FWP’s work relevant and challenging.

While national FWP officials were dissatisfied with definitions of

American identity that gave low status to many of the nation’s inhabitants, they, unlike the new social historians, were intensely concerned with the idea of America. The end they envisioned was not simply a greater under-

62 JERROLD HIRSCH standing of social change, processes, and structures, but a flowering of American culture growing out of a more inclusive, egalitarian, and democratic community in which all citizens participated. They were not only scholars; they were also contributors to a New Deal cultural reform program. It is too easy to forget how radical the idea of a diverse and inclusive community seemed to many Americans, and still does to some. And yet, paradoxically, the work of the FWP and other New Deal cultural efforts can be seen as a precursor of the post-World War II consensus approach to American history and culture. Nevertheless, it also left an important heritage for future reform and radical movements. National FWP officials were conscious of the difference between fascist cultural developments and the pluralistic romantic nationalism they were seeking to develop out of American traditions. A pluralistic synthesis of provincialism and cosmopolitanism was reformist, potentially radical, and a way of preserving liberalism in an increasingly totalitarian world. As B.A. Botkin put it, ‘False national culture, with its delusions of purity and superiority, may require closed doors, but not true folk culture, for culture, like love, laughs at locksmiths.”© Such a vision can challenge fixed notions of America by linking the reality of pluralism with democratic values and by treating American diversity as a continuing source of cultural renewal—in short, by repeatedly addressing the question inherent in all the FWP interviews, the same question the Invisible Man poses at the end of his story—’”’Who

knows but that, on the lower frequencies, I speak for you?” Then the FWP’s idea of America, not as a holistic concept but as both diversity and wholeness, becomes relevant to a new social history, a new applied folklore, and a new sense of community. The WPA folklorists tried as best they could to give the United States national folklore institutions and to develop a large-scale folklore publication program aimed at the general public. That they failed was nota reflection on them, but on a Congress unwilling to see the government assume cultural responsibilities that are taken for granted elsewhere. Congress had acted in response to national adversity, not out of a concern for national cultural institutions. In all areas of the humanities and social sciences, scholars thinking about the idea of public sector work have had a tendency to focus on the factors that could limit and distort scholarship. Yet no scholar operates in ideal circumstances, whatever they might be, or without institutional constraints, and it is a dangerous illusion to think either academia or the public sector a better arena for the folklorist. Both roles serve different and legitimate needs. The interesting historical question is the creative response of scholars to the constraints they face, the challenges of their time, and it is also the enduring challenge contemporary scholars must con-

The New Deal Precedent 63 front, for when it is not addressed, it has a way of vitiating scholarly activity.

Not bounded by the constraints of English or anthropology departments, New Deal folklorists were able to formulate broad theoretical questions that treated folklore as both literature and anthropology, as a study that could speak to a general audience about both history and contemporary American life and that could contribute to the power of art as well as

scholarship to interpret American life. Nor was the vision of New Deal folklorists fragmented by a bureaucracy trying to assign folklore either toa committee on the humanities or to an arts commission. New Deal folklorists were, however, limited by the fact that, for the most part, they could not choose their employees; they had to deal with state and local employees who either did not understand or rejected their vision. In the circumstances in which New Deal folklorists worked, pluralism contributed to a reform atmosphere; but in ways they could not foresee, a celebration of democracy and diversity became in a more conservative time a shibboleth easily repeated, while the realities of discrimination and inequality were not confronted. Botkin talked about the place of folklore in a democratic and progressive society in a period when liberal and radical folklorists employed by the WPA knew their work rode ona wave of political, social, and economic experimentation and contributed to a favorable climate for reform without having to be programmatic. Indeed, the House Un-American Activities Committee’s attack on the FWP and the Federal Theatre Project reflected HUAC’s unwillingness to accept a definition of American culture as unfinished, as still in a state of becoming, because such a view constituted a challenge to the status quo.® In a conservative political climate, linking folklore studies that acknowledge pluralism to

democratic values in ways that can make them a continuing source of cultural renewal and political, social, and economic reform constitutes a somewhat different challenge; the WPA scholars, nevertheless, have a relevant place in this inherited as well as contemporary discussion. A history of applied folklore in the United States has much to offer not only to students of American intellectual and cultural history, but also to public sector folklorists. It can help them assess the results of previous experiments in applied folklore and, perhaps more important, give them a vision of the possibilities inherent in such work. And developing an informing rationale for public sector folklore is a more pressing task than refining techniques. A concern with the latter should not be allowed to get in the way of confronting the former task. The WPA folklorists have left not only folklore materials that need to be assessed, but also a body of theory about the role state-supported folklorists can play ina democracy. The real danger in such work is not in having a cultural strategy, but in either denying one has such a strategy or in failing to make it explicit.

64 JERROLD HIRSCH The work of the WPA demonstrates that a state-supported folklore program does not have to be chauvinistic and that thinking about the role of folklore in a modern democratic society can lead to rich theoretical insights. Indeed, thinking about a public audience, rather than a scholarly one, helped WPA folklorists develop a cultural strategy that is still relevant

both to the development of theories about American folklore and to the development of applied folklore, for the issues they focused on—the relationship between the individual and the folk group, provincialism and cosmopolitanism, tradition and modernity, and the fact of pluralism and the need for unity—seem a permanent aspect of American life and central questions for all folklorists. For WPA folklorists these issues reflected their concerns as citizens and scholars trying to understand the nature of Amer-

ican identity, nationality, and culture and their awareness that as public folklorists they had to contemplate the relationship between government and culture and culture and democracy. NOTES 1. Richard Dorson, ‘Folklore Research Opportunities,” in Folklore and the American Historian (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971), p. 113. 2. A growing number of folklorists are trying to assess and use WPA folklore materials

rather than dismiss them because of their limitations. See, for example, Amanda Dargan and Steve Zeitlin, ‘“American Talkers: Expressive Styles and Occupational Choice,” Journal of American Folklore 96 (1983): 3-33; and Roger Welsch, comp., A Treasury of Nebraska Pioneer Folklore (Lincoln: Univ. of Nebraska Press, 1966). 3. B.A. Botkin, ‘“WPA and Folklore Research: Bread and Song,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 3 (1939): 10.

4, Dick Sweterlitsch, “Applied Folklore: The Debate Goes On,” Folklore Forum 4 (Jan.March 1971): 15-18; idem, ed., Papers on Applied Folklore, Folklore Forum Bibliographic and Spe-

cial Series, no. 8, 1971. 5. Botkin, ‘““WPA and Folklore Research,” p. 10. 6. B.A. Botkin, “Applied Folklore: Creating Understanding Through Folklore,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 17 (1953): 199-206.

7. Archie Green, “Introduction,” in Linda C. Coe, comp., Folklife and the Federal Government: A Guide to Activities, Resources, Funds, and Services (Washington, D.C.: Publications of the American Folklore Society, no. 1, Library of Congress, 1977), pp. 1-9.

8. Two landmarks revealing the development of applied and public sector folklore are Sweterlitsch, ed., Papers on Applied Folklore, and the papers in ‘Folklore and the Public Sector,” Kentucky Folklore Record 26 (1980).

9. Christa Kamenetsky, “Folklore as a Political Tool in Nazi Germany,” Journal of American Folklore 85 (1972): 221-35; William E. Simeone, “Fascists and Folklorists in Italy,” Journal of American Folklore 91 (1978): 543-57.

10. Henry and Betty-Jo Glassie, ‘The Implications of Folkloristic Thought for Historic Zoning Ordinances,” in Sweterlitsch, Papers on Applied Folklore, p. 31. 11. Bruce Jackson, “Folklore and the Social Sciences,” in Sweterlitsch, p. 15. 12. Charles Seeger to Walter Spivacke, April 4, 1940, Box 212, Federal Writers’ Project

files, Works Progress Administration Records Group 69, National Archives, Washington, D.C., (hereinafter FWPNA); Botkin, ‘“Applied Folklore,” p. 206. 13. Botkin, ‘“WPA and Folklore Research,” p. 10.

The New Deal Precedent 65 14. On the relationship between pluralism and cosmopolitanism among American intellectuals see David Hollinger, “Ethnic Diversity, Cosmopolitanism and the Emergence of the American Liberal Intelligentsia,” American Quarterly 27 (1975): 133-51. In trying to understand romantic nationalism in the United States, I have relied heavily on Charles C. Alexander, Here the Country Lies: Nationalism and the Arts in Twentieth Century America (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1980), especially pp. 1-71. In my dissertation I examine the background and outlook of key national FWP officials. See Jerrold Hirsch, ‘Portrait of America: The Federal Writers’ Project in an Intellectual and Cultural Context” (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1984),” pp. 30-67. 15. B.A. Botkin, ‘““The Folk in Literature: An Introduction to the New Regionalism,” in idem, ed., Folk-Say: A Regional Miscellany (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1929), pp. 9-20.

16. Botkin was a poet before he was a folklorist. His poetry appeared in magazines such as Southwest Review, Panorama, Prairie Schooner, and in his Folk-Say volumes and in Space, the

experimental literary journal he edited. His ideas about literature, folklore, anthropology, and their interrelationship are explored in depth in Hirsch, ‘Portrait of America,” see especially pp. 326-50, 425-609.

17. Randolph Bourne, ‘“Trans-National America,” Atlantic Monthly 108 (July 1916): 91. On Kallen and thirties pluralism, see R. Alan Lawson, The Failure of Independent Liberalism (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), pp. 149-54. 18. The term composite America was used repeatedly in connection with the social-ethnic studies. ‘The Portrait of the Negro as American” was a study that FWP Negro affairs editor Sterling Brown directed. See the lists of planned work in the social-ethnic studies file Box 191 and the Negro studies file Boxes 200 and 201 FWPNA,; “The American Guide and the American Guide Series: Their Task—To Introduce America to Americans,” n.d., Box 74, FWPNA. 19. Correspondence between Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and national FWP director Henry Alsberg can be found in Box 196, FWPNA. See also George W. Stocking, Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 64-90, 195-233.

20. For an account of the development of a racist and chauvinistic form of nationalism, see George L. Mosse, The Nationalization of the Masses: Political Symbolism and Mass Movements in Germany from the Napoleonic Wars through the Third Reich (New York: H. Fertig, 1975).

21. B.A. Botkin, national FWP folklore editor, was a contributor to The Problems of a Changing Population, report of the committee on population problems to the National Resources Committee, May 1938 (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1938). The theme of cultural pluralism as an alternative to totalitarianism is clearly developed in chapter 9, ‘Cultural Diversity in American Life,” pp. 224-52. 22. B.A. Botkin, ‘The Folk and the Individual: Their Creative Reciprocity,” English Journal 27 (1938): 131.

23. Ibid., p. 125. 24. Writers’ Program, Alabama, A Guide to the Deep South (New York: Richard R. Smith, 1941), p. 129; Writers’ Program, Texas: A Guide to the Lone Star State (New York: Hastings House, 1940). 25. See, for example, Francis V. O’Connor, ed., Art for the Millions: Essays from the 1930s by Artists and Administrators of the WPA Federal Art Project (Greenwich, Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973). For an extended examination of the guidebook essays on the arts, see Hirsch, ‘Portrait of America,” pp. 127-57. 26. Jane DeHart Mathews, “Arts and the People: The New Deal Quest for a Cultural Democracy,” Journal of American History 62 (1975): 316-39, describes the quest in relation to the

Federal Art Project, the Federal Theatre Project, and the Federal Music Project but only touches on the Writers’ Project. See also “Portraits of the United States: The Arts and the Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration,” publicity release, n.d., Box 83, Works Progress Administration, Division of Information Files, Records Group 69, National Archives, Washington, D.C.

66 JERROLD HIRSCH 27. Warren I. Susman, “History and the American Intellectual: Uses of a Usable Past,” American Quarterly 16 (1964): 244, 245-48, offers useful distinctions between myth and ideology; myths in complex societies seek to provide grounds for unity, while ideology focuses on

particular interests and aims to bring about social change. 28. The following works have helped me understand the picturesque qualities of the guidebook automobile tours: Nancy K. Hill, A Reformer’s Art: Dickens’ Picturesque and Grotesque Imagery (Athens: Ohio Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 12-29; and Charles Rosen and Henri Zerner, ‘Enemies of Realism,” New York Review of Books 29 (March 4, 1983): 31-32.

29. The national FWP office issued instructions on using folklore in the American Guide Series automobile tours. See Supplementary Instructions No. 9-A to the American Guide Manual, July 27, 1936, Box 69, and Supplementary Instructions No. 16 to the American Guide Manual, Oct. 21, 1936, Box 70, FWPNA. National FWP director Henry Alsberg’s disappointment with the initial results are revealed in his correspondence with state FWP directors. See, for example, Alsberg to George Rollins, acting director Illinois FWP, Oct. 6, 1936, Box 193, FWPNA,; and Alsberg to John Lyons, director Wisconsin FWP, Dec. 12, 1937, as quoted in William F. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts: The Origins and Administrative History of the Arts Projects of the Works Progress Administration (Columbus: Ohio State Univ. Press, 1969), p. 708. 30. On this theme see Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 1977), p. 76; and Dean McCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken Books, 1976), pp. 13, 45, 56, 83. 31. On the cultural history of Main Street as an American symbol, see D.W. Meinig, “Symbolic Landscapes: Some Idealizations of Ordinary Landscapes,” in idem, ed., The Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1979) p. 178.

32. John Lomax, Supplementary Instructions No. 9 to the American Guide Manual, ‘Folklore and Folk Customs,” March 12, 1936; and No. 9C, “Folklore and Folk Customs— Example,” Aug. 4, 1936, Box 69, FWPNA. 33. John Lomax, Adventures of a Ballad Hunter (New York: Macmillan, 1947), pp. 128-29;

PP. XXVi, XXVIl, XXX, XXX]. .

John A. and Alan Lomax, eds., American Ballads and Folk Songs (New York: Macmillan, 1934),

34. Alsberg to Lewis Mumford, Oct. 4, 1938, Box 195, FWPNA.

35. Alsberg to Ellen Woodward, assistant WPA administrator, July 22, 1938, Box 195, FWPNA. 36. Alexander Haggerty Krappe, “’ ‘American’ Folklore,” in B.A. Botkin, ed., Folk-Say: A Regional Miscellany (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1930), pp. 291-97. 37. Botkin, Folk-Say, p. 16. 38. Botkin, ‘‘The Folkness of the Folk,” pp. 464-65. 39. Ibid., p. 469. See also B.A. Botkin, ““Manual For Folklore Studies,” Aug. 15, 1938, Box

69; and “Social-ethnic Studies Manual,” Sept. 1938, Box 191, FWPNA. . 40. Botkin, ‘Folk in Literature,” pp. 9-10; and idem, “We Called It ‘Living Lore,’ ” New York Folklore Quarterly 14 (1958): 189-98.

41. Botkin, ‘We Called It ‘Living Lore,’” p. 197; and idem, ‘Folklore as a Neglected Source of Social History,” in Caroline Ware, ed., The Cultural Approach to History (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1940), pp. 308-15. 42. Botkin, Lay My Burden Down: A Folk History of Slavery (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1945), p. xiii. 43. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts, p. 719; Susan Dwyer-Shick, “The Development of Folklore and Folklife Research on the Federal Writers’ Project, 1935-1943,” Keystone Folklore Record 20 (1975): pp. 18-20.

44. B.A. Botkin to Robert W. Gordon, Dec. 28, 1938, Box 195, FWPNA. 45. See the discussion of Gordon’s workin D.K. Wilgus, Anglo-American Folksong Scholarship Since 1898 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1959), pp. 110-13.

46. Herbert Halpert to Botkin, Oct. 4, 1938; ‘Draft, Coordinating Committee on Living

The New Deal Precedent 67 Folklore, Folkmusic and Folk Art, Federal Project Number One, Works Progress Administration,” Nov. 23, 1938, Box 195, FWPNA. 47. Minutes—First Meeting Joint Committee on Folk Arts W.P.A., Dec. 7, 1938, Box 195, FWPNA. 48. Richard Reuss, ‘The Roots of American Left-Wing Interest in Folksong,” Labor History 12 (1971): 268-72; Ann M. Pescatello, s.v. ““Seeger: American Family of Musicians,” in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 6th edn. 49. McDonald, Federal Relief Administration and the Arts, p. 720.

50. Herbert Halpert, ‘Federal Theatre and Folksong,” Southern Folklore Quarterly 2 (1938): 81.

51. Ibid., p. 82. 52. Ibid., p. 84. 53. Botkin, ‘“Manual for Folklore Studies.” 54. Reed Smith to Botkin, Dec. 21, 1938, as quoted in Botkin, ““We Called It ‘Living Lore,’ ” p. 195. 55. Interview with Kenneth Goldstein, Oct. 1982. 56. For a more detailed analysis, see Hirsch, ‘Portrait of America,” pp. 373-81, 489-539, 595-652; Botkin, ‘“We Called It ‘Living Lore’ ”; and B.A. Botkin, “ ‘Living Lore’ on the New York City Writers’ Project,” New York Folklore Quarterly 2 (1946): 252-63.

57. The FWP’s most famous life history publication is FWP, These Are Our Lives (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1939). My discussion draws heavily on William Stott, Documentary Expression and Thirties America (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1973). 58. B.A. Botkin review of Sterling Brown, The Negro in American Fiction and Negro Poetry

and Drama (both published Washington, D.C.: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1937), in Opportunity 17 (June 1939): p. 184. See also Brown outline of ‘Portrait of the Negro As American” and other Negro studies in Box 200 and 201, FWPNA. See also Hirsch, “Portrait of America,” pp. 523-61. 59. Botkin, ‘“Manual for Folklore Studies.” 60. Robert E. Spiller, et al., Literary History of the United States, 4th rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 1255-66, 1270, 1313. This is a standard work in the field that treats the FWP in cursory fashion. 61. The details of Ellison’s experience on the FWP are noted in Robert G. O’Meally, The Craft of Ralph Ellison (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1980). Examples of the work he did on the New York City Project can be found in Ann Banks, ed., First Person America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1980). 62. See letter Franklin D. Roosevelt to Paul Green, president of the National Folk Festival, as quoted in Botkin, ‘We Called it ‘Living Lore,’ ” p. 193. 63. Botkin, ‘“Folk and the Individual,” p. 126. 64. David A. Hollinger, ““American Intellectual History: Issues for the 1980s,” Reviews in American History 10 (Dec. 1982): 310.

65. Botkin, ‘Folk and the Individual,” p. 131. 66. On HUAC and the Writers’ Project, see Hirsch, “Portrait of America,” pp. 214-49.

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Three Contemporary

Public Sector

Folklife Programs

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PEGGY A. BULGER ~~ esSsSsSsSsSsSsssSSsSSssSSSSsSsSSSSS

Folklife Programs in Florida

The Formative Years

Many folklorists in academe were skeptical when Pennsylvania employed the first state folklorist in 1966, fearing that publicly supported programs

in folklife might somehow muddy the waters of “serious” scholarship. Over the years, however, government support of folklife research and presentation has provided invaluable public visibility for our field of study, and public sector folklorists have earned the respect of academics who once feared the popularization of folk culture. Today we can count over forty state folklife offices, several regional centers, and national efforts such as the American Folklife Center, the Smithsonian Institution’s Folklife Office, and the National Council for the Traditional Arts, all promoting folk culture through public programming. Most of this activity has

been institutionalized in the short time span of less than ten years, but it has emerged from years of lobbying and foundation-building. Although each situation is unique, by examining the case of Florida, I hope to outline

some of the concerns and issues important to the field as a whole. The political pressures and social trends that created the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs are the same forces that fostered publicly supported folklife work during the New Deal, created a popular folk revival movement in the fifties and sixties, and continue to shape public sector folklife programs today. In recognizing the guiding principles of folklore scholarship as they have been interpreted and used in recent years by scholars, collectors, practitioners, and enthusiasts, we may then perceive the ways in which these tenets have been shaped by the programs that aim to present folk culture to a mass audience. In this essay I will be joining historical analysis and description with personal experience to trace the evolution of folklife programming in Florida. Moreover, I will refer to events on a national level as they relate to the Florida situation, paying heed to the ways in which they have influenced the development of programming in the state. In 1976, when I came to Florida as the state folk arts coordinator, three strong forces were at work. The bicentennial celebrations planned for the nation and the state had created an interest in American culture, and folk culture in particular; the Florida Folk Festival was in its twenty-third year,

79 PEGGY A. BULGER being an entrenched institution of Florida’s folk revival; and a young, innovative arts administrator was hired as the director of the Stephen Foster Center in White Springs. These three factors were crucial to the original appointment of a folklorist to work in Florida. Guided by the advice of such public sector pioneers as Archie Green, Alan Jabbour, Bess Hawes, and Ralph Rinzler, Florida bureaucrats recognized the need to hire a professional folklorist to serve a public need and to develop folk arts programming in the state. This fact notwithstanding, the conception of a folklorist’s role remained obscure to the Florida Fine Arts Council, which funded the position for its initial year; the Stephen Foster Center, which housed the position; and the public, who would be affected by the position, the majority being participants at the Florida Folk Festival. More importantly, the role of public sector folklorist was new both to the discipline as a whole and to me in particular. Three years later, when the first ‘Folklore and the Public Sector” conference was held at Western Kentucky University, I delivered a paper entitled “Defining the Folk Arts for the Working Folklorist.”! I had spent those first three years in Florida grappling with the task of educating the public, the state bureaucracy, and the Florida Fine Arts Council as to the nature of folk arts and why they should be supported in the public sector. Like many of my colleagues, I was isolated and cast adrift as the single staff member of the Florida Folk Arts Program. This isolation contrasts sharply

: with the halcyon days of graduate school comradery. Unfortunately, our academic training rarely prepares us for an active advocacy role as public sector employees, leaving us at times to question the very foundations of our work. The success or failure of public programming depends, in large measure, upon skills that cannot be honed in the academy. Political acumen, public visibility, social tact, and personal magnetism are attributes that folklorists must cultivate on the job to create and nurture a folklife office devoted to public programming and supported by tax dollars. These assets are often acquired through the difficult processes of compromise and

mediation. On occasion, we may find ourselves accepting policies that conflict with our cherished ideals and personal goals. My own experience

bears these observations out, as my plans for promoting folk culture in Florida were often altered at key decision points. Rather than pointing toward an underlying insidiousness of bureaucracy, these changes in agenda reflect the naivete that I carried to my new position. This innocence is one that continues to perplex us when our intellectual truisms are tested “on the market.” Straight out of graduate school with six months’ job experience, my aspirations for conducting folklife research in Florida differed significantly from public and bureaucratic expectations. My graduate training had prepared me to argue the fine points of folklore theory, quote Boas or Dorson,

Folklife Programs in Florida 73 identify the motifs in a folktale, and assign the appropriate Child or Laws number to ballads I might collect. I had been trained to conduct focused research on specific topics with a few select informants. I came to Florida with a strong sense of propriety and a list of ethical rules that could not be broken. I was in for a shock. I was soon to discover that the rigors of government work demanded skills and time-management decisions never mentioned within the halls of academe. In-depth research was out of the question, long-term alliances with folk informants were impossible, and no one cared about the latest scholarly debate on theoretical and ethical concerns in the field. In fact, very few people recognized folklore as a field at all. Legislative schedules and funding priorities were central to the operation of the Florida Folk Arts Program. As others had discovered, I found that the ““process of implementing a program involves a series of focused decisions in response to rather specific and frequently unconnected problems.‘’? These decisions often combine to create a situation known as policy

drift. Policy is designed at the top levels of bureaucracy and is subsequently handed down to be implemented at a middle-management rung _ of the governmental ladder, where unforeseen impediments frequently arise. In response to specific problems, original policy drifts to allow program implementation. A historical example of this process occurred within the Federal Writers’ Project of the Works Progress Administration. The underlying policy

of the WPA was to provide jobs for the unemployed. Federal administrators, therefore, instituted a policy that 90 percent of those hired for the Federal Writers’ Project had to be on relief. In Florida and several other states, this federal mandate was altered as the program was implemented. In order to hire enough qualified writers to produce a state guidebook, the nonrelief quota was raised from 10 percent to 25 percent. Public programs in folklife today continue to experience policy drift.

However, more often than not, it is the dreams and aspirations of folklorists that are changed by government priorities. If my experience is typical, the first year of a public sector position will be devoted to a series of dialogues and compromises between the professional folklorist, the hiring institution, and the constituents to be served. Several serendipitous circumstances and focused decisions have led to the present model of folk

programming in Florida. Over the years, public policies and personal motivations have contributed to the specific shape of the folklife office as it exists today. What follows is a quick overview of the evolution of one public sector enterprise—the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs. The Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs (BFFP) is indebted to many early collectors and government efforts to preserve cultural heritage. Florida saw a flurry of folklife activity during the Depression years. Zora Neale

Hurston and Alan Lomax conducted extensive folklife fieldwork in the

74 PEGGY A. BULGER state, recording Afro-American traditions for the WPA that would eventually be deposited in Washington, D.C. at the Archive of Folk Song. During the same era, Alton C. Morris was collecting folk songs in Florida to complete his Ph.D. dissertation for the University of North Carolina, and Stetson Kennedy developed his Federal Writers’ Project field materials into the popular volume, Palmetto Country, for Couch’s Folkways Series.3 On the national scene, Sarah Gertrude Knott held the first National Folk Festival in May 1934, and she began preliminary dialogue with the Florida Federation of Music Clubs to create a Florida spin-off festival. Although government sponsorship of folk cultural programming ended for a time in Florida with the demise of the Works Progress Administration in 1942, interest by scholars and lay collectors continued. The fifties would see publication of Morris's Folk Songs of Florida;* published scholar-

ship from Edwin Kirkland, Ralph Boggs, and others in the academic arena;> as well as the creation of the Florida Folk Festival from a grass-roots level. Southern Folklore Quarterly, published at the University of Florida, emerged as an internationally acclaimed journal of folklore scholarship, while the efforts of Sarah Knott and “Cousin” Thelma Boltin were providing an annual showcase for revival folk artists at the state-sponsored Florida Folk Festival.

Meanwhile, across the nation revival folk music was receiving unheralded attention as college students and activists created the “festival circuit.” This American “folk boom” reached its zenith (or nadir) in 1963 with the broadcast premiere of ‘“Hootenanny” over ABC network TV. Sponsored by Procter & Gamble, this media enterprise sought to capitalize upon the interest in American traditional music by featuring professional musicians playing sing-alongs to a studio audience of clapping college coeds. Although our professional sensibilities may be injured by such hype, the sixties’ folk revival was largely responsible for a renewed interest in the traditional arts and brought many of us into the field as musicians-turned-scholars-turned-public servants. The year 1967 would herald the first Festival of American Folklife held in Washington and would also see the start of lobbying efforts led by Archie Green that would eventually lead to the passage of the American Folklife Preservation Act in 1976.

Throughout the folk music revival of the sixties and the early seventies, interest in folklife remained steady in Florida. However, despite several attempts, the universities in the state failed to develop a program of study for the discipline while, in contrast, the Florida Folk Festival and related events grew in popularity. The folk revival in Florida peaked in

1972 when over one hundred thousand enthusiasts descended upon White Springs, a town with a population of eight hundred, to attend the Nineteenth Annual Florida Folk Festival. From most reports the scene rivaled Woodstock, with a twist; instead of traveling to hear Jimi Hendrix

Folklife Programs in Florida 75 or the Grateful Dead, the public came to hear Gamble Rogers, Chubby Wise, and Cousin Thelma demonstrate their versions of traditional art. Mass popularity for a prime-time version of folk culture was at its pinnacle. It was into this crucible that I was flung headlong in 1976, to anneal my

personal vision with the molten aspirations of those who had hired me. The original appointment of a Florida folk arts coordinator resulted from a grass-roots movement, with little or no support from the academic sector in the state. The Foster Center was hiring an unknown entity: a “professional” to work with a lay constituency of enormous influence and longevity in the state. In 1976 it seemed that every community in Florida had planned a Pioneer Days festival and required a weaver, a dulcimer maker, a bluegrass band and a black gospel group—all in sunbonnets and overalls. To festival organizers, salvation was seen in the form of a folklorist, synonymous with festival expert. Thus it was that the state folk arts coordinator was viewed and used as a procurer of folk artists. Not only was the state hiring an unknown entity, but I, like many first-time state folklorists, was moving into unfamiliar territory to fill an untried job description. Like David Whisnant’s description of ‘culture workers” in the southern mountains at the turn of the century, I found myself displaced from my natal land in a region I found fascinating for its cultural traditions.© My desire to conduct in-depth cultural documentation was tempered by the pragmatic problems of establishing a viable public program and meeting the deadlines imposed by government calendars. As I reflect on the Florida case, I see five factors during the formative years that were to influence the development of the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs as it exists today. In many ways, these decisions can be seen as creative compromising between the cultural vision of a folklorist and the long-range goals of government, restructuring policy for program implementation. I will begin with terminology. Although we are always required to explain our work, our goals, and our philosophy as professional folklorists, communication during this probationary period was critical to the future of the program. In most cases, a professionally trained folklorist uses a lexicon that is either incomprehensible to, or incorrectly interpreted by, the public. Such terms as traditional, folk, and cultural heritage have been in common usage for years with an army of connotations. If we attempt to correct public usage, we may as well try to catch a greased pig. No sooner do we drop the term folk artist for tradition-bearer than the media pick this up as anew buzzword. Our finely tuned connotation goes out the window

as popular usage stretches the boundaries of our definition. Each profession nurtures a jargon, but our profession cannot seem to hang onto ours long enough to establish continuity. Joe Wilson and Lee Udall describe six categories of performers who are all lumped together in the public’s understanding of folksinger: tradi-

76 PEGGY A. BULGER tional folk performers, aware traditional performers, evolved traditional performers, performers who reproduce traditional folk styles, performers

who innovate upon adopted folk styles, and performers who create in folklike style.” Despite this carefully articulated taxonomy, Wilson and Udall conclude that “in common parlance, folk artists often are not called folk artists; instead, artists who are not folk artists are so labeled.””® As professional folklorists working in the public sector, therefore, we

must attempt to capture a few key definitions before meaningful communication slips forever out of our grasp. This task is tedious toa fault, but

in the Florida case, the redefining of terminology became an invaluable tool to educate bureaucrats and public alike as to the complex nature of traditional culture. Surprisingly, it also became a way to reevaluate the responsibilities of a public sector folklorist. As public employees, we may begin by explaining the ““company line” on what a folklorist does and yet end with a new perspective on our work by incorporating the vision of our

constituents.

Public folklife programming demands a flexible stance on the place of folk, popular, and elite culture. Moreover, the longer one works with the public, the larger the gray areas become that separate this holy trinity. Again, if the Florida case is typical, the formative years of state folklife programming can be seen as the academic ideal confronting stark reality. In this case, the parameters of folklife were expanded to include items of cultural expression in the gray areas, while other expressions of unquestionable authenticity were left for study in other arenas. This realigning of the discipline’s compass can prove to be a lifeline in government work. Policy drift, therefore, occurred within my personal vision. The rules that I had considered sacrosanct prior to my appointment were amended, altered, and, insome cases, discarded altogether. A traditional shoe-shine rag-popper performs with a revivalist harmonica player, a traditional quilter also brings her Cabbage Patch dolls to display at a festival, the Seminole Indians sell Indian fry bread and tacos. This complexity is the true nature of folk culture and one of the more difficult points we are forced to address. As folklorists we are looked upon as experts, yet how do we explain to the public the complex nature of cultural change and adaptation in a festival booklet? Conversely, how do we, as public employees, explain the complex nature of the political decisions we make to our colleagues in the academy? There are no easy answers to these questions; however, it is the experience of conducting public programs in folklife that has thrust the discipline headlong into the fray. The decision to remain flexible on terminology was a major compromise that directly affected the course of folklife programming in Florida. A second factor influencing the establishment of Florida’s program was the large, vocal, and, most important, politically savvy folk revival movement in the state. The Florida Folk Festival was the catalyst for the establishment

Folklife Programs in Florida 77 of a folk arts coordinator position, but it was also almost the executioner of

the Folklife Program. An event with a thirty-year history has a life and traditions of its own. A professional folklorist attempting to change these traditions should expect to find the same adverse reaction from the tradition-bearers as in any culture-change situation. In this case, the traditionbearers of the Florida Folk Festival were revival musicians, some of whom had been performing at the event for over twenty-five years. The Florida festival has second- and third-generation artists carrying on the revived folk music and craft skills of their parents who helped establish the festival in the fifties. The Florida Folk Festival existed, and continues to exist, as an event of ritual significance that validates esthetic choices, reestablishes kinship ties (the performers call each other ““cousin’”), and provides a public display of a popularized version of traditional expression heavily peppered with sentimentality. The first impulse of the professional folklorist is either to refuse to have anything to do with this “travesty” or to lay down the law and set the stage with “real” folklife. I must admit that both solutions were considered in 1976, but program security demanded a biting of tongue, a cooperative rather than a combative stance, and for professional integrity, coordinating a nonthreatening adjunct to the festival that would showcase the root traditions of the state. Indeed, the root and revived traditional expressions presented at the festival are often so fused as to be inseparable. Attempts to segregate tradition-bearers from revivalists become self-defeating and pointless in an event of celebratory significance of this magnitude. We, as trained folklorists, share an ideology that attempts to canonize a pristine notion of the tradition-bearer, which we then endeavor to preach to the public. Yet, as Eric Hobsbawm points out in The Invention of Tradition, efforts to revive or present traditions can only occur after the tradition itself has ceased to function. ‘““Such movements, common among intellectuals since the Romantics, can never develop or even preserve a living past. . . but must become ‘invented tradition.’ . . . Where the old ways are alive, traditions need be neither revived nor invented.’ Festival production, of necessity, involves a subjective choice of traditions to present and folk artists to validate, as well as the fashioning of a fantasy environment. By presenting traditional culture out of context, isolated in a world of our own creation, we have invented a new tradition. David Whisnant describes this phenomenon of systematic cultural intervention as a process whereby “someone (or some institution) consciously and programmatically takes action within a culture with the intent of affecting it in some specific way that the intervenor thinks desirable.’”’!0 We, more often than not, pretend to ourselves that we will not affect our informants or their environment. We want to document “what's there” and vanish without a trace, leaving the folk community or individual to carry on undisturbed. We do not view ourselves as missionaries,

78 PEGGY A. BULGER consciously spreading a new doctrine. Yet our work speaks for itself, pros-

elytizing the “good news” that folk arts and traditional culture are valuable, marketable, and sometimes endangered. For better or worse, we need to recognize the impact of our encounters and our programming decisions. The impact of decisions made by the BFFP staff became clear in 1980 when substantive changes were to be made in the festival program so as to exclude many revival performers. Never before had we seen such a swift mobilization of an unofficial body to use any means necessary to achieve

an end. We quickly realized the extent to which the bureau was tied to political priorities and bureaucratic reactions to public opinion. Our fledg-

ling attempts to replace revived traditions with root traditions were dashed by a barrage of angry letters and lobbying efforts in Tallahassee. A programming decision we considered to be above reproach actually perpetrated months of political turmoil and impassioned public outcry. If the Florida experience is typical, the public sector folklorist will find him or herself walking a tightrope to compromise programming decisions without compromising integrity or ethics. A flexible stance on programming can provide the necessary support to continue the important work of documentation and presentation of folk culture. In Florida the large and vocal revival constituency can now be counted as allies rather than as ad-

versaries and their power used to promote the work of the agency as a whole. Compromise on the folk festival program created an invaluable support group to lobby for the concerns of Florida’s folk artists as a whole. A third factor to shape the Folklife Program in Florida during the for-

mative years was its unique position within the state bureaucracy. This placement was fluid from the start and continued to change with the political winds from 1976 to 1980. Our nomadic existence demanded a shifting of priorities and loyalties by the staff but also created a diversified support system for folklife within the Department of State. The shifting location of the Florida program was accompanied by corresponding name changes: Florida Folk Arts Program, Florida Folklife Program, Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs. The original folk arts coordinator position was housed at the Stephen Foster Center, an agency of the Division of Cultural Affairs. The coordina-

tor worked for arts administrators whose priorities were to present performing arts events at the Center. Logically, emphasis was on artistic presentation, particularly music. Folk cultural components that were not easily recognized as esthetically familiar art forms were neglected in the scramble to present the most comfortable examples of folk artistic expression. This problem is not unique to Florida and is a concern for most folklorists who work within the framework of an arts agency or request funding from arts endowments. In 1978, when the Foster Center was reorganized and placed under

Folklife Programs in Florida 79 the state park system, the Florida Folklife Program was established and situated within the Office of the Secretary of State. Uncertain of which parent agency would adopt us, the Folklife Program had over a year to develop independently as state administrators debated our rightful niche within the system. This second period brought our program in direct contact with the secretary of state and his personal staff. The visibility of folklife was raised, and for the first time, Tallahassee took notice of the unique program they had created. As luck would have it, a career bureaucrat (rather than a folklorist) had been appointed as the first director of the Florida Folklife Program. He knew state government, had been trained

as a historic preservationist, and had close ties with the Division of Archives, History, and Records Management. These factors were largely responsible for the eventual installation of the program within that division, where it remains today. The move from the arts to the historical camp opened the door to new fieldwork and presentation opportunities. The focus of programming now reflected the social scientific and humanistic training of administrators within the new division. Together, the three moves brought folklife to the attention of all cultural agencies within the Department of State and helped to institutionalize the program with a broad base of support. A fourth factor to consider when reviewing the formation of the Florida agency is the choice of programming for the first years. When one is faced with a state position that demands the skills of administrator, grants writer, cultural advocate, and folklorist, priorities must be set and difficult decisions made as to time management. Most public sector folklorists are faced with the realities of a job that could demand forty-eight hours a day. I remember being crushed by the advice of one senior folklorist (an academic) who stated that ‘any less than seventy-five percent of your time in the field will be a waste of tax money.” As new state employees, we find that

fieldwork is merely one task of many demanding our attention. In the initial years of programming, when a position is on soft money and under hard scrutiny, the most important task is to produce tangible results. This

may necessitate the “slash and burn” fieldwork that we detest, but it provides an invaluable public relations tool to justify continued funding and, if our prayers are answered, a “line position.” Again, the folklorist is faced with weighing the benefits and costs—not merely economic—of specific programs and then forging ahead with hopes that the results of these decisions will ultimately benefit the cause of folk cultural studies and the folk artists themselves.

In the case of Florida, the first products were developed for broad public consumption in an easily understood package: a Folk Arts Directory

and a slide/tape program. Other states have successfully mounted exhibits, produced record albums, or created new festivals. Whatever the delivery system, the most effective products are presented to a mass au-

80 PEGGY A. BULGER dience with as much fanfare as possible. Newly established positions for public sector folklorists almost always involve the persuasion of the masses as to the value of governmental support of folk culture, perhaps arguing some points of which we ourselves are not convinced. As public programs proliferate, we learn much concerning the pitfalls of our work. We are able to judge the merits of specific programming formulas only after they have been tested on site. We have many successes but also must own up toa host of failures, large and small. It should be a responsibility of professionals working in the public sphere to report to our colleagues the results of our failed dreams as wellas our realized aspirations. Choices for programming will affect the work of an agency long after the tenure of a grant project or the weekend of a festival; therefore, it is imperative that we instruct each other on the experiences of past projects and productions. One final factor to mention was particularly critical toward the continuation and growth of folklife programming in Florida and has been crucial to other state programs as well. That is the support of the national network of public sector folklorists. This unofficial network was in large measure responsible for saving the Florida folk arts coordinator position in 1977. In 1976 the grant-funded position received legislative approval to be transferred to Florida’s career service track. But the priorities of the Foster Center shifted with the arrival of a new director who saw the folk arts component as a likely candidate for a “golden fleece” award. Support and assistance came immediately from the community of professional folklorists who rallied to save the fledgling program. Letters from Washington and state and regional centers poured into the secretary of state’s office. State bureaucrats were surprised that a network existed and were shocked that the folk arts position was familiar to persons beyond Tallahassee. We all feel isolated when working solo in a state or regional office, but we desperately need to communicate with each other and call for help when appropriate. Working in isolation, folklorists are vulnerable to political opportunists and budget-slashing bureaucrats. Working as a link in a large association, we gain power and respect for and from the politicians and public we serve. Folklife programming in Florida has been established and institutionalized within the cultural framework of state government through a series of compromises and mediation. Staff members at the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs bring to their jobs the lofty expectations and professional goals instilled by academic training, which are tempered by the requirements of bureaucratic agendas. Our work as publicly employed folklorists has had both profound and subtle effects upon the folk artists we promote and their cultural environments. As recently as February 1986 at a conference on folklore fieldwork, several panelists were asked, ‘“Why did you become a folklorist?” , It was generally agreed that we did not enter the field for overtly altruistic rea-

Folklife Programs in Florida 81 sons, to “uplift the folk”—but because we liked the “‘stuff’”’ of folklore. We

were, generally, selfish in our choice of vocation. Any long-term effects upon “the folk,” good or bad, were accidental. However, we must recognize that the nature of folklife research and resulting public programming demands systematic cultural intervention and the invention of new tradi-

tions. The institutionalization of folklife programming in Florida and elsewhere depends upon this complex process. With this fact in mind, it is time to evaluate the long-term impact of our cultural intervention/invention upon the agencies we work for, the discipline we embrace, and the communities we document. Critical analysis and comparative investigation of public programs is overdue. In 1976 six states had programs devoted to the folk arts. Today, in 1986, there are over forty-six. In 1976 members of the American Folklore Society were debating the issue of whether public sector work was legitimate employment. Today the president, the secretary-treasurer, and two members of the executive board of the society are employed in the public sector. In 1976 graduate schools were virtually unprepared and unwilling to confront the issues and provide direction on applied and public sector work. Today all the major programs have added courses in applied/public folklore to their curricula. As I reflect upon my early years in Florida, beginning in 1976, I see the larger discipline evolving to incorporate a new generation of folkloristsina burgeoning realm of employment. The Florida story is but one chapter in the emerging history of public sector folklife in the United States; other case studies will add to our understanding of the field we are cultivating. The creation of the NEA Folk Arts Program, the summer-long Bicentennial Festival of American Folklife in 1976, and the passage of the American Folklife Preservation Act in January of that year all combined to raise na-

tional awareness of, and appreciation for, folklife. These forces occasioned the need for professional folklorists to work in the public sector, and we now can view the fruits of a decade of work and look toward an assured future for public sector folklife.

NOTES 1. Peggy A. Bulger, ‘Defining the Folk Arts for the Working Folklorist,”” Kentucky Folklore Record 26 (1980): 62-66.

2. Guenther Kress, Gustav Koehler, and J. Fred Springer, ‘Policy Drift: An Evaluation of the California Business Enterprise Program,” in Implementing Public Policy, ed. Palumbo and Harder (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath and Co., 1981), p. 19. 3. Stetson Kennedy, Palmetto Country (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1942). 4. Alton C. Morris, Folk Songs of Florida (Gainesville: Univ. of Florida Press, 1950). 5. In 1937 Alton C. Morris became the first editor of Southern Folklore Quarterly, a post he retained until 1966. During Morris's tenure as editor, SFQ frequently published notes and articles from scholars in Florida. Most notably, Ralph S. Boggs, a professor at the University

82 PEGGY A. BULGER of Miami, compiled an annual ‘Folklore Bibliography” that appeared in the March issues of SFQ from 1942 through 1965. Boggs also published on Latin American folklore. Edwin Kirkland of the University of Florida was also a SFQ contributor and served as Morris’s managing editor from 1957 to 1966. 6. David Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region

(Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983), preface. 7. Joe Wilson and Lee Udall, Folk Festivals: A Handbook for Organization and Management (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1982), p. 20. 8. Ibid., p. 18. 9. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983), p. 8. 10. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine, p. 13. 11. “Basement to Attic: A Conference on the Collection of Folklore,” Jacksonville, Fla.; Feb. 7-9, 1986.

JANE C. BECK —__ SSS Public Sector Folklore in Vermont

For years folklorists and their discipline existed primarily under the uncertain shade of the university umbrella, where these scholars often had to fight hard for academic recognition. But over the last decade, the field has

both burgeoned and changed. One of the reasons for this new state of affairs is the dramatic increase in the number of folklorists working in the public sector. This is largely due to the influence of the Folk Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts and the concomitant growth of public interest in and recognition of folklore and folklife. What of this new proliferation and how does it affect the field? Scholarship and fieldwork are still at the heart of the discipline. That

must continue if the study of folklore is to be viable, but there are real differences and variations in approach between the public sector folklorist

and the academic folklorist. While the university scholar is faced with “publish or perish,”’ the individual working at the state or local level strains to provide a variety of programming for the general public. This programming must be exciting, communicative, and creative. In many cases, the same individual is responsible for all aspects of the public process. For the public sector folklorist, scholarship is important, but the bottom line is communicating findings to the general public. Sometimes the situation forces the minimum of scholarship and the maximum of com-

munication. Ironically, this maximum of communication has so far included few thoughtful articles about the field of public sector folklore. Many of the rapidly developing programs—with their multitude of approaches designed to bring the field to an audience outside of the university—have not existed long enough to have been evaluated thoroughly and documented fully, particularly in terms of the larger cultural mission of public sector folklore, a mission now recognized tacitly, not yet articula-

ted in print. Public sector folklorists are still experimenting with approaches, implementing new techniques, abandoning those that do not appear suitable for particular places and situations. Much of our work is still trial and error. The problem has been basically one of focus. Before a program can become established and be critically evaluated, it has to be developed. Many of us are in this developmental stage—a stage that makes the endeavor exciting and vital and a process that seems all-encompassing. As

84 JANE C. BECK programs mature, as more folklorists join in this work and lighten the load, there will be more time for studies that address issues such as cultur-

al advocacy, dissemination of research, and the impact of folklife programming on local communities. Such studies are needed because the lack of scholarly and critical publications has widened the breach between the academic and public sector folklorists. Many of our academic colleagues are accustomed to viewing scholarship as an end in itself and can point to the lack of critical studies on the part of those working in the public arena. We need a body of critical literature about what we do, how we do it, the rationale behind it, and the ramifications of it. Although this kind of reflection has not been our first concern, it is now time to begin it. As the field

continues to develop, there will be more material available on which to base thoughtful scholarship, and we must not neglect the task. Like the majority of folklorists who have been involved in state or community programs, I can speak most knowledgeably about the program with which I have been involved. Therefore, I will first review what has taken place here in Vermont and then look to the future, suggesting possibilities to further the development of the field of public sector folklore.

The development of Vermont’s folklife program has a familiar ring to many who are familiar with other public programs. In 1977 the Vermont Council on the Arts applied to the NEA for a folk arts coordinator’s posi-

tion. They were funded, they advertised the position, and I applied. The process seemed to take forever, and I went off on a research trip with my husband to the South Pacific, thinking someone else had been hired. Two months later a dog-eared letter appeared on Council stationery. The opening lines read: “I am mailing a copy of this letter to Tonga with only a faint hope that it will reach you. Iam pleased to offer the position of Vermont Folklorist to you.” It went on to describe my charge. The folklorist’s primary duties will be to research and evaluate existing material, collections, recordings, artifacts of Vermont folk arts; to document these findings; identify further areas of study; design stages for further fieldwork; and initiate plans for a central archives/depository of all material so collected. In addition, the folklorist will work with other government and private agencies to coordinate activities in folk arts and to encourage local interest in folk arts. As for salary and benefits, the Council will be able to offer you a salary of $12,500 per annum. You will be entitled to 13 days vacation, and 13 sick days per year. The Council does not

as yet have any other employee benefits beyond workmen’s compensation and unemployment security. The position is currently on a one-year basis.!

With this alluring offer in hand, [left the warm breezes, sunny skies, and peaceful life-style of the South Pacific and returned home to Vermont full of ideas and excitement at having the opportunity to direct an infant

state folk arts program. I knew I would probably be granted a certain

Public Sector Folklore in Vermont 85 amount of initial freedom—and as long as my techniques worked, I would probably continue to be allowed a relatively free hand in the development of the program. Thus, it was imperative to go in with a good plan. Ellen McCulloch-Lovell who was then executive director of the Vermont Council on the Arts was very supportive of the new program. She

has written since: ,

After fourteen years of supporting the arts in Vermont, we realized the tremendous influence we have by recognizing some artists and organizations and by neglecting others. Of course we nurtured what we had, and we also “imported” a great deal of art from other places. I do not want us to be an isolated province culturally nor do I want us to be merely a colony or market for art from somewhere else. I did begin to feel that sometimes we were at the “end of a cultural pipeline.” And, I wondered whose culture?

| All this suggested that our policies need to grow from the cultural history and heritage of the place. We need to present work that is born out of, reflective of, or relevant to a real place and its people: ‘a new regionalism” where the particular is so alive that it expresses the transcendent.?

Like many other states that have a heavy tourist economy and a high rate of population growth and, therefore, an influx of newcomers, Vermont has an awareness of two groups: the Vermonter who is native born (and to be absolutely authentic, both sets of grandparents also should be native born) and the Flatlander, who has moved into the state from “down country.” Such books as Real Vermonters Don’t Milk Goats make much of

this distinction and have been tremendously popular.? But despite the influx of newcomers and the booming tourist industry, a traditional way of life still exists in Vermont, which is often overlooked by these so-called

Flatlanders. Convinced of the importance of serving all elements of the population, the Vermont Council on the Arts wanted to underscore its commitment to Vermont's traditional heritage and sense of place by exploring, documenting, and presenting the indigenous art forms of the state. The executive director understood that the program I was attempting to develop had to be based on good fieldwork; she allowed me the necessary time to do this. Still it was imperative to address certain concerns of the Arts Council, along with implementing the methods for a comprehensive program. The Council wanted me to survey the collections of folklife and folk art materials around the state and to present my findings in the form of a directory. This was straightforward and could be done with a questionnaire and site visits. It also helped me become familiar with what materials were available throughout the state. It was a tangible project and one that was easily completed within the first year. The most challenging part of my job was to develop field projects to discover the range of traditional culture still functioning in Vermont—as it

86 JANE C. BECK was vaguely expressed at the Council, “to see what was out there.” I was warned by one staff member that she did not really believe I would find anything. I was determined to prove otherwise. First, I had to have some idea of the range of lore in Vermont; and second, I needed to establish a network of contacts throughout the state who could help me locate people who had the kind of expertise and information that I was looking for—those, for example, who possessed traditional skills, played the fiddle, told stories, or perhaps practiced some form of folk art. Then I could begin to build a program that would educate the general public to the significance of folk art and traditional culture within the state, address the needs of the folk

, artists themselves, and attempt to provide educational materials to schools and local groups. My major goals were both to preserve and to promote the traditional arts in Vermont. Icame to work in the fall of the year, and I decided to take the apple as a motif and to see what lore I could find around it. The apple harvest was about to begin, Jamaican pickers (a relatively new ethnic group to Ver-

mont) were brought in for the season, and if I did not start work im- mediately, the time would be past. That way I gave myself no chance to delay. I lunged in headlong, and I was lucky. The yield on the project proved high, and I collected a wide range of tales, songs, beliefs, proverbs, riddles, folk cures, weather lore, and apple dolls, ample proof that traditional culture was still alive and well. The Arts Council was not sold on the fact that apple dolls could be considered folk art, but as I said, initially they let me have my head.

The second project was another strange one for the Council, and again they were not quite sure where I was headed, but once more they allowed me the opportunity to hang myself. This time I focused on the general store. In Vermont the general store is still at the center of small rural communities, and if you want to know who the bearers of tradition are, who the singers and storytellers are, you go first to the general store. In many cases, these stores are the exhibition halls for local folk art. From this project a slide-tape show and booklet on the general store resulted, but more important, I at last had an understanding of what was out there, where I might begin to look, and with whom I should talk. This perhaps seems like a roundabout way to undertake a general survey of folk art and folk artists, but it provided the understanding and background on which to display and present these artists. It also gave me material I could use in stimulating people’s interest in the folk arts. I put together an exhibit of seventy photographs entitled “Traditional Vermont: A Folklorist’s View,” which traveled to schools and local historical societies throughout Vermont, showcased a selection of traditional performers for the Vermont legislators on Farmer’s Night in the state’s capitol, and gave many talks

Public Sector Folklore in Vermont 87 around the state, all of which helped to raise people’s consciousness of the folk arts. Traditional culture is the cloth from which the folk artist is cut, and therefore, it must be addressed. Sometimes this puts the folklorist at odds with an arts council, and the situation must be handled carefully. In my case, the long-range plan was to mount a folk art exhibition, and I realize I was lucky that the Council had patience with me. Eventually, I was redeemed in their eyes when the exhibition Always in Season opened. At first only the executive director believed I could find enough material to mount such an exhibition. The Council trustees were skeptical, to say the least. They were not quite sure what I was doing ‘out in the field,” and they did not see what was taking me so long. After all, there was not much to find. Meanwhile, the first two projects had provided a framework for me to begin my survey of folk art. From my work on the directory, I was familiar with what existed in the local historical societies and local museums. From

the general store project, I had my statewide network, and I had seen many examples of local art displayed in the general stores. The first year’s work provided me with a firm foundation. Two more years in the field and I had interviewed a number of artists and photographed a wide variety of objects throughout the state. By this time it was the fall of 1981, and the trustees were audibly negative on this new folk arts program. Why were they wasting time with such a project? Everyone knew that Vermont had no indigenous folk art. When Ellen Lovell put the trustee, a professor of art history who was most vocal in his criticism of the program, on the object selection committee, I blanched. In retrospect, it was an astute move. | Through my fieldwork I knew that the traditional arts in Vermont had

not disappeared. I also realized that many people had negative views concerning folk art, and I was determined to display those objects that I felt were of the highest quality in the most professional manner to make a statement as to their significance. I also planned to produce a catalog that

would place the objects in a contextual framework and attempt both to define what I meant by folk art and to look in some depth at who the folk artists were, their relationship to their community, and the significance of

their work.

In order to proceed, it was important to establish a working definition of folk art. These criteria became the framework for selecting the pieces for the exhibition: that folk art was passed down from generation to genera-

tion, that it was learned traditionally rather than in a formal setting, that the folk artist was the visual spokesman for the community, and that the art, which the individual created, was usually made from materials that were inexpensive and easily available. I presented the selection committee of five with about 750 slides of

88 JANE C. BECK various objects of Vermont folk art and reiterated the guidelines I had used in defining them. We had planned to select seventy-five objects, but by the time we were finished, the board had unanimously agreed on 175 pieces.

This quieted the art historian’s outcries, and from that time on he was a

strong advocate of the program. |

Although, as I have said, I was lucky to have the support and patience of the executive director, there was always the demand to produce visible, tangible programs along the way. I had begun to work on a radio series with Vermont Public Radio, but no programming had been specifically developed for the schools.° In 1980 I felt the pressure to use the mechanism of the Council’s artist-in-residence program to bring folk artists into the schools; however, I was uncomfortable with this, for I felt the groundwork had not been laid. A local school wanted to try a pilot project. I had suggested a program that would supplement a unit on local history and bring in six folk artists in groups of two. Each pair of artists knew each other, would complement one another, and, I felt, would work well together. My thought was to have each pair come into the school a number of times over a two-week period; then I would introduce the second pair, and two weeks later, the final pair. I suggested specific films to be shown in conjunction with each team of artists and recommended that at the end of the project we bring back all the artists and have a mini-festival where the students could share their work with the artists. But the school had its own ideas as to how they wanted to proceed. What the principal and teachers ended by doing—despite my dire predictions of doom—was to suspend classes for two weeks and focus on folk art. The result was that the students looked upon the program as a two-week recess, and although they were exposed to folk art and worked with the folk artists, the experience was too intense and was not integrated into the school curriculum. As a result, it had few lasting effects.

After that experience I was discouraged with educators. It was not until we opened the exhibition that I again became involved with the Department of Education. At three exhibit sites, we held teacher workshops sponsored by the host museum’s educational programs and the Department of Education. We developed a study guide, in addition to the workshop training, and a sheet of twenty slides for teachers to use before bringing their students to the exhibition. This preparation had tangible results. More than five thousand school children came to the exhibition, and most of them had spent time on classroom units of folk art and had invited local folk artists into their schools. It seems to me that every school could profitably use some form of folklore in its curriculum. It is fine and well to expose schoolchildren to folk

artists, but I have found that not much of an impact is made. However, if there is a buildup and the folk artist is brought in as part of a whole study unit, then there is a more lasting effect. My strategy now is to take the

Public Sector Folklore in Vermont 89 research gathered from various projects and make it available to teachers in the form of study guides. This gives the teachers ready-made folklore materials to use in their classes with minimum work involved for them and guidelines as to how they might use these materials. At the moment, we have three packages that include a videotape and study guide available to schools with two more packages being developed. Judging from teacher

response, this approach appears to be working effectively. Once again the method involves building from the ground up. From now on, every research project I undertake will have an educational component that will make the material usable and available to schools, not only to the general public. Despite some shortcomings—as with the school project—there has been a general feeling around the state that the folk arts program has been a success. Before Always in Season opened, the board of trustees reluctantly agreed to give ten thousand dollars toward the folk arts program during

the next year so that the folklorist could at least oversee the exhibition while it was touring. At that time, however, they were adamant that not one additional cent was to be spent on folk arts. The exhibition opened in May, and by the time Charles Kuralt had featured it on “Sunday Morning” the following September, that one exhibition had given the Council more

visibility and press than any previous event. The trustees had a sudden new admiration for folk art.

The program is now allotted ten thousand dollars yearly. This is nothing to sneeze at in Vermont, but it makes for some problems, especially the constant search for funding. In November 1982 the Governor's Conference on the Future of Vermont’s Heritage, which brought together a diverse group of people to discuss issues affecting Vermont heritage and culture, was held. This meeting was encouraging because for the first time there was a conscious effort made to include folklore and traditional culture as a significant part of Vermont's heritage. In a preliminary panel discussion, which was to give the delegates to the Conference a framework to work from, history, architecture, artifacts,

and the intangible heritage were all addressed as major themes. Later when the delegates met for the two-day conference, Vermont's intangible heritage was considered as one of the ten major topics to be discussed by

the smaller working groups of delegates. From these working groups came the resolutions that were later presented to the whole body to be ratified. The awareness of Vermont's intangible heritage had been stimulated by the folk art exhibition, and because of the interest it had generated, the exhibition’s tenure at the Vermont Historical Society’s Museum was extended so that it could be featured at the Governor’s Conference. Among

the resolutions propounded by the delegates was the call to establish a Center for Traditional Culture that was “not to duplicate other efforts but

90 JANE C. BECK to act as a clearing house to serve as an archive, to research and document traditional culture, to work with educational programs and local historical

societies in the use of traditional materials, to share information, and to | ‘package’ research so that it can be used by teachers and local groups and enjoyed by the general public.’”®

Although the resolution carried no funding, it did provide an important impetus. A steering committee was formed to further shape and develop the concept of a center and to formulate goals. Late in 1983 the board began to take shape. Permanent board members were recruited, and articles of association and corporate bylaws were drafted. The Vermont Council on the Arts agreed to serve as an interim host for the new organization and continued to support folk arts programming. The Vermont Folklife Center was established in February 1984 to operate exclusively for cultural, educational, and scientific purposes with three major goals: to establish an archive and resource center of all materials related to the traditional cultures of Vermont; to collect, research, document, and interpret traditional cultures in Vermont; and to use the materials of the resource center for programming and outreach to schools, local groups, and the general public. One of the original strategies behind the creation of the Folklife Center was that of funding flexibility. As an entity separate from the Arts Council, the Center is eligible for a variety of educational and humanities funding that might not be available to the Arts Council. The Vermont Council on the Arts can only partially support the folk arts program, and therefore, if the program is to survive, it must build other forms of support. Program money is not hard to come by, but administrative costs are another matter altogether. Because of this the Center has begun to try to build a clientele among organizations and state agencies as well as private individuals who can pay for its services. Just recently the Center was contracted to do research, conduct interviews, and produce a book concerning the oral histo-

ry of a specific farm in Vermont. This endeavor strays from the public nature of the state folklorist’s job, and the question that must be asked is whether the end justifies the means. In this case, I think the answer must be yes. The money that the project brought into the program is substantial, and it is money that can be used where it is most needed. Still, such a project took time, and, therefore, time away, from public programming. However, if there is no money, there is no public programming. So in my

view we have to look at private projects such as these. If the economic reward is high enough and will substantially better the program, then I think that we must consider such projects. Where is all this leading us? The public sector folklorist must constantly be looking down the road, planning a progam that will meet the demands of the state or region in which he or she is working, stimulating public interest, and answering the needs of a constituency that is often

Public Sector Folklorein Vermont _ 91 very different from the one the Arts Council usually serves. At first, survey projects are necessary. There is a need to identify a wide range of folk artists, performers, and others involved in traditional activities. But because of its nature, this kind of work tends to be superficial. I know that in such projects I try to stress maximum research and fieldwork, but I admit that in the race to meet the deadline for a selection committee or an upcoming festival, [do more interviews in a day than I should and often, as time gets shorter and shorter, leave my tape recorder at home and rely on scribbled notes and—horror of all horrors—memory, because there is no time to write up fieldnotes fully. The exhibit is selected, performers are identified, notes get stuck in a file waiting for the day when there will be an extra minute to write them up. But somehow it never comes—at least not yet. This, I suspect, is more common than any public sector folklorist would like to admit. So survey projects are a kind of stopgap necessity, but they are not the end-all for the public sector folklorist. Time pressures tend to foster the “slash and burn” type of fieldwork, but if state programs are to flourish, they cannot afford to ignore careful fieldwork, using the first survey as the blueprint and the future projects as building materials. The emphasis must be on building a firm foundation through fieldwork. Planning, which in many cases seems antithetical to the vagaries of grantsmanship, where the failure to procure a grant can upset the bestlaid plans, is important both in the development of a strong program and the development of strategies necessary to cope with the funding crunch. Research and programming should be varied, and there is no reason why subsequent projects cannot be in-depth studies—perhaps looking at a region, a family, or even an individual, if the project contributes significantly

to the understanding and promotion of the traditional heritages of the state. As the field of public sector folklore continues to expand—and at the moment it appears to be expanding at breakneck speed—jobs are constantly opening up, and academic institutions are having trouble keeping pace with the demand. The public’s appetite for folklore programming grows as well. Look at the success of the recent Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. The performers became stars overnight. The gathering

was a veritable media bonanza capturing the nation’s imagination by storm as it was reported in major publications around the country, and next year the business community wants to pick up the tab and host the event again.’ The final endorsement was the popularity of the gathering itself. The enthusiasm with which it was received surpassed everybody’s expectations. Along with the public’s growing enthusiasm for folklore programming comes a growing quantity of excellent, readily available material. This has major benefits for the field. A good example is The Stone Carvers, a

film produced by the Smithsonian Institution’s Marjorie Hunt and film-

92 JANE C. BECK maker Paul Wagner featuring four of America’s master stone carvers who

have spent years carving the ornamentation of the National Cathedral. When Hunt and Wagner won the Academy Award for best documentary short subject of 1984, they assured their film of major attention. Since that time widely diverse audiences have seen it, audiences that the public sec-

tor folklorist does not typically reach—such as the Labor International Union of North America, the Associate Building Contractors, and the American Institute of Architects—all of whom have shown the film at their meetings. Washington, D.C. has declared a special day as “Stone Carvers Day,” and a rapidly disappearing traditional craft has been given new recognition. With the proliferation of public sector folklorists, the resulting heightened interest on the part of the public, and the increasing excellence of the programming, something new is occurring. The climate appears right for the development of folklife centers or other entities that deal with the public dimension of our field. A number of folklorists are responding by at-

tempting to establish organizations that are funded by a combination of public and private sources. Funding is always precarious, but as the public’s appetite for folklore programming grows and as both cultural tourism and quality of life become important economic issues, such organizations could play an increasingly significant role. Each state and region will develop those organizations that best suit its needs. In some cases, thanks to established precedents, programs will flourish within branches of state government, as in Florida. Other states

will continue to nurture programs within arts councils, historical societies, or perhaps an office of city government as is now the case in Baltimore.® In Memphis a combination of private funding, income-producing programs, and federal grants now keep the Center for Southern Folklore operating. More and more creative partnerships are developing to allow the establishment of such organizations. This is a new wave; indeed, it is the discipline’s coming of age. The success of developing these new kinds of entities will be determined by the ability of the organizations to respond to their regions’ public and business interests. Such organizations can affect the quality of life within the community and at the same time be seen as a development initiative for attracting visitors to the area. In Vermont the structure for a center has been set up. It still needs a location. One tantalizing possibility is to join in partnership with a construction company that wants to restore a significant building in the town of Middlebury. Together the center and the construction company would attempt to raise the funds for both the restoration and the establishment of the center. At the moment, Middlebury College owns the building. Recently, the trustees of the college voted to sell the property because it was on the other side of town from the college and no acceptable use had been

found for it. However, if the center was established there, Middlebury

Public Sector Folklore in Vermont 93 College would, instead of selling the property, enter into a long-term lease with the center fora dollar a year. Obviously, college support of the project would be significant. The property in question was originally owned by Gamaliel Painter, founder of the town of Middlebury and of Middlebury College. Painter was the embodiment of what we perceive as the prototype Yankee Vermonter. Farmer and craftsman, independent, hardworking, and shrewd, he had much to do with the development of Vermont, first defending it

against the British, later helping create an independent republic, and eventually serving on the legislative committee that requested statehood for Vermont. Not as colorful as Ethan Allen in historical chronicles, he was the more highly respected of the two among their contemporaries. From humble roots the patriot, farmer, and craftsman went on to become industrialist, politician, and philanthropist. The residence Painter built in 1802 not only has significance as a fine example of federal period architecture, but because of its prominent location and heritage, it is a building that should serve the community and the general public. What better use than as the Vermont Folklife Center? Although the idea is a compelling one, it remains to be seen whether we can raise the funding necessary to make the project possible and feasible. Perhaps the restoration of the Gamaliel Painter house may be too ambitious, but it is definitely the direction toward which the Vermont public folklife program is tending. Only time will tell, but for now a couple of points are significant. First, the concept so far has generated genuine excitement within the community. Second, it is an opportunity for one organization to address a range of activities that are important within the field of folklore: research, a place to deposit that research and make it accessible, an educational facility, and a variety of programming—of both a public and an academic nature—under one umbrella. This integration of activities would result in an organization that addresses all aspects of the field for the state. It would serve schools and scholarly researchers, busi-

nessmen, professionals, and tourists. ,

The advantages of establishing a stable organization such as the Vermont Folklife Center are obvious. Not only will we see an expansion and legitimizing of the discipline, but folklorists will have a base from which to work both to preserve and to promote the traditional cultures with which they are involved. It is doubtful that the lone folklorist working in an arts council or historical society can make a comparable impact. The leap from individual to organization is a critical one. I would go so far as to suggest it is a necessary one. As organizations develop, they will bolster the health of the discipline and serve as evidence of the maturation of the field of public sector folklore.

94 JANE C. BECK NOTES 1. Letter from Nike Speltz, associate director of the Vermont Council on the Arts, Aug. 18, 1978.

2. Ellen McCulloch-Lovell, ‘“Remarks to the National Council on the Arts,’” Washington, D.C., Feb. 4, 1983. 3. Frank Bryan and Bill Mares, Real Vermonters Don’t Milk Goats (Shelburne, Vt.: New England Press, 1983). 4. Jane C. Beck, Always in Season: Folk Art and Traditional Culture in Vermont (Montpelier,

Vt.: Vermont Council on the Arts, 1982). 5. ““A Hand-Me-Down-Harvest,” a series of eight half-hour radio programs on traditional Vermont.

6. Resolutions adopted at the Governor’s Conference on the Future of Vermont’s Heritage, p. 3, resolution 4. 7. Some of these major publications were New York Times, Feb. 3, 1985; Wall Street Journal, Feb. 4, 1985; Los Angeles Times, Feb. 4, 1985; Newsweek, Feb. 11, 1985; People Magazine, March 4, 1985.

8. Baltimore City Folklorist, Office of the Mayor, Neighborhood Progress Administration/DHCD, Baltimore, Maryland.

ELAINE EFF —WWHH Birth of a New Tradition A City Folklorist for Baltimore

In 1985 Baltimore, a city proud of its firsts in all endeavors, became the first municipality to establish the position of city folklorist as an adjunct to the

urban planning and redevelopment process.! Unlike most regional public sector folklorists who are associated with state or local arts agencies, the Baltimore city folklorist is responsible to the commissioner of housing, manpower, and development in the city’s Neighborhood Progress Administration (NPA) who in turn reports directly to the mayor. Aware of both the persistence and loss of folkways among Baltimoreans and their physical surroundings, the city’s leadership grasped the opportunity to link the traditional culture and urban growth through the creative services of a trained chronicler, guardian, and interpreter of local folklife and lore. Having completed one year in the position of city folklorist, it seems appropriate for me to reflect on the motivations, goals, and accomplishments of what began as a novel urban experiment. Baltimore, a city of 790,000 people, the largest in Maryland and the eleventh largest in America, has in recent decades changed froma conservative, blue-collar, “nickel” town to a cosmopolitan, billion-dollar tourist center. The sudden rebirth of a new Baltimore, nurtured by decades of enlightened Democratic leadership, stems from the gradual loss of waterfront and center-city industry and its replacement with harbor-side enter-

tainment, corporate headquarters for the finance industry, and the conversion of new neighborhoods from old. An increasingly attractive skyline overtook the grit of the railroad yards and the cranes of the now defunct shipyards. A once-thriving garment industry ceased to exist. Baltimore’s industrial core now embraces office workers, conventioneers, luxury hotels, and museums, which salute the bygone trades their buildings once housed.

As the solid brick monuments—some survivors of the devastating Great Fire of 1904—and rows of characteristic attached homes fell to neglect and the wrecker’s ball, the joys of a revitalized tax base and healthier

environment overshadowed any maudlin nostalgia. Baltimore, like so many Eastern cities confronting urban flight, required creative and quick

96 ELAINE EFF solutions if it was to enter the twenty-first century with dignity and promise.

Today new place names grace the “townhouse” (formerly “‘rowhouse”) communities of young urban professionals where low-income families once struggled to survive. Public housing and high-rise projects stand on the grounds of European immigrants’ first homes and shops. In some sectors oil storage tanks and interstate highways have obliterated entire communities. Amid the signs of progress and growth, a few remaining neighborhoods became islands, their residents the progenitors of local traditions. Federal legislation provided the mechanism for landmark designation of existing historic structures, an important bow to architectural pres-

ervationists. Further, the state historical preservation office has been charged with completing archaeological surveys when federal funds were employed to rebuild demolished sites. These simplistic nods to historic

integrity satisfied some critics of urban upheaval. Today, found within Baltimore’s city offices are the Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation (CHAP) and The Center for Urban Archaeology directed by the city archaeologist. All that seemed to be lacking in the efficient networks of growth and change was an office that similarly addressed the historical and contemporary components of physical displacement—people and their traditions.

Despite the responsiveness of local government to constituents’ needs, the vocal and visual aspects of daily life have been perceived as the realm of arts and culture brokers. Although ethnic festivals and art extrav-

aganzas are a regular part of the city’s annual entertainment cycle, the critical context of the community as backdrop to and generator of expressive life is increasingly overlooked. This oversight is not intentional, but merely an area of systematic civic concern that previously fell between the cracks of the many city agencies. With this background the folklorist, as an agent of inquiry and preservation, suggested a fresh, integrated approach to the city’s living tradition-bearers. Two basic realities of urban life provided the subtle impetus to a city folklore office: namely, that change is imminent and that folk traditions are community-based. The position was launched, very simply, in a discussion between a high-ranking official of the mayor’s office and a folklorist, a discussion of that previously unexplored relationship between redevelopment and folklife. Having determined that the idea of a city folklorist was a sound one, the question remained where to locate this professional anomaly. The local history museum was the city’s first suggestion, one that would have affirmed folklore’s customary niche in the history and preservation arenas. At that moment, a logical home, the City Life Museum (formerly the Peale

A City Folklorist for Baltimore 97 Museum) was unable to accommodate an additional staff member who needed to generate funds from outside sources. Several ongoing projects, which are described below, fortified the dialogue with compelling examples of successful marriages of folklore and urban growth. Coincidentally, an announcement of a massive revitalization endeavor on one of the city’s major thoroughfares became the springboard to thrust the folklorist into the Neighborhood Progress Administration’s dynamic development and planning program. North Avenue, the street in question, once a fashionable, five-mile boulevard, was the city’s boundary line from 1816 to 1888. Its stock of housing, which reads like a guide to Victorian vernacular architecture,

suffered a decline in recent decades. Through the NPA the mayor launched a campaign to build a “new North Avenue,” primarily through rehabilitating the streetscape and creating zones of housing, commerce, and light industry. The folklorist, deeply concerned with the course of redevelopment as it affected historic and existing communities, proposed an approach that would incorporate human traditions that were a significant part of the avenue’s past, present, and future. Using the tools of oral history and surveys of folk artists and searching for archival and family photographs and memorabilia, representatives of twenty-two former and present neighborhoods, as many religious institutions, a dozen schools, and a myriad of ongoing and former businessmen and families who lined the avenue could be tapped as folklife resources. Incorporating these human resources in an integrated program that develops interest in the generators and victims of tradition and change allows the city to embrace individuals and groups on a much needed and appreciated personal scale. It is precisely this concern for continuity and change that spurred the creation of an office that deals exclusively with urban traditional life. The people of a city are its most valued resource, and Baltimore’s enlightened leadership recognized the importance of the contributions in the realm of spoken and material expressive culture—keys to learning a community’s past and to planning more effectively for the future. The stated goals of the folklorist in Baltimore are to identify, document, preserve, and publicly promote traditional culture within the city’s boundaries. Educating the public by offering a clarification of the folklorist’s role—particularly as it may be applied to public planning or policymaking must come first. It is critical at the outset to correct the popular misconception that the folklorist’s function is to entertain through story

and song, in favor of turning the spotlight on community traditionbearers. During the first months and on a regular basis, the folklorist’s lecturers and public forums addressed groups that included every agency head and public information officer within city government, business ex-

98 ELAINE EFF ecutives, community leaders, and a wide range of local groups. Television and radio interviews and generous coverage by major newspapers alerted a larger public to the presence of anew type of city official. The immediacy of the popular media allowed the folklorist to monitor the effectiveness of the mission to a huge audience while building a network for the development and execution of public programs. Since April 1985 in Baltimore, that mandate has witnessed the investigation of an array of urban folklife genres while educating and entertaining the populace at large. Developing an awareness of the categories of spoken and material folklife forms can, in large part, serve the ultimate goal of continuity or survival of traditional life.

Two ongoing projects that illustrate the nature of the folklorist’s work

culminated during these early months, providing clear examples of the content and presentation modes of urban traditions. First, an exhibition cocurated by the folklorist featuring old-world and contemporary aspects of life within Baltimore’s Greek community opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art.3 Distinctively decorated room settings and black-and-white

| photographs by two internationally known photographers accompanied by translations of oral poetry spotlighted the transplanted villagers’ embellished material and verbal culture. The opening events included a typical glendi, the ritual party that combines island food, song, dance, and poetry in a festive environment. Second, in another highly publicized gathering, a group of folk artists who practice the esoteric but locally recognized art form of window screen painting in the rowhouse neighborhoods were honored by the mayor with the formal presentation of proclamations noting their valued and previously unheralded contribution to community and city life. A folklorist employed by a municipal government and, consequently, acting as a civil servant must respond to a variety of public and private masters. The mayor, city agencies, individuals, and groups with shared traditions engineer the course of the city folklorist. The local citizenry are the research base, the research assistants, and the recipients of a rich and historic body of spoken and visual lore and life. Developing an ever-widening audience and constituency characterizes the mission of the folklorist in the public sector wherever he or she is located. Setting priorities may be difficult when, in effect, the entire city is the employer. Each community the folklorist “discovers,” it seems, has been personally visited at one time by the energetic city executive who has served since 1970. Mayor William Donald Schaefer has participated in the ritual occasions, festive feasts, or solemn religious moments of virtually every neighborhood and ethnic group in the city of Baltimore. His sincere and exemplary appreciation for and sensitivity to folk culture stems from his own upbringing in a west Baltimore neighborhood. Yet not until the notion of hiring a city folklorist was suggested was the distinction clarified

A City Folklorist for Baltimore 99 between observing or participating in and documenting or saving folklife for a permanent record. The creation of a folklorist’s position in Baltimore is intimately tied to the concept of close-knit communities as found here. Two recent instances illuminate the relevance of tradition and the political process. Their occurrence easily convinced municipal decision makers of the wisdom of appointing a professional folklorist to act as a bridge between the city’s traditional inheritance and its redevelopment—the latter a process that may contribute inadvertently to the disappearance of valuable folk expressions. Baltimore, ‘The City of Neighborhoods,” is continually enriched by its interconnecting webs of conservative ethnic, occupation, community, and family alliances. Maryland’s largest inland port has a long history of immigrants who came to America, and specifically Baltimore, for a better life. The stable yet progressive environment of the growing industrial city affirmed the notion of community defined by family, church, work, and home. These central institutions provide a firm foundation for the affirmation of the seemingly endless array of forms of expressive culture. The rowhouse neighborhoods of southeast Baltimore, and Canton in particular, are characterized physically by the industrial waterfront, corner stores, taverns, and church steeples. Modest brick two-story homes housed families in communities based on proximity to the workplace or religious institution. Home ownership has always been high here, due primarily to creative financing by the ethnic building and loan associations often under the patronage of a single successful entrepreneur from within the ethnic group. The encouragement of home ownership coupled with an advantageous ground-rent scheme allowed the most modest breadwinner to contemplate owning a home.* Consequently, the Canton com-

munity, largely composed of German, Polish, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, Welsh, and Irish stock, continues to harbor one of America’s stablest ethnic populations.

One example of private benefaction based in this neighborhood provides an instructive forum and a compelling example of the union of local tradition and development. When Charles Hatton, a lifelong Canton resident, died, he left the bulk of his estate to his “family”—neighbors and

friends in the community—for the purpose of building a senior citizen recreation center. A bachelor who had worked since his teenage years as a bookkeeper for nearby Standard Oil, Hatton had invested wisely, leaving, much to everyone’s surprise, in excess of $400,000 for construction of a facility specifically in the Canton neighborhood. His will, read upon his death at age 74, instructed the city of Baltimore through the Office of the Mayor to locate, design, and complete the structure within one year or to forfeit the gift. With much speed Mayor Schaefer’s office designated a committee to carry out Hatton’s last wish. This group consisted of rep-

100 ELAINE EFF resentatives from city offices of neighborhoods, aging, planning, budget, and construction management, as well as private citizens in their roles as neighbors, seniors, architect, and folklorist. In forming this decision-making body, the implication was that community needs and esthetics must be addressed and that, above all, maintaining the traditional character of the neighborhood should be consid-

ered. The shape, size, and orientation of the building were primary concerns, as this was the first new building to rise in the neighborhood in recent years. One of the committee’s first and unalterable requests was to retain half the selected lot as an open recreation area as not to alienate the youth displaced during construction. In response to an early design calling for colorfully enameled or patterned concrete block, the folklorist, acting as arbiter of traditional taste, urged a tour of new buildings in the city in search of an exterior treatment that would conform with the pale formstone facades of the nearby homes.

Even the color selected for the window treatment, originally a bright yellow-green chosen by the interior designer, was vetoed by the local board in favor of brick red, as not to offend the viewer from the street and to better enhance one of the building’s most distinctive features. The nineteen windows have been embellished by the neighborhood’s own historic art form—landscape-painted screens. Each window, painted by a local practitioner of screen art, suggests a Canton landmark that would have been familiar to Mr. Hatton. As aresult of their dedicated efforts, a modern, yet conforming, brick structure and a blacktopped athletic court share the lot that decades before was the site of Public School 24, Charley Hatton’s alma mater. The Hatton

Senior Center stands as a solid reminder of the endurance of local traditional values—industry, thrift, and neighborliness. Inside, old and new skills and sounds are shared by Hatton’s “‘family,” while outside, the building serves as a public gallery of a local artistic tradition and a personal picture album that together tell a history of old and new Canton. Here the expertise of the professional folklorist, unlike a planner or a community organizer, called upon a knowledge of and an ability to channel local arts to add an appropriate sense of place. An awareness of and a sensitivity to expressive culture in a dynamic situation distinguishes this humanist from other public servants. In the ongoing drama of city build-

ing, the folklorist consciously acknowledges and incorporates tradition and its bearers. In an attempt to respond to the seemingly infinite number of constituencies that compose a city, the city folklorist is responsible first for educating constituents to the extent and limits of her profession. Because the camera and tape recorder are essential tools of the folklorist’s trade, he or she is often expected to conduct interviews and oral histories of every significant and aging participant in the political arena and of every individ-

A City Folklorist for Baltimore 101 ual who has reached the age of eighty-five. The public, coddled by the mass media, expects the documentation process to yield immediate newsprint or television footage. In this progressive age, long-term goals suchas publications and festivals must yield short-term evidence such as newsletter articles and informal public programs staged as part of other agencies’ events. The need to prove one’s mettle in a public arena is constant. Accountability is constant and immediate. Lectures, handouts, and publications are essential to reaffirm the civil servant’s commitment to a participatory process that continually identifies local contacts and volunteers who ultimately share the rewards of the search for authentic traditions and their bearers. It is important to realize that not all research areas are considered fair game by municipal leaders. There is a point where expressive culture may become highly charged with resonances of dormant political issues. Certain endearing representatives of older layers of traditional life maintain a presence over time despite factionalization that threatens their very existence. Baltimore’s surviving anachronism of street arabers—produce ven-

dors in horse-drawn wagons—is one of the longest-lived, continuous communities of folk artist-merchants. The colorful wagons pulled by single ponies through the alleys and main streets of the city are at the center of a historic and often inflammatory debate that culminated in a 1966 city ordinance prohibiting the existence of animal stables within three hundred feet of residential dwellings.° Only a handful of these stables remain today. On one side, animal rights supporters with the ear of the city council have hopes of systematically eliminating the stables and, therefore, the arabers. With some regularity city officials propose the compromise of

establishing horse stables in geographically central, east, and westside parks, forever silencing the argument and allowing the street arabers to continue the unique provision of personal service. In the meantime, the arabers’ stories and distinctive street cries are a unique example of Baltimore’s oral traditions in need of complete documentation. Although it would be irresponsible of the folklorist to ignore this local treasury of expressive culture, there is a benign pressure to avoid focusing public attention on the subject. Aware of the antagonism toward

them, arabers, consequently, avoid contact with inquiring strangers. Gaining their trust and bringing them together on their terms in private forums to share and record their spoken inheritance is, therefore, a provocative challenge. To wait for the eve of extinction when a study would be sanctioned in the name of an eleventh-hour ethnography would be folly. Similarly, Baltimore’s “Little Italy,” a residential and restaurant com-

munity increasingly under siege since the successful waterfront renaissance, is a prime target for obliteration by the end of the century. Adjacent public housing and industry of every description and vintage have left this

102 ELAINE EFF fiercely proud multigenerational neighborhood as an ethnic preserve since the fifties. Today its islandlike presence serves as a popular symbol for cultural conservation. Its future lies in the meeting rooms of city councilmen, community activists, interstate highway designers, and city planners. The question of preservation of traditional values is the underlying theme in every discussion. The folklorist’s contribution to urban planning is a subtle one. Preoc- © cupation with understanding life and lore in its original context is a recent folkloristic trend. A case in point is a recent forum sponsored by a local respected advocacy organization whose purpose is to monitor development and, therefore, preservation in Baltimore.” One of several Citizens’ Planning and Housing Association’s Downtown Committee’s periodic forums focused on the above-mentioned Canton community as it was about to undergo significant redevelopment of its now vacant waterfront canning and machinery factories. As a member of a program committee that included public and private sector volunteers, the folklorist was able to add to the usual panel discussion format, a bus tour of old Canton’s traditional landmarks narrated by lifelong residents and a stop en route at a community bake sale sponsored by the friends of the hundred-year-old public library branch. When the forum of city, highway, and coastal planners, community el-

ders, developers of loft apartments, marinas, and town houses shared their plans and fears with each other and the public, the critical cultural context of an early, stable, ethnic workers’ community had been set. The process and products of the urban folklorist must address as wide a group as possible without compromising the quality of the investigation or its final form. The range of activities ideally generated by the communi-

ty’s understanding of its own traditions includes surveys, photographic and video documentation, oral histories, audio recordings, and historic photo document and artifact identification or collection. These activities have yielded tours, festivals, forums, workshops, exhibitions, courses, apprenticeships, reunions, radio broadcasts, lectures, and publications. In each case, the goal is to borrow the community wisdom for the purpose of returning it in a more easily shared format and ultimately as a permanent record of urban folklife. Each project, in turn, serves as a model to inspire other communities. In the first year, community-based folklife projects in Baltimore have been initiated by groups seeking a meaningful commemoration of their progress and accomplishments. In an effort to focus positive light on public housing, an oral history project featuring elder residents was completed. The resulting people-centered publication and accompanying photo exhibition are intended to share a sense of pride in these much maligned, uniquely public environments. In another community a weekend festival and a publication featuring interviews with old and new resi-

A City Folklorist for Baltimore 103 dents will be the highlight of a community celebration where leaders are eager to share their success in reversing a blighted housing picture into one of model home ownership and pride. Workshops equip neighborhood volunteers with the skills and rewards of folklore inquiry. Planting the seeds for curiosity about the built environment and local folk traditions is one goal. Stimulating intergenerational dialogue is another. Humanities teachers from nearby high schools, who contribute their time, become central to a network of youngsters and adults who may effectively direct inquisitiveness about unique local resources. Bearers of folk traditions and community and family history are discovered and channeled through a process that is sensitively guided by the folklorist in tandem with a continually expanding local leadership. The partnership of public and private groups is continually negotiated and redefined for every project. The resources of the private sector

and municipal government are impressive when gathered to support community-based projects. Various agencies willingly supply services and materials such as photography, graphic design, recording equipment, performance stages, sound amplification, and public relations. A cooperative program presently being planned grew from a holiday survey of Christmas gardens, miniature indoor villages and train layouts located below or in conjunction with the family Christmas tree. Found Originally in German immigrants’ homes, these gardens have been a part of Baltimore family and local fire house holiday rituals for generations. In recent years, however, their numbers have declined. During visits to ‘gardeners’ ” displays this winter, the folklorist was encouraged to organize a public forum to teach the endangered art form. Volunteers eager to share their tradition have inspired and designed a one-day workshop this fall in which they (the folk artists) will teach the history and skills of Christmas gardening. The finished workshop product will be displayed at the City Life Museum during the appropriate season. Among the cooperating institutions are the museum, fire department,

Streetcar Museum, the city folklorist, and local suppliers and hobby shops. An all-volunteer group is securing private funding and carrying

out aspects of planning and implementation. |

Whatever the project, locating operating support is a necessary reality that requires special attention. The responsibilities of fund-raising add a new dimension to the folklorist’s domain. As originally conceived, the Baltimore city folklorist was contracted to raise money for salary and pro-

gram costs. In one sense, this suggests that only programs that prove attractive to funding agencies are completed. By designing projects that have a grass-roots constituency whenever possible, the community can act as the fund-raising entity. If tax-exempt status is lacking, the folklorist’s office can act as a conduit for funds. As once reliable federal funding sources for cities and for the arts di-

104 ELAINE EFF minish simultaneously, private benefaction must be sought from local businesses, corporations, and foundations to fill the growing financial gap. The private sector, we are told, is the only hope to replace beleaguered federal sources. The tasks of keeping informed and courting and soliciting corporate donors are a full-time enterprise and, when possible, better left to the professional fund-raiser or public relations staff. Unfortunately, the question of budget for operating expenses beyond

special projects cannot be overlooked, particularly if the office of the folklorist is to anticipate growth. The seemingly routine activities and the

accompanying costs for phone answering, film, processing, tape, and transcription need immediate attention. Transcription is one of the time-

intensive skills that the folklorist who conducts many interviews and maintains a schedule requiring nightly meetings must relegate to professionals at the market rate. The services of volunteers in their capacity as office workers, student researchers, or interns cannot assure the smooth functioning of an office that requires personal service to succeed. Without the constant supervision of a volunteer supervisor, only a very limited program can exist. The care and feeding of working volunteers, like informants, is a fine art. In an effort to circumvent budget restrictions that at present make regular staffing impossible, Baltimore’s folklorist has installed a telephone answering machine as receptionist, employed the services of students as interns, supervised a student’s independent study, and cotaught a college historic preservation fieldwork course that engages the students in timely research. Volunteers directed toward specific projects that match their skills must work outside of the office because of space limitations. Ideally, funds obtained through grants, private benefaction, or city budget will allow the establishment of headquarters ina larger, more visible space that can accommodate volunteers and a minimal staff. Despite the impressive resources of a municipality, creation of selfsupporting programs with paid staff is the only relief for the one-person office. Perhaps the most compelling reason to keep plans within reasonable limits is the painful reality that it takes time to know how to use available resources and to build a base of community and financial support. This realization comes as no surprise to any toiler in the public sector. A staff of volunteer and paid youngsters, college students, adults, and senior citizens, all from the neighborhoods, along with short-term fieldworkers from graduate folklore programs will, in time, blur the distinction between the researcher and the audience, as they share the important message of folklore’s valuable role in Baltimore’s continuing growth. A continuing exchange of information and skills, sensitively gathered and interpreted, will, in the not-so-distant future, make the job of city folklorist a common feature in municipal governments throughout this country.®

A City Folklorist for Baltimore 105 NOTES 1. For a recent study of cities as folklife research sites, see Barbara KirshenblattGimblett, ‘““The Future of Folklore Studies in America: The Urban Frontier,” Folklore Forum 16:2 (Fall 1983): 175-234.

2. The Commission for Architectural and Historic Preservation (CHAP) was established by Ordinance 939, Article 1, Section 40 of the Baltimore City Code in 1964 in response to a proposal to demolish historic buildings in the Mount Vernon district of the city. The designation of city landmarks was added in 1968. 3. Scattered in Foreign Lands: A Greek Village in Baltimore, an exhibition and publication was conceived by Greek-American folklorist Anna Caraveli and sponsored by the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, Washington, D.C., at the Baltimore Museum of Art, June 30Aug. 18, 1985. 4. The English system of renting rather than purchasing the ground on which a building stands is found only in Baltimore and St. Louis in the United States. ‘“Ground rents” substantially lowered the purchase price for a new home, in large part making Baltimore a

city of homeowners. .

5. Ordinance 895 (1966) and amended ordinance 49, 5-3 (1972) of the Baltimore City Code restrict the stabling of animals from residential areas. 6. For an important early study, see Dan Ben-Amos, “Towards a Definition of Folklore

in Context,” Journal of American Folklore 84 (1971): 3-15.

7. Citizens Planning and Housing Association (CPHA) founded in 1941 is a nonprofit, public interest organization devoted to informed citizen action, to assure responsible government in planning, housing, zoning, and issues pertaining to the upgraded quality of life for all citizens of metropolitan Baltimore. 8. At present, municipally sponsored folklorists are located in the Queens (New York) Arts Council and Los Angeles Department of Arts and Culture. City Lore, a quasi-public and privately funded folk arts agency for New York City has recently been established by Steven Zeitlin. Urban Traditions in Chicago operates folk arts programs under the sponsorship of » the American Jewish Committee’s Institute for American Pluralism. Philadelphia’s International House, a private residence for foreign and other visiting students on the University of Pennsylvania campus, has directed local folk arts research since 1979.

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Programming —

Formats & Issues

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ROBERT T. TESKE ~~ State Folk Art Exhibitions |

Review and Preview |

During the ten-year period since the American Revolutionary Bicentennial occasioned the exhibitions Michigan Folk Art: Its Beginnings to 1941 and Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Art 1770-1976, a total of ten statewide survey

exhibitions of folk art have been organized by, or in consultation with, academically trained folklorists in different parts of the country. Following Michigan and Georgia, inroughly chronological order, the states that have

researched, documented, and presented the variety of their traditional arts and crafts include Utah, Mississippi, Oregon, Vermont, Iowa, Idaho, Maryland, and Rhode Island. These ten state survey exhibitions were by no means the only exhibitions of folk art that took place during this period. Indeed, a report prepared by Ann Taft, titled “Folk Art Exhibitions Funded by the Folk Arts Program, 1975-1984,” indicates that 107 shows were funded by that division of the National Endowment for the Arts at a total cost of $1,845,571.! These exhibitions, again principally the work of professional folklorists working in the public sector, documented a considerable range of region-

al, ethnic, and occupational traditions. Deadrise workboats of the Chesapeake Bay, wrought iron grave crosses of the German-Russians in North Dakota, traditional pottery from Alabama and basketry from Florida, the folk arts of New York’s north country and of the Lower Chattahoochee Valley of Georgia and Alabama, Zuni ceramics, basketry of the North Alaskan Eskimo, festival traditions of Orthodox Christians in Rockland County, New York, and of Portuguese-Americans in California, AfroAmerican quilts from Rhode Island and Mississippi, Japanese-American

bonsai, and Hmong needlework—all were the subjects of exhibitions funded by NEA’s Folk Arts Program. In addition to presentations funded through Folk Arts, a large number of exhibitions documenting traditional

material culture were mounted with support from the museums programs at NEA and the National Endowment for the Humanities and various private funding sources. Particularly noteworthy among these exhibitions are such highly publicized shows as the Pennsylvania-German folk art exhibit mounted by Winterthur and the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Corcoran Gallery of Art’s Black Folk Art in America: 1930-1980; the Mu-

110 ROBERT T. TESKE seum of International Folk Art’s installation of the Girard collection of over 100,000 pieces of folk art from some 100 countries; and American Folk Art: Expressions of a New Spirit, assembled by the Museum of American Folk Art.?

Amid this array of exhibitions devoted to American folk art in all its diversity, the ten survey presentations of the folk art of individual states

might seem of relatively minor consequence. However, they are significant for several reasons. First, the statewide survey approach has emerged as the single exhibition format to be reapplied on a continuing basis by public sector folklorists. Though of necessity broader than they are deep, these multigeneric, multiethnic, multiregional exhibitions have been effective both as educational programs and as vehicles for increasing the visibility of state arts agency-sponsored folk arts programs. Second, the state folk art exhibitions are important because they have served as one of the principal forums for academically trained folklorists to join the debate with dealers, collectors, and museum professionals over the definition of American folk art. In light of their breadth and inclusiveness, statebased exhibitions have demanded well-thought-out definitions of folk art and detailed selection criteria even more than other folk art exhibitions narrower in focus. As a result, the catalogs accompanying these exhibitions reflect the current approach of folklore scholarship to this long-running debate. Finally, because of their unique comparability, the ten-state folk art exhibitions mounted to date provide an invaluable gauge for measuring movement and direction in the documentation and presentation of folk art by American folklorists. It is the purpose of this essay, therefore, to review the patterns of development evident in the state folk art exhibits

organized to the present; to consider their impact on such interested groups as folk artists and their communities, museum professionals, art critics, and the general public; and to suggest the positive and negative considerations surrounding continued use of this format in the future. Perhaps the most apparent pattern to be found in the ten state folk art

exhibitions mounted over the past decade is their almost universal grounding in field research. From the two-year survey of Michigan folk art

resources, through the team field research projects mounted in Oregon, Vermont, and Idaho, to the one-man sweep of Iowa conducted by state folk arts coordinator Steven Ohrn, every state-based folk art exhibition except one has built primarily upon a foundation of fieldwork. Only Mississippi drew more heavily upon the existing holdings of public institutions and of private collectors than upon a field investigation, yet even this exhibition had the benefit of the Mississippi Folklife Project survey of black

traditional arts in the state’s southwestern section. This consistent application of the most basic research technique employed by academically trained folklorists clearly distinguishes the ten state folk art exhibitions from many prior and many contemporaneous exhibitions of folk art

State Folk Art Exhibitions 111 mounted by fine art and folk art museums and other proponents of an essentially art historical approach that emphasizes the object of art to the exclusion of its context. A second pattern, which can be discerned from an examination of the

ten state folk art exhibitions organized thus far, is the progression from entirely historical to entirely contemporary works selected for inclusion. Following the initial Michigan exhibition with its 1941 terminus post quem, . the Georgia, Utah, Mississippi, Oregon, and Vermont shows all included both historical and contemporary folk art. Indeed, the Utah, Mississippi,

and Oregon exhibitions even included several prehistoric native American artifacts. The most recent state folk art surveys, however, have all but eliminated historical examples of traditional material culture and have focused on the work of contemporary folk artists. In this way, the lowa, Idaho, Rhode Island, and Maryland exhibitions seem to emphasize the living nature of folk art even more than its time depth and traditionality. Whether this concentration on the current is a function of such narrow influences as the Folk Arts Program’s funding guidelines that stress support for traditions still actively being practiced or a reaction to the stereotypical notion that folk art is dead or at least dying is impossible to determine. Most likely, both factors—and others as well—have contributed to the pursuit of this new course. A similar pattern of development can be observed in the evolution of

the organizational principles adopted to structure the ten state folk art exhibitions presented to date. The early exhibitions in Michigan, Georgia, and Mississippi were all organized more or less by medium, just as earlier shows by adherents of the art historical approach to folk arts had been. In the next group of exhibitions, the folk arts of Utah, Oregon, and Vermont were organized according to the cultural groups in which they originated. Each state’s native American population was first recognized for its contri-

bution to the folk arts repertory, and then such other historical and occupational groups as pioneers, buckaroos, ranchers, farmers, and ethnic immigrants were singled out for their additional contributions. From a concentration on the art forms of distinct settlement groups, the organizational focus of the state folk art exhibits shifted to those commonalities that crosscut various discreet ethnic, regional, occupational, and religious traditions. Thus, the Idaho folk art exhibit brought together the state’s traditional arts under the headings of ‘““Beauty in the Home,” “Working on the

Land,” “Whimsy and Recreation,” and ““Ceremony and Celebration.’ Finally, from an emphasis upon those aspects of folk art that bring many people from many groups together, the structuring principle for state folk art exhibitions has become the folk artist as individual, working within a communally shared tradition. Thus, in the relatively small Rhode Island exhibition and catalog, biographies of artists are provided for the first time in a state folk art show, and in the Maryland Soundings exhibition, three

112 ROBERT T. TESKE artists are allowed to shape their own material presentations of themselves to the. viewing public.‘ In the progressions from organization by medium to organization by group, to organization by commonly shared contexts, to organization by individual artists, statewide folk art exhibitions reflect the emergence of folklore scholarship from an overriding concern with the group and its role in shaping and maintaining a tradition to a greater awareness of the ability of the individual folk artist to create and experiment within the structures of a given tradition. If the organization of state folk art exhibitions reflects one recent direction of American folklore scholarship, the definitions employed as a basis of these exhibitions clearly demonstrate the discipline’s increasing

acceptance of a consistent approach to folk art that is considerably removed from the earlier art historical perspective. Although the first Michigan folk art exhibition was grounded in a definition closely related to that of the art historian—a folk artist was said to be “one without formal academic art training who did not seriously consider himself or herself to be an artist”°—other early exhibits showed an awareness of both the art his-

torical and the emergent folkloristic perspective and sought—albeit unsuccessfully—a compromise. Anna Wadsworth, the organizer of Georgia’s Missing Pieces exhibition, juxtaposed the perspectives of John Burrison, Eliot Wigginton, and Herbert W. Hemphill, Jr. and concluded that “both idiosyncratic, self-taught artists and traditional folk craftspeople bring together fragmented aspects of our lives.’ Patti Carr Black, in the introduction to Made by Hand: Mississippi Folk Art, compared the per-

spectives of art historians and folklorists and proceeded to employ the criteria of both while “holding strictly to neither stance.” After correctly noting the art historian’s focus on the esthetic and the folklorist’s focus on traditional design and techniques, Black defined folk art as ‘““objects made as an expression of spirit by artisans without formal training.”’ Finally, Kurt Dewhurst and Marsha MacDowell took up the divergent perspectives of folklorists and art historians and sought in their exhibition of contemporary Michigan folk art, Rainbows in the Sky, to explore the continuum of folk artistic expression, which they believed extended from the wholly traditional through the individualistic to the more popular and commercial.®

With the appearance of Barre Toelken’s essay, titled ‘In the Stream of Life” in the catalog Webfoots and Bunchgrassers: Folk Art of the Oregon Coun-

try, efforts at reaching a compromise on the definition of folk art were set aside, and a clear statement of the folklorist’s perspective on the subject became available. Toelken dismissed earlier characterizations of folk art as “primitive,” “naive,” and “childish” as unacceptable in their description through “deficit dimensions.” He went on to emphasize that “folk art lies not in the object, item or gesture produced, but in the live process which brought about the nature of the production.’”? He also stressed the role of

State Folk Art Exhibitions 113 tradition in folk art, the shared community esthetic that underlies it, the informal training of traditional artists, and the frequently utilitarian nature of their work. So logical, so consistent, so theoretically sound a position gained wide acceptance within the ranks of folklorists and has been echoed in the introductory statements of all the state folk art exhibition catalogs that have followed. Jane Beck affirmed that Vermont folk art is related to traditional learning, based in shared experience, and possessed of an esthetic shared by both maker and viewer.!° Steve Siporin, in The Folk

Art of Idaho, allowed that “folk art is art which has grown through time within a community.”!! And Michael E. Bell, in Hand to Hand, Heart to Heart: Folk Arts in Rhode Island, recalled Toelken’s words of five years before

when he stated: “Ultimately, then, any folk art object is only a tangible representation of a continuing process. Even when the object’s maker is long forgotten, or the object itself is gone, the ideas which produced it may

still be alive, to live again through the hands and hearts of a succeeding generation.” After years of careless, ill-informed, and frequently emotional haggling over an acceptable definition of folk art, the growing consistency of approach to traditional material culture, which appears to be achieving reification in the state folk art exhibitions, is extremely welcome.

Indeed, the development of a consistent definition of folk art and the amassing of collections of artifacts that exemplify that definition may prove to be the most lasting and significant of all the contributions made by the series of state folk art exhibitions. Consideration of the various contributions made by or through these ten state-based exhibitions of folk art raises the second major issue of this paper, the general impact of such projects upon a number of widely divergent constituencies. Assessing the impact of state folk art exhibitions upon the folk artists whose work is included and the communities they represent, upon the museum professionals and art critics who aid in the mounting and interpretation of such shows, and upon the general public who come to view them is surely a critical factor in determining the overall value of such efforts. Unfortunately, evaluating the impact of public sector folklore programs is at this point about as exact a science as phrenology, and as a result, only a few anecdotal responses can be given to the questions of impact raised above. With regard to the folk artists and the communities whose arts have been presented to a larger audience, the past decade’s state folk art exhibi- — tions seem to have had a largely positive impact. As was invariably intend-

ed, the state exhibits conferred upon the folk art, the folk artists, and the traditional communities various forms of honor and recognition. Local and regional press coverage, honored guest status at openings, and occa-

sional handshakes from the governor and other dignitaries provided small but meaningful tokens of esteem and affirmation. That this attention was, in fact, appreciated by individual artists is confirmed by Steve

114 ROBERT T. TESKE Ohrn’s account of Pappy Davis arising from bed for the first time in five years to share his gourd carvings with the folklorist in preparation for the state’s exhibit. In addition to recognition, the state folk art exhibitions led

to commercial benefits for some of the traditional artists represented. Oregon artist Rod Rosebrook was contacted by a New York gallery that has gone on to handle his work. Gus Gadow, an Iowa blacksmith featured in Passing Time and Tradition, has sold work to galleries like folklorist Reba Bass’s Beyond Necessity in Wyoming. And Alabama potter Jerry Brown, who demonstrated his skills at the opening of the Traditional Pottery of Ala-

bama exhibit, has seen an increased demand for his work.’ The recogni-

tion and scholarly endorsement that state folk art exhibitions have provided has not been entirely free from negative side effects, however. A Nebraska gallery that took many pieces from Iowa folk artists on consignment honored its obligations to them only after considerable pressure was applied by the artists and by the state folk arts coordinator. And Michigan Hmong needleworkers have taken to producing replicas of the paj ntaub that adorned the cover of the Michigan Hmong exhibition catalog, though this was clearly never intended as a model.4

With regard to museum professionals and art critics, the impact of state folk art exhibitions seems to be localized at best. For every positive sign of support, such as the commitment of The Museum of Michigan State University to collect folk art or the agreement of the Vermont Historical Society to change its main gallery exhibition for the first time in umpteen years to accommodate Always in Season, there are negative indications of a lingering lack of understanding, such as the Renwick Gallery’s refusal to include a number of the interpretive panels in its installation of Webfoots

and Bunchgrassers in order to preserve the necessary ‘white space” surrounding objects. There do appear to be indications, however, that museum professionals throughout the country are gaining respect for the position represented by the state folk art exhibitions and by the discipline of folklore in general. Several major museums, for example, have recently sought funding from the NEA Folk Arts Program for workshops and demonstrations by area traditional artists to augment their installations of the Museum of American Folk Art’s exhibition, American Folk Art: Expressions of

a New Spirit, which they found to be too heavily historical and too strongly _ biased toward New England and the Middle Atlantic states. Yet only when these institutions begin to focus on their regional and local folk cultures as primary rather than as secondary subject matter will a significant corner

have been turned in the relationship of folklorists and museum professionals.

The understanding of and appreciation for folk art as defined by folklorists in their exhibitions and publications seem no more common among art critics than among the majority of museum professionals. While news coverage of state folk art exhibitions has been fairly liberal, the :

State Folk Art Exhibitions 115 number of serious reviews of these shows by established critics has been small. On the one hand, the Vermont folk art exhibition received detailed and lengthy consideration by Christina Robb in The Boston Globe Magazine;!5 on the other, Passing Time and Traditions never received any full reviews from Des Moines Register critic Elliot Nusbaum, even though he did see fit to review the Museum of American Folk Art’s current show when it

was installed at John Deere corporate headquarters in Moline. Perhaps Hank Willett best summed up the popular media’s reaction to folk art in a

note attached to clippings regarding his Alabama pottery show. As he pointed out: “You'll notice we’re on the arts page, the children’s section,

the rural news section, the human interest page. We even made the Montgomery society column. . . . I"mafraid we still have a long way to go in overcoming the ‘cutesy,’ ‘whimsical’ stereotype.’’!¢ With regard to the general public, the impact of the ten state folk arts

exhibitions presented over the past decade seems essentially positive. Throughout Iowa the exhibition Passing Time and Traditions proved extremely popular, drawing many first-time art museum visitors to the sites where it was installed. In Idaho the public reaction to the state folk art exhibition was one of amazement at the fact that there was “anything that good in the state.” Unfortunately, the positive impact of presentations such as these state-based folk art exhibitions upon the general public is frequently mitigated by the publicity surrounding more visible exhibitions of folk art assembled by major museums and other institutions. The people of Iowa, for example, must have found confusing the disparity between the definition of the subject employed in their state’s folk art exhibition and that used in the Museum of American Folk Art show presented at John Deere corporate headquarters in Moline. Similar consternation must have been registered by Baltimore television audiences when a carefully prepared series of interviews with folk artists featured in Charles Camp’s Soundings exhibition was followed the next day by an interview with a gushing spokesperson for the Museum of American Folk Art’s touring Grandma Moses show who explained that folk art was the naive and unsophisticated expression of artists without formal training.!” In short, as long as ill-prepared yet highly publicized touring exhibitions, such as the Corcoran Gallery’s Black Folk Art in America, find their way into major mu-

seums around the country and into the art sections of weekly news magazines, the impact of past or future state folk art exhibitions upon the general public is likely to be marginal at best. In light of the successes and failures of the ten state folk art exhibitions assembled during the past ten years, is there justification for continuing to make use of the format in the future? I believe the answer must be yes. The

first ten state folk art exhibitions have supported too much good fieldwork, generated too much archival documentation, educated too many gallery-goers, persuaded too many balky legislators, and honored too

116 ROBERT T. TESKE many exceptional folk artists to argue against expanding the approach to other states. However, to do so without taking into account the lessons learned from an examination of earlier state folk art surveys would prevent future efforts from reaching their highest potential. What factors must be taken into consideration in improving future state folk art exhibitions? First, we must recognize the strides that have been made in developing an intellectually sound definition of folk art and strive to apply it even more consistently in the future. For example, the tendency to include naive paintings in recent state folk art shows must be curbed. While these works may seem to meet one or two of the criteria specified by the folkloristic definition of folk art—they may document traditional customs or ceremonies, they may bring artist and community members together—such paintings rarely constitute a traditional expressive form in folk communities and often reflect more of an individual than a communal esthetic. Naive paintings should, therefore, be omitted from future state folk art exhibitions in order to achieve greater definitional con-

sistency and to avoid renewed confusion with the art historical perspective.

A second factor to be considered in improving state-based folk art exhibitions is the issue of providing more than token recognition to tradi-

tional artists and their communities. While gubernatorial handshakes, certificates, and corsages or boutonnieres at openings are thoughtful symbolic gestures, more concrete forms of assistance often can be provided to active folk artists and craftspeople either in direct association with an exhibition or as a supplement to one. Aid in identifying an apprentice, discussion of the complexities of selling one’s work outside one’s community, and even the sensitive marketing of the work of folk artists through museum Sales shops during the run of an exhibition might represent valuable forms of assistance that could be provided in concert with or in addition to future state folk art exhibitions. A final consideration for improving future state folk arts exhibitions involves further efforts at encouraging museum personnel and art critics

to weigh the merits of the folklorist’s approach to American folk art. Through the placement of state folk art shows in major museums in-state

and in prestigious national venues such as Washington, D.C. or New York, through careful presentations on the special character of folk art and

its consequent need for specialized interpretation, and through such calculated efforts at attracting critics and reviewers as invitational gallery talks and special tours, folklorists mounting state folk art exhibitions may be able to further narrow the gap between themselves and these old-line supporters of the art historical approach. The record of the first ten state folk art exhibitions is a remarkable one | in many respects. It provides a solid foundation upon which the five or six

state surveys currently under development, and many more thereafter,

State Folk Art Exhibitions 117 can safely build. As long as these early exhibitions do not become models to be slavishly copied or inhibitors of innovative approaches to the future presentation of America’s folk art, they will continue to inform and inspire the work of public sector folklorists long after they have been crated and returned from their final touring sites. NOTES 1. Ann Taft, ‘Folk Arts Exhibitions Funded by the Folk Arts Program, 1975-1984,” National Endowment for the Arts Fellows Report, 1984, p. iii.

2. For further information regarding these exhibitions, see Beatrice B. Garvan and Charles F. Humme, The Pennsylvania Germans: A Celebration of Their Arts, 1683-1850 (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1982); Jane Livingston and John Beardsley, Black Folk Art in America, 1930-1980 (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 1982); James Pahl, “Glimpses of Fantasy: The Girard Exhibit,” El Palacio 88, 4 (Winter 1982-1983): 25-33; Robert Bishop, American Folk Art: Expressions of a New Spirit (New York: Museum of American Folk Art, 1983). 3. Steve Siporin, Folk Art of Idaho: ‘We Came to Where We Were Supposed to Be’’ (Boise:

Idaho Commission on the Arts, 1984). 4. Michael E. Bell, Hand to Hand, Heart to Heart: Folk Arts in Rhode Island (Providence: Rhode Island State Council on the Arts, 1985), pp. 27-40; and Charles Camp, Soundings: Tradition in Maryland Life (Baltimore: Maryland State Arts Council, 1984). 5. Michigan State University, Michigan Folk Art: Its Beginnings to 1941 (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ. 1976), p. 5. 6. Anna Wadsworth, Missing Pieces: Georgia Folk Art 1770-1976 (Atlanta: Georgia Council for the Arts and Humanities, 1976), p. 110. 7. Mississippi Department of Archives and History. Made by Hand: Mississippi Folk Art (Jackson: Mississippi Department of Archives and History, 1980), p. 9. 8. C. Kurt Dewhurst and Marsha MacDowell, Rainbows in the Sky (East Lansing: Michigan State Univ., 1978), pp. 10-11. 9. Suzi Jones, Webfoots and Bunchgrassers: Folk Arts of the Oregon Country (Salem: Oregon

Arts Commission, 1980), p. 14. 10. Jane Beck, ed., Always in Season: Folk Art and Traditional Culture in Vermont (Montpelier: Vermont Council on the Arts, 1982), p. 22. 11. Siporin, Folk Art of Idaho, p. 2. 12. Bell, Hand to Hand, Heart to Heart, p. 25. 13. Regarding Jerry Brown’s work, see Henry Willett and Joey Brackner, The Traditional Pottery of Alabama (Montgomery: Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts, 1983), p. 46. 14. C. Kurt Dewhurst and Marsha MacDowell, Michigan Hmong Arts: Textiles in Transition

(East Lansing: Michigan State Univ., 1984). 15. Christina Robb, “By the People: The Community Spirit of Folk Art,” Boston Globe Magazine, Aug. 7, 1983, p. 12ff. 16. Personal correspondence from Henry Willett, March 15, 1984. 17. Personal correspondence from Charles Camp, Jan. 1985.

JACK SANTINO _____essssSsssSsSSsSsSSSFSSSSSSSSSSSS

The Tendency to Ritualize The Living Celebrations Series as a Model for Cultural Presentation and Validation

On St. Patrick’s Day weekend, 1982, an exhibition opened at the Smithsonian Institution entitled Celebration: A World of Art and Ritual. For this major

museum event, objects having to do with rituals and celebratory events of all kinds were gathered together from the vast holdings of the Smithso-

nian, and those judged most beautiful and most representative of the widest possible range of ritual phenomena were chosen for display. The exhibition was sponsored by the Office of Folklife Programs in conjunction with the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art. Anthropologist Victor Turner served as a guest curator of the exhibition, and he and research coordinator Elaine Eff, along with Ralph Rinzler, Peter Seitel, Jeffrey LaRiche, and other staff members of the Renwick Gallery and the Office of Folklife Programs, designed the exhibition and selected the objects to be showcased. Musical instruments, altars, costumes, banners, and other material components of celebration were installed behind protective glass, grouped together in ways that illustrated certain anthropological concepts about ritual and celebration.!

For instance, funerary objects from many different cultures were displayed together under the rubric ‘‘Rites of Passage: Death.” The exhibition drew attention to the beauty of the artifacts’ craftsmanship so as to demonstrate that these objects, although created for a ritual context, are indeed works of art. From its earliest inception, the exhibition was designed to be complemented by “the staging of living celebrations by American folk groups,” that is, a series of celebrations of traditional cultures that would be held in the Grand Salon of the Renwick Gallery, an area adjacent to the installation of the ritual objects.” The living component was intended to provide a

medium through which visitors could witness and experience the use of these objects and others like them in context. The Living Celebrations Series was designed to add a living cultural dimension to the exhibition. I served as director of this series for its entirety, from March 1982 through

The Tendency to Ritualize 119 June 1983, and it was charged to me to realize this idea, to develop living museum presentations that would demonstrate the place and use of objects in the ongoing processual contexts of ritual and celebration. Working closely with program coordinator, Magdalena Gilinsky and senior assistant Samantha Hawkins, it was my job to choose appropriate celebratory events and then to develop these into workable public presentations.

My purpose in this article is to view these public presentations as cultural events. We will examine the celebrations as they were designed and presented at the Renwick Gallery rather than as they regularly occur

in their natural context. It is my argument that these events, although changed, continued to be dynamic events that contained within them the potentiality to transform the actors and properties involved. As presentations of folk and ethnic celebration and ritual sponsored by a public agency, the events were created by specialists from outside the group in con-

junction with members of the groups involved, some of whom were specialists in particular areas. In order to best understand the extent of the power inherent in events public sector folklorists create, I have found the theories and methodologies of the anthropological and social scientific

work on ritual and other cultural performances to be most useful. This article, then, will perhaps be of relevance to other kinds of public presentations of traditional culture that have been developed by public sector folklorists for other contexts, such as outdoor festivals, public libraries, or schools. Our intention was to develop public presentations of events that are usually private (although not sensitive) in nature. At all times we worked

closely with the people who were participating, and together we developed designs and plans for layout and sequence of events that best recreated the atmosphere of the actual celebrations. Whenever possible, we engaged fieldworkers who were trusted by the community group to develop specific events. Because the participants were not professional performers, we were sometimes met with skepticism; to perform one’s traditional and religious customs associated with social or religious holidays fora large outside group is an unusual concept. Itis in this regard that

working with community leaders is very important. Ideally, the events were intended to actually be celebrations, to break through into celebration, to paraphrase Hymes.4 Often the events moved froma solemn begin-

ning to a participatory, joyous, singing-and-dancing conclusion. The overall sequence of the events was developed and discussed in advance, but the events themselves were unrehearsed. Although this is not intended to be an instructional, how-to paper, a description of the format of the events and the means and strategies used to successfully carry out the programs is in order. Initially, assumed that the various celebrations would be developed for presentation in much the same way as were the outdoor presentations I had worked on for the

120 JACK SANTINO Smithsonian’s Festival of American Folklife annually since 1975 and also the living museum presentations I had developed, such as the Folk Medicine: Herbalists, Curers, and Healers program, which was held in the Museum of American History in 1979. While the Living Celebrations Series

| was, in fact, directly related to and developed out of those models, the problems of presenting an authentically traditional and celebratory public event ina large, luxuriously appointed Victorian salon were substantially different from the problems involved in the staging of those other kinds of presentations. The Living Celebrations had to be designed and presented

in such a way as to (1) be faithful to the nature of the celebration and culture of which that celebration is a part; (2) instruct and educate an audience, many of whom were casual passersby, as to the nature of the particular celebration of the evening and of celebration as a dynamic, processual concept generally; and (3) create a genuinely participatory and celebratory ambience in which audience members would feel encouraged to join in the dancing, share the food, and otherwise engage themselves in the event. During a Cambodian festival of the New Year, for instance, the audience was invited to kneel and approach a statue of the Buddha and pour water over its head to bring good fortune during the coming year. To my surprise, an overwhelming majority of the approximately two hundred people in the audience did exactly as they were invited. Young and old, male and female, predominantly white middle-class individuals got down on their knees, formed a long line, and slowly shuffled toward the altar of the Buddha assembled for the presentation by Cambodian Americans who lived in northern Virginia and the District of Columbia. Individual events were developed as follows: after initial contact was made with community leaders (official and unofficial), they and other members of the community came to the Renwick Gallery to view the space and plan the event accordingly. I worked with them in a mediatory capacity, suggesting ways to maintain the integrity of the tradition and maximize the potential of the room. At the Smithsonian we had access to good production support services that enabled us to divide the large area of the Grand Salon into smaller areas in which different aspects of the celebration could occur. Often, as with, forinstance, the Latin American El Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead), the natural flow of a particular celebration is from the home to a holy place (a church), to an outdoor site (in this case a

graveyard), to someone’s home again. These changes in venue reflect the movement from family customs (sacred and secular) to a sacred ritualistic

tradition (decorating the graves), to a secular celebration with singing, dancing, and eating at someone’s home. Because the Grand Salon is a Victorian era room decorated with oil paintings in the Western European high art tradition, the challenge was to transform it into another kind of quality space. Our strategy was to create new quality areas within the Grand Salon

The Tendency to Ritualize 121 by using photographic backdrops and plywood or styrofoam constructions with props such as chairs, tables, flowers, icons, banners, holy pictures, etc. The participants usually brought these objects from their homes or sometimes made them for the event and set them up themselves so as to ensure accuracy and authenticity. For the Day of the Dead presentation, a table decorated with items belonging to the participants became a home altar in one side of the Salon; located in the rear central portion of the room, a backdrop in the shape of the exterior of a small church was constructed; in front of that, three mock graves were built. The activities began at the

home area, moved to the church, and then to the graves. Because the events only lasted from two to three hours from beginning to end, while the holiday, celebrations, or festivals they represented lasted at least a day, and often many days, the physical movement through the space metaphorically represented the temporal movement through the day. In this way, space stood for time. At a certain point, traditional foods were sampled by the audience. Musicians were positioned in ways appropriate to the overall flow of people during the celebratory events, and audience-performer spatial distinctions were minimized. Stages were generally not used or, if used, consisted of platforms raised only eight inches off the floor. Many of the Living Celebrations involved processions and parades into, through, and around the room; sometimes statues, icons, or holy images were set up in different corners of the room, and participants would parade to each of these. Each Living Celebration involved sequences of ritual and of play.5 I use the term ritual to refer not to regularly repeated actions of daily life but, following Turner, to formalized, sequenced, and patterned events that have transformative power and are perceived as having such power— weddings, commencement exercises, or retirement parties, for instance.® Our purpose was to create, finally, real celebrations for the participants and to involve the audience in the secular and play aspects of dancing and feasting. As it turned out, the audiences were, in many cases, also asked to participate in sacred aspects and did so willingly and meaningfully, such as on the occasion mentioned above when people approached the Buddha on their knees or when audience members placed flowers on the mock graves during the Day of the Dead celebration. Even though these graves were not real—there were no bodies buried in the floor of the Grand Salon—they became the focus of veneration, they became holy because of what it was they represented. It is in the nature of symbols and objects of special attention to be reified not because of what they are, but rather because of what they stand for and suggest. For instance, a Christmas tree need no longer be either evergreen or even a tree—it can be purple and plastic—but it is still a Christmas tree and given a special place of honor in the home in December. The objects used in the Living Celebrations Series, because they were used in a dynamic, processual context, took on the

122 JACK SANTINO same kind of symbolic power. The props, backdrops, statues, flowers, and

so forth were not objects for public scrutiny as were the objects in the exhibition but instead were used to create a situation of true celebration. They were used to induce a natural context’ that would result in spontaneity and ‘’flow’’® or ‘“communitas’’? for audiences and participants alike. It is important that we understand the ways in which this occurred, and to do that, it is helpful to view these events as genuinely symbolic rather than as mock-symbolic, as events that changed intrinsically during the course of their presentation and that had the power to transform the participants and the audience. We can get at the nature of this ritualistic, transformative quality if we

look at another major, though perhaps unstated, purpose of the programs, that of the validation of the traditional cultures that were a part of the series. The hypothesis is that recently arrived immigrants to this coun-

try, and other folk and ethnic groups as well, by being encouraged to proudly present their traditional customs in as august an institution as the

Smithsonian, may be encouraged to resist the otherwise almost overwhelming social pressure they experience in so many aspects of their lives to deny these traditions and to assimilate. Thus, the fact that these celebratory events were being presented by, and in the overarching context of,

the National Museum is of central importance toward the purposes of validation in that it indicates to the people that this agency, which represents the dominant culture of the United States, recognizes and values their unique cultural contributions and the intrinsic worth and beauty of their traditions. I suspect this is true also, to greater or lesser extents, in other publicly sponsored events on the state and local, as well as national, levels. To this end, we developed a standard format for each presentation. As director of the series, | welcomed the audience, explained the concept of

the Living Celebrations Series with regard to the exhibition in general, briefly described the evening’s presentation, and then turned the microphone over toa member of the group who acted as spokesperson-narrator for the evening. Despite the attempt to minimize audience-performer distinctions, these were sharply pronounced at the beginning of the events. During the presentations, however, these roles were changed by asking audiences to become engaged in the events in ways dissimilar to other public presentations or museum exhibitions. In the course of the presenta-

tions, audience members adopted new roles, experimented with unfamiliar customs, ate foods new to them, and talked to people with whom they might not have otherwise associated. The presentations took on an aspect of liminality, during which audience members tried on new roles,

and transition, as the events became increasingly participatory, before ending with an integration of audience and performers. At that point the two became one; all were participants in a traditional, non-Western or

The Tendency to Ritualize 123 nonmainstream cultural event. The final dancing period can be seen as a kind of reintegration, the third stage in the classic rites-of-passage paradigm.!° At some point during this final stage, I would again take the microphone and, along with other staff members, publicly thank many individ-

uals, including staff and volunteers. We then presented certificates of

appreciation to the participants, calling each one forward to receive a cer- ; tificate before the audience. To the community leaders who had been most instrumental to the proceedings, we gave a bouquet of flowers. This format served to give an identity and continuity to the series as a whole. It

gave each presentation an opening and closing frame," and for the audience members, it identified each event as one ina continuing series. The format worked very well. Everyone, including the participants, audience, and staff, went away well pleased. After several such presentations, certain things became apparent. We learned that it was best to work with local people so as to be able to involve them in the design and planning of the programs from the very beginning.

In terms of audience interest and attendance, we learned that we were often most successful when we presented folk variations on such nationally celebrated American holidays and holy days as Halloween, Christmas, or Passover, because people are often looking for special ways to make these occasions more meaningful. Therefore, we scheduled a Latin American Day of the Dead celebration, which is in many ways cognate with the American Halloween (the Eve of All Saints), for November 1 (All Saints Day) and 2 (All Souls Day). In December we ran one of our most successful programs, a Polish Christmas celebration. During the spring at the appropriate time, we presented a Maimouna festival, a celebration held

by Moroccan Jews to note the end of Passover. On St. Patrick’s Day, 1983, | we ran an Irish American ceili with Irish beer and soda bread, traditional musicians, and dancing. The success of these programs also underscores the importance of working with knowledgeable fieldworkers and event coordinators. In each of these cases, the events were developed by individuals skilled in the presentation of cultural events and trusted as insiders by the people with whom they work: Olivia Cadaval coordinated the Day of the Dead program; Magdalena Gilinsky, the Polish Christmas celebration; Ruth Fredman, the Maimouna; and Marsha Maguire, the ceilt. Perhaps of greatest importance to the argument of this article, how-

ever, are the manner and criteria by which the events were evaluated. Significantly, the participants evaluated the events differently than did I or my colleagues. For instance, where I was concerned with such variables as the length of the event or of certain aspects within it or of the quality of individual performances (e.g., Was this musician as good as the other?), the participants were much less concerned with individual performances than with the event overall. The participants were concerned that the festival components be presented correctly. It was of primary importance that

124 JACK SANTINO events be presented in the proper sequence, that nothing be either included or excluded that would not otherwise be included in the events as they exist in their natural context. For them the presentation was a state-

ment about their culture, their nationality, their homeland, their community, and it was presented communally. Because it is multigeneric, festival may be the only folk genre to which the concept of communal creation is truly applicable.!? As such, individuals who represented individualistic performance traditions of music or verse were subsumed into the larger event. This was a house party, nota presentation of blues music. This was an Irish ceili, not a presentation of fiddle music. Aspects of festival that normally occur “backstage,” such as food preparation, were, when possible, made visible, and the women (who most often were the cooks) were as important as the men (who usually filled the public roles of musicians) in all aspects of organization and presentation. Moreover, the Living Celebrations events partook equally of sacred and secular, of ritual and play. However, because they were being presented for outsiders (nonmembers of the traditional group) in the structure of an official institution of the large society and were now routinized by our opening and closing frames of introductions and the bestowal of certificates of appreciation, the events, no matter what their original nature, were transformed. Each presentation in this new context became a rite of intensification of group unity and identity. This is a central point: in natural context, some events were rites of passage; others, rites of intensification. They were variously sacred, secular, religious, familial, or personal.!> However, when brought to the Renwick Gallery of the National

Museum, the intentions and the purposes of the events changed. Now they were being self-consciously performed for and presented to outsiders. As such, all rites were transformed into rites of intensification of the group as a cultural entity by virtue of the ceremonial framing of the event, the radically different context of the presentation in the museum rather than in the home and community, and the concomitant change in audience from family and friends with similar backgrounds to strangers with different backgrounds. The very fact that the celebration was a formal presentation of some sort, conceived and perceived as such, is itself a

transformation. A second transformation occured during the presentation. The events that were planned as museum programs were understood to be deep, complex, important statements to an audience that shared a potential to move from being spectators to becoming cocelebrants, cocreators of the events if they accepted their cues from the partici-

pants. I am arguing then that the presentations of traditional holiday and festival celebrations, though in large part planned and in some aspects contrived, were used by the participants— members of folk and traditional cultures—as formal occasions for the presentation of their culture to

The Tendency to Ritualize 125 outsiders and for the strengthening of their cultural bonds among themselves. More directly stated, the formalized presentation of rituals and celebratory events of many kinds became, in the new context (or frame) of museum gallery, rituals of intensification. The Living Celebrations were seen by the participants as opportunities to make a public statement, intensity the body politic, and strengthen community identity. I have been referring to these events as rites of intensification, which also exhibit some of the characteristics of rites of passage, particularly in the potentiality to transform an audience. At such events as weddings, funerals, commencements, and retirement parties, the audience takes on new roles as the status of the initiates changes. At the Living Celebrations, a key to the ritual dynamic at work is found in the transformation of the audience who came to observe a spectacle, a kind of museum holding, and discovered themselves actually participating in a “‘real” rather than a “make-believe” event.!4 Their participation was integral to the dynamic process of the event itself. If attitudes changed as well toward appreciation, acceptance, and understanding of alternative esthetic systems, this

was a welcome result of what was intended as a program of applied folklore—the use of our knowledge of cultural dynamics toward the ameliorization of a social ill. If we are interested in social change, then we must create programs that have the power to effect change, and for these we can look to the ways cultures institutionalize change: through the use of symbols in a ritual context. Many of the groups featured were recently arrived immigrants to the

United States, and it is worth noting at this point that the format of the Living Celebrations can also be said to parallel the immigrant experience. As we have seen, the events moved from a formal definition of audience and performers through a series of events that resulted in a dissolution of those distinctions and ended in an informal, integrated melding of insiders and outsiders, participant and audience groups, usually expressed ina general dance. Above I have compared this sequence of events to the tripartite structure of rites of passage. The final, integrative stage might also be seen as being suggestive of a kind of assimilation of the group. To the extent that this is in fact the case, there is an important distinction to be made between the activities that occurred at the Renwick Gallery and the kind of cultural denudation usually associated with the term assimilation. At the Living Celebrations, there was no requisite loss of tradition or distinctive cultural identity. The integrative process developed in the terms of the participants—the traditional society—trather than in the terms of the dominant society. Mainstream Americans adapted to unfamiliar customs and followed the lead of and took their cues from the cultural subgroup. In

fact, middle-class Americans were assimilated into the small groups rather than vice versa, if only for the space and time of the event. In describing the changes from organically occurring social events to

126 JACK SANTINO contrived museum events and from museum events to rites of intensification for the participants, [am not being metaphorical in my terminology.

These events were not simply staged shows, nor were they only ceremonial in nature. Having been transformed, the presentations took on transformative power, intangible but real. I referred above to ways in which our Living Celebrations presentations parallel the separation-transition-integration stages of most rites of passage. During our presentations the audiences were changed. Visitors came to the events with certain expectations in mind. The setting of the events within a museum frame

implies certain behavioral characteristics. A museum presentation is meant to be viewed, observed. Active engagement and participation are not usually required of the museum visitor. This is especially true with regard to exhibitions of objects. A person comes and goes at will, observing as much oras little as one cares to. Even live events such as musical

concerts rely on traditional audience-performer roles in which the audience is expected to observe in detachment and then evaluate critically. In its efforts to validate, the Living Celebrations Series asked the audience to play a much more active role. The participants in these events used the events ina dynamic way, to define and communicate their social identities as wellas to create new social roles and to communicate these persuasively to outsiders. Consequently, this transformation in requisite audience behavior from casual and detached to intense and engaged was really part of

a larger movement away from detached and ultimately static spectacle toward engaged, transformative ritual. Within ritual it is necessary, if not mandatory, that the audience witness an event by becoming part of it. This accounts in part for the kind of emic esthetic evaluation I referred to above. Itis more important that a ritual be conducted properly than that it be conducted well. Roman Catholics, for instance, are required to attend

the ritual of mass weekly. On Sundays, after services are completed, churchgoers often evaluate the performance of the priest esthetically: was he good, was he boring, was he relevant, did he have a good singing voice, etc. However, all of this is incidental to the fact that they partook of the celebration of the mass, regardless of who performed it or how well it was performed. If somehow the priest were to forget to consecrate the wine, or if he were to begin the mass with the consecration and neglect to distribute the host for communion, or if someone other than an ordained priest performed the consecration, people would object not that the mass was performed poorly, but that no mass was performed at all. Rituals are sacred, whether they are strictly religious or not, and so must be carried out ac-

cording to strict rules concerning proper roles, actors, sequences, and properties. Attempts to change any of these are met with strong resistance. Thus, to continue with the example of the mass, the argument over whether women can be ordained as priests is a negotiation about which actors are appropriate to fill that role in the ritual, and some people feel

The Tendency to Ritualize 127 that it would not be a real mass if it were celebrated by a woman. Likewise,

a recent debate over the introduction of Saturday afternoon services as acceptable for fulfillment of the weekly attendance requirement was a debate over the temporal frame of the ritual. In much the same manner, the participants at the Renwick Gallery were most concerned with the appropriateness and the accuracy of what was being presented. The genre of festival (subsuming ritual and celebration) includes all of the expressive arts—cooking, dancing, music making, and so on—and it was important to everyone involved that the most excellent examples of these be represented. '° To the participants, however, it was most important that the arts in the presentation accurately represent the holiday, festival, or celebration. ‘To be sure, it was important that these

representative arts be of the most excellent quality, but it was of primary importance that they be truly representative. Even though artists usually had time for solo or ensemble performances, the overall presentation was perceived by the participants as a group statement about the group, acommunal statement about their community. For this reason, the genre chosen—festival and celebration—is particularly suited to the larger goal of validation. Festivals and holidays are everywhere culturally emblematic, culturally sacred in a way in which some individualistic arts may not be. A blues singer, for instance, may be considered marginal in his own community. However, when a group, for instance Vietnamese, is asked to represent its New Year festival, all members of the Vietnamese community are equally “expert” in that they all experience and share this calendrical event despite differential individual roles or degrees of participation within it. The time frame of the Living Celebrations events also contributed to

the validation process. The presentations were held on weekends and sometimes on one afternoon only. The result was that rather than a lengthy (one or two week) series of presentations, these events were focused into two or three hours. There was an obvious beginning, middle, and end to the events, coupled with an awareness that a great deal had to be accomplished in a single presentation. Rather than presenting over a long period of time an individual artist who represented a tradition (and his or her other expertise within that tradition), we presented in a short period of time a group of individuals who represented differential but complementary roles within the social entity, who represented a variety of

traditions which, in turn, represented their culture. If the presentation was to make a statement, the statement had to be concise, direct, and accurate. Time—the length of the presentations—contributed to this ritualistic process. Place—the Grand Salon—was equally important. The conventional wisdom prior to doing the series was that the site of the presentation would, like the culture it represented, dominate the events. How could

128 JACK SANTINO the ambience of a blues house party, an Irish ceili, ora North African Maim-

ouna be suggested amid the oil paintings adorning, and Victorian furniture lining, the walls? Above I mentioned the use of photographic backdrops and three-dimensional constructions to create a different kind of quality space by suggesting it metaphorically. During the course of the series, however, it became apparent that the surroundings of the Grand Salon contributed a sense of ceremony to the events. In terms of staging, the Grand Salon worked for rather than against the success and transforma-

tion of the events. Its elegance provided ritual context for what were, in fact, new rituals. I have been referring to them as rites of intensification, but this term is not entirely sufficient. These events were rituals of community transition, presentational rituals of a cultural body, a cultural self, a cultural whole (or holistic culture), of a small group to the larger society in which it lives, similar to what Barbara Myerhoff has termed definitional ceremonies. !”

Following Clifford Geertz, Frank Manning has described celebration as both a “textual portrayal of society and an active role in the social process.” Referring again to the distinction between play and ritual, he suggests that celebration consists of these two modes: play, which is licen-

tious and subversive of the social order, and ritual, which is the mechanism through which culture replicates itself by confirming the social order. He goes on to address the very important issue of superordinate versus subordinate control of celebration and the ways in which these are manifested as ritual or as play. ‘“When those who control celebration are also those who dominate the social order, there is a tendency to ritualize

that dominance in order to sustain and legitimize it. Conversely, when those who control celebration are in a socially subordinate position, there is a tendency to emphasize the playful devices of negation, such as rever-

sal, irony, and the juxtaposition of social forms.’ The idea that the quality, kind, and content of celebratory social events are determined, at

least in part, by the persons and institutions who control that event is highly suggestive when applied to a wide variety of what Turner has termed social dramas.’ For instance, a recent study of official ritual and state-sponsored holidays in the Soviet Union supports the hypothesis,” and it is also useful in the analysis of American occupational pranking, where pranks by superordinates can be seen as power games that dramatize the superordinate status of the prankster, while pranks perpetrated by subordinate workers are subversive of the superordinates’ power and authority.?! Because state and national government agencies are certainly institutions of the dominant social order, we must deal with a key question: do the programs of public sector folklorists employed by these agencies ritualize the dominance of those agencies? Public sector folklorists see their mission as a struggle against such domination in behalf of the less powerful. In the case of the Living Cel-

The Tendency to Ritualize 129 ebrations Series, we had created a ritual that involved the institutionalization of the event by placing it in the context of amuseum exhibition and the legitimization of it by bestowing a certificate of appreciation. It can be

argued that the museum gallery functioned as a neutral space for two different and possibly mutually threatening cultures to meet, and while this is the case to some extent, it does not fully explain the social dynamics

that occurred therein. As we have seen above, the Renwick Gallery was hardly neutral. We need to consider the possibility that the events actually ritualized the dominance of the sponsoring institution by containing the groups and their traditions within its framework and by presenting them under its umbrella. By this argument the group members were the positional equivalent of museum holdings such as the moon rocks or the Hope Diamond—rare, curious, valuable, but objectified, contained, and controlled, containable and controllable—whose presence gives witness to the power of the institution to collect such things and display them to the world.

However, what actually seems to have occurred is that the events transformed the audience rather than that the participants became subsumed by the museum. This transformation of the audience is a kind of subversion of dominant values rather than a reification of them, because through the Living Celebrations, audiences were effectively provided with access to an alternate system of cultural esthetics and values. In order for this to happen, a great deal of the decision-making responsibility for the event had to have been shared with the participants. Because the participants worked with staff on all aspects of a presentation—content, se-

quence, logistics, setup, design, and so on—they had some measure of control over the presentation, and the result was something other than the ritualization of the dominance of the host institution. Public sector folklorists have sometimes been referred to as cultural brokers. Because we have access to public places, we have the opportunity to carve out the space for various kinds of presentations of many different cultural groups and traditional expressions. I would like to suggest with some seriousness that we are, in fact, often ritual caterers in that our work consists of the creation of new rituals to respond to new social situations; the juxtapositioning and interpretation of symbols in a new way toward new ends; and the development of new processes, as much symbolic as bureaucratic, by which to realize those ends. It is this necessary admixture of mundane bureaucracy and deep traditional symbolism that most often

marks these presentational rituals. Perhaps the next step is toward the development of a system that more fully allows people to validate their sense of cultural worth, to realize spiritual and cultural freedom, on their own terms. Barbara Myerhoff has suggested that individuals need to develop new personal rites of passage to mark new transitions in status in contem-

130 JACK SANTINO porary society (e.g., divorce, the dissolution of long-standing but not officially sanctioned relationships, etc.).22 , The programs public sector folklorists have developed (folklife festivals, the National Heritage Awards of the National Endowment for the Arts, the holistic presentation of celebratory events) can be interpreted as new symbolic processes that have been developed in response to new social situations (immigration, suburbanization, gentrification, etc.). At this time, we may be best aided in an assessment and understanding of the ways in which these programs work and the effects they have if we apply theory on symbol, ritual, and celebration not only to the interpretation of ethnographic material in the field, but also to our own work in translating that material to the general public. Because we deal with the symbolic materials of our own culture and of others, but more especially because we develop new symbolic statements out of these (as when the elite, western European cultural heritage of the Grand Salon combines with the symbols of the organic festivals of folk groups to create anew and different symbolic nexus), the anthropological work on symbol

is particularly relevant. The events that are the results of our work are processual and symbolic; they are intended to effect social and personal change. Our work, too, is human behavior; we, too, demonstrate the tendency to ritualize. Because we create public events—processual, performance oriented, dramatic cultural events—the semiological analysis of festival, ritual, and celebration is of great importance. The insights and methodologies that underlie this body of scholarly thought open to us the possibility of understanding the work we do and its ramifications within a real context of human behavior and with a wider perspective on human

life. } NOTES

1. See Richard M. Dorson, “Material Components of Celebration,” in Victor Turner, ed., Celebration: Studies in Festivity and Ritual (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), pp. 33-57.

2. Celebration: A World of Art and Ritual (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1982), p. 6.

3. On cultural events see, for instance, Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in W.A. Lessa and Evon Z. Vogt, eds., Reader in Comparative Religion (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), pp. 167-78.

- 4. Dell Hymes, “‘Breakthrough into Performance,” in Dan Ben-Amos and Kenneth S. Goldstein, eds., Folklore: Performance and Communication (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 11-74.

5. Frank E. Manning, ‘““Cosmos and Chaos: Celebration in the Modern World,” in idem, ed., The Celebration of Society: Perspectives on Contemporary Cultural Performances (Bowl-

ing Green, Ohio: Popular Press, 1983), p. 7. 6. Victor Turner, ‘“The Anthropology of Performance,” in idem, Process, Performance, and Pilgrimage (New Delhi: Concept Publishing, 1979), p. 64. 7. Kenneth S. Goldstein, A Guide for Fieldworkers in Folklore (Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore Asso- __

ciates, 1964), pp. 87-90. “

The Tendency to Ritualize 131 8. Mihaly Csikszentmihaly, Beyond Boredom and Anxiety (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1975). See also Mihaly Csikszentmihaly and Eugene Rochberg-Halton, The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981).

9. See Victor Turner, ‘“Liminality and Communitas” and “Communitas: Model and Process,” in idem, The Ritual Process (New York: Aldine Publishing Company, 1969), pp. 94-165.

10. Arnold Van Gennep, The Rites of Passage (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960). 11. Erving Goffman, Frame Analysis (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). 12. RobertJ. Smith, ‘‘Festivals and Celebrations,” in Richard M. Dorson, ed., Folklore and Folklife; An Introduction (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 168. 13. On the distinction between sacred and religious ritual, see Sally F. Moore and Barbara G. Myerhoff, “Secular Ritual: Forms and Meanings,” in idem, eds., Secular Ritual (Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum and Company, 1977), pp. 3-24.

14. John J. MacAloon, “Olympic Games and the Theory of Spectacle in Modern Society,” inidem, ed., Rite, Drama, Festival, Spectacle: Rehearsals toward a Theory of Cultural Perfor-

mances (Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1984).

15. John J. MacAloon, ‘Sociation and Sociability in Political Celebrations,” in Turner, Celebration, p. 262.

16. Smith, ‘Festivals and Celebrations.” 17. Ronald L. Grimes, ‘The Lifeblood of Public Ritual: Fiestas and Public Exploration Project,” in Turner, Celebration, pp. 272-82; see also James Peacock, The Rites of Modernization

(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1968); Barbara Myerhoff, Number Our Days (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978). 18. Manning, ‘““Cosmos and Chaos,” p. 7. 19. Turner, Celebration. 20. Christel Lane, The Rites of Rulers (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981). 21. See, for instance, my discussions of occupational pranking in Jack Santino, ‘“Characteristics of Occupational Narrative,” in Robert H. Byington, ed., Working Americans (Los Angeles: California Folklore Society, 1978), pp. 57-70; “Flew the Ocean in a Plane: An Investigation of Airline Occupational Narrative,” Journal of the Folklore Institute 15:3 (1978): pp. 189-208; and “A Servant and a Man, a Hostess and or a Woman: A Comparison of Folklore in Two Service Occupations,” Journal of American Folklore (in press). 22. Barbara Myerhoff, ““Rites of Passage: Process and Paradox,” in Turner, Celebration, pp. 109-35.

ROBERT McCARL ~~ Occupational Folklife in the Public Sector A Case Study

In 1978 Archie Green summarized the state of occupational and industrial folklore study in the United States by tracing the development of this subdiscipline from the earliest ballad scholars to contemporary researchers who approach the workplace from an ethnographic perspective. In addition to providing a useful overview of the history of this type of inquiry from frontier occupation to computerized factory, Green also cautioned his colleagues to be aware of the potential tension and possible conflict between our roles as scholars and as activists in thehighly sensitive area of occupational folklife.! I intend to explore in detail such ethical and meth-

odological questions and suggest how the expanding interest in public sector folklore since Green’s assessment has affected the work communities studied by folklorists. Green states the dilemma of studying work culture from a folklorist’s point of view in the following passage. As a scholar I have long accepted limited views of folk society and traditional behavior. Similarly, I have felt at ease with conventional methods in research. Asa citizen I have wanted to see marginal or overlooked persons, including industrial workers, achieve their “place in the sun.” I continue to be partial to people labeled folk and treasure their lore. In examining the twin roles of study and action, I know ’ also that scholarly conduct does affect the identity and esteem of the subjects of my research. Accordingly, lam not immune from responsibility beyond the academy. Hence, the kinds of questions asked here about bus drivers, boat builders, airline pilots, and television anchor women are not only conceptual, but also civic and moral in nature. Scholarly choices of field or method do have consequence in the larger society. It seems to me that our sensitivity is heightened and our reports strengthened if we can articulate and face openly the dilemma posed by the cliche

: “scholarship versus activism.” [p. 96]

He concludes this overview with a brief discussion of how those conflict-

ing impulses were dealt with in the Smithsonian Institution’s Working Americans section of the Festival of American Folklife in Washington, D.C., which he began in the early seventies (pp. 97-99). In the discussion that follows, I will use my experiences as the research coordinator, hired

Occupational Folklife 133 by the Smithsonian to design, conduct, and carry out these presentations of work from 1975-76 (and later as a presenter in 1979 and 1984), to suggest

how the questions and cautions raised by Green were addressed.? A folklife festival is an extremely cumbersome vehicle for the com-

munication of new ideas. Members of any traditional community— whether ethnic, regional, or occupational—are perceived by outsiders as living representatives of cultural wholes only dimly understood and often highly stereotyped by outsiders. Although the avowed aim of presenting representatives within these contexts is to replace stereotype with culturally relative insight, often the reverse is achieved. In the presentations of

occupational folklore, this dialectic between a romanticized view of organized labor’s past, a negative perspective toward the lack of skill or craft in industry, and the reality of day-to-day work experience must be understood from the diverse points of view of the various bureaucracies involved. Perhaps as I explore one research project from conception to festival presentation, the underlying issues will become clear. In presenting what some may take as a critical depiction of the Working Americans section of the Festival of American Folklife, I would like to stress that this program provided a laboratory for the presentation of contemporary urban folklife unique in both its scope and length. As in any experimental environment, mistakes were made and ideas compromised, but I offer the following observations in the hope that the positive and negative results of this effort will ultimately improve our ability to present work culture responsibly to outsiders. The complexity of industrial life has forced us to become isolated from the cultures and perspectives of others even as our interest in the construction crew or the fire company draws our attention without our understanding. Ironically, my experiences as a public sector folklorist, documenting and presenting work culture, led me from this stereotypical view of work to a recognition of its diversity and complexity and back to a presentational form that combined elements of both. In my exploration of one presentation from conception to festival realization, both the methods and the philosophy behind this process will become part of a critical framework for further projects.

The research negotiations between the Smithsonian staff and the _leaders of the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers for the 1976 Festival of American Folklife led to a field trip to Chicago in 1975 to conduct fieldwork with tool and die makers in the Calumet region. As the researcher who was to do the fieldwork, write up a presentation plan, and present the traditions of this trade to the public, it was my

job to document and understand this highly complex occupation well enough not only to mount the two-week presentation in Washington, but to select the participants who would participate in the exhibit. Upon arriving in Chicago, I met with the local union president, and we proceeded to compile a list of field sites in which I could get an idea of

134 ROBERT McCARL the types of work that tool and diemakers do, as well as meet some of the members of the local union. Our first visit led us to tool and die makers who worked with physicists and chemists at the University of Chicago. These craftsmen construct the hardware used in a variety of projects ranging from electron microscopes to radio telescopes. I then met with two apprentices who were in the process of fabricating their own micrometers and measuring devices as part of their five-year training in a metal stamping plant, and I was given a very careful security check before entering a tool and die plant in which a member of the union had just perfected a new die that could produce a new beer can tab with one stamp of the die.

At the end of that week, I spent a day in a manufacturing plant in which clocks, radios, and electric shavers were fabricated. I was there to see the work of tool and die makers in a “captive shop” that makes and repairs the stamping dies used in the fabrication process, but I found myself amazed at the working conditions of union members of the plant who were literally tethered to their stamping machines with harnesses. These devices limited their movement (for ‘’safety reasons”) while counting the number of their repetitive actions as they fed the stamping machines with an inexhaustible supply of flat stock that was turned to a variety of stamp-

ed shapes. This was alienated labor in its most rationalized form, and these production workers were among the lowest paid, semiskilled work-

ers in this elite craft local. I discussed the possible presentation of this production work with the local president, who agreed with the political motivation of revealing the ‘dark Satanic mills’ for what they are; but we both realized that the Smithsonian, the international union, and even I and my fellow folklorists could not organize such a presentation in a folklife festival. It became clear to me in this and my other field forays into work settings that my job was not to depict work as the demeaning and exploitive process that it often is, but to take a centrist and even conservative view by

accepting what I was being allowed to document as representative of a trade and industry and building a mall demonstration out of the most creative and challenging aspect I could find. At this point in my public sector career, I was anticipating the various interpretive contexts of work culture while I experienced the day-to-day reality as an informed visitor. In addition to gaining perspective on the tool and die makers and production workers I met in the shops and the union hall, I was being asked to interpret this complex world to international union leaders, Smithsonian folklorists, and museum administrators as well as the public. The industrial folklife of the tool and die plant was a bag packed thick with many layers of cultural meaning, and as I unpacked this world for insider and outsider alike, I was being reminded to keep their and my own best interests in mind. I began to realize that the reality of the cultural experience

Occupational Folklife 135 was less important than the symbolic metaphors of industrial craft that I was seeking to present. Finally, I visited the National Acceleration Laboratory outside of Chicago where (with virtually no security check) we had lunch with tool and die makers and physicists from around the world who use the huge nu- | clear accelerator at this site to explore the characteristics of the atom and its inner workings. I sat quietly munching a sandwich as a tool and die maker drew a sketch on a napkin that had been the inspiration for a whole new generation of electron-splitting hardware that he and his fellow shopmates were shaping out of solid metal. The sketch had been the result of a similar luncheon discussion between the tool and die maker and a Chinese physicist the previous month. Having been exposed to a variety of specialties within this trade, I began to perceive the processes of this highly technical occupation. ‘Tool and die makers shape the hardware that is used to produce scientific and technical insight as well as virtually anything that is mass produced using metal dies and stamping. The artistry and skill of years of apprenticeship and training in using a bewildering array of milling, boring, and shaping machines results in the toasters, beer cans, and bumpers we all take for granted as well as the research technology we never see. Having gained these insights through the somewhat impersonal and cursory plant visitations we had conducted, I now had to design the actual mall presentation and select the participants. The international union had sent me to the most highly skilled craft local in their organization, and having spent some time with the members of this local, I had glimpsed the complexity and artistry of their craft as well as its virtual invisibility outside of the industry and the region. At the same time, however, I also discovered that less highly skilled workers in the same trade (machinists, production workers, assemblers, etc.) were to be neglected in the skill demonstrations and possibly the entire presentation itself. The selective and superficial view of this and the other trades in the Working Americans section will be discussed in some detail below. After my initial visit to Chicago to see the work of the trade, Ireturned a few weeks later to choose the participants. The word went out in the local union concerning a two-week, paid vacation in Washington during the Bicentennial, and a large number of excited tool and die makers packed the meeting room on the night that this project was to be discussed and participants selected. I outlined the nature of the presentation itself, the fabrication of clock parts that would be used to make a clock on the mall, and then began to confront the question of who would go to Washington to

represent the trade, the local, and ultimately the international union. I chose this almost parodic form of technical presentation because it illustrated the intricacy and primacy of the tool and die trade through the pro-

136 ROBERT McCARL duction of an easily recognizable consumer product. Our model, a Sun-

beam alarm clock, was also the product stamped out in the “captive shop’s” production line mentioned above, and I was confident that I could bring a few of the production workers to the mall who could at least relate their experiences in one of the narrative sessions. Although these machinists recognized that fabricating clock parts was a far-from-ideal example of their extremely complex trade, they accepted this mode of presentation as the somewhat peculiar form of skill demonstration being mounted on the mall. In fact, in the case of many of the work groups I presented during the three months of the festival, an apparent lack of concern for my original design during the planning stages of the project was replaced on the mall itself with a creative commitment to use the materials at hand to com-

municate underlying skills and technical concerns. Fire fighters developed somewhat sophisticated attacks or ‘“evolutions” using the plywood structure we had constructed, sheet metal workers constructed duct work to direct cool air toward festival visitors, and carpenters and electricians used their skills to help out in building stairs or laying cable in many areas of the festival. Many of the tool and die makers in the Chicago local had emigrated to this country from Germany and eastern Europe as skilled craftsmen who

had been raised in the trade in their homelands. This homogeneous, white, male population comprised some of the most skilled and highly paid craftsmen in the country. The most senior of their ranks expected to be granted their perceived right and to predominate in the twenty-member delegation, while the less powerful but highly visible minority members demanded parity. The local union, the international office in Washington, and the AFL-CIO education department also had their own goals in mind. In order to understand these goals, the historical context of local and national union responsibilities requires some clarification. Prior to the merger of the American Federation of Labor and the Conegress of Industrial Organizations, craft unions conducted themselves like guilds. Families and regional officers dictated techniques and tools as well as terms of membership. Following the merger of the guildlike trade organizations with the more fluid and less homogeneous unions of the CIO, local control and decision making began to move away from the craft community to centralized, “international” officers in Washington, D.C. The movement of political control away from the primarywork group on the shop floor to top union officials did not, however, diminish the strength and cohesiveness of the primary work group itself; it merely isolated it from other subcultures in the union hierarchy.* This separation of the skilled craft community from its representatives placed yet another layer of bureaucracy between workers and their representatives, while it consolidated informal leadership on the shop floor and isolated the various types of workers within an industrial union as they listened most closely to the

Occupational Folklife 137 representatives of their own craft or shop. The increased number of wildcat strikes in recent years in which local leaders defy the contractual obligations imposed by international representatives is in part a reflection of this schism.* The machinists union mitigated this problem with this particular Chicago local, however, by maintaining the integrity and responding (on an international level) to the respected craft traditions of the local. The gravity of this conflict between local or national control of decisions affecting the tool and die makers was skillfully negotiated by the

union president, who held a position in the regional union hierarchy. Many members of the local wanted to participate because of the paid vaca-

tion as well as the opportunity to educate the public about the essential role of their craft in our society. Keeping in mind his allegiance to his mem-

bers as well as the desires of the international office, the local president successfully negotiated a series of compromises during this phase of the project that was a testimony to his years of experience at the bargaining table. The most experienced journeyman was paired with the newest and most promising minority winner of that year’s apprenticeship competi-

tion, while well-respected black and other minority craftsmen were matched with the most popular and garrulous union activists, and representatives from virtually all of the various types of machine and tool and die shops in the Chicago area were brought in to man the exhibit. Production workers, representatives of captive shops in manufacturing plants, , research tool and die makers, and model builders were all included. Thus; in much the same way that he might select a politically het-

erogeneous delegation to an annual meeting, the local president drew from the available pool of potential participants individuals who presented a heterogeneous image of the members of this trade that fit political as well as demographic reality. The wisdom of his choice was underscored

by his careful enfranchisement of most of the leading primary work groups in the trade. My role at this point was to take the responsibility for selecting one worker over another, even though the selection was made

by the local president and approved by the international. I was the organizer of an event that would be shaped, manned, and informally controlled by trade unionists and industrial craftsmen. The local president

union. |

was willing to cooperate as long as he could choose the people he wanted, and the international accepted my insistence on the craft and work process

over union symbolism or rhetoric because they understood the impor-

tance of this public recognition of their members’ skills and they had sent me to their most skilled local. The goals of the education office of the AFLCIO, however, differed greatly from those of the local or the international The representatives of the AFL-CIO education office viewed the uni-

on presentations in the festival as opportunities to educate the public about the benefits of trade unionism. George Meany and his staff had

138 ROBERT McCARL arranged to place a Federation person in charge of the Smithsonian Work-

ing Americans program, and she made certain that the interests of the “Fed” were met while she also saw to it that the sensitive protocol of deal-

ing with international union leaders was carefully followed. Corporate unionism, like corporate capitalism, shapes decision making into highly proscriptive pyramids of responsibility, and it became clear that the Meany preoccupation with patriotism, anticommunism, and the accommodation of national union interests for the common good would prevail.

The concerns of the rank-and-file workers for such issues as retraining clauses in contracts, affirmative action considerations, local control of the right to strike, and a variety of grievances against the policies of federation leadership were ignored, or the proponents of these views were simply kept away from me, the staff, and the festival itself. Because the mid-seventies were a period of declining membership and polarization of sentiments over the Vietnam War and the civil rights movement and because of the imminent shift of power when Meany either stepped down or died in office, this was no time to explore the range of internal dissension under the federation umbrella.° All groups participating in the festival, whether representing a tribal council or ethnic community organization, wanted to put their most positive face toward the public view, and the AFL-CIO was no exception. Ironically, William Winpisinger, president of the International Association of Machinists during this period, was one of Meany’s harshest critics, and his independence from the unusually tight policy of the “Fed” made my work with his staff much easier. They were eager to make their own decisions (rather than checking with the education office), and Winpisinger had given them the power to do so. This ability on the part of Meany and Winpisinger to dominate the goals and the priorities of such large organizations as the AFL-CIO and the

IAM illustrates the way in which cultural presentations cut across the organic complexity of bureaucratic decision making. Representatives of workers on the shop floor are answerable to regional and national union executives, not the reverse. As these bureaucratic structures begin to grow in size and power, they create their own work cultures as separated from and opposed to the rank-and-file members as management itself.” These organizational hierarchies are inevitable, yet any presentation of work culture negotiated through them must maintain and protect the original shop floor culture in which the trade or craft actually operates. Maintaining a culturally relativistic perspective with regard to the subcultures of managers and union executives is important, and recently the Working Americans program has begun to present service and administrative trades in the festival as well.* What is difficult to portray, however, is that the metaphorical symbolism of corporate or trade union identity (a product line or a type of industrial craftsmanship) has little to do

Occupational Folklife 139 with the diverse subcultures within those organizations. Janitors, production workers, trainees, tool and die makers, model builders, office workers, local union representatives, corporate executives, and international officers can all be said to work in a single industry, but their subcultural

views and traditions are divergent-and often in opposition to those of another group within the same trade. Only through long-term participant-observation in these corporate subcultures can folklorists or other researchers determine the effect that any person or work collective can have on the entire organization. What must not happen is the documentation of one group (workers on the shop floor) for another (managers) in

the naive hope that this process will result in a more humanized workplace. This compromising of informal aspects of work floor culture is the cornerstone of the human relations school of social science research, and it

can be viewed quite simply as the means through which occupational folklore is collected, presented, and manipulated by researchers to more efficiently manage the members of face-to-face cultures on the shop floor.? The Smithsonian Institution itself had a number of goals in presenting occupational folklore on the national mall. As a quasi-governmental institution dominated by academic researchers and powerful museum curators, the Smithsonian saw the festival (and continues to rely upon it) asa

vehicle for countering the limited portrayal of cultural pluralism the Smithsonian offers to the public. Museums devoted to art, natural science, and history and technology (now the Museum of American History) only selectively present the contributions of ethnic, regional, or occupa-

tional culture to American life, and when they do so (as in the case of native Americans presented in the Natural History Museum), it is with a normative, historical perspective. Festival founder Ralph Rinzler effectively lobbied S. Dillon Ripley, the

secretary of the Smithsonian, to take the traditional artifacts out of their cases and reveal the people and the cultural dynamism that lay behind the static dioramas and exhibits. In regard to the presentation of the American worker, however, that impulse resulted in focusing the attention of aca-

demic folklorists and middle-class festival-goers on representations of working-class life (rarefied skills and trade union symbols and rhetoric) that had the potential to shift the attention away from industrial craft to competing stereotypes of blue-collar life. The artifacts of industry, e.g., locomotives, airplanes, and trucks, require demanding fieldwork and presentational commitments if anything but the product itself is to be perceived and understood. Unfortunately, during and after the folklife fes-

tival research period, the curatorial staff of the Smithsonian did not aggressively pursue further research in occupational culture to provide wider and more complete contexts for the technological exhibits in its museums, and therefore, the workers who fabricated these important aspects of American life remain virtually invisible.

140 ROBERT McCARL Speaking for myself, I wanted to educate outsiders about industrial craft, but as a festival organizer, I also wanted to entertain the crowd and provide the Working Americans participants with activities and symbols they could celebrate and enjoy. As a former union member, I maintained a belief in the integrity of the labor organization as the only collective voice for the American worker, particularly if local craftspersons and activists could predominate over international representatives. Personally and professionally, I was in the right job at the Smithsonian, yet I soon realized that our presentations on the mall would probably provide the only forum

for this type of display even though brief forays into the industrialized workplace revealed the richness and complexity of these important Amer-

ican subcultures. I also, however, began to experience the conflict between the exhibition of “pure” cultural material and showmanship that has plagued public sector folklorists since George Korson first presented miners as participants in the Pennsylvania Folklife Festival in 1935.10 Although this subject will divert attention away from the discussion of the

machinists’ presentation, it will clarify much of the material presented below.

Korson’s research and presentation of mining culture in his books and various public programs was motivated in part by his view of miners as members of rural, enclaved work communities that were also industrial

. work sites.!1 As Angus Gillespie has illustrated, Korson accepted and valued the academic recognition he received for his published work, but he also sought to include miners in a folklife festival ‘‘as a means of restoring dignity and a sense of community to the participants” who were “close to

the soil and to the customs and traditions that they reflected.” Korson resisted attempts to emphasize showmanship over folklore, and in so doing he articulated both the promise and the limitations that would affect the public presentation of occupational folklore to the present day. Unlike in virtually all other performance genres of traditional expression— such as songs, stories, customary events, traditional handicrafts, dance, and foodways—occupational technique lies at the heart of work tradition, but it is an expressive form that is extremely difficult to present with any cultural fidelity. In the early seventies, Archie Green struggled with this same problem in his attempts to expand the Smithsonian Festival into the presentation of labor lore and industrial craft.!4 The folk song revival of the sixties (in its use of many of the labor protest songs of earlier decades) had complicated the public as well as the academic view of work and workers in the United States.!5 It made sense to folk festival organizers at the Smithsonian and

, elsewhere to include the songs and symbols of labor protest because these traditional genres evoked images of populism that dovetailed with the peace and civil rights movements with which the pluralistic festival became allied. Green, however, resisted this simplistic view of labor and

Occupational Folklife 141 occupational culture because it reinforced a stereotype of working people as simply members of a class rather than more accurately seeing them as constituting a variety of rich subcultures. He recognized the integrity and power of occupational skills and technical traditions as a base from which other expressive forms were derived and felt confident (as had Korson) that given the opportunity, workers could perform and teach at least a glimpse of their rich occupational tradition if they were provided with the appropriate public context. 16

As a shipwright, folklorist, and specialist in tracing the interplay between community-controlled work tradition and popular culture, Green was uniquely qualified and placed to maintain the integrity of festival pre-

sentations by maintaining the emphasis upon skill and technique as a focus for presentation of occupational folklore. In 1973 a crew of ironworkers exhibited their skills in the raising of a building framework of I-beams, and the workers who related their work experiences and translated their occupational jargon to Green in narrative exchanges revealed the power and complexity of cultural reality in their eloquent contradiction of romanticized or negative “hard hat” stereotypes of American working life.17 As he wrote in the 1973 festival program book: “One of the purposes of the Festival of American Folklife is to permit the broad public to observe craftsmen at work and to talk with them face to face about working experi-

ence. A by-product of this interaction is that the Festival’s craft participants become conscious of their roles as teachers. Naturally mechanics on all urban construction sites know that sidewalk superintendents enjoy gawking at work in progress. . . . Only infrequently do construction men converse with street watchers. The Festival setting, however, provides an excellent platform from which carpenters can describe their adventures to countless supers.’”18

Korson, Green, and later I and the other folklorists presenting work culture to the public were all forced to strike a balance between the inherent complexity and virtually unintelligible quality of highly skilled work and the need to hold the attention of the festival-goer long enough to

reveal the people and the tradition behind a given trade. Korson relied heavily upon the more conventional performance genres of song and story, while Green expanded the festival context to include narrative and such dramatic construction skills as ironwork. Later I and the other public sector folklorists working on the bicentennial festival attempted to extend this approach to a variety of other trades (bakers, airline pilots, shirt plant

workers, radio announcers) and, at the same time, retain the interest of

both performer and audience. All of the folklorists involved in the presen- : tation of occupational skill (perhaps because of our exposure to the way in which skill is actually learned on the job) recognized the value of relinquishing cultural reality for a reliance on the performers themselves in order to educate the visitor. Yet often even these carefully framed contexts

142 ROBERT McCARL failed to compete against gospel choirs, native American lacrosse players, or German oom-pah bands. Consequently, we developed other strategies. The Festivals of American Folklife in 1975 and 1976 also used profes-

sional folk musicians singing labor and occupational songs to draw crowds into the otherwise poorly attended skills areas of the Working Americans section. This further complicated the ““purity” of the craft dem-

onstration by reinforcing many of the stereotypes outsiders had about unionized workers, i.e., they advocate civil disobedience and view work in a strictly political context. Ironically, it was the sentiments and struggles

reflected in these songs that drew many of the senior folklorists into the profession in the first place. The inability of younger folklorists to locate and present any comparable modern form of occupational expression tended to reinforce the view of many professionals that the folklore of the workplace was rapidly disappearing in the face of increased automation and computerization. Fortunately, the regular narrative sessions provided a festival context for presenting some of the rich yet politically oppositional lore directly from the shop floor, but it was effectively presented only by the most skilled narrators in periodic storytelling sessions. The emphasis, however, remained on the craft demonstrations themselves, and to better

| understand the broader academic context surrounding these festival presentations, it is necessary to outline the changes in the work culture of the folklorists involved. The early seventies were extremely important in folklore because of

the introduction of the ethnographic approach to cultural performance and the increasingly sophisticated way in which folklorists documented folk crafts and material culture.!? In occupational folklore this theoretical expansion broadened the focus of research to include the technical traditions being informally controlled by members of any work group. Rather than seeking key performers of any one expressive genre (although this did occur), this comprehensive view of work culture provided us with both a theoretical as well as a presentational framework: We looked for the “shaping principle” of a technical flow under informal group control. On the Mississippi with towboat crews, the movement of huge barges against and with the river current shaped verbal and nonverbal forms of expression, while among the machinists the removal of unwanted sections of a block of metal formed a die which, in turn, shaped other metal parts. Just as the emphasis in folklife studies shifted from the product of a craft or the personality of a craftsman to the processes and performances of creative

activity, the emphasis in festival research shifted from the history of a trade or a union to a metaphorical depiction of actual performances of technique in the public arena.”° Regardless of the varying goals and contexts of the organizations and academics involved in the production of the festival itself, this materialist recognition of the mode of production as a fundamental force in the crea-

Occupational Folklife 143 tion and maintenance of work culture was significant. Not only did it provide folklorists with a realistic approach to rapidly changing occupational folklore and its various forms of expression, but this greater recognition of the technical complexities of industrial craft also broke down a few of the cognitive barriers between researchers and workers who may have had similar goals in presenting work culture to the public in the past but failed to reach any accord on how best to begin the task.?!

Many examples from the bicentennial festival demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of this approach. I will concentrate here on the machinists’ presentation, because it illustrates both the positive and negative results and leads toward broad questions of public sector work in occupational culture that will form the conclusion of my discussion. The machinist presentation began as a dense cluster of milling, boring, and metal turning machines crowded onto a small concrete pad. The all-star team of tool and die makers who arrived a few days early to set up the clock-making process was dismayed at the primitive conditions and concerned that they would embarrass themselves as well as the union. The machinery itself was drawing so much power that it threatened to overload the circuits to the whole festival. Accordingly, machines were periodically shut down and rearranged, and our clock manufacture was par-

ed down to machining some gears. Once on the mall, the tool and die makers themselves became instrumental in rethinking the presentation, and together they and the folklore staff partially abandoned the concept of industrial realism in favor of a more crowd-pleasing form of showmanship in which the craftsmen, not the hardware, became predominant. The representatives of the Smithsonian Institution had up until these first Working Americans skill demonstrations been only vaguely aware of the scale of modern industrial technology. Milling machines, ironwork with cranes, railroad cars, and later semitractor trailer rigs participating in

a truck ‘‘roadeo” became instant theater on such a scale that the more traditional ethnic, regional, and intimate performances in the festival were being eclipsed by machinery, not people or performance genres. In an effort to combat this result and also to shift the viewers’ attention back to the workers themselves, the Folklife Program hired advisers trained in theatrical concepts of staging and public presentation to present occupational folklore both in the skill demonstration areas and during the story exchanges on an amplified stage. The relationship between the theatrical specialists and the folklorists in the Working Americans area was fascinating because the former saw the

festival as a dramatization of work designed to entertain the audience, while the folklorists saw it as actual cultural performance simply placed within a broader performance context. The truth is that the theatrically trained advisers and presenters were much closer to the facts. A National Acceleration Lab tool and die maker experienced in splitting electrons is

144 ROBERT McCARL acting when he grinds a clock gear and explains to a midwestern insurance salesman and his family what he is doing. As Korson, Green, and later we

(the bicentennial folklorists) learned, people are inherently interested in work processes and expressions, but our theatrical constructs may be only tangentially related to the actual work contexts from which they were derived. The machinists’ skills demonstration represented only a fraction of the technical sophistication of this highly complex industrial craft. Although it did not successfully portray the depth of traditional skill that I had hoped for, it did reveal on a number of levels the strength and informal control of the industrial milieu. In their positive and insightful acceptance of the concept as I had only partially articulated it in the field, their eloquence and sense of fairness during the selection process, and their willingness to rework the mess of machines into a metaphor of their craft, the tool and die makers wholeheartedly maintained the integrity of their work traditions. Perhaps the biggest lesson that I learned as a folklorist during this project was that union rhetoric, corporate sponsorship, and even the internecine bickering of folklorists could not totally obfuscate the integrity of informally controlled work techniques and the ability of workers to articulate their unique point of view. Unlike other areas of research and presentation in the festival, the location, documentation, and presentation of work culture was controlled by one corporate entity (the AFLCIO), characterized by little in the way of academic or professional exper-

tise in presenting work culture or documenting it, and limited by a ridiculous time frame for the research period itself. In some cases, the union, its corporate cosponsor, and the trade association itself (as in the construction trades) had such a strong preconception concerning public presentation of its members that the demonstrations were literally buried behind popular images of trade unionism and its representatives. Although most craft demonstrations sustained the focus on the skills

of the workers themselves, these special interests and their standard modes of presentation did prevail: union T-shirts and balloons emerged and disappeared almost as rapidly as take-home samples of a product or

redeemable coupons, skill demonstrations like those of truckers in a freight terminal or radio announcers lacked the necessary framework to appear as skill demonstrations and, therefore, disappeared against the festival background, and in the case of the meat cutters, health regulations placed the workers behind so many layers of plexiglass that they were virtually invisible. In spite of these occurrences, the vast majority of workers who participated in this event celebrated their individual and collective contributions to their trade by teaching visitors, folklorists, and often each other the unique contribution of their skills and trades. At one point dur-

ing the construction trades presentations, I took it upon myself to tell a retired plasterer that he couldn’t continue to tape pictures of his father,

Occupational Folklife 145 grandfather, and brothers to the expensive, color-coordinated sign we had had made for his skill area. He lost no time educating me about the various plastering and wall-trade skills commanded by each individual in his fam-

ily photograph display and in so doing revealed the importance of the teaching role provided and eagerly sought by many of these craftspeople at the festival. The photos remained. The presentation of occupational skill and work-generated narrative continues to occur not only in subsequent Smithsonian festivals, but also as a part of regional festivals from Oregon to Maine. In addition, folklorists

have been aggressive in documenting and presenting occupational folklore and folklife from a variety of perspectives via film, booklets, and social histories.*2 I would like, in conclusion, to suggest what these various pre-

sentations of work culture have in common and point out the potential value and dangers in this important aspect of public sector folklore. All presentations of work culture must begin and end with an assessment of the techniques required to produce a product or a service. After witnessing the work process or participating in and observing the work culture, the folklorist mentally constructs a continuum of technical skill from the most simple tool use to the most complex and demanding techni- __ cal task and between these two extremes locates the center of the work

process. As discussed above, however, in the case of the tool and die makers, this intellectual exercise not only creates a reductionist and simplistic metaphor of actual work (the fabrication of clock parts), but also forces the folklorist into a positivistic metaphor for work that is only tan-

gentially related to cultural reality. Unskilled or semiskilled workers, those suffering from industrial accident or disease, and the most challenging aspects of the actual industrial craft itself must be overlooked. What remains is a presentation that is a symbolic reflection of technical skill

against which workers perform understandable tasks or tell stories of work. The question that we need to ask ourselves might be phrased in the following manner: Is this presentation of occupational folklore providing _ new insights into work culture or simply bolstering false images of industrial life that carefully screen out the danger and drudgery in order to reinforce the bureaucratic and academic hegemony of international unions, sponsoring cultural institutions, and publicly funded folklorists? In order to begin to answer this question we need to look at the representation of work within a broadly defined display of folk traditions found in the machinist presentation described above. On the surface, the fieldwork relationships between folklorist and culture member, the negotiation between the varieties of organizations and associations, and the re-

cognition as a tradition-bearer by a national or regional government agency merge and become an important event in most people’s lives. A tool and die maker, a local fox hunter, or an itinerant buckaroo may never get a chance to travel to the national mall or the state capital, and this

146 ROBERT McCARL opportunity is valuable because it is also an affirmation of worth. Years of experience in any line of work entitle the journeyman and survivor with the right to send apprentice and folklorist alike looking for left-handed

monkey wrenches, glass rods to weld broken windows, and polka-dot paint. These “‘fools’ errands” quickly point out to us that experience counts, and outside of the often hidden world of occupational culture, recognition of that experience is virtually nonexistent. Yet having made this assertion, as a professional folklorist, I must also ask myself how far I will let the presentation shift from the cultural reality I know to exist and who I will allow to influence my decision. In response to the first question, I was confident in most of the Smithsonian presentations that a concentration on the basic flow of work or some portion of the work process was a foundation on which a number of presentational formats could be built. I was willing to provide the participants themselves with virtually any materials or services I could locate to make the event feel right for them. At the same time, however, I (like any new member of a work group) chose who I thought was the informal leader of the group on the mall site and gauged my acceptance or rejection of outside opinion and attempts at interference on the basis of that person’s response. Although definitely not a recreation of an actual primary work group as it may exist in a given work site, the “all-star” collections of various trades on the mall quickly and decisively yielded informal leaders and performers who led me through the three months of presentation. Regarding the false image I both acquiesced to and presented during the festival, I (and other folklorists who attempt to present work culture to the public) must accept the responsibility for creating yet another universe of popular symbolism that we have placed between the reality of work and outsiders. A tool and die maker milling a useless gear, a Chesapeake Bay waterman finishing a workboat on the national mall, and an Idaho rancher reciting cowboy poetry toa public audience are performers who have been given the opportunity to perform because they command a craft we have decided is important and they are articulate spokespersons for their occupational culture. The fabricated work context of the festival may not fit

our professional ideals, but it is more positive and real than television characterizations of blue-collar stereotypes and certainly more accessible than academic monographs. The education of the American public about the importance, complexity, and danger of work must begin with these imperfect depictions in order to develop a language of presentation that is more precise. Yet having affirmed the importance of this research and presentation I find myself uncomfortable with the above assertion. Perhaps in the long run the only people really benefiting from these displays are the folklorists and the decision makers in supporting bureaucratic organizations. We might find that this material is best left to the work group members themselves to present.

Occupational Folklife 147 The large Labor Day celebrations in cities across the country remind us that for decades members of various trades and occupations (organized and unorganized) were more than capable of presenting themselves and their goals to the public. This ritual display of occupational and trade union solidarity has gradually dwindled, along with union membership and the blurring of manufacturing and resource occupations and employment in the service economy. Many workers, including women, members of recent waves of Asian and Latin migrations, and most recently senior citizens, view the highly paid unionized worker with suspicion and resentment over what they consider to be exclusivity revealed in white male predominance in the membership of the union and a lack of concern for minority needs. Folklorists who attempt to document and present occupational folklife must anticipate the layers of contextual concern emanating from the primary work group before any historical, political, or presentational needs are considered. Only by comprehending the technical requirements and mode of production (how people accomplish their goals on the job) can we endeavor to document or display that culture. Physical and emotional survival within a work culture depend to a large extent on controlling information at the workplace. Subcultures within the work setting contribute their individual skills toward the completion of a product or service (tool and parts suppliers in a tool room crib, for example), yet they also maintain a body of esoteric knowledge and folklore that protects them from outside intervention. Just as a hard hat or welding hood shields the body, the folklore of the workplace provides protection from the dangers of outsider intervention and manipulation. Certainly dangerous or covert techniques will generate work group members who are hostile to outside intervention in order to protect themselves and their coworkers. Beyond these most delicate forms of occupational folklore, members of primary work groups in many trades may see the liabilities of public presentation outweighing the benefits. Popular presentations of police work, for example, continue to reinforce the violent glamour of car chases and gun battles even though these activities represent only a fraction of the actual work experience. On the other hand,

the public’s preoccupation with these misconceptions shifts attention away from the day-to-day realities of street work by police officers who are forced to bend the rules of legal and ethical conduct occasionally just to survive. A union representative or public relations officer may find it too dangerous to extend public exhibitions of actual work technique beyond

the superficial public relations campaigns devoted to safety locks and household security measures. Folklorists need to remember that the expressive culture in the workplace that is controlled by the primary group on the shop floor takes many forms, from the jargon of the trade to full-length personal narratives, from

individual work habits to elaborate rites of passage, and from simple

148 ROBERT McCARL hand-tool use to elaborate skill performances. Woven throughout this weft of occupational expression is a very necessary yet highly covert net-

work of information that provides members of the group with the selfprotection that they need to survive not only the physical constraints of the actual work, but also the various layers of ethnicity, gender, and bureaucracy that compete for attention and control. As folklorists we are drawn to the accident accounts, shortcuts, sabotaged craft products, and reorganized techniques used to beat the quota system as well as subcultural networks of informal control. Yet if we document and present these aspects of work culture, we are betraying the people we have sought to champion. As the workplace continues to become more deadly (cleanup crews using more and more toxic chemicals and reactor workers exposed to unknown amounts of contaminated material), we run the risk of endangering further those we seek to portray in a more positive light.

It is important that those entering the workplace to document and present work culture recognize that the means of production (how workers themselves organize their work at the technical “face” of the job) is affected by, but very different from, the relations of production (the social and organizational hierarchies that are part of the manufacturing or labor bureaucracy).*4 Tool and die makers, like fox hunters in the New Jersey pine barrens and crabbers on the eastern shore, accept and often encourage the stereotypes that outsiders have about them and their work. The

challenge to the folklorist is to become familiar enough and trusted enough to see the means of production and the covert culture it shapes yet sensitive enough to place any presentation of those traditional expressive forms ina context that manipulates the exoteric stereotypes as the workers themselves want those images to be manipulated. Perhaps by illuminating this concept with a specific example, I can communicate this somewhat delicate concern. As an illustration of this process, I presented fire fighters in the bicentennial festival by having them slowly “attack” a plywood row house that they set on fire four times a festival day. The evolutions of hoses and ladders as they attacked the fire was studiously performed according to the book, and it was (as we all knew) only partially or metaphorically representative of the skills actually used on the fire. One aspect of the presentation, however, the use of a twenty-four-foot aluminum ladder to break a window and provide emergency exit for anyone trapped inside, resulted in lively questioning and debate between the fire fighters and festival audiences. People who had been victims of fires or had heard accounts of fire fighters at work expressed concern for the destruction caused by the re-

sponding company. The participating fire fighters admitted that sometimes truck companies get overzealous breaking windows and taking out doors, but they claimed that in order to save lives and the overall structure itself, it was a justifiable excess. By providing a symbolic arena in which

Occupational Folklife 149 the actual skills could be approximated, the festival allowed the members of the work culture to shape a stereotype in a positive fashion. The confrontation between the fire fighters’ emic point of view about windows and doors (when in doubt, take it out) with the festival-goers’ etic percep-

tion of this activity as unnecessarily destructive is, perhaps, one of the most important results of public displays of occupational folklore. The festival context also provided accomplished narrative raconteurs (most of whom were chosen for their craftsmanship abilities) to choose the manner in which stories of opposition, resistance, and various challenges to corporate or union hegemony were expressed. Black fire fighters, Asian tool and die makers, and Puerto Rican textile workers used the festival stages as a forum for challenging unfair or arbitrary decisions made by representatives of organizations ranging from the local union to the secre-

tary of the Smithsonian Institution. These workers had been given the opportunity to travel to the nation’s capital, and there they took the opportunity to speak face-to-face with those individuals who made decisions about their lives. They may or may not have changed the policies of the decision makers. But as presenters and intervenors into these cultures, we should provide more opportunities for such confrontations in the hope that even these pale metaphors of actual cultural experience will properly frame a well-articulated point of view to distant and often unconcerned decision makers in any of the organizations involved. Work culture, like any culture, is continually changing, and as it does,

the conservative skills and traditions of the past reluctantly give way to emergent forms of expression and opportunities for judgment and performance evaluation.Ӣ As scholars we must see the residual friction of tradi-

tion as a historical framework within which any individual actor undertakes a creative action. Yet as activists we must make decisions concerning the public presentation of those activities that best reinforce the emerging

cultural goals of the participants themselves. Members of work cultures are often trapped into cooperating with researchers and “‘outside experts” by virtue of their lack of ownership of the means of production. Yet their informal control of that means provides them with an awareness and sensitivity to outsiders’ perceptions that has protected them for generations within the strictures of industrial bureaucracy. As intervenors into the political fabric of work culture, we can recognize the necessary dialectic between overt and covert expressions of cultural identity in the workplace and use the insights of the workers themselves to shape public perception in a direction of their choosing. If we fail

: in that regard, we run the risk of documenting and presenting work culture without considering the implications of our depictions orthe impact that this information might have if it is simply turned over to outsiders without any concern for community control. Rather than preserving and celebrating work culture, this latter approach (like that taken by time/mo- _

150 ROBERT McCARL tion experts, industrial engineers, and organizational folklorists) will result in the development of public sector folklorists who improve the products and streamline the processes of work with little concern for the lives of those involved. When cultural material leaves the direct control of the primary work group of face-to-face workers, our role as researcher and academic specialist is traded for that of activist or informer. If we ignore the political and economic implications of our interventions into work culture or perceive festival presentations or skill demonstrations as superficial activities, we will create an expectation on the part of the participants in these activities that folklorists, like industrial engineers and time/motion experts, are just one more organizational obstacle between the reality of work and outsiders’ true understanding of its impact on people’s lives. The documentation of any aspect of culture (ethnic, regional, sexual, or occupational) in a public forum subjects the presentation of that information to commodification, i.e., previously private cultural expressions become public performances and products that fill our publications and populate our festival stages. We can no longer claim inexperience or lack of awareness for the results of our interventions into work culture. Each representation must ensure that the participants derive satisfaction and remuneration from the engagement equal to our own. Like television jour-

nalists, documentary filmmakers, and theatrical agents, folklorists engaged in the presentation of culture must ask themselves who benefits most from this metaphorical, dramatized form. If we fail to pose this question, the members of work groups will simply deny us access to their culture, as have members of native American, ethnic, and religious communities who have been exploited by unethical researchers. The primary work group on the shop floor and in the office will continue. Whether or not we will be allowed to collaborate with members of these subcultures to increase understanding of their unique points of view rests to a large extent on how well we serve the interests of these workers in their struggle for fair and healthy working conditions today. Returning to the moral and ethical question raised by Archie Green in

the beginning of this discussion, I find that the Smithsonian Working Americans presentations reveal the promise and the limitations of folklore research presented in a festival setting. The promise of this type of ethnographic theater is that it provides workers with a stage from which they can create their own interpretive contexts. Unlike academics and theater specialists, workers don’t make a distinction between political point of

view and technical expertise—and that rhetorical use of occupational folklore intimidates and frustrates those of us who want to separate politics from pure industrial craft. The limitation of any approach that separates politics from craft is that it objectifies and commodifies the work culture by presenting it as a product rather than as an occupational pro-

Occupational Folklife 151 cess. Just as Green and Korson struggled with questions of the integrity of folk versus popular presentations of work culture, folklorists presenting the traditions of work today must maintain their awareness of the realities

of industrial life and the subcultures therein, so that our presentations reveal those realities without endangering the welfare of those we have

chosen to represent.?” :

NOTES 1. Archie Green, ‘Industrial Lore: ABibliographic-Semantic Query,” in Working Americans: Contemporary Approaches to Occupational Folklife, ed. Robert H. Byington, Smithsonian

Folklife Studies 3 (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1978), pp. 71-102 [reprint of Western Folklore 37 (1978)].

2. Ibid., pp. 80-82. See also Robert S. McCarl, Jr., “Occupational Folklife: A Theoretical

Hypothesis,” pp. 3-19, and Robert H. Byington, ‘Strategies for Collecting Occupational Folklife in Contemporary Urban/Industrial Contexts,” pp. 43-47, in Byington, Working Americans.

3. Henry Pelling, American Labor (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 179-209; also see Stanley Aronowitz, Working Class Hero: A New Strategy for Labor (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1983), p. 33. 4. Aronowitz, Working Class Hero, pp. 93-94.

5. Ibid., p. 31. For a more positive presentation of the progressive contributions of the AFL-CIO to American life, see Andrew Levison, Working Class Majority (New York: Penguin, 1975), pp. 173-247. 6. Aronowitz, Working Class Hero, p. 190. 7. Stan Weir, ““The Conflict in American Unions and the Resistance to Alternative Ideas from the Rank and File,” in Workers’ Struggles, Past and Present, A ‘Radical America’ Reader, ed.

James Green (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1982), pp. 254-62. 8. During the 1986 Festival, trial lawyers were presented as part of the Working Americans section of the Smithsonian’s annual presentation on the mall. 9. Elton Mayo, The Human Problems of an Industrial Civilization (Cambridge: Macmillan, 1933); F.J. Roethlisberger and W.J. Dickson, Management and the Worker (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1939). Contemporary sources presenting the human relations approach include Frederick Herzberg, Work and the Nature of Man (New York: Mentor Books, 1966); Douglas McGregor, The Human Side of Enterprise (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1960); Rosabeth Kanter, The Change Masters: Innovation for Productivity in the American Corporation (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983). Critiques can be found in David Montgomery, “The Past and Future of Workers’ Control,” in Green, Workers’ Struggles, pp. 389-405; C. Wright Mills, ‘The Contributions of Sociology to Studies of Industrial Relations,” Berkeley Journal of Sociology 15 (1970): 11-32; and Chris Lee, ‘‘Raiders of the Corporate Culture,” Training: The Magazine of Human Resources Development (Feb. 1984): 26-33. Folklorists approaching work from the human relations point of view can be found in Michael Owen Jones, “Organizational Folklore and Corporate Culture,” American Folklore Newsletter 12 (Oct. 1983): pp. 3-6; and idem, “On Mergers and Managing: What Every Executive Ought to Know about Corporate Culture,” California Folklore Society Newsletter 1 (1984): 2.

10. Angus Gillespie, Folklorist of the Coal Fields: George Korson’s Life and Work (University

Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1980): pp. 41-55. 11. Ibid., pp. 5-13. Also see Archie Green, Only a Miner: Studies in Recorded Coal Mining Songs (Carbondale: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1972), pp. 6-29; and idem, “George Korson and Industrial Folklore,” Keystone Folklore Quarterly 16 (1971): 53-65. Korson’s published works

152 ROBERT McCARL include the following: George Korson, Minstrels of the Mine Patch (Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore Asso-

ciates, 1964 [reprint—original published 1959]); idem, Coal Dust on the Fiddle (Hatboro, Pa.: Folklore Associates, 1965[reprint—original published 1943]); idem, Pennsylvania Songs and Legends (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1949); and idem, Black Rock: Mining Folklore of the Pennsylvania Dutch (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1960). 12. Gillespie, Folklorist of the Coal Fields, pp. 44, 53.

13. Ibid., p. 52. An early article discussing the differences between true folk performance and popularized or “fakelore” presentations can be found in Richard M. Dorson, American Folklore (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1959), p. 4. Works that deal directly with

the presentation of cultural materials and performances in a folklife festival context include Charles Camp and Timothy Lloyd, “Six Reasons Not to Produce Folklife Festivals,” Kentucky Folklore Record 26 (1980): 67-74; David Whisnant, Folk Festival Issues: Report from a Seminar (Los

Angeles: John Edwards Memorial Foundation Special Series 12, 1978); Olivia Cadaval, Festivals and the Politics of Culture (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, 1980).

14. Archie Green, ‘Another Tool in the Carpenter’s Chest,”in 1973 Festival of American Folklife, ed. Ralph Rinzlerand Gerald L. Davis (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution [pamphlet], 1973): p. 40-43. Also see Green, ‘Industrial Lore,” pp. 97-99. 15. See Richard Reuss, ‘The Roots of American Left-Wing Interest in Folksong,” Labor History 12 (1971): 259-79; and idem, ‘“American Folksongs and Left-Wing Politics: 1935-56,” Journal of the Folklore Institute 12 (1975): 89-111.

16. Green, “Another Tool,” p. 43; idem, “Industrial Lore,” p. 97. 17. See James R. Morris, ‘““Working Americans,” in Rinzler and Davis, 1973 Festival of American Folklife, p. 38; and Green, “Another Tool,” pp. 41-42. 18. Green, “Another Tool,” p. 42. 19. One of the most significant publications introducing the ethnography of speaking approach to folklore was Americo Paredes and Richard Bauman, eds., Toward New Perspectives in Folklore (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1972). I outlined the impact of this new approach on occupational folklore studies in Robert McCarl, “Occupational Folklife: A Theoretical Hypothesis,” in Byington, Working Americans, pp. 3-18; Green discusses the impact of the ethnography of speaking approach on occupational folklore in ‘Industrial Lore,” pp. 79-80. A comprehensive description of the impact of European folklife and material culture studies and ethnographic models upon American research in this area can be found in Thomas J. Schlereth, Material Culture Studies in America (Nashville: American Association of State and Local History, 1984), pp. 21-23, 53-63; and Henry Glassie, ‘’Folkloristic Study of the American Artifact: Objects and Objectives,” in Richard M. Dorson, ed., Handbook of American Folklore (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 376-83. 20. Byington, “Strategies for Collecting,” pp. 51-56. Also see Robert McCarl, “Product, Process and the Industrial Craftsman,” New York Folklore Quarterly 30 (1974): 243-53. 21. Byington, “Strategies for Collecting,” pp. 54-56; McCarl, “Occupational Folklife,” pp. 17-18; Green, ‘Industrial Lore,’ pp. 96-99. 22. Examples of these presentations of occupational folklore since the 1976 Smithsonian festival include the following: Suzi Jones, ed., Webfoots and Bunchgrassers: Folk Art of the Oregon

Country (Salem: Oregon Arts Commission, 1980); Mary Hufford, ‘Just Grab the Tail and Hang On! Snappers and Snappering in the Pinelands National Reserve,” in Brett Topping, ed., Folklife Center News 8 (1985): 6-13; Pineland Folklife Project; Howard W. Marshall and Richard Ahlborn, Buckaroos in Paradise: Cowboy Life in Northern Nevada (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1980); Jack Santino, ‘Characteristics of Occupational Narrative,” in Byington, Working Americans, pp. 57-71; and Jack Santino, ‘‘Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggles: The Negotiation of a Black Occupational Identity through Personal Experience Narra-

, tive,” Journal of American Folklore 96 (1983): pp. 393-413. Also see the accompanying film, “Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle: The Untold Story of the Black Pullman Porter,” by Jack Santino and Paul Wagner (fifty-nine minutes, black and white sixteen millimeter, Bench-

Occupational Folklife 153 mark, 145 Scarborough Rd., Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. 10510). In addition, see Carl Fleischhauer and Charles K. Wolfe, The Process of Field Research: Final Report on the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife

Project (Washington, D.C.: American Folklife Center, 1981). Two public sector projects with

urban firefighters and southern textile workers, which I conducted following the festival model and in the interest of returning occupational folklore to a work community for its use,

are described in Robert McCarl, ‘‘Fire and Dust: Ethnography at Work in Communities,” Practicing Anthropology 1 and 2 (1985): 21-22; and idem, The District of Columbia Fire Fighters’ Project: A Case Study in Occupational Folklife (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

23. James W. Rinehart, The Tyranny of Work (Don Mills, Ontario, Canada: Longman, 1961); Elliot Leyton, Dying Hard: The Ravages of Industrial Carnage (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1975); Robert McCarl, While I Breathe, I Hope: Personal Accounts of Textile Workers with

Brown Lung Disease (Columbia, $.C.: Carolina Brown Lung Association, 1982). All of the above represent ethnographic research devoted to documenting and presenting occupational disease without compromising the covert networks established by work group members for their own protection. Also see Paul Brodeur, Expendable Americans (New York: Viking Press, 1974). 24. Robert L. Heilbroner, Marxism: For and Against (New York: W.W. Norton, 1980), pp. 61-67.

25. Marvin Harris, Cultural Anthropology (New York: Harper and Row, 1983); McCarl, “Fire and Dust,” pp. 21-22. 26. Jose Limon, ““Western Marxism and Folklore: A Critical Introduction,” Journal of American Folklore 96 (1983): 48.

27. | would like to thank Archie Green, who gently but determinedly saw this paper through a number of revisions. Iam, of course, responsible for any errors it may contain.

JEAN HASKELL SPEER —WHHH__EESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Unshared Visions Folklife and Politics

in a Rural Community

Too often at the conclusion of an expensive, publicly funded folklife project, we hear only of its successes and perhaps some lamentation about how much more could have been accomplished had there been time and money. The nitty-gritty of daily challenges and compromises, decisions and moral dilemmas that have gone on behind the scenes is lost beneath

the project’s public persona, stored only in the memories of those who participated in the project or in trails of paper growing musty in files. Yetin that nitty-gritty there is much to learn about the political dimensions of the public presentation of folklife.

This paper is an analysis of the politics of public programming in a three-year oral history and folklife project in a rural, mountainous community in Virginia. I was one of two folklorists on the project, and in the three years since the project was formally completed, I have done a lot of

reflecting on the motives, goals, institutional pressures, and cultural forces that shaped the project as well as the continuing impact of the project. Throughout the project we confronted such issues as cultural exploitation; federal, state, and local attempts to control the direction of the project; the role of local elites in perceptions and promotion of folklife; racial and other prejudices; legal and ethical constraints on scholarly materials produced by the project—in short, the politics of culture. The Public Persona

In 1979 I was contacted by colleagues at my university who work as humanities extension faculty in a local community about an hour and a half from the campus. They asked if I would be interested in working onan oral history and folklife project for which they were submitting a grant to the National Endowment for the Humanities and for which they would serve as project directors. Fresh froma Ph.D. program at the University of Texas and in the process of developing an Appalachian Studies program at the university, I eagerly accepted—leaping before I looked, as it turned

Rural Folklife and Politics 155 out. I was anxious to go through what Robert Georges and Michael Owen Jones call the rite of passage for professional acceptance as a folklorist— fieldwork from which I would undoubtedly produce the most provocative and amazing scholarly work.! Another colleague, also a folklorist, had just come to teach at the university and was just as eager to seize this opportunity, because she was working on a book on folklore text making and wanted to test out some of her ideas.* Looking back now, some five years later, we both laugh at our naiveté, our lack of real understanding about what would be required of us as folklore fieldworkers on a large project staff of a public humanities grant. The project was a cooperative venture among our university—particularly its extension learning center in the community of study—a regional library with a branch in the community, and NEH, which funded the project to the tune of $220,000, the largest grant they had awarded toa rural project of this kind. The project grew out of a perceived need by local

people, librarians, and university staff to bring a greater number and wider spectrum of the community’s residents into the local library and the university’s extension learning center. The impetus for the project was not simply a perceived need, but also a documented need. An evaluation of the humanities learning center a year earlier noted that the center needed to change its elitist image and appeal to a broader group of community residents.

Based on their observations and informal discussions in the community, the project directors decided that a focus on the familiar—family, local, and regional history and culture—would attract greater numbers of

people to public programs and to the library during and, it was hoped, long after the project ended. There was good evidence for supposing this would be an appropriate focus: this rural community, which has no stoplights, no fast-food restaurants, and no movie theaters, does have a wellstocked and visited historical museum, and the community has some reputation as a place rich in folk traditions (for example, the community had previously been the site for some fieldwork by the American Folklife Center).

The project staff consisted of the two project directors, three librarians (one each from the local, regional, and university libraries), a pro-

ject information director, and three “humanities scholars”—a historian and two folklorists. As the project progressed, numerous others, suchas a photographer, a filmmaker, and students from the university, worked with the project ona fairly regular basis. In addition, a local advisory board of community residents worked with the project staff from the beginning

and throughout the project. The project design seemed simple enough, if somewhat ambitious. We would hire and carefully train some local residents to be field inter-

156 JEAN HASKELL SPEER viewers along with the historian and folklorists; this seemed to fit both the

scope and the intent of the project. We would collect oral history and folklore from as many community residents as feasible, using approaches designed to amplify the project theme of continuity and change, tradition and transition ina mountainous, rural community. We would then use the

materials collected as foundation for a series of public programs that would be presented throughout the community. These public programs would incorporate not only the taped materials but also photographs (old and new), artifacts, and traditional performances of many types. At each program we would distribute educational materials relating the project to

the humanities in general, provide a related library book display, and conduct public discussions on historical and cultural issues raised by the project. We would make a half-hour documentary film about the community’s history and traditions in transition. And at the end of the project, we would deposit all project materials—tapes, transcripts, photographs, books, records, and the film—in the local library with copies in the special collections of the university library. All of us who worked on the project can say with pride that we did

what we set out to accomplish. We produced over one hundred taped interviews; two thousand beautifully bound pages of transcription; five slide-tape programs, which have served as the focus for countless public programs on topics of family life, community life, technological change, making a living, and hard times in the community; an enriched collection of regional materials in the community library; a series of nine public programs on folklife, exploring traditions in music, dance, verbal art, material culture, customs, and celebrations; and a documentary film, which has been shown locally, nationally, and even internationally when we took it to meetings in Scandinavia and Germany. But this is the project’s public persona, our collective vision of what we accomplished. As in all such projects, these accomplishments did not come without struggle, without discovering we had many unshared visions of what we were about, without learning that when visions collide, sparks may fly. Sometimes the heat from those sparks reshaped visions or melded visions together; some visions withered and died in the heat; some gained the strength of forged steel. I want to focus on a few of those “‘unshared visions collisions’ and ponder what, if anything, we may learn from them about the politics of culture.

Unshared Visions In his recent book, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an

American Region, David Whisnant analyzes cultural assumptions, cultural images, and cultural manipulation in folklife work in Appalachia in the early part of this century.? Using case studies of three early institutions

Rural Folklife and Politics 157 established for cultural work in the mountains, Whisnant pieces together a pattern of systematic cultural intervention on the part of these institutions and their agents. Although all cultures constantly change to remain vital, Whisnant is not talking about this normal evolutionary process within the life of a community. He means “that someone (or some institution) consciously and programmatically takes action within a culture with the intent of affecting it in some specific way that the intervenor thinks desirable” (p. 13). While the program of action may be fairly passive or relatively active, the intent positive or negative, the outcomes are never so simple. Any focus on the cultural life of a community, based on a concept of culture as “safe” and “uncomplicated,” runs the risk of blinding us to our own motives and assumptions and to other political realities of class-based inequalities, economic exploitation, and similar injustices. I found Whisnant’s book instructive in understanding our project’s cultural work in the same region as that of his case studies. Particularly useful was his admonition that such work always represents some measure of cultural intervention and is never merely a benign incident. Folklife work does have impact on traditional communities, and we must be selfcritical and vigilant in planning and assessing the cultural work we do. As Whisnant concludes, ‘“‘We must begin to understand the politics of culture—especially the role of formal institutions and forceful individuals in defining and shaping perspectives, values, tastes, and agendas for cultur-

al change” (p. 15). |

By Whisnant’s definition our project clearly represented a case of systematic cultural intervention; we consciously and programmatically took

actions that affected a cultural group in ways we felt desirable. Even among the grant staff, our agendas and even our actions were not always congruent with one another nor with the ideal for our project we carried in our heads. Obviously, then, our desires would not always match the desires of members of the community either. There were conflicting public . and private agendas for cultural change. The grant proposal, for example, plainly outlined the desire to change the elitist image of both the local library and the humanities learning center by broadening their base of appeal, especially among blacks and rural adults living in the more remote and mountainous sections of the community. Although on the surface this seemed to be logical, fairly unobjectionable, and cultural intervention of a most benign sort, changes in these two local educational institutions would necessarily cause changes in the community. One of the first public programs, part of the folklife series, featured a white, mountain, musical family and a black family who played traditional music. The two families had become friends through their music, and we made much of this fact, because it illustrated that shared traditions may

158 JEAN HASKELL SPEER overcome other cultural and political realities. Not only did we consciously make this rhetorical point in the program, which seemed to us an important point about folklife, but having these two families on the same program brought more blacks and whites together in the audience than is

usual for the community—which produced some disquietude among some community residents. Nevertheless, throughout the project the staff continued to plan that blacks and nonelites of the community would

be included in all aspects of our programming, because this position squared with the project’s stated goals, the advice of our local advisory board, our own beliefs and values, and what we felt was our responsibility in spending taxpayers’ money ina democratic society. Besides all this, the

: other folklorist and I found that the blacks and mountain whites had the richest store of folk traditions for public programs.

Although most people in the community had no objections to this stance, we did uncover some deep cultural anxieties on the part of some residents. One of our interviewers was told that in one part of the community, there were “no chiggers, no niggers, no poisonous snakes.”” And as we neared completion of the project’s most visible product, the film, someone who had the power to influence the film’s direction questioned why so much of the film was given over to whites living on the mountain and to blacks who only made up 8 percent of the community’s population and why more brick houses were not shown in the film footage.

These comments represented concerns about the cultural image of the community that the project obviously was helping make visible, if not shape. These were concerns for the project staff, too, and we tried to be as sensitive as possible to our constituents, to take an emic rather than an etic perspective, to work “from the native’s point of view.”” We hoped our intervention would be less in ways we felt desirable and more in directions the community identified for itself. But among the natives there were con-

flicting points of view, cultural assumptions, and cultural self-images. These kinds of conflicts, along with the constraints of time and money and other practicalities, make such public projects fraught with moral dilemmas and our cultural intervention less controllable than we might imagine or hope. To try to represent the community’s congruent and divergent points of view and to involve the whole community in recording and preserving

its history and traditions, we gathered interviews from the entire spectrum of community folk—old, young, white, black, literate and barely literate, powerful and powerless. We did, however, make special efforts to

reach those people who had little access to education beyond public schools and who had least opportunity to become part of the historical and cultural record. As oral historian Paul Thompson has said, “Local history drawn from a more restricted social stratum tends to be more complacent, a re-enactment of community myth.”4 Again, on the surface our special

Rural Folklife and Politics 159 efforts seemed only logical and reasonable in developing a rounded community history and a full picture of its folk traditions. But there were inherent political dimensions in this position as well. It has become a commonplace that oral history and folklife fieldwork helps us document the unofficial, unnoticed lives of ordinary people and that in so doing we learn more about the present than the past. We empower those who are often powerless to present their vision of their community’s history and culture, which may not match “official” visions of

the community’s lore. As Thompson says: ‘Oral history . . . makes a much fairer trial possible: witnesses can now also be called from the underclasses, the underprivileged, and the defeated. It provides a more realistic and fair reconstruction of the past, a challenge to the established ac-

count. In so doing, oral history has radical implications for the social message of history as a whole.’ We quickly discovered some of those radical implications in our project. Early on, we were cautioned by some community members, mostly local elites, not to overlook prominent families and important events of their history (e.g., Civil War heroes and famous local politicians). They expressed anxiety that their community’s cultural image as presented

publicly by the project would be what one person called ‘celebrated

hicks.” It had never been our intent to overlook any segment of the community’s population, only to ensure that those persons and events not already part of many official versions of the community’s history were added to the historical and cultural record. But this continued to be a sticky political issue that resurfaced at several junctures. For example, as the project neared completion with final work being done on the film, we were criticized for not including one of the local power brokers in the film. We discovered that a local banker who was featured in the film did not count because his family was originally from “‘up the mountain” and not part of the local establishment. On this issue we compromised because the local elites are undeniably part of the community context, and we had indeed been giving them short shrift in the project’s programming. This produced, however, some jarring moments in the film’s continuity because those added segments were arbitrary inclusions rather than a part of the film’s original concept and emergent rhythm. To do less, however, would have been dishonest on our part and cultural manipulation of the worst sort. As we began the project interviews, political and cultural tensions between the said and the unsaid, between what could be safely said and — what could not be said at all became apparent. We wanted to probe ways in which the community’s traditional life intersected with the community’s changing character in, for example, the change from its agrarian tradition to an economy more based on factory work. In the local manufactur-

160 JEAN HASKELL SPEER ing plants, there were some clear labor tensions resulting from recent unemployment and some management practices. But our interest in exploring what seemed to be a major social and cultural dislocation met dead

ends. Few would speak about this issue except in the most general way, and the largest local employer barred us from interviewing at the plant. On similarly sensitive issues, interviewees would begin to tell us a story but stop when the story seemed inappropriate to some cultural image of the community they hoped we would make public. Although we did not try to mask these political realities behind our project’s cultural focus, we were not able, or else did not try hard enough, to unmask them either, and I believe our project has some significant gaps on topics of central concern to the life of the community. To me, as project folklorist, one of the most interesting aspects of the project was the perception of folklife and its political efficacy in the community. As we made choices about what to include in the nine public folklife programs and recruited participants from among the community’s tradition-bearers, we encountered nothing but cooperation and enthusiasm. The folklife programs were attended by a total of more than 1,100 persons, and many of the tradition-bearers featured in the series were organized into programs for the fall agricultural fair by community residents themselves. Although the folklife series overall did not produce any major political flaps, the series did play a role in cultural intervention in the community. We made conscious choices to elevate the level of knowledge about folklife in the community. At each program we distributed materials defining folklife, explaining its functions, its dynamic character, and its variety. We also included information about specific folk traditions celebrated in the program at hand and related them to larger regional or even archetypal cultural patterns. Our purpose was not only to enrich the humanities content of each public program, but also to change popular notions about folklife and its role in our lives. We also hoped to increase the visibility and reputation of local tradition-bearers, to have them regarded as important cultural resources by the whole community. All these efforts were in line with the stated goals of the project and with the advice of the local community. Nevertheless, this sharpening focus on folklife and particularly on individual tradition-bearers marked a disturbing shift in community priorities for some opinion leaders. We heard carping over federal monies being spent for such “fluff” instead of for real needs like sewer systems, and we learned of small jealousies over the elevation of certain folk “stars” to the exclusion of other kinds of community leaders. Hard though it is fora folklorist to admit, such sentiments are good arguments that point to the federal government's role in cultural intervention. Government institutions (e.g., NEH and NEA) pour tax

Rural Folklife and Politics 161 money into arts and humanities programs, such as our project, when the community as a whole might prefer to use such funds for, say, sewer systems (but that grant proposal gets turned down by another government agency). Those of us who do cultural work applaud a government that takes culture as seriously as sewers, but we must be conscious and critical of the government's role in the politics of culture. In spite of our educational efforts to explain the complexities of folk culture, I think the public programs clearly named folklife were viewed as fun (which they were), nonthreatening, and politically safe. In fact, at one program, a twilight storytelling contest, a local politician freely told funny but unflattering stories about himself and others in the community who were present in the audience. Since all storytellers are “‘liars’” in the com-

munity and since this was a program on folklore, there was a culturally and politically protective frame around the event. On the whole, I think most people equated folklife with “old ways” that have only nostalgic connection to the present, though we continued to argue for “the presentness of the past.” Nevertheless, when we drew _ from the folklife programs numerous traditional performances for the film, which did seem to be about the community’s present image, we encountered some of the difficulties discussed earlier. Political Infighting Many of the minor skirmishes and major battles over conflicting val-

ues, motives, and cultural assumptions were never known to the community because they took place behind the scenes, among the project staff. Perhaps nowhere in the project did I observe the politics of culture so clearly and engage in my own campaign battles so fiercely. We wrangled over how the fieldwork would be conducted and paid for—some felt the local people hired as interviewers should be paid a modest amount, the assumption being they were amateurs who had little overall responsibility for the project’s outcomes. Because the folklorists and the historian trained the interviewers and insisted that they be responsible for data sheets, field

notes, and tedious tape catalogs, we argued that interviewers must be paid more or we would endanger the quality of the project’s core materials.

The differences of opinion on this matter stemmed, | believe, from different views of the project’s cultural role in the community. Was our main purpose to involve the community more actively in its own heritage, requiring mere involvement on the part of the local interviewers rather than rigor, or were we hoping to produce materials of real scholarly value beyond the community’s use? As we shall see, this continued to be an unresolved tension, but on this salary issue, we agreed that it would be

162 JEAN HASKELL SPEER fairer and we could accomplish all our goals better if the grant budget were

renegotiated to reduce administrative costs and pay the interviewers a

higher wage.

A similar disagreement arose over tape transcription, an ordinary part of such a project but one with extraordinary possibilities for unshared cultural interpretations. Some of the staff urged the most expedient ap-

proach to transcription (i.e., extensive editing) to make as many tapes accessible in print as possible and as quickly as possible. The folklorists, whose interests were in producing the best scholarly transcripts possible even if it meant fewer tapes transcribed, pushed for transcriptions as close to verbatim as possible, reserving the structure of the spoken performance as well as its informational content. The intent of both positions was to serve the community in the best way we could, but our positions reflected different sets of practical and cultural concerns among various staff members. Some felt public access to grant materials and immediate impact on the community were the highest priorities. Some feared impressions created by transcripts that reflected a speaker’s inarticulateness or ungrammatical qualities. The folklorists took a long-range view, thinking of scholarly uses of the materials and evaluation of our work in the project by other scholars, particularly other folklor-

ists. Should we present the culturally sensitive area of a community’s speech as it is, in a tedious and expensive transcription process, or should we edit the language in print to meet some culturally acceptable standards derived from mainstream cultural values? Both views had merit, but in the end we produced fewer but near-verbatim transcripts; all tapes, however, have fairly thorough tape catalogs for easier public accessibility. The issue of appropriate public access surfaced again as we began to think about depositing materials in the various libraries scheduled to re-

ceive them. Opinions on this issue ranged from complete, unrestricted public access to materials to numerous proposed safeguards on them, toa complete moratorium on scholarly access and publication for a period of five to seven years, excluding project staff. The ensuing imbroglio on this matter kept us in lawyers’ offices for hours on end, kept memos flying and

phone lines busy, brought the university administration, NEH, and a state senator into our discussions, caused one staff member to resign, and drained us all of energies better spent on the project itself. As a reasonable compromise, we finally agreed on controlled public access to protect the materials physically and a copyright to prevent un-

ethical uses of the materials; otherwise, use was unrestricted. But this disagreement, like most of our staff disagreements, forced us to put our cultural cards on the table—to discuss the assumptions and motives underlying our own stances. In retrospect, I believe these disagreements resulted in better decision making, which should be a conscious goal for those who engage in the politics of culture.

Rural Folklife and Politics 163 As I think back over all the unshared visions in this shared public project, lam sometimes amazed that the project reached such a successful conclusion and has had continuing impact on all participants. But it has had important, long-term impacts in shaping personal lives and the politi-

cal and cultural images of the community. : Conclusions

Once the project formally concluded, we had to evaluate how well we

had met our initial objectives and assess any unexpected results of our work. First, in line with our stated goals for the project, use of the local library and the university learning center in the community increased quite substantially both in numbers and in diversity of users. The elite image of both institutions seems to have changed, especially of the learning center where programming now reflects the imprint of the project. And after the end of the project, for the first time ever, the center’s Christmas celebration attracted an integrated audience. A black man who had been in the project film stood at the door and exchanged enthusiastic greetings with his community neighbors, both black and white. Others in the community associated with the project also achieved some new status. Some, especially those in the film or in the folklife pro‘grams, became so visible that they have become community spokespersons or local celebrities. For example, a fine local basket maker, the centerpiece of one of the folklife programs, now teaches basket making regularly at the learning center, and his baskets have become prized possessions throughout the community. For others the changes were more private, though no less dramatic. One woman who worked as an interviewer and had just suffered a painful divorce told us she regained confidence in her abilities from the project work, as did many interviewers who had been unemployed prior to the project.

The community seems to have developed a heightened cultural consciousness, or perhaps a cultural self-consciousness, in the years since

the project ended. One of the community’s two small newspapers, for example, gave us little coverage when the project began (our opening pro-

gram lost out to a car wreck on the front page), but by the end of the project, the paper had changed its format from a general news publication to a newspaper emphasizing local history and local folklore. One of its regular features is a column of old tales from the community written by the same local politician who made such a splash at our storytelling contest. __

And now there is a third local newspaper being published in the community that is solely devoted to, in its own words, ‘‘mountain life and lore.” Some in the community have themselves discovered the political implications of their own culture. Local employers refer to the rich cultural

164 JEAN HASKELL SPEER life of the community and its solid traditional values as a drawing card for new management personnel from other areas. A local industrial development group is using project materials to attract new industries to the community. They have made former project staff members and interviewers a

part of their group, and they are using the very fact that the project occurred to argue that the community is worthy of interest from industrial developers. One of the project directors, who lives in the county, also notes that there now seems to be less stigma attached to seeking federal funds for the community than prior to the project. Whether this is attributable to the impact of our grant is unclear, but it is a noticeable community change. Quite recently the state attorney general and a state delegate, both of

whom are from the community and who were running again for state political offices, contacted us about use of project materials in their campaigns. These two politicians clearly had become more sensitive to the political values of their cultural heritage. Another recent indication of the community’s strengthened sense of political and cultural substance is its challenge to the more politically ‘powerful eastern, urbanized sections of the state. A fight in the state legislature between the urban east and the rural, mountainous west of Virginia over highway funds led to the formation of a regional coalition among mountain counties. Most prominent in forming and leading the coalition have been people from the community we studied. I have followed their

rhetoric in the news with interest, particularly their statements about“paying attention to the people of the mountains.” Because there have long been these deep political and cultural divisions in Virginia, asin most Appalachian states, I hope to continue charting ways in which giving col-

lective voice to communities through projects such as ours may make communities more vocal about themselves. We need to ask what sorts of cultural interventions lead to cultural self-determination. In his recent study of the history and culture of an Ulster community,

Henry Glassie concludes that good fieldwork and good ethnographic scholarship should make us come to respect the people they represent and question the validity of our own lives in comparison with the integrity of theirs.© Work on our project certainly has changed me in the directions Glassie suggests. The people of the community have earned my respect and my ongoing friendship, reminding me, as Walter Benjamin says, that “wisdom, righteousness, and ethics are not the property of a few.’”’” Long after the end of the formal grant period, the community remains a large part of my personal and professional life, at once a beautiful and beastly

burden.

I wrote at the beginning of this essay that I wanted to ponder what, if anything, I learned from the project about the politics of culture. Surely I learned many things, but one overarching lesson: collecting oral histories

Rural Folklife and Politics 165 and folklife traditions and presenting them to the public are not morally neutral activities. These activities may produce conflicts for which we are unprepared, but those conflicts force us into awareness of complex ethical tensions, tacit political commitments, and moral ambiguities inextricably caught up in the public presentation of culture.’ Through our work we empower the often disenfranchised by giving them ways to participate in fashioning the story of their polity. As Paul Thompson says, such work may lead to action that does not confirm but changes the world. The thought is sobering. NOTES 1. Robert A. Georges and Michael Owen Jones, People Studying People: The Human Element in Field Work (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1980), p. 147. 2. Elizabeth C. Fine, The Folklore Text: From Performance to Print (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1984). 3. David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983).

4. Paul Thompson, “History and the Community,” Oral History: An Interdisctplinary Anthology, ed. David K. Dunaway and Willa K. Baum (Nashville: American Association for State and Local History, 1984), p. 12. 5. Thompson, “History and the Community,” p. 41. 6. Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), p. 12. 7. Walter Benjamin, I/luminations (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1955), p. 106. 8. For many of these conclusions and even some specific language, I am indebted to many shared discussions with my colleagues, Dwight Conquergood of Northwestern University, Kay Ellen Capo of SUNY at Purchase, and Elizabeth C. Fine of Virginia ‘Tech.

SHALOM STAUB ~~ Folklore and Authenticity A Myopic Marriage in Public Sector Programs

During a forum discussion about marketing traditional crafts at the 1984 annual meeting of the American Folklore Society in San Diego, one panelist described changes that had been introduced in a traditional craft in response to the commercial market. A Mexican woodcarver had altered the design of a traditional mask so that it would hang flat against the wall when displayed in the home of a non-Mexican buyer. This example of a craftsman tampering with tradition caused consternation among some folklorists and marketing specialists present at the panel. Some expressed the view that the mask was no longer authentic. The use and misuse of such terms as traditional and authentic have serious implications for the still-young field of public sector folklore. Many

folklorists have strong opinions about popular representations of the quaintness of folklore in the mass media, but do folklorists take a close enough look at the imagery and implications of folklore terminology? Particularly in the public sector, do we yet know whether folklorists are truly

preserving traditions or serving as the unwitting agents of change to the very things the field seeks to conserve? Public sector folklorists occupy a critical position, mediating several social worlds. Trained in the academic setting and working in government agencies, public sector folklorists seek to serve a folk population, which is oriented neither to academic tastes nor agency bureaucracy. Functioning as “‘culture brokers,” public sector folklorists serve as agents of cultural legitimacy, translating the values and practices of the folk into forms and events understandable to a general population. Public funding for folklife programs offers evidence of an emergent political ideology in the United States that supports cultural and artistic pluralism. Folk arts funding categories now exist alongside the classical categories of elite arts as arts agency staffs and legislators have recognized the political mileage to be gained from the support of such folk cultural

programs. This support is still far from unanimous and large scale, although the dramatically rapid recent development of the field indicates a public readiness, which likely grew out of the civil rights movement and

Folklore and Authenticity 167 ethnic revival of the sixties and the bicentennial fever and search for roots in the seventies. ! Although there seems to be a general public interest and readiness for things folk, public sector folklorists play a key role in shaping the public definition of American folklife. We do this in our choices of what commu-

nities to target, which activities to feature, and how such activities are presented. As folklorists we look to our discipline for the boundaries of the subject, to identify the proper objects of our attention. We ask ourselves if a particular activity or object corresponds to an acknowledged definition of folklore. Are these performers or craftsworkers truly tradition-bearers?? In the academic setting, folklorists are comfortable pushing the limits of

the discipline, seeking cases and situations that challenge the accepted definitions of folklore, but for folklorists working in the public sector, the definition of what is suitable for documentation and presentation tends to be more conservative. Even though the discipline has come to recognize the validity of Alan Dundes’s observation that the folk are ‘any group of people whatsoever”

who share common cultural characteristics, public sector folklife programs follow a safer, more restricted definition of the folk: usually the most easily recognizable categories of ethnic, regional, and occupational eroups.® These three social categories, together with familial and religious groups, are included in the definition of American folklife, which appears in the American Folklife Preservation Act, Public Law 94-201. Although these social categories are indeed represented in academic folklore studies, the choices of specific cases systematically differ. ‘To take the example of occupational folk groups, academic folklore studies feature a full range

of occupations, from the outdoor, male, preindustrial and industrial age occupations (such as lumbermen, miners, and railroad workers) to examples of xerox lore among office secretaries and folk speech of computer programmers. Public sector folklore programs tend to emphasize the outdoor and industrial occupations, a focus that responds to and reinforces a popular image of American folk experience. Public sector folklore is still young enough to be worried about its public image, a justifiable concern because public image largely determines the viability of public programs and their continued funding. Consequently, public sector folklore seeks the common denominator, working with folk groups that not only fit the definitions of the discipline, but also are politically safe. Beyond the choice of whom to feature, public sector folklorists have to make choices about what can be presented. Music, dance, crafts, and dec-

orative arts are emphasized, for they fit the public program formats: concerts, festivals, exhibitions, demonstrations, workshops, and apprenticeships. Narrative verbal lore and poetry, together with folk belief, folk medicine, custom, and ritual, tend to be more difficult to adapt for general

168 SHALOM STAUB public presentation. Films, videotapes, recordings, and radio programs offer possible vehicles to present these intangible aspects of folklife, but the high cost of production keeps their number smaller than the less expensive, more available formats noted above. Through the choice of whom and what to present within the rubric of their programs, public sector folklorists play a role in shaping the public consciousness of the definition of folklife. This is true not only for the general public, but even for the folk communities that the folklorists serve.

In cases where the values and definitions of the folk community are not identical to those of the public sector folklorist, serious misunderstanding may develop. The example of a community-supported ethnic dance ensemble illustrates this issue. In the particular ethnic community, much time and money may be devoted to hiring an accomplished dance troupe leader, training the young dancers, making costumes from printed patterns, and arranging and recording the music. The well-meaning public sector folklorist enters the scene, and the pride of the community is likely dismissed as neither truly folk nor traditional with its formal, organization-arranged music and choreography, standardized costume, and prerecorded music. This example invites the question of whose definition or image of folk culture dominates the work of public folklife programs. Clearly, the im-

plicit definitions are rooted in the academic setting, and furthermore, these definitions may, in fact, be external to the communities whose tradi-

tions public sector folklorists seek to document and present. A further indication of this paradox is apparent in the review process for folk arts

grant proposals. The model of peer review common to arts and humanities agencies has been adopted, but instead of a review panel of folk artists, the reviewers are generally academic folklife specialists. Thus, the reviewers are peers of the program director, not the artists. I will cautiously draw an analogy to the politics of culture in the Appalachian South, as discussed by David Whisnant. With all good intentions, the work of late nineteenth and early twentieth century ballad collectors, festival promoters, and crafts school organizers tapped into traditional sources and reshaped them to fit an externally imposed image of the mountain folk culture. The culture of southern mountaineers was recast to serve the needs of socially and economically powerful outsiders. Whisnant’s critique of this cultural intervention has significance for the present discussion of public folklife programs. He writes, ‘“Anintervenor, by virtue of his or her status, power, and established credibility, is frequently able to define what the culture is, to normalize and legitimize that definition in the larger society, and even to feed it back into the culture itself, where it may be internalized as ‘real’ or ‘traditional’ or ‘authentic.’ “4

By making this analogy and drawing attention to the cultural inter-

Folklore and Authenticity 169 ventionist aspect of public folklife programs, I do not mean to indict the field. Rather, I propose that the field can develop beyond its limitations by engaging in serious self-scrutiny and ongoing self-conscious practice. Repeatedly, we will need to confront the problems of our terminology and our invention of categories external to the communities that we serve. Even the term folk artist, so central to our vocabulary, is as new to the musicians and craftsworkers who are so designated as it is new to agency staff, legislators, and the general public. Beyond the terminology we must be cognizant of the image of folk culture presented in public folklife programs, specifically the nature of what is considered to be authentic. In administering folk arts grant pro-

grams and projects, such as apprenticeships, festivals, or exhibitions, public sector folklorists are generally inclined to make distinctions between traditional and revival artists. The former are implicitly understood to be the true folk artist and, therefore, the appropriate subject of public programming. Folk arts apprenticeship programs, for example, are generally constructed to limit the selection of masters to senior traditional artists, while allowing greater flexibility in the selection of the apprentices to include both younger traditional and revival artists.° Public sector folklorists conduct fieldwork to identify and document true folk artists and craftsworkers. While generally avoiding the word authenticity, public sector folklorists search for people who embody some loosely defined sense of authentic folk experience. Curiously, the term authenticity rarely appears in public folklife program descriptions. One of its few appearances is in the list of criteria for the selection of recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts’ National Heritage Fellowships. In thinking about these issues in light of my experiences as director of State Folklife Programs in Pennsylvania, I recall my first meeting with Lewis Reinhart, a German Gypsy basket maker of central Pennsylvania. I was attending a local street fair in 1983, wandering along rows of macramé plant hangers and woven placemat and napkin sets, when I saw a man in his sixties weaving a willow basket in the shade of his van. He was surrounded by over a dozen types of willow baskets in assorted shapes and sizes. When I began to talk to him, [learned that his father and grandfather had been basket makers and that he grows his own willow crop.® Like his father and grandfather before him, he peddles his baskets to Amish, Ger-

man, and English farmers. But unlike his father and grandfather who lived in tents and peddled by horse and wagon in several central Pennsylvania counties, Lewis Reinhart has bought some land, lives in a trailer, and loads his van for peddling trips through central and western Pennsy]lvania, westward to Ohio, and eastward to Delaware. Only recently has he started selling at street and craft fairs to supplement his income from peddling and from laying blacktop. I left the fair that day satisfied that I had met a potential candidate for any number of future folklife programs, fit-

170 SHALOM STAUB ting the strictest definition of a traditional folk craftsworker. Since that first meeting, I have maintained a relationship with Lewis Reinhart. He later demonstrated his craft at the 1983 South Central Pennsylvania Ethnic Folklife Festival, and he served as a master craftsworker in the 1984-85 Apprenticeships in Traditional Crafts program, both public folklife projects receiving substantial support from the Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts. During subsequent interviews I learned that selling at craft fairs has prompted changes in Reinhart’s work. Reinhart recognizes that the consumer at a fair is far less informed than the farmers who demand a variety of basket types, made with a rugged construction to stand up to demanding field and home use. Most crafts fair consumers cannot distinguish baskets by type, and many simply ask for an attractive basket to hold magazines in the living room. Reinhart continues to display a variety of baskets at fairs, but the baskets he makes when sitting by his display are, for

him, often simple and quickly finished. In this way, when a fair-goer wanders by and exclaims, “I’ve never seen anyone making a basket before! Can I buy that one? It would look great in my family room!” Reinhart

can respond, ‘Yes, come on back in forty-five minutes, and I'll have it finished for you.” Reinhart has developed a pragmatic and savvy approach to crafts fair marketing, having learned that potential customers will be as attracted by the opportunity to observe the performance of a traditional craftsworker as by the actual baskets he has for sale. From his first encounter with the crafts fair crowd, Reinhart built ina demonstration of his craft as an attraction to set himself apart from mere sales displays. The following interview excerpt illustrates Reinhart’s own amazement at the public reaction to his

demonstration.’

SHALOM StTaus: What was your reaction, if you can think back to that first time that you did a craft fair? Lewis Remnnart: Well, I couldn’t believe it. People, they just went mad. See a basket maker making baskets. They never in their life seen it before, see. Yeah, never seen it before. And teach? ““Are you gonna teach me?” Yeah, I could have got

sixty, seventy, seventy-five dollars an hour for teaching. Yeah, just beg me to teach, still every time I go to the craft shows.

For Reinhart demonstrating initially meant just being himself; he is a basket maker, and he might as well use the available time to make more baskets. He immediately saw that in public view his activity as a basket maker became a marketable commodity just as the baskets themselves. People watch, and people buy. SS: So, at a fair or festival when you are demonstrating, are people buying too, or are they just watching?

Folklore and Authenticity 171 LR: Oh, you bet they buy, yes sir. Last year at Colonial Days, I started one of

them hampers, and the lady said, (I only had it about that far, about five to six | inches) she said, “I want that.” I said it will take awhile till I get it done. “It don’t matter. I'll be here all day.” So I finished it for her. Never in my life seen nothing like it. SS: So she just saw the bottom of it; she didn’t know what it was going to look

like. ...

LR: No, she didn’t know that it was gonna have a belly on it.

Reinhart continues to make a broad range of functional basket types, because he still has his regular customers among the Amish farmers. Those baskets that I will term Reinhart’s fair baskets are any type that he can finish

quickly and easily to combine the attractiveness of the basket itself with the customer’s satisfaction of buying a hand-crafted artifact whose actual production he or she witnessed. Lewis Reinhart and the Mexican woodcarver I mentioned earlier have much in common. Both have altered the objects they produce to meet the demands of a nontraditional market. I suspect that some would say that Reinhart’s fair basket, like the altered Mexican mask, is no longer a traditional—implicitly meaning authentic—folk artifact. Where is this authenticity that we seek? Does authenticity reside in the craftsworker, in the knowledge that unfolds in the process of construction? This approach characterizes Michael Owen Jones's treatment of traditional and idiosyncratic chairs made by the Kentucky craftsworker Charley.’ Following this line of thought, the mask and basket under consideration were certainly produced by folk craftsworkers, utilizing traditional skills, techniques, and tools. Might authenticity reside in the object itself, as Henry Glassie said in Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States? Glassie writes,

“A folk-produced object does not lose its folk status when utilized in a non-folk manner.’’’ In this sense, the mask and basket are authentic folk objects even when separated from ritual or utilitarian use, the mask now hanging for decoration and the basket adding ambience to a living room’s “folk” decor. Does authenticity reside in the context of an object’s use? Purchased by consumers who do not share common cultural experience with the craftsworkers, the mask and basket are used in nontraditional settings for nontraditional purposes. If function and use are definitional criteria, these objects may not represent anything folk at all. Considering these questions, the status of the Mexican mask and Reinhart’s fair baskets is no longer a simple commonsense determination of traditionality and authenticity.

Terms such as tradition and authenticity are particularly difficult, for they have an everyday meaning and are also used as academic terms. In the recent article, ‘Tradition, Genuine or Spurious,” Richard Handler and

172 SHALOM STAUB Jocelyn Linnekin observe that the conventional, noncritical understanding of tradition “posits a false dichotomy between tradition and modernity as fixed and mutually exclusive states.” They argue against folklorists’ use of the concept of tradition in its commonsense meaning, as ’’a core of inherited culture traits whose continuity and boundedness are analogous to that of a natural object.” Instead, they propose that we refine our understanding, using the concept in an academic sense, which recognizes that tradition is a symbolic construction, “‘an interpretive process that embodies both continuity and discontinuity.” Representing an academic field in the public sector, folklife programs too often adopt the commonsense meaning of tradition discussed here. The characteristic division between traditional and revival artists, for example, reduces a complex process into static categories and those categories then become the basis for funding consideration. Those qualities that we commonly refer to as traditional and revival may differ not so much in kind but in degree. Both are part of that process, described here by Handler and Linnekin as embodying continuity and discontinuity and elsewhere as the human effort to achieve meaning in social interaction through “traditionalizing” aspects of behavior.'! The example of the ethnic dance ensemble mentioned earlier does not fit into a rigidly defined category of traditional, but it clearly represents the community’s efforts to achieve cultural continuity by selecting elements from a historical repertoire and adapting them for new functions, settings, and meanings. Exactly which items and activities we judge to be traditional thus reflect a choice between a commonsense or critical usage of the term. For this

reason, notions of authenticity that underlie public folklore programs must be examined for their implications. Designating an experience or object authentic implies distance between the designator and the designee, whether social, physical, or temporal. Authenticity is not a term likely to be used self-referentially within a folk group. Presumably, Lewis Reinhart would not describe his wares to a farmer as authentic egg baskets, field baskets, and clothes baskets. Conceivably, however, the fairgoer who purchases one of Reinhart’s baskets for living room display may tell his friends about his authentic Gypsy basket. Dean MacCannell addressed these issues in The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, where

he notes, ‘“For moderns, reality and authenticity are thought to be elsewhere: in other historical periods and other cultures, in purer, simpler lifestyles.’”12

The quality of authenticity is invested in the experiences, practices, and activities of people socially distant from ourselves. The greater the social distance, the more we commonly attribute the image of a pure, authentic culture. The Amish and Hasidim provide ready examples of communities popularly thought to embody a traditional cultural experience unsullied by modern society. Conversely, the familiar cultural landscape

Folklore and Authenticity 173 of contemporary American urban and suburban experience does not carry the same mystique. This mystique of traditional culture has charged the

public imagination, inspired boundless academic folklore studies, and formed the basis of many public folklife programs. As attributed to that which is socially and culturally distant from the self, this underlying notion of authenticity may explain why public folklife programs are particularly inclined to distinguish between traditional and revival artists. Revival artists, who are often highly educated with formal artistic training, are too close to the folklorist’s own experience to qualify as authentic. After all, revival artists and folklorists share a need to search for authentic cultural experience, one as a participant and one as an observer. On the other hand, the traditional artist represents that authentic experience, the unbroken cultural lineage that has been lost in modern society. Authenticity is a construct of our intellectual, social, and political experience, although having created the category, we then write ourselves

out of the picture. When authenticity is used in a commonsense, nonanalytical manner to judge folk performance or artifacts, there results a false dichotomy between authentic and “not-the-real thing.” Authenticity is not an a priori category of classification and description that contrasts with fake or nontraditional, but rather, it is a term rooted in social interaction and multicultural negotiation. Such an approach may offer one vantage point for the assessment of public sector folklore while suggesting possible future responsibilities and directions. Folk communities had dealt with outsiders long before folklorists came along to serve as interpreters. Commonly, these indigenous responses to commercial and social interaction with outsiders produce a protective cultural barrier, presenting certain performances and objects for public consumption while reserving others for private performance within the community. We already have the examples of the Mexican wood carver and the Gypsy basket maker who alter their work to meet a new market, but other examples abound. In the Middle Eastern restaurants along Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn, Yemenite Muslim restaurant workers present Lebanese and Syrian foods and music to customers, while reserving Yemenite foods and music for private consumption in the _ kitchen and basement.!’ In Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, the intense tourist industry, which presents Amish culture while using non-Amish actors, actually provides a cultural buffer that distances tourists from the Amish themselves. '4 The view that such public performances and prod‘ucts are “fakelore” rests on popular assumptions and stereotypes that folk groups are neatly bounded, without social, economic, and political ties

with other groups.' Such neat boundaries do not exist, and the consequences for public sector folklorists are significant. Folklorists designing

public programs to present and interpret these traditional cultures must recognize the importance of considering intragroup and intergroup rela-

174 SHALOM STAUB tions. Public and private folk expressions can be seen as appropriate performances for differing cultural systems of meaning, and in terms of public programming, each requires its own type of contextualization. I will take the case of Yemenite Jewish culture in Israel to explore this issue of public and private meaning. Though removed from the American public folklife scene, this example offers a valuable perspective on the public-private dichotomy. Yemenite Jewish dance has attracted wide attention and has been identified as an authentic Jewish dance. The questions to explore include how authenticity is conferred upon a particular folklore genre or indeed upon a particular folk community, who assigns this status, whatis their motivation, and what is its impact in the folk community. From the beginning of the Jewish immigration to Palestine in the late 1800s to the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, amodern Hebrew culture

emerged. The European Jewish immigrants to Palestine during that period sought to break the sterotypes of Diaspora experience and create a new Jewish identity. These settlers seem to exemplify MacCannell’s observation noted earlier, that reality and authenticity are located in other historical times and other cultures. For the settlers reality and authenticity derived from the revival of biblical forms—antiquity engendered authenticity.

Among the settlers composers, choreographers, and craftsworkers sought new forms built on ancient foundations. Most shared an implicit rejection of European Jewish folk traditions, since these were all too read-

ily identified with the Diaspora experience, unbefitting the return to ha’aretz, the Land. Just as the nation and its language were seen as a revival of the biblical Hebrew experience, biblical images dominated the work of the early folk music and dance revivalists. Composers and dancers turned their creative attention to their agricultural practices, drawing on biblical

precedents to create kibbutz-based harvest pageants and festivals. The local Arab population offered other biblical images. The Arab men’s debka

line dances accompanied by shepherd flute and clay drum recalled the image of biblical shepherds tending their flocks. While local Arab folk cultural materials were borrowed or used for inspiration as examples of biblical activity, the European Jewish settlers also viewed Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jews as bearers of biblical traditions because their diaspora had not taken them as far from the homeland. Of all the Middle Eastern Jewish communities, the Yemenites seemed to

emerge as best embodying this sense of biblical-ness. Even before the Yemenite mass immigration of 1948-51, the Yemenites provided the folkloric sources for craftsworkers, musicians, and dancers. Embroidery patterns and silver filigree work were adapted, melodies were borrowed and simplified to meet the western musical ear, and dance steps were similarly appropriated. In the thirties, a Russian ballet dancer named Rina

Nikova turned to Yemenite women to dance in her ballets of biblical

Folklore and Authenticity 175 scenes. Lead dancer Rachel Nadav recalls that Nikova “felt Yemenite dancers were the only ones who could truly express the Bible.” Following the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, there was the “Ingathering of the Exiles,” the mass immigration of the Jews from eastern and western Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The Ingathering

offered new cultural sources to those who felt the mounting pressure to create distinctly Israeli expressions as a means of uniting the myriad Jewish ethnic groups. When the Yemenite Jews arrived en masse in the late forties, they were viewed by some as primitives with odd customs and by others as custodians of an authentic, ancient Jewish culture. A community that lived for centuries in the isolated, mountainous terrain of the southern tip of the Arabian Peninsula, the Yemenites themselves viewed their airlift from Yemen to Israel as a fulfillment of the biblical prophecy, “I will

bring you to Me on eagles’ wings.” Israeli researchers seeking ancient Jewish survivals in the exotic Jewish groups found much of what they

sought in the Yemenite community, with resulting articles titled “Yemenite Culture as a Source of Ancient Jewish Culture,” ““Ancient Customs Among the Jews of Yemen,” and ‘““Yemenite Hebrew and Ancient Pronunciations. ’’!” To be viewed as the bearer of ancient customs offered a high cultural

status to the socially low and economically marginal Yemenite immigrants. While still living in makeshift transit camps of tents and metal huts, Yemenites were visited by veteran European-born Israelis seeking artistic and cultural inspiration. Rivka Sturman, a prolific and influential folk dance choreographer, was taken by Yemenite dance after one such visit. She described her visit in this way. We took with us recommendations from the Federation of Labor and we were consequently received with official honor. This meant that the Yemenites had prepared a gathering of all the families—babies, young children, parents, and grandparents—and the entire assemblage danced. I was bewitched by their grace and lightness and by their natural demeanor. One man beat on the side of a square bisquit tin as if it was a drum, and they sang songs from the prayer book. I was especially entranced with one step that I noted had a basic form, with many variations repeated in almost every dance. At the time I consciously realized that here I had come to the source, the fountain of one of our basic steps. !8

Speaking of Yemenite dance, Gurit Kadman, another influential figure in the Israeli folk dance revival, asked: ‘“Are we indeed faced with the remnants of ancient traditions which originated in Biblical times? Are these dances, in fact, directly descended from the most ancient prayer movements?’"!9

These assertions of biblical origins for Yemenite dance are impressionistic and entirely derived from sources external to the Yemenite community. But the “myth” of biblical origins and, therefore, the authenticity

176 SHALOM STAUB of Yemenite Jewish dance offered European Israeli revivalists a source wholly appropriate to their work. If the identification with ancient sources served the needs of a larger Israeli community to demonstrate cultural continuities and validate their return to the Land, the Yemenites saw a

strategy for their own social legitimacy and cultural pride. A young Yemenite Jewish woman dancing with Inbal Dance Theater, a Yemenite Israeli performing group, commented: “Israel is a Biblical land, so that its dance company should be Yemenite. The Yemenites are a Biblical people. We even dressed Biblically in Yemen.’ The rhetoric of antiquity and authenticity, drawing from both substantive and impressionistic sources, has generated a popular stereotype that has been adapted by Yemenites themselves as one strategy in constructing Yemenite ethnic identity in Israel. Within the context of a particular Yemenite Israeli village where I conducted fieldwork, these themes of antiquity and authenticity are evident in the contrast of the village’s dance troupe performing for outsiders with the villagers’ own dance activity at such events as circumcisions and weddings. For outsiders the villagers are costumed, wearing ankle-length caftans and headdresses with false sidecurls sewn on, performing a two-and-a-half-minute, choreographed version of their traditional dance repertoire. If someone asks the meaning of their dance, a villager might respond that the dance tells the story of their emigration from Yemen or the Exodus from Egypt. Among themselves ata festive occasion in the village, celebrants dance to honor their hosts and for their own enjoyment—no special costumes, no choreographed sequence of movements, and no stories to explain the meaning of the dance. If we call the dance troupe performance ‘‘fakelore,” and having labeled it, then dismiss it, we can only arrive at a limited understanding of Yemenite Israeli culture. In seeking to validate its experience and create its own meaning, one social group—the dominant European-born secular Israelis—appropriated and adapted Yemenite Jewish folkloric forms. For the general public, traditional Yemenite meanings and values associated with these forms remain hidden; only the created mythic meaning is available. The Yemenites themselves, transformed from a Jewish minority in Yemen to a Yemenite minority in Israel, have sought ways to carve out their cultural identity in a new context. In a way, the existence of the Yemenite village dance troupe, created for presentation to outsiders, allows the community’s traditions to adapt and change at their own pace within the village, unscrutinized by strangers. In considering this case for the current assessment of public folklife programs, I find that public sector folklorists face an interesting dilemma.

Ethnographic fieldwork suggests that folk groups and individuals respond to social and commercial interaction with outsiders by creating slightly altered forms that may provide a buffer to allow the traditional form to continue within the community. Public sector folklorists, how-

Folklore and Authenticity 177 ever, are not satisfied with the modified folk forms; we seek to document authentic, traditional practices in their natural contexts. A dilemma arises when we seek to bypass the cultural buffers and present folk cultural activities, normally restricted to insider knowledge and participation, to cultural outsiders. Discussion that public folklife programming alters traditional culture by changing the context and meaning of its performance is already commonplace, but my point here is slightly different. I want to suggest that public sector folklorists’ responsibility to document and interpret folk cultural expressions should extend to encompass this public-private cultural process. Viewed from this perspective, our work leads away from celebrations of isolated, authenticated folk performers and craftsworkers to projects that recognize and interpret the complex relationships within folk communities and between folk communities and the general society. This suggestion may be interpreted by some as a call for humanitiesoriented folklife programming to replace the arts orientation of folk arts programs, but such an interpretation would be simplistic. The choice is

not one of funding sources or program formats, but rather an issue of focus and interpretation. A principal role of any public folklore program is to educate, and in this capacity the program must strive to rise above the pervasive, popular cultural images that are dominant in our society.

Bridging the academic and public sectors, public folklife programs have the opportunity to draw from the insights and perspectives of academic folklore studies in designing projects. These insights should be . weighed carefully at all stages—from evaluating the terminology and concepts underlying the program to defining the scope of a new program and selecting its participants. Commonsense notions of what is meant by the word tradition, for instance, should be questioned as the basis for program and funding policy. Admittedly, academic perspectives on tradition may pose clear difficulties for some public folk arts agencies, but if public sector folklorists do not grapple with this issue, no one will. The need to deal with the question of what is traditional is not one of mere intellectual curiosity. There is always a lurking danger that if the focus of public folklore programs comes to be viewed as anachronistic, quaint customs and colorful local characters, then legislators or administrators could easily approve funding cuts that would end the programs. The need for addressing the intellectual issues is real. An additional resource for defining public folklife program objectives must also be the folk communities. Just as there is a need for intellectual

grounding, public folklife programs must accurately reflect the experiences of these communities. At issue here is exactly whose definition of culture, tradition, and authenticity is documented and presented in public folklife programs. Our terms should reflect the categories of the people with whom we work. Do we sacrifice credibility and the specificity of the

178 SHALOM STAUB term when we call all our program participants folk artists, abandoning the terms used among community members themselves. Authenticity is rarely mentioned as a qualifying criterion in public folklife programs because its images are part of the dominant cultural worldview. In suggesting that we question whose definitions of authenticity underlie our search for American folk culture, I hope to stimulate discussion and evaluation of current definitions. Without questioning such issues, well-meaning public folklife programs may repeat prior tendencies to recast folk cultural traditions to fit the interests of the socially _ powerful. By accepting the double challenge posed by intellectual perspectives and fieldwork-based observations, public sector folklorists may be less inclined to pass judgment on the work of the Mexican woodcarvers, the fair basket makers, and ethnic dance ensembles. The alternative is a prescription for obsolescence. NOTES 1. For a discussion of recent developments in public folklife programs, see Charles Camp, “Developing a State Folklife Program,” in Handbook of American Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 518-24. For a longer historical view, see Ormond Loomis, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United

States, Publications of the American Folklife Center, no. 1 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1983).

2. This term, tradition-bearer, has emerged in public sector folklife parlance as an alternative for the sometimes restrictive folk artist. Even this alternative is not altogether satisfac-

tory, because it relies upon a notion of tradition as superorganic, raising the issue of continuity and change. Dan Ben-Amos offers a critical assessment of American folklorists’ use of the term tradition that bears clear relevance for public sector folklife; see ‘“The Seven Strands of Tradition: Varieties in Its Meaning in American Folklore Studies,” Journal of Folklore Research 21 (1984): 97-131.

3. Alan Dundes, The Study of Folklore (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 2. 4. David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983), p. 260.

5. Traditional artists in this usage would indicate an association with the particular social group and cultural tradition by birth and a skill learned through informal observation, imitation, or apprenticeship. The Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment of the Arts, in its definition of its field and scope, has sought to emphasize these qualities as representative of the kind of traditional artists appropriate for support through its funding programs. In papers presented at the 1985 annual meeting of the American Folklore Society, Robert Baron (“Canons of Authenticity, Cultural Policy, and the Public Programming of Folklife’) and Deirdre Evans-Pritchard (‘The Portale Case: Authenticity, Tourism, and the Law”) raised interesting observations on the definition of the traditional artist in the public sector, as seen in the policies of funding agencies and in court rulings. 6. A photograph of Lewis Reinhart’s maternal grandfather, basket maker George Einsig, taken in 1924 in central Pennsylvania, appears in Jeannette Lasansky, Willow, Oak, and Rye: Basket Traditions in Pennsylvania (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1979), p. 6. 7. Interview, Feb. 21, 1985, Pennsylvania State Folklife Programs tape #85c-ss-4.

Folklore and Authenticity 179 8. Michael Owen Jones, The Hand Made Object and Its Maker (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1975). 9. Henry Glassie, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), pp. 11-12. 10. Richard Handler and Jocelyn Linnekin, ‘Tradition, Genuine or Spurious,” Journal of American Folklore 97 (1984): 273.

11. Dell Hymes, ‘’Folklore’s Nature and the Sun’s Myth,” Journal of American Folklore 88 (1975): 353. 12. Dean MacCannell, The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class (New York: Schocken

Books, 1976), p. 3.

13. Shalom Staub, “The Near East Restaurant: A Study of the Spatial Manifestations of the Folklore of Ethnicity,’”” New York Folklore 7 (1981): 113-27; idem, “A Folkloristic Study of

Ethnic Boundaries: The Case of Yemeni Muslims in New York City” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1985). 14. Roy C. Buck, “Boundary Maintenance Revisited: Tourist Experiences in an Old Order Amish Community,” Rural Sociology 43 (1978): 221-34. 15. Fakelore, a term coined by Richard Dorson to refer to literary pseudofolklore [see Dorson’s American Folklore and the Historian (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1971); and Folklore and Fakelore: Essays toward a Disctpline of Folk Studies (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1976); William S. Fox, ‘Folklore and Fakelore: Some Sociological Consideration,” Journal of the

Folklore Institute 17 (1980): 244-61] has come to have a more general application to folkloric activity separated from its natural traditional context, such as in tourist settings and revival performance. 16. Judith Brin Ingber, “The Russian Ballerina and the Yemenites,”’ Israel Dance ’75 (Tel Aviv: Israel Dance Society, 1975), p. 19. 17. Yehuda Ratzhabi, ‘“Yemenite Culture as a Source of Ancient Jewish Culture,” Afikim 13-14 (1966); idem, ‘Ancient Customs Among the Jews of Yemen,” Shevet V’Am 1 (1971): 168-80; Larry Kutshner, ‘““Yemenite Hebrew and Ancient Pronunciations,” Journal of Semitic Studies 11 (1966): 217-25.

18. Judith Brin Ingber, “Shorashim: The Roots of Israeli Folk Dance,” Dance Perspectives 59 (1974): 18.

19. Gurit Kadman, “Yemenite Dance,” in Grace C. Grossman, ed., The Jews of Yemen (Chicago: Spertus College of Judaica Press, 1976), pp. 6-8.

20. Eugene Palatsky, “Informal Report on Inbal in New York,”” Dance Magazine 32:3 (1958): 18-23, 65.

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Cultural Conservation, Historic Preservation, & Environmental Resources

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ORMOND H. LOOMIS ~~ Links between Historic Preservation and Folk Cultural Programs _

In February 1985 representatives of the National Park Service met in Tal-

lahassee with staff from Florida’s Bureau of Historic Preservation, the state historic preservation office, and others. They gathered to review the progress toward a state Resource Preservation Planning Process (RP3) statement.! The Bureau of Historic Preservation, the Bureau of Archaeological Research, and the Bureau of Florida Folklife had been working on a draft of an RP3 statement for several months. The state historic preservation officer, George Percy, asked the lead Park Service representative, Mark Barnes, how folklife would fit into RP3.

' Mr. Barnes answered that the Park Service was firmly in favor of seeing folklife included as a topic or theme for preservation activity. He went on to say that the Park Service had collaborated with the American Folklife Center to study the subject and that the Service would like to see states relate folklife to the concerns of historic preservation. Since the development of the cultural conservation report to which

Mr. Barnes was referring, cultural resource specialists are beginning to | realize that state historic preservation offices and state folk cultural programs can be great allies.2 The goals of each are highly compatible. As folklorists consider the prognosis for public sector programs, it will be useful to consider the relationship between folklife and historic preserva-

tion. The views of historic preservationists toward the idea of linking folklife with historic preservation and the efforts, both in Florida and elsewhere, that are being made in this direction illustrate the potential folklorists have to apply their skills in exploring the frontier that folklife programs and historic preservation share. To appreciate the importance of historic preservationists and folklorists working together, it is necessary to review the evolution of historic preservation in relation to folklife studies and folk cultural programs. The development of connections between preservationists and folklorists can

be traced over more than two decades. Emerging interests of the two groups have brought them progressively closer in philosophy and work, and the narrowing of the apparent gap between them has led to points of cooperative action.

184 ORMOND H. LOOMIS The modern historic preservation system in the United States had its foundation in the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. This legislation grew out of a concern during the mid-sixties for the accelerating loss of national, regional, and local patrimony. Architects, historians, and others

directed their sentiment and energy to stop the steady loss of the built environment. The historic preservation system that resulted went beyond encouraging people to appreciate and save significant sites and properties on their own. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 created a National Register of Historic Places and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, established a grants program for survey and rehabilitation work, and required “federal agencies to consult with the Advisory Council before undertaking activities affecting properties listed on the National

Register.’ Subsequent legislation and executive positions strengthened the system. In 1969 the National Environmental Policy Act required federal agencies to consider the impact of their building projects on culturalas well as natural resources; in 1971 Executive Order 11593 made federal agencies directly responsible for the survey and planning required by the National Historic Preservation and National Environmental Policy Acts; and three years later, the Archaeological and Historic Preservation Act of 1974 increased federal agency responsibility for avoiding, or at least miti-

gating, the negative consequences of their building projects and made specific funds available for survey, planning, and mitigation efforts.4 Although historic preservationists concentrated at first on the need to

save sites and properties of unquestioned architectural merit, their thoughts were open to the importance of addressing cultural resources in a way that included folklife. Many references can be cited that illustrate the sensitivity of preservationists in the sixties to folk culture: for instance, the inclusion of the Watts Towers among Los Angeles landmarks® and the hopeful comment that “with the inclusion of themes such as ‘Agriculture’ and ‘Conservation of Natural Resources’ ina national program. . . Ameri-

can history extends beyond the confines of our political and military heritage. . . . History does not existina vacuum. . . . [The] historic structure, or site, or area is a part of its setting.’ Two examples seem particularly relevant because they imply the likelihood of a dialogue between preservationists and folklorists around the time that the National Historic Preservation Act was created. In 1964 the National Trust for Historic Preservation met in San Antonio, Texas, to discuss their goals and to plan for concerted efforts to

advance those goals. Among those who spoke was John E. C. LewisCrosby, secretary of the Irish National Trust for Places of Historic Interest

or Natural Beauty. He talked about work with thatched cottages, farm houses and outbuildings, and similar buildings of folkloristic interest. He pointed out as well that preservationists in Ireland had benefited from the

Historic Preservation 185 help of the three museums in Northern Ireland, one of which was a folk museum, and that “advice from these three is freely given.”’” Two years later at the National Trust meeting that followed the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act, members of the Trust gathered in Philadelphia to discuss the implications of the new law. The speakers, who addressed the issue of ““A Broader National Preservation Program,” were primarily from the federal agencies responsible for implementing the Preservation Act and related legislation that had been enacted by what was called the “Preservation Congress.” Included among the papers at the meeting was one by S.K. Stephens, director of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. He spoke in favor of state programs that, in terms of presenting an accurate interpretation of the past, ‘are closer to the people [than those presented by the programs of the National Park Service and private museums such as Colonial Williams-

burg]. . . in that we are trying to preserve as monuments or recreate in living museums the total American past and not an aristocratic segment”; and he expressed the opinion that “historical conservation programs are best handled by state agencies such as the commissions, departments, or

state supported historical societies.’’’ Interestingly, the same year that Stephens spoke to the National Trust, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission appointed the first state folklorist.? Judging from Historic Preservation, the magazine of the National Trust, preservationists have developed a serious appreciation for folklife. Since 1972 every volume has contained articles on folklife, averaging nearly one per issue. The pieces cover such subjects as the cultural as well as the built

environment of Alaska, Hawaii, Micronesia, and Texas; traditional car-

penters, decoy carvers, quilters, and market vendors; the folk arts of blacksmithing, dry stonemasonry, painted wood graining, and stenciling; the traditional architecture of the Andes and of Lesotho; and the work of Dick Van Kleeck, director of the Folk Arts Program at the Kentucky Center for the Arts in Louisville.!° Articles in Historic Preservation have titles that include “Folklore, Custom and Crafts of the Valley [of Virginia] Settlers,” ‘Preserving Georgia’s Folk Heritage,”’ ““Appalachian Folk Culture,”’ “Black Urban Culture,” ““WPA Handicrafts Rediscovered,” ‘Brands of the Old West,” “Traditions in Clay: Piedmont Pottery,” ““Shungnak Eskimos:

At Home in Two Worlds,” and “Saving the Chesapeake’s Legendary Lore.””!!

Perhaps most indicative of the attitude of preservationists toward folklife are articles by the editors of Historic Preservation. Before the nation’s Bicentennial, they wrote: “Preservationists are concerned with more than momentous events; they are concerned with the identifying fabric of a time, a place, or a culture. The fabric of a culture may be discerned in its tools, handicrafts, clothing, and architecture.’’!? In another issue they ex-

186 ORMOND H. LOOMIS pressed a commitment to cultural diversity and promoted the value of regional culture. The dreary monotony of our cities, highways, and suburbs can be relieved immeasurably by concentration on cultural differences, starting with one’s family heritage. . . . Over a period of 300 years, our ancestors and many of us, as immigrants, have experienced adjustment to a new environment with its social, economic, cultural, and psychological implications. Yet ethnic rituals, dances, sports, clothing, food, arts, and crafts were discarded over the years in favor of the melting

pot concept. . . . Recent national trends have helped some groups become more proud of their heritage, but the joy of being different has generally been submerged. Diversity, however, should be valued, especially in America where so many different peoples have come together. 8

As preservationists espoused these views and defined historical resources in a way that included folklife, anumber of legislators, federal and state administrators, and folklorists were working to establish institutional bases for folklife programs. In 1974 the National Endowment for the Arts created its Folk Arts Program, and Maryland and Tennessee hired state folklorists. In 1976 Congress enacted the American Folklife Preserva-

tion Act, which created the American Folklife Center. That same year, state programs were initiated in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Utah. Before the end of the seventies, the National Endowment for the Humanities had made a commitment to funding folklife projects, and many other states had begun folk cultural programs. 14 Writing in 1979, Barre Toelken explained that the mission of professional folklorists was “to discuss and analyze its [folklife’s] validity in the ongoing culture, to provide greater recognition of its role in our lives, and to encourage people to be more articulate about their role in tradition and about tradition’s role in their lives,” in short “to study, preserve, and provide status for folklore.” The developing folklife programs were quickly assuming a role in this work. The year 1980 was a time of assessment for historic preservationists and folklorists. Preservationists saw that they had made significant strides

during the Bicentennial toward working with a variety of allied professionals, and, in so doing, many preservationists had become “‘more sensitive to social needs and community values.”’!6 Perhaps as a consequence of

the interaction between preservationists and other cultural specialists, there was a growing awareness that existing preservation efforts were somehow lacking. The National Historic Preservation Act Amendments of 1980 called

for a number of reviews and modifications. One of the sections of the legislation directed the Department of the Interior and the American Folklife Center to “submit a report to the President and the Congress on preserving and conserving the intangible elements of our cultural heritage

Historic Preservation 187 such as arts, skills, folklife, and folkways.’’!” In response, the American Folklife Center and the National Park Service brought together anthropologists, archaeologists, folklorists, and preservationists to prepare the report. Cultural intangibles and folklife are not identical. On one hand, some cultural intangibles, such as popular American slang, are not expressions of folk culture. On the other hand, a portion of folklife, as understood in the sense proposed by Sigurd Erixon and adopted by American folklorists, falls into the area of material culture and is tangible.!® Nevertheless, the concepts of folklife and cultural intangibles overlap closely.

Alan Jabbour, director of the American Folklife Center, has commented that the federal policy group that responded to section 502 of the 1980 Historic Preservation Act Amendments chose to use the term cultural — conservation as the key to the issues involved in the mandated report rather than cultural intangibles because, as Jabbour explained, “the word intang-

ible defines negatively; it tells not what something is, but what it is not. . . . [And they] saw that the report had to deal not only with intangible elements of culture but with tangible elements as well. What was needed was a conceptual system that related efforts involving intangible elements of culture to similar efforts on behalf of tangible cultural artifacts.’’19

The Cultural Conservation report described the relationship between cultural intangibles and folklife as follows: Intangible elements are values, and actions expressing them, that stand in favor of connections to one’s immediate community and place. As such they are found in the interaction among family, neighbors, and friends and provide the touchstones for orienting the individual in society. They order personal associations. They shape the relationships that enable the individual to know who one’s friends are, what and where home is, who the “‘folks’” are. The groups in which such elements are found are not limited to geographic areas, but can be composed of people who share common attributes whether family, ethnic, occupational, religious, or regional. Although the words folk, folklore, and folklife mean different things to different people, the sense of the word folklife as defined in the American

Folklife Preservation Act of 1976 captures appropriately the idea of these elements.7°

Since its introduction in the federal policy study, the term cultural conservation has begun to find its way into the discourse of folklorists. For example, the Smithsonian Institution’s 1985 Festival of American Folklife

had a section devoted to cultural conservation, and the festival guide contained an essay that explained that “cultural conservation is a scientific and humanistic concern for the continued survival of the world’s traditional cultures. It grows, like its sister concept environmental conserva-

tion, from several related insights of scientists and humanists over the

188 ORMOND H. LOOMIS past quarter century.”?! The aim of cultural conservation can be thought of as advancing the protection of cultural diversity in American society. The importance of cultural diversity has been stressed by Alan Lomax, and the role of the Archive of Folk Culture in the American Folklife Center in contributing to the corollary principle of cultural pluralism has been described by Archie Green.”

By studying, preserving, and providing status for folklife, anthropologists, folklorists, historians, preservationists, and other cultural specialists have begun to appreciate and affirm the value of cultural intangibles. For example, anthropologist Benita Howell has observed in her reflections on a study undertaken in the development of the Big South Fork Recreation Area that if federal construction entails a responsibility to preserve material culture in the path of the bulldozers, even the fragmentary remains of long extinct cultures, is there not an even greater responsibility to mitigate disturbances to contempo-

rary cultures incurred as the direct result of the federal project? Careful social impact assessment and well-managed relocation programs address the immediate needs of individuals living in development areas, but cultural heritage preservation also requires documentation of traditional lifeways threatened by relocation and modernization. Federal agencies responsible for complying with historic preservation legislation have begun to see the validity of this argument, and recent events suggest that social anthropology may soon take its rightful place alongside archaeology in the field of cultural resource management. This is an important development for. . .

linguists, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, and museologists will have opportunities to participate in contract research.”9

In Florida the Bureau of Historic Preservation, the Bureau of Archaeological Research, and the Bureau of Florida Folklife are equal branches of

the Division of Archives, History, and Records Management. Historic Preservation processes nominations for sites to be listed on the National Register; conducts historic preservation compliance reviews; and supports local preservation efforts with programs including a Main Street Pro-

gram, grants-in-aid, community education, and technical assistance.”4 Archaeological Research manages the Florida Master Site File, operates a major research and conservation laboratory, engages in projects such as the excavation of the Mission of San Luis site, and oversees archaeological research activities throughout the state. The Bureau of Florida Folklife works to identify, document, interpret, and present the folk culture of the state. Among its programs and activities, Florida Folklife provides technical advice on preservation policy development, as in the case of the RP3 statement, and assists with community education work. To avoid duplication of effort, however, the Bureau of Folklife refrains from sponsoring historic preservation projects.

Historic Preservation 189 The Bureau of Historic Preservation can help fund folklife survey activities that relate to preservation. Examples of such projects, however, are few in number. This bureau, like every branch of Florida’s Department of State, has a serious commitment to encouraging private initiative; and

in considering projects for preservation grants, the preservation office and its advisory panel favor projects from local historical organizations. To

date such organizations have not submitted many project grant applications that pertain to folklife. Furthermore, although the state historic preservation officer in Florida appreciates the value of folklife, he, like some other historic preservationists, views intangible cultural resources with caution.» The amount of money available for grants in each state depends upon many variables. In Florida, for example, the total in any year is the sum of funds granted by the National Park Service, those allocated by the state legislature, and funds generated by local option preservation days held at race tracks. The preservation fund is never adequate to satisfy the demand. Historic preservationists who see folklife as separate from preservation worry about dividing the limited funds to support another cause. Fortunately, as the common ends of folklife programs and historic preservation become understood, a growing number of preservationists are less anxious about the presumed division of resources. Legal and practical constraints influence those who evaluate preservation grant applications. For example, the money raised by a race track on its Preservation Day must be used for projects that fall within fifty miles of the race track. To some who review grant applications, the cost of a project relative to its measurable results is the most critical consideration. According to the head of the Bureau of Historic Preservation, the cost to the state of a site nomination generated by a grant-funded project is between three

and six dollars. Folklorists often have difficulty quantifying the cultural resources they are concerned about protecting, much less establishing a cost per increment of instrumental conservation action. Annual federal program grant awards made to state historic preservation offices are based on measures of effectiveness. The system used by the National Park Service for rating the effectiveness of a state preservation office is tied to the number of National Register nominations made in a state per year. It does not contain any rating factors for folklife. As a result, historic preservation offices tend to be indifferent to proposals that depend upon the value of intangible cultural resources. To them folklife may be important, but it earns no credits to justify future federal funding. With these general points about Florida’s base for historic preservation and folklife programs in mind, I offer three examples of historic preservation efforts in the state to suggest the kinds of activities to which folklorists may be drawn. The first relates to a single community-inspired

190 ORMOND H. LOOMIS site nomination. The other two concern sizable projects that are being supported by state preservation grants. In the first case, that of the Old Jasper Jail nomination, there was evidently little about the building to distinguish it as architecturally significant. Two applications to the Bureau of Historic Preservation to have the building nominated for the National Register of Historic Places had failed, and the preservation system only allows three nomination attempts per building. After the second attempt, people in Jasper appealed for help to the Division of Archives, History, and Records Management, and because the Bureau of Florida Folklife was based in the same county as the jail, the folklife staff was encouraged to lend a hand.

, Peggy Bulger, a folklife programs administrator with Florida Folklife, worked with preservationists in Jasper to submit a third application. She received advice from the staff of the Bureau of Historic Preservation about

architectural information required in the description of the jail, but her rationale for the site’s significance relied on folk traditions associated with the building. She collected oral histories about the place and identified a cycle of legends, most of which concerned murderers who had been hanged there and their ghosts. The nomination showed that the jail had intangible worth to the community as a symbol of law and morality. Thanks toa folklorist’s efforts, the building received a nomination by the state and is now listed on the National Register. The example of the Old Jasper Jail nomination preceded the publication of the cultural conservation study. Since the publication of the report, the Bureau of Historic Preservation has awarded grants that increase the support for projects related to folklife. The reasons for this development may have something to do with trends in national policy, but they unques-

tionably indicate a growing awareness in communities throughout the state of the importance and potential of traditional expressive culture. The Jacksonville Museum of Arts and Sciences has a historic preservation grant to survey and prepare National Register nominations for farm sites in Baker and Nassau counties, the counties that lie between Duval County in which Jacksonville is located and the Florida-Georgia border. The museum plans to use information gleaned from the survey to refine its interpretation of a cabin it owns. There is talk at the museum of eventually reorganizing the cabin complex on the museum grounds and creating a characteristic regional farm site, establishing some living historical interpretation, and developing a series of folk cultural demonstrations.

The museum contracted with a private consultant, a historian by training, to conduct the survey.*° According to the contract, the historian was required to submit no fewer than two hundred site nominations. During preliminary field trips in which he documented ten buildings and interviewed their owners, he accumulated new data on mid-nineteenth century settlement patterns as well as the evolution of farmstead use. The job

Historic Preservation 191 included writing historical sketches on the background of the buildings, and the consultant kept notes on his conversations with residents of the houses to help him prepare the sketches. The consultant is sensitive to the breadth and usefulness of folklife, but he concentrated on “survey data.” Although full folklife documentation was beyond the limits of the survey, he has recommended that follow-up historic preservation studies should allow for the collection of oral histories and documentation of traditional agricultural practices associated with the farms. In Hillsborough County, where Tampa is located, the local Historic Preservation Board has initiated a program to preserve, document, and interpret a complex of buildings in Ybor City. Ybor City is the location of one of the first Cuban settlements in Florida and was a cigar manufacturing center as well as a home for several other immigrant groups that came to the United States to work in the industry. Hillsborough historic preservationists have been active in Ybor City for over ten years. They have helped enact ordinances governing the style of new construction, established a historic preservation district, and encouraged the local development of museums and other historical institutions. One project in a series of activities for community revitalization stands out for the way it combined historic preservation efforts and folklife research.?’ The Preservation Board and cooperating organizations began development not long ago on a block of typical workers’ homes, moving houses from various locations in Ybor City to a block that was virtually cleared by urban renewal. Such homes were once routinely ignored by conventional preservation efforts. Most of them are shotgun houses, and to add to the cultural interest of the complex, they will be placed next to a building that was an Italian-American bakery and in which the Florida Park Service has now installed a history museum. Recently, the Board received a state historic preservation grant to compile an ethnographic sketch of the old Ybor City area. The study coordinator, a graduate anthropology student, worked with volunteers to interview and photograph former tenants, neighbors, and owners of the houses. Resulting documentation is being incorporated ina slide-tape program for use in the museum, the restored historic workers’ homes, and elsewhere, and the full body of field material will continue to be available to support future cultural interpretation. Preservationists are already planning other efforts that will bring attention to the folklife of Ybor City. Susan Greenberg, an anthropology professor at the University of South Florida, is preparing a study of a black community that had its roots in the area and still maintains a presence at one edge of the restored district. Two ethnic festivals are being developed as annual events, one of which is conceived as a celebration of Ybor heritage and will begin with the support of a grant from the Folk Arts Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.

192 ORMOND H. LOOMIS Florida is not the first or only state in which cultural specialists are working to chart the territory that joins folklife and historic preservation. Several others come to mind. Among them, ‘Texas, California, and Utah reflect the variety of directions that are being taken.

The Texas Historical Commission included folklife as one of its

concerns in 1981 and 1982 when it prepared a model RP3 statement.”8 Folk-

lorists were part of the advisory group to the project, and the model plan that the Commission published contained many appropriate references to folklife, folk arts, and Texas folk. In a section on German-Texan culture written to exemplify the RP3 approach, the authors suggested that folk traditions associated with such distinctive German sites and structures as farmsteads, beer gardens, and turn vereins or athletic clubs could be the basis for establishing significance in the historic preservation system. When asked at the Tallahassee meeting what progress Texas had made with its RP3 plan, Mark Barnes said that there had been no progress, that the staff that had prepared the statement had left the Texas historic preservation office to work elsewhere.

California has recently amended its Public Resource Code, and in the process added some provisions for traditional expressive culture. One section names folklife among the resources for which the state historic preservation office must plan as it establishes policies and guidelines, and

another requires the inclusion of an individual “‘knowledgeable in folklife’” on the nine-member State Historical Resources Commission.?? At this time, though, such direct links between folklife and historic preservation at the state level are exceptional. In Utah the state historic preservation office has had a growing interest in vernacular architecture and folklife. It employs an architectural historian who is a trained, experienced folklorist as well as a fine historian. At the 1985 meeting of the Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers,

he reported on a survey of buildings in Carbon County, 150 miles southeast of Salt Lake City.*°

The Carbon County Survey identified several distinctive folk buildings such as the Italian hill-house and bake oven, Slovenian homes, and a

recreation hall. Nevertheless, the surveyors encountered difficulties in treating the significance of the homes of ordinary people and nominating them to the National Register. The survey left out intangible expressions of culture entirely, ignoring data on Italian-American agricultural practices and foodways; Italian, Slovenian, Hispanic, and Mormon music; and

numerous local celebrations. After the historic site survey, however, a team of folklorists sponsored by the Utah Arts Council documented the musical traditions of the area and produced a record of the music found there. Since the Carbon County Survey, folklorists and preservationists in Utah have combined forces in a study of the cultural resources of the

Historic Preservation 193 Grouse Creek area in northwestern Utah. Following the recommendations of the Cultural Conservation report, the project participants recognized that “‘reconnaissance surveys are regularly undertaken in both folk arts and historic preservation work to identify in a short period of time a broad spectrum of significant cultural resources, yet to date there... [had] been no attempt to integrate these survey efforts.” Thus, a Grouse Creek Cultural Survey, undertaken by the Center for Western Folklife with assistance from the Utah Arts Council, the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, and Utah State University as well as the American Folklife Center and the National Park Service, has been designed ‘’to test the practical application of a combined architecture, folklife, and folk arts field survey.” »!

Why are folklorists in every state not pursuing projects that combine public folk cultural work and historic preservation? Historic preservationists are accustomed to thinking in terms of sites and properties. When questioned about this habit, they are often willing to consider the importance of folklife. Staff from the Bureau of Florida Folklife were invited to help the staff of the Bureau of Historic Preservation prepare the draft of the state RP3 statement to ensure that folklife would be included. More than once during the sessions that led to the draft, it was necessary to change wording from strict reference to “sites and properties” to allow consideration of cultural intangibles. Folklorists must engage in a dialogue with historic preservationists, provide examples of intangible elements of culture that are historically significant, and articulate clearly the value of these elements. It will be necessary to grapple with questions about costs in relation to the benefits of folk cultural programs as well as definitions of historic and cultural significance. At the same time, folklorists need to learn more about historic preservation. This frontier of public sector folklife will not expand without exploration.

NOTES 1. RP3 is an approach recommended by the National Park Service to help states establish priorities for preservation action. With its RP3 plan, a state historic preservation office identifies thematic units that are important to the cultural history of the state. The state then works to fill gaps in its data base on historical resources according to a matrix derived from the themes. For additional information see National Park Service, Resource Protection Planning Process (Sept. 1980).

2. Ormond H. Loomis, coordinator, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United States, Publications of the American Folklife Center, no. 10 (Washington,

D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983). ,

3. Ibid., p. 98. 4. For detail on the evolution of the historic preservation system, see Thomas F. King, Patricia Parker Hickman, and Gary Berg, Anthropology in Historic Preservation (New York: Academic Press, 1977); and Loomis, Cultural Conservation, pp. 87-108.

194 ORMOND H. LOOMIS 5. William Woollett, ““Los Angeles Landmarks,” Historic Preservation 18, no. 4 (1966): 160-63.

6. Tony P. Wrenn, “Conservation, Preservation and the National Registry,” Historic Preservation 18:4 (1966): p. 169.

7. John E.C. Lewis-Crosby, ‘Preservation in Northern Ireland,” Historic Preservation 17:1 (1965): 29-37.

8. S.K. Stephens, “Toward a Broader National Preservation Program: Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission,” Historic Preservation 18, no. 6 (1966): 264-71.

9. Charles Camp, “Developing a State Folklife Program,” in Handbook of American Folklore, ed. Richard M. Dorson (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1983), p. 518.

10. “Alaska: Preservation in the Great Land”—-An Interview with Robert Frederick, Historic Preservation 27, no. 1 (1975): 4-13; also, Gavan Davis, “Hawaii: Guarding the ‘Island of the Kings,’ ” 25, no. 2 (1973): 4-9; Diane Maddex, “‘Micronesia: Wind, Water, and Heritage,”

27, no. 3 (1975): 4-9; Wendy V. Watriss and Frederick C. Baldwin, ‘The Texas Nobody Knows,” 32, no. 3 (May-June 1980): 20-28; Robert Sutter, ‘Tools in the Carpenter’s Box,” 29, no. 3 (1977): 16-21; Roger Caras, “More American than Apple Pie [Decoy Carvers],” 34, no. 5

(1982): 36-41; Patricia Cooper, ‘Patchwork of the Pioneer West [Quilts],” 31, no. 1 (1979): 12-17; Ashton Nichols, ‘The Fish Is Fresh, the Heritage Is Alive [Market Vendors],” 31, no. 3 (1979): 15-17; Barbara H. Schneider, “The Ageless Bond of Iron and Smith,” 31, no. 4 (1977): 2-9; Robert Brandau and Eleanor Ward, “Stone upon Stone: The Craft of Dry Stone Masonry,” 27, no. 2 (1975): 26-29; Frank Welsh, ‘The Art of Painted Graining,” 29, no. 3 (1977): 32-37; Shirley Williams, ‘Learning the Stenciler’s Art,” 35, no. 2 (1983): 34-41; Earl Kessler, “Materials Rusticos, Materials Nobeles in the Andes,” 29, no. 4 (1977): 24-30; Anthony Hart Fisher, ‘‘Lesotho Houses You Should Never Forget,” 31, no. 3 (1979): 39-41; and Ronni Lundy, “Impresario of the Offbeat [Dick Van Kleeck],” Historic Preservation 36:5 (Oct. 1984): pp. 30-41.

11. Klaus Wust, “Folklore, Custom and Crafts of the Valley Settlers,’”” Historic Preservation 20, no. 2 (1968): 29ff.; John Burrison, ‘Preserving Georgia’s Folk Heritage,” 24, no. 3 (1972): 18-21; Elliot Wigginton, et al., “Appalachian Folk Culture,” 25, no. 1 (1973): 23-27; Joan Maynard, ‘Black Urban Culture,” 25, no. 1 (1973): 28-30; Andy Leon Harney, ‘““WPA Handicrafts Rediscovered,” 25, no. 3 (1973): 10-15; Kenneth Arline, ‘Brands of the Old West,” 27, no. 3 (1975): 16-19; Nancy Sweezy ‘Traditions in Clay: Piedmont Pottery,” 27, no. 4 (1975): 20-23; James Magdany, “Shungnak Eskimos: At Home in Two Worlds,” 32, no. 5 (1980): 20-25; and Michael Olmert, “Saving the Chesapeake’s Legendary Lore,” 35, no. 1 (1983): 28-39. 12. “Biography of All Men,” Historic Preservation 26, no. 2 (1974): 3. 13. “‘Diversity in Your Town,” Historic Preservation 26, no. 1 (1974): 3. 14. See Camp, “Developing,” pp. 518-24; and Loomis, Cultural Conservation, pp. 42-48. 15. Barre Toelken, The Dynamics of Folklore (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1979), p. 283. 16. Claire Johnson, ‘Preservation in the 1980s: A Dynamic Movement Looks at Itself,” Historic Preservation 32, no. 6 (1980): 36.

17. National Historic Preservation Act Amendments of 1980, Title II, Section 502 (P.L. 96-515, 94 Stat. 2987, 16 USC 470); for detail see Loomis, Cultural Conservation, p. 1. 18. Sigurd Erixon, “Introduction,” Folkliv 1 (1937): pp. 5-12; also see Don Yoder, American Folklife (Austin: Univ. of Texas Press, 1976). 19. Alan Jabbour, “Director’s Column,” Folklife Center News 8:4 (Oct.-Dec. 1985): 2. 20. Loomis, Cultural Conservation, p. 27 21. Marjorie Hunt and Peter Seitel, “Cultural Conservation,” in 1985 Festival of American Folklife Program Book (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1985), p. 38. 22. Alan Lomax, ““Appeal For Cultural Equity,” in 1985 Festival of American Folklife Pro-

gram Book (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1985), pp. 40-46; and Archie Green, “The Archive's Shores,” Folklife Annual 1985 (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1985), pp. 61-73.

Historic Preservation 195 23. Benita J. Howell, ‘Folklife Research in Environmental Planning,” in Applied Social Science for Environmental Planning, ed. William Millsap (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1984), pp. 27-128; also, see her full report in A Survey of Folklife Along the Big South Fork of the Cumberland River (Knoxville: Department of Anthropology, Univ. of Tennessee, 1981).

24. For a sketch of the role of the state historic preservation office within the historic preservation system, see King, Hickman, and Berg, Anthropology in Historic Preservation, pp.

75-76. Florida has expanded upon these responsibilities and divided them between the Bureau of Historic Preservation and the Bureau of Archaeological Research. 25. Iam indebted to George Percy, chief of the Bureau of Historic Preservation and state historic preservation officer for his counsel on the policies and operations of the state historic preservation program. 26. The information on the Baker and Nassau counties Survey is based on a personal interview with the project consultant, Phillip A. Werndli, on March 23, 1985. 27. The Historic Tampa—Hillsborough County Preservation Board of Trustees, especially Patricia Waterman, and its staff, Stephanie E. Ferrell, director, and David Rigney, research and construction director, were most helpful in explaining the nature of this project. 28. See Theodore M. Brown et al., Resource Protection Planning Process for Texas (Austin: Texas Historical Commission, 1982). 29. Public Resources Code, Chapter 1289, Sections 5020.2 (b)(3) and 5020.4 (e), California Statutes, as amended Sept. 19, 1984. 30. Thomas Carter, ‘Folklife Documentation Concerns and Historic Preservation Surveys,” Paper presented to the National Conference of State Historic Preservation Officers Meeting, Washington, D.C., March 26, 1985. 31. ““Grouse Creek Cultural Survey, Work Plan” (manuscript: June 25, 1985), pp. 1-2.

MICHAEL ANN WILLIAMS ——H_ eee The Realm of the Tangible A Folklorist’s Role in Architectural

Documentation and Preservation

During the past decade, folklorists have played an increasingly active role in cultural conservation. An issue that has recently been brought to the fore by folklorists is the inadequacy of preservation programs and legislation in dealing with intangible cultural resources.! Historically, preservation has been concerned primarily with tangible cultural items; for some people historic preservation is architectural preservation. Even within the realm of the tangible, however, folklorists who study material culture may

not always find that their concerns dovetail neatly with those of public sector preservation programs. Along with urging preservation programs

to expand their interests beyond architecture and other tangible re-. sources, folklorists also need to define their role within the myriad of exist-

ing programs that deal with architectural preservation and documentation.

As the preservation field has changed in recent years, the issues dividing folklorists who study architecture from architectural preservationists have become more subtle. Federal and state agencies concerned with architectural preservation and documentation have become increasingly enthusiastic about hiring folklorists. Some have felt the need to employ folklorists, as they have been forced to deal with folk architectural forms through their involvement in developing cultural impact statements or amelioration programs. In other governmental agencies, the interests of those directing the programs have broadened in recent years to include folk architecture.? Of course, not all federal or state programs are as enlightened as we might wish, but folklorists have been granted a growing role in preservation planning. Not only have governmental agencies hired folklorists directly, but there has also been a growing willingness among these agencies to cooperate with existing folk cultural programs.

Once we gained access to preservation programs, we were confronted by the problem of how to deal with the preservation tools that are already in place. Some, designed with high style structures in mind, have proven woefully inadequate for dealing with folk architecture. Still, pres-

Architectural Documentation 197 ervationists have generally recognized these limitations, and a sincere effort has been made to accommodate the preservation of folk structures.

This accommodation has primarily taken the form of redefining the concept of architectural significance to include regional and cultural criteria.

All this would seem to predict a rosy future. Federal and state agencies have increasingly accepted the need to document and preserve folk structures. They have been willing to hire or work cooperatively with folklorists, and they have often been willing to adjust their criteria of architectural significance. Is this not enough? Why then does it often seem that, in developing adequate programs for the documentation and preservation of folk structures, folklorists have achieved an impass rather than a victory?

The problem does not necessarily lie in the intransigence or narrowmindedness of architectural historians or historic preservation planners. The energies of folklorists in this field have, to a large extent, been consumed by advocacy, promoting the need to document and preserve folk structures. We generally have not taken enough time to discuss and define critical problems. What is the rationale for architectural preservation? When, how, and why should folk structures be preserved? How do we define the adequacy of architectural documentation, both as a contribution to scholarly research or as cultural amelioration? In this paper I would like to draw from my own experience in order to raise a few issues that I believe are critical if folklorists are to achieve an active voice within architectural preservation. Unlike folklorists who work strictly in a contemporary setting, those

of us who study historic architecture find ourselves intervening in one culture in order to study another. Although the issue of cultural intervention is critical for folklorists involved in any type of cultural conservation program, it is particularly complex when we are responsible to different

groups of people. We feel a responsibility to document or preserve the artifacts of a past people, but we must also be aware of our impact on living human beings. None of us are so naive as to think that all preservation is for the public good. At its worst, architectural preservation has displaced or discriminated against the poor. This is sometimes the result not only of ruthless real estate speculation, but of public policies. Local preservation

ordinances that control exterior alterations within historic districts have sometimes been detrimental to the poor who lived within the designated area. Many incentives and grants for preservation benefit only the relatively well to do. In cases where preservation programs are detrimental to the existing community or individual occupants of structures, I would hope that folklorists should know where to stand. Many preservationists are themselves not insensitive to the potential social impact of their programs. But what of subtler issues, such as the rights of a contemporary

198 MICHAEL ANN WILLIAMS culture to assert their esthetic preferences in the houses and communities they inhabit? In some instances, folklorists may decry amodern community’s insensitivity to or destruction of artifacts of the past. In other cases, however, we may be sympathetic to the preferences of a vital community whose esthetic or spatial values may differ from those of the builders of the architectural environment they inhabit. Often the difference is only a matter of perspective. Although many folklorists would choose the rights of

an existing community over the preservation of the past, we are not as likely to find as many allies among preservationists.

The situation is not necessarily simpler when there is cultural continuity between the past builder and the present owners of historic structures. In many instances, the agent of destruction of folk structures is a descendant of the original owner or builder. While we may see our own role as one of heightening the sensitivities of people to the artifacts of their own heritage, we must also accept the fact that not all destruction of historic architecture is rooted simply in a modern value system rejecting the past. Different people place different cultural values on the objects that surround them, and different communities have different ways of dealing

with their own artifacts. While working in Mississippi for the Historic American Buildings Survey, I was somewhat taken aback one day when the owner of the house we were carefully documenting looked at us and said, ‘But you don’t understand, this house is no account.” The woman was not hostile to our efforts, only puzzled by them. While I might legitimately have explained to her why we felt the house was worth recording and why she, indeed, ought to feel proud of it, did I not also owe her the

responsibility of understanding why she felt the way she did about her house? For some people old buildings are symbols of a past they do not care to

remember. Often, they do not wish to have these symbols enshrined. An individual's attitude toward his house is not necessarily a function of his social status or the quality of the house. I have worked in areas where people felt hostile to the old houses they inhabited and in communities where people were proud of their houses, though they were no larger or fancier or better built. Rather, the symbolic meaning of the house is often tied to the individual’s perspective on the past. Some communities continually redefine the past, and in doing so they selectively choose which artifacts to preserve or destroy.’ While the notion of encouraging a community’s pride in its past sounds good, we should not assume that the artifacts that surround the community do not have preexisting values. The folklorist needs to recognize and respect the existing values placed upon cultural objects and define the limits of asking people to abandon these values, even when the outcome negatively affects the preservation of the artifact. In rural western North Carolina where I have done most of my field-

Architectural Documentation 199 work, the attitude toward old houses is seemingly contradictory. People would talk of the “old homeplace” with tears in their eyes, even though they were often the same people who were directly responsible for the destruction of old houses. Some folk dwellings in this region were literally burned as firewood. While I did my bit for consciousness-raising, I sometimes suspected that my programs had more impact on townfolk and visit-

ing Floridians than on the rural people whose heritage I was trying to preserve. Ultimately, I realized that if 1 could not come to terms with how people felt about old buildings, and why, the effort made little sense. It was too easy to see the rural western North Carolinian’s rejection of traditional houses as a rejection of traditional esthetics and life-styles. Examined closely, this rejection could also be seen as an aspect of traditional attitudes toward housing. Despite a very conservative building tradition, the rural majority in this region has always emphasized rebuilding over retention of dwellings. Few rural people had the ethic of passing the home

down to subsequent generations, and, in fact, inheritance patterns worked against this happening. The builder seldom turned ownership of the house over to a child during his lifetime, and in the event of his death, his widow retained dower’s rights. After both parents died, the house was

inherited by the youngest child or, just as commonly, the last child at home (or it simply remained undivided family property). Chances, therefore, were high that the house would be inherited by a child who would remain unmarried or one who had already built himself a home. For this reason, the family’s designated homeplace often changed every generation. The homeplace was not the oldest house on the property or the home where many generations had lived, but it was the place where the individual (and his siblings) grew up. This cultural pattern tended to strip the oldest rural houses of a potential for symbolic meaning. Rural preservationists have sometimes complained that many people abandon (refuse to inhabit) old houses but also refuse to sell them or fix them up to be rented. This is not necessarily simple intransigence on the part of the owner. In western North Carolina, this pattern makes sense in the light of cultural attitudes toward old houses. Many of these houses are

- not truly abandoned; if a house is left standing (rather than moved or demolished and salvaged), a member or members of the family often live nearby, and the empty house does have a symbolic role. Although a house is not usually a symbol of several generations of a family, it is symbolic of the immediate family, and its role as ‘old homeplace” tends to interfere with the actual occupancy of the house. Ideally, the homeplace belongs to the whole family, at least in spirit if not legally. It is often used as a site for family gatherings and reunions. After the death of the parents, the continued occupancy of the house by one sibling and his spouse and children is sometimes a source of family tension, for the house becomes their home, rather than our home. The empty house, maintained as a symbol of the

200 MICHAEL ANN WILLIAMS family, avoids this conflict. Even in cases where the house has been destroyed, the site itself may remain important to family members. People often do make pilgrimages to empty house sites. While abandoned houses do have a symbolic role, the fact that these structures are often not well maintained or that an empty site can be its symbolic substitute is indicative of the nature of this symbol. The physical structure is in itself an inadequate representation of ‘“home.” It is the

memory of the experiences within and the meanings attached to the homeplace that are important, not the walls, the roof, and the foundation. Perhaps it is for this reason that individuals preserve stories about old houses better than they preserve the structures themselves. The fluidity of the narrative form gives expression to the intangible aspects of home.* I have used this example because I believe that we owe people an understanding of the role of old buildings in their culture before we de-

velop programs that instruct them of the values we place on the same structures. Historic preservation, like most other cultural conservation programs, is cultural intervention. Not that this is always negative, but it needs to be done carefully, wisely, and with a consciousness of its impact. Luckily, there are times when our responsibilities to the present and the past do coincide, and we can wholeheartedly throw ourselves into making sure that available preservation tools do work for the people we are repre-

senting. In other cases, our responsibility to the past, as well as to the general or scholarly public, may be fulfilled only by choosing to document or ‘““museumize” outstanding or representative structures.

Historic preservation not only demands a responsibility to the present, but also involves the choice of protecting or preserving certain structures over others. Even as preservation criteria have expanded, the notion of significance has continued to be problematic for folklorists.5 We find many preservationists who are willing to embrace the preservation of folk architecture but still allow esthetic judgments and the idea of uniqueness

to shape their evaluation of individual structures. Folklorists are often more interested in the typical, but the notion of preserving typicality has sometimes been difficult to sell to preservationists, unless the majority of typical items of whatever type have already been destroyed or are threatened with destruction. This attitude may seem absurd, butif folklorists are to be involved in the type of preservation that actively preserves individual structures, then ultimately we do have to deal with some sort of stan-

dard that defines criteria for preservation. While we may endorse the preservation of the cultural character of a community’s architecture, it is often very difficult to make this notion operational in actual practice. Because of problems inherent in defining significance, as well as hesitancies about the interventionist nature of some types of historic preservation planning, many folklorists find themselves more comfortable in architectural survey and documentation programs. Still, the issue of signif-

Architectural Documentation 201 ‘cance haunts even our documentary efforts, for we are likely to be asked tu justify our choices of what we document. This is particularly true in projects that involve elaborate documentary procedures, such as the scale drawings executed by the Historic American Buildings Survey, but even in so-called comprehensive surveys, we make choices about what structures merit our attention. The notion of typicality in itself can be a problem for folklorists involved in survey work. As typologies of folk architecture have been developed, folklorists tend to be drawn to those structures that exemplify

type. We have the opposite problem of preservationists—looking too much to typicality and rejecting the unusual—that sometimes leads to a portrayal of a cultural conformity that simply is not borne out in reality.® As a young field, folk architecture scholarship has repeated some of the mistakes of our predecessors in other categories of folklore research by letting itself be drawn into the search for the pure folk. In the division of

labor between architectural historians and folk architecture scholars, whole categories of architecture have sometimes been orphaned. Folklorists, as well as architectural historians, have their blind spots in recognizing the significance of certain types of buildings. The documentation of folk architecture in southern Appalachia is a good example. Folklorists have generally concentrated on examining traditional construction techniques and recognizable folk plans. With the exception of Charles E. Martin’s recently published Hollybush: Folk Building and Social Change in an Appalachian Community, early twentieth century

rural architectural forms and techniques have been generally ignored.’ Both folklorists and architectural historians have tended to dismiss this architecture as degenerate folk, noticing the divergencies from folk practices rather than the important elements of cultural continuity. Martin’s oral history-based study of a single community in eastern Kentucky documents the presence of box construction, a method of building using verti-

cal planks rather than a full framing system. The fact that this type of construction is noted in none of the existing surveys of western North Carolina (including my own) would suggest that it never existed in that section of Appalachia. Interviews with over fifty rural, western North Caroli-

nians, however, document that in many mountain communities during the early twentieth century, boxed construction was the dominant method of building. Furthermore, oral testimony suggests that boxed construction

facilitated the continuity of cooperative building patterns and the construction of traditional house plans in a period of social and economic change.® Part of our failure to recognize this type of building, and its importance, was in our inadequate use of oral history, for these structures have not survived well, but the failure was also in our lack of interest ina type of building that superficially did not appear to be traditional. One is

reminded of Cecil Sharp collecting ballads in the same region seventy

202 MICHAEL ANN WILLIAMS years ago. While contributing invaluably to the recognition and documentation of the singing of ancient ballads in the region, he ignored the area’s vital instrumental and religious song tradition. We, too, have sought out the most traditional to the exclusion of other forms, and we have put our emphasis on folk form, rather than on folk process. Perhaps we are also guilty of what we accuse preservationists, allowing our esthetic judgment

to guide what we choose to study. While we respect the log house, we have negatively judged other more recent (and to us, less appealing) forms of dwellings to be products of poverty rather than tradition. Documentary efforts not only require the choice of what to document, but also require a notion of documentary adequacy. Some programs emphasize the broad sweep, others, the meticulous recording of detail. One need not champion one approach over the other, for they accomplish different, but necessary, goals. Although most of these programs involve some degree of gathering of historical facts, the emphasis is on documenting the physical nature of the structure. Even the history gathered tends to focus on events relating to the physical construction and alteration of the building or, at best, some brief facts concerning ownership.? Folklorists champion the study and preservation of architecture, not because of its esthetic quality or because it is merely illustrative of history, but because it is a form of cultural expression yielding meaningful cultural artifacts. Despite our justifications, however, the conventions of folk architecture scholarship have emphasized form and technology over use and meaning. Part of this emphasis is a result of the youth of the field; we have had a need to simply understand what is physically there—hence our enthusiasm for technology and typology. We have also sometimes indulged in romanticizing artifactual analysis by characterizing it as a difficult but necessary means of understanding people who are otherwise lost to history. This has led to a preference for studying architecture of a dis-

tant, rather than a recent, past, and it has led to an emphasis on methodologies concerned with the interpretation of physical form. Although the development of typologies and the stress on interpreting the artifact have been important in folk architecture research, they have become unnecessarily restrictive, and they have led to attitudes within our own field which reinforce traditional notions of documentary adequacy. Folklorists, like other recorders of historic architecture, have been obsessed with capturing the physical essence of the structure, although we have been more interested in floor plans than architectural details. In my own sixteen months of architectural survey in western North Carolina, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with the results of my work. Along the way, people told me things that did not correspond with standard interpretations of the artifactual evidence, but there was no way to plug my doubts into the reams of photographs, floor plans, maps, and computer forms that were produced during the course of the survey. De-

Architectural Documentation 203 spite the quantity of data produced, I felt that was missing something. As the region had a very conservative architectural tradition, oral history was a useful tool, and I went back to the field, not to look at more buildings, but

simply to listen intently. Given the luxury of retracing my steps, I was shocked to realize that despite my own, as well as other people’s, intensive surveys of the region, we knew and understood little about the use and meaning of the traditional architecture of the region. The problem was not that we had neglected to use oral history and documentary evidence in reconstructing the historical context of the structures we had studied. Rather, it was that in doing so we still focused on the physical aspects of architecture and not on its use and meaning in everyday life. Trained to look rather than listen, we had not paid enough attention to what people were telling us, or we failed to ask the obvious questions. We had neglected the most fragile category of evidence that existed, the memory of the experience of these folk structures. The more | listened, the more | realized how deceptive architectural form can be as an indicator of social use or cultural meaning. Simple forms may beget complex systems of spatial arrangement. In order to cope with the limitations of the single pen house plan, families carved up a single room, either mentally or by arranging their furniture, into multiple social and symbolic spaces. People may also create architectural forms that are

wholly incompatible with their system of spatial use. In western North Carolina, some people built center-hall houses but never adapted their own patterns of spatial use to fit this plan. Conflict arose between the symbolic meaning of the hall and its social use. A multiplicity of functions

dictate architectural form, but no simple hierarchy dictates which function takes priority. In serving one function, others may be abandoned. We have no way of reading the complexities arising from functional conflict within architectural form. Much of what is truly meaningful about architecture is not fully manifested in physical form and is, therefore, not readable from the artifact alone. Because architecture is tangible, however, we have felt compelled to deal with its tangible nature. Writing of the poetics of space, Gaston Bachelard notes the difficulties of going beyond the house’s physical form. “In short, discussion of our thesis takes place on ground that is unfavorable to us. For, in point of fact, a house is first and foremost a geometrical object, one which we are tempted to analyze rationally. Its prime reality is

visible and tangible, made of well hewn solids and well fitted framework.’’!0 We, too, must begin to look beyond the obvious to stop complacently believing that in documenting the physical form we have captured the nature of folk architecture. The field of folk architecture scholarship is changing. A few studies of the last several years have indicated new directions in using oral history,

ethnography, and documentary evidence for a richer understanding of

204 MICHAEL ANN WILLIAMS the cultural meaning of folk architecture.!! These advances in scholarship need to be translated into new criteria for documentary adequacy in public programs. I retraced my own steps (and realized how much I had initially missed) as part of my dissertation research, but there is no reason that a focused examination of architectural use and meaning could not be part of

documentation programs. I do not think, however, that simply placing architectural documentation into a broader program of recording folklife is necessarily the answer. Although this provides some semblance of cultural context, it does not necessarily motivate researchers to look beyond the physical nature of architecture. If folk architectural research is to develop meaningfully, we must focus specifically on developing means of documenting the intangible aspects of architecture as well as the physical shell. The time has come for folklorists involved in public programs of architectural preservation and documentation to stop dwelling on the limitations that have been placed upon us and begin to assess our own attitudes and methods. By exercising some self-criticism and by confronting important issues, we will be in a better position for taking the lead in shaping new preservation policies. Issues I personally believe are important to face include (1) defining the rights of individuals and communities affected by the interventionist nature of preservation and exploring ways of understanding existing values placed on historic structures; (2)'examining new ways to make the concept of preserving representative structures actually operational in preservation programs, as well as examining the limiting aspects of the notion of typicality in our own research; and (3) defining new criteria for documentary adequacy that do more than pay lip service to the concept of architecture as a meaningful cultural expression. Although ostensibly the object of our study is tangible, we need to question our own assumptions, as well as those of public programs that give priority to the physical entity, making its preservation and documentation an end in itself. NOTES 1. Alan Jabbour and Howard W. Marshall, ‘‘Folklife and Cultural Preservation,” in New Directions in Rural Preservation, Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service Publication,

no. 45 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Interior, 1980), pp. 43-45; and Ormond Loomis, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United States, Publica-

tion of the American Folklife Center, no. 10 (Washington, D.C.: American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, 1983). 2. This, at least, has been my experience. Rather than have to persuade agencies to hire a folklorist, I have been met with, ‘““We have been looking for someone to help us deal with these resources.” I worked for the Historic American Building Survey (Tennessee—Tombigbee Waterway Project), and I have conducted two comprehensive surveys under the auspices of the North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Division of Archives and History. North Carolina has had a particularly enlightened survey program, and the leader-

Architectural Documentation 205 ship within Archives and History has been actively interested in the documentation of vernacular architecture. 3. An interesting exploration of this theme is Mark P. Leone, ‘‘Why the Coalville Tabernacle Had to Be Razed,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 8 (1973): 30-39.

4. Exploration of the symbolic role of empty houses is taken from chapter 6, ‘“Abandonment and the Old Homeplace” in Michael Ann Williams, ‘“Homeplace: The Social and Symbolic Use of the Folk Dwelling in Southwestern North Carolina” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1985). 5. Jabbour and Marshall, “Folklife and Cultural Preservation,” p. 49. 6. For a discussion of the limits of typologies, see Elizabeth Mosby Adler and Thomas A. Adler, ““Folk Architectural Teratology: Problems in the Study of an Indiana Farm,” Folklore Forum (Special Issue: Approaches to the Study of Material Aspects of American Folk Culture) 12 (1979): 198-221.

7. Charles E. Martin, Hollybush: Folk Building and Soctal Change in an Appalachian Community (Knoxville: Univ. of Tennessee Press, 1984).

8. This was an unexpected result of my dissertation research. I had conducted the interviews to examine patterns of social and symbolic use. In doing so I found it necessary to reexamine the building history of the region as formulated by myself and other researchers. 9. For the approach of the Historic American Buildings Survey to historic documentation, see Harley J. McKee, Recording Historic Buildings (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, 1970), pp. 97-105, 116. 10. Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, trans. Maria Jolas (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969), pp. 47-48. 11. I would include in this group: Martin, Hollybush; George W. McDaniel, Hearth & Home: Preserving a People’s Culture (Philadelphia: Temple Univ. Press, 1983); Henry Glassie, Passing the Time in Ballymenone: Culture and History of an Ulster Community (Philadelphia: Univ.

of Pennsylvania Press, 1982), pp. 327-424; and Robert Blair St. George, ‘“A Retreat From the

Wilderness: Patterns in the Domestic Environments of Southeastern New England,

1630-1730” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1982). |

MIRIAM CAMITTA —WW EE O The Folklorist and the Highway Theoretical and Practical Implications of the Vine Street Expressway Project

The study of folklore in a community which has been radically altered by major highway construction has ethical, theoretical, and practical implications for folklorists working both in academe and in the public sector. My research in one such community, focusing on the local application of the environmental review process, suggests both possibilities for, and limitations of, folklife research with regard to recent historic preservation legislation. Additionally, this case study exemplifies the need for clarification and solidification of our stance toward the conservation of culture. Franklin Bridge North was one of several Philadelphia communities assessed in the Environmental Impact Statement for the proposed Vine

Street Expressway, the right-of-way for which cut a mile-long swath across the northern edge of Center City Philadelphia. Although a multidisciplinary team was assembled by the consultant to the state Department of Transportation to identify and evaluate the potential environmental impact of the proposed roadway, a folklorist was not included in that group. This lack was strongly felt in the formulation of the research design, in the determination of cultural significance, in the commitment to meaningful mitigation procedures, and in the accommodation of project design features to community needs. As I will demonstrate, the description and interpretation of the effects of dismantlement, dislocation, and

disruption of community life caused by the proposed federal highway project would have been enhanced by the ethnographic lens through which the folklorist views community life and history. The reasons for the exclusion of a folklorist from the Vine Street Expressway study team can be clarified by an analysis of historic preservation legislation in the United States. This body of law has played a major role in the description and protection of environmental resources within the context of the environmental review process. A review of preservation legislation reveals a gradual broadening of the concept of culture to include folklife. Preservation laws have typically recognized the importance of protecting our country’s heritage from the potentially damaging wheels

The Folklorist and the Highway 207 of progress. The National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 (NEPA) com-

mitted the federal government to ensuring a healthy and informed balance between the two intermittently opposing forces of tradition and change. NEPA also gave teeth to existing preservation legislation by delin-

eating procedures, via the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), for evaluating and ameliorating the negative environmental impacts of proposed federal projects. Although NEPA mandated the identification of significant historical and cultural patterns existing in an area to be affected by a federal project, it designated the National Register of Historic Places

as a central tool for that process. Because of emphasis placed upon the National Register and its criteria of eligibility, both by NEPA and by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation, the study of culture was limited to its tangible remains manifested in “districts, sites, buildings and objects.’”"! Evaluation and mitigation procedures, consequently, were concentrated in the disciplines of history, architecture, and archaeology. With the passage of the National Historic Preservation Act Amendment of 1980 came increased federal recognition of the desirability of preserving intangible cultural resources, thereby expanding the scope of fu-

ture Environmental Impact Studies and affording folklorists a greater opportunity to enter the environmental review process. However, the criteria developed for the protection of the built environment cannot be transferred wholesale to the conservation of cultural intangibles. As yet federal guidelines regulating the conservation of cultural intangibles have

not been established. Folklorists participating in the environmental review process are, thus, challenged to reconcile the theories and methods of folklore with the theories and methods of those disciplines upon which existing federal guidelines for the study of culture are based. Although the

problem of how to legislate folklife inquiry is currently unresolved, amended preservation legislation and the research guidelines already in place underscore the necessity for folklorists to explore the possibilities for conducting meaningful inquiry within those guidelines.

In the following history of the Franklin Bridge North community, I have attempted to address some of the exigencies and discontinuities of historic preservation law that have general bearing on the practice of folklore. To that end, Ihave focused on the major themes of community life

as they are expressed in the group’s response over time to its physical surroundings. The case study of the environmental review process as it was conducted in Franklin Bridge North describes the consequences for the community resulting from the absence of a trained cultural specialist on the study team. In the concluding discussion, I suggest some problems associated with the participation of folklorists in the environmental review process. For the past sixty years, city planners have proposed construction of new, high-volume access routes for cars, trucks, buses, and trains for the

208 MIRIAM CAMITTA area known as Franklin Bridge North, a community that lies at the northeastern edge of Center City. In 1976, at the inception of my research, Franklin Bridge North was a residential pocket in the commercial heart of

one of the oldest sections of Philadelphia. Although continuously occupied since the drafting of the first city charter in 1682, the area has been much reduced in population from its former size because of construction of three large-scale roadways. Prior to the turn of the century, many of the immigrant forebears of current residents settled in what was then an area that housed hundreds of families. Since that time roadway construction

has transformed the built environment, disrupted community life, and acted as the external stimulus for the cultural reorganization of the community. Over time this construction has had the effect of transforming the physical boundaries of the community. At the turn of the century, the community extended east from Franklin Square (one of the original four city squares in William Penn’s plan of Philadelphia) to the Delaware River,

an area of eight blocks. It ranged from Market Street on the south, an open-air market for two centuries, to its northernmost point at what was once the banks of Pegg’s Run, a creek along which the British army encamped during the Revolutionary War. The first boundary change in the twentieth century occurred with the building of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, then known as the Delaware River Bridge. Originating at Franklin Square on the Philadelphia side of the Delaware River, it spans the entire east-west dimension of the community. Its depth is that of almost an entire city block. Although the bridge was completed in 1926, there are still community residents alive who can recall the era of its construction. The location of such a massive structure two blocks north of the community’s southern boundary had the effect of separating neighbors on the north from those living on the south side of the bridge and of effectively relocating the community’s southern boundary. ‘Today, the bridge is a kind of Mason-Dixon line. It divides what was once a whole into two parts, each of which is represented by its own civic group. The next alteration of the community’s boundaries occurred in 1969, when properties were acquired and demolished to make way for the proposed Vine Street Expressway, a roadway which has been on the planning books since the early fifties. Ironically, the location of the southern line of the right-of-way for the segment of the highway in Franklin Bridge North determined the northern boundary line of the Old City Historic District, even though buildings on either side of this boundary line were architecturally and historically related. The districting of the Old City Historic District allowed for the demolition that cleared the way for the Callowhill East Industrial Park that abuts the northern edge of the highway right-ofway. The massive demolition in the northern sector of the community effectively created a new northern boundary for the community.

The Folklorist and the Highway 209 During this time, in the late sixties and early seventies, property acquisition for and construction of Interstate 95, a highway that runs from Maine to Florida, was taking place between Second Street and the waterfront. This created still another barrier on the eastern side of the community, severing it from its riverfront component to which it had been linked since the seventeenth century. Today, residents of the riverfront area have formed their own community group, which is officially recognized by the city’s administration as “River's Edge.” The physical changes that have so altered the boundaries of this area of the city have occasioned several waves of cultural reorganization. One example of how physical change and cultural reorganization are interconnected is provided by the spatial organization of the community through its parish. The parish, known as St. Augustine’s, exists in two domains: it occupies physical space, and it represents a spiritual realm that is socially

and culturally structured. The physical parish can be defined geographically. It is bounded in all directions by city streets. Its spiritual and social center is the church, which is both edifice and institution. The term parish also signifies structures related to the church such as the rectory, the school building, and the convent. The parish also consists of parishioners who divide themselves into geographically determined subgroups, which are designated by the name of the street on which they live. Thus, people who live on Race Street are known as “Race Street,” as if their existence had a geographical manifestation. The inhabitants of Elfreth’s Alley, the oldest continuously occupied residential block in the city of Philadelphia, are referred to by fellow parishioners as “The Alley.” This naming practice has been customary among St. Augustine parishioners since the turn of the century, before the construction of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. At that time a major cultural activity, which symbolically expressed the geographical nomenclature and subdivision of the

parish, was the carnival. Then, parish boundaries were almost identical with those of the larger community. Between Market Street and Spring Garden Streets, Franklin Square and the Delaware River were many more streets than there are today. Thus, there were many more subgroups. The carnival was a yearly event requiring several weeks of preparation. It was a successful fund-raising effort organized by parishioners. The event both unified and polarized the subdivisions of the parish. The purpose that united them all socially was the fund-raising events that benefited the church. The polarizing effect of the carnival, expressed through games and contests sponsored by each subgroup, set the groups in competition with each other. The winner of the competition was the group that raised the most money for the church. Each year, the winner was paraded about the parish streets on a hay cart. The carnival, held on the street directly in front of the church, came to an abrupt halt between 1920 and 1922 when

210 MIRIAM CAMITTA properties were taken for the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. At this time whole streets disappeared from the community and the parish map, and with them went the physical and symbolic organization of the parish community as expressed through the parish carnival.

Although the importance of the street as a symbolic expression of community organization exists today, the residents of Franklin Bridge North, who are in part the vestigial remains of the once sprawling St. Augustine’s parish, divide their community into even smaller units of dwellings and buildings. Every edifice within the boundaries of the community, whether used for residential or commercial purposes, has a lineage that is expressed in anecdotal reminiscences about its former occupants. That is, each building on every street of the community is associated in the minds of community residents with the succession of people who occupied them. One octogenarian resident is able to recite the genealogy of buildings, both extant and long-ago demolished, for a six-block area. This custom is practiced by younger residents as well, and sixty-year genealogies are learned by residents of Franklin Bridge North who are not even fifty years old. The merging of the physical and symbolic aspects of community is exemplified in the residents’ emphasis that the community was the setting for life. For instance, from the end of World War II until the Vine Street property acquisitions in the late sixties, the parish buildings were the site

of many community activities. The parish school gymnasium housed dances where parishioners courted future spouses. Sodality, a prayerbased social occasion for female parishioners, was held weekly in the school. The convent, formerly the first home for Villanova University, was fully occupied by nuns who were the teachers of parish children. The VFW post, named for a male parishioner who was killed in World War II, was the Sunday watering hole for parish men. At election time the sacred and secular boundaries of the parish and the community overlapped when the school gymnasium served as the ward division’s voting place. In the secular domain, the Benjamin Franklin Bridge and its plaza were the sites for seasonal recreation—dog walking on the bridge in the summer, sledding on the plaza steps in the winter. Billboard structures lining the Fifth Street

Bridge underpass were the outdoor gymnasium for neighborhood children. In that same period, the fourth twentieth-century generation of children to graduate from St. Augustine’s school was born. By the early fifties, city planners were drafting the first of a series of plans for the Vine Street Expressway. By 1976, when over 90 percent of the

properties for the right-of-way had been acquired and demolished and over 50 percent of the community inhabitants had been relocated, consultants to the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation made the claim that no communities existed along the right-of-way for the expressway east of Franklin Square.’ Thus, no cultural assessment of project impacts

The Folklorist and the Highway 211 was needed, nor was it conducted in the draft Environmental Impact

Statement. The importance assigned to the physical aspect of their community resonates through the reminiscences of Franklin Bridge North residents today. When recalling life before the Ben Franklin, older people lament the loss of “fine” homes as much as they do their “lovely” neighbors.* Younger members experience the right-of-way demolition in much the same way, regretting the loss of homes and shops, neighbors and family who lived in what is now the right-of-way for the Vine Street Expressway. A community value informing these references is the desire to remain in close proximity to one’s friends, neighbors, and family for the duration of one’s existence, the context for which is the community. An effect of the decimation of the built environment on young residents’ adulthood is the inability to establish separate residence within the boundaries of the community. Newlyweds or young adults must remain with their parents or live outside of the community. Neither of these options is considered appropriate, traditional, or desirable. In response to the physical diminishing of their community, Franklin Bridge North residents seemed to intensify their symbolic expressions of community by literally expanding its social boundaries. Large events such as weddings, birthday parties, St. Patrick’s Day celebrations, New Year’s Eve parties, and Halloween dances were planned to include the entire community as well as friends and family members living outside of it.

These festivities were held in the old parish school gymnasium, now closed for parish education as a result of the reduction in parish population. Block parties, having gotten too big for the block, spilled over onto the right-of-way land, which was decorated on national holidays with Irish and American flags. The rule of thumb for these occasions was that the entire community, including neighbors who did not belong to the parish and representatives of the community living outside of its physical

boundaries, was invited to participate. On Saturday and Sunday, especially in warm weather, family and friends of neighborhood residents swelled the ranks to three and four times their usual size. And community members as a group, still tied to the traditional conventions and unable to avail themselves of goods and services within their community boundaries, chose new providers for those services from outside of the community. For example, 75 percent of community residents use the same outside physician and the same hospital. Thus, the specious claim made in 1974 by consultants who prepared the Preliminary Working Paper: Environmental Assessment of the Proposed Vine Street Expressway that one criterion for

defining community is that goods and services are located within its boundaries is demonstrably false.° When the environmental review process for the Vine Street Expressway began in the early seventies, the presentation of community cultural

212 MIRIAM CAMITTA expressions and values was handicapped by an inadequate research design and resulting insufficient data base. For example, consultants utilized sociological criteria for identifying and describing the existence of ““community.”” These criteria were too restrictive to include Franklin Bridge North as an example of a community lying within the highway’s right-ofway. The consequence of the lack of an adequate data base in the social impact section of the draft and final EIS made it impossible for the community to effect an ameliorative solution through the environmental review process. For the data base to have been both relevant and sufficient, it needed to be oriented historically, sociologically, and folkloristically. Although several hours were spent by consultants collecting oral history and reminiscences for the final EIS, the lack of a cultural specialist to interpret and accurately present this data resulted in its misrepresentation and underrepresentation in the final EIS.

The omission and mistreatment of cultural data had serious con-

sequences for the mitigation phase of the review process. Normally, mitigation is predicated on the projected negative impacts of the project. That

is, mitigation is intended to ameliorate the harmful effects of a federal project. In the case of Franklin Bridge North, two draft EISs, one published in 1977 and one in 1983, ignored the cultural and social structures upon which the highway would have a negative impact. Perhaps this is so

because precipitous right-of-way acquisition and demolition had destroyed much of the historical and cultural data base. However, inadequate scholarly treatment of the remaining community effectively discounted what was left. In this way, the scope of study of the environmental review might have excluded Franklin Bridge North from the legal protection afforded by a comprehensive assessment of impacts on cultural resources. Had the scope of study gone unchallenged by the community group, no mitigation program for Franklin Bridge North would have been

developed, because no study identifying negative community impact would have been conducted in this “‘noncommunity” area. Ironically, it was only after the community had successfully negotiated a mitigation program for their area of the highway, with the help of their attorney, that some oral history was collected by a social worker on the consultant team. This data, however, was not included in the final EIS. Because highway consultants were not responsive to the community’s mitigation requests, either because the community had not been officially recognized as such or because of bureaucratic recalcitrance, it was necessary for the community to hire an attorney. Community members had reached an impasse in their mitigation negotiations with the consultants. The community had challenged its exclusion from the environmental review process at the Public Hearing for the Vine Street Expressway and through its written response to the first draft EIS in 1977. In the early eighties, however, it became obvious that legal representation was an un-

The Folklorist and the Highway 213 avoidable reality if adequate mitigation procedures were to be developed and secured. In order to meet the cost of substantial legal fees, the community mobilized a traditionally defined method of fund-raising. Residents organized a “beef and beer.” A ticket to this event, held in the old school gymnasium, assured participants all the beer and food they could consume in an evening. Supplemented by membership dues saved over the course of a few years, the money raised by this event successfully defrayed the costs of legal counsel. Thus, unable to avail itself of the protection an adequate environmental review would have afforded, the community utilized other legal means for its protection from the highway. As a result of this new course of action, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation and its consultants agreed to address the concerns of Franklin Bridge North regarding mitigation and highway design. Ironically, had an adequate review of cultural resources been conducted, it would have revealed that those concerns were neither impractical nor outside of traditional custom or habit. For example, the major concerns of community members related directly to the value they assigned to home and neighborhood. Community members were, therefore, particularly anxious to ameliorate several highway impacts that were believed to be especially disruptive to their way of life. One of these impacts involved the design of York Avenue, a street first opened in the early part of the eighteenth century. Highway design called for the street to be closed to vehicular traffic. Residents of York Avenue objected to this plan, stating vehemently that although it was too late for the unlucky residents who had already been relocated by the highway, it was not too late for them, and they were not going to let “them” take one more thing away. One local resident said, “It’s bad enough that they took all those houses and all those people had to move. But they’re not going to take my street, too!” Yet another mitigation issue for the community was the new design for traffic exiting from the Benjamin Franklin Bridge. Traditionally, traffic from the bridge made a hairpin turn onto what is known as Bridge Access Street. Highway design called for that street to be closed and for exiting traffic to spill onto the small streets of the local community. Residents wanted to retain their use of Bridge Access Street and to keep unwanted and potentially dangerous traffic off of the small streets and byways of their neighborhood. While highway planners maintained that the hairpin turn was dangerous and represented poor planning, local residents and bridge police agreed that the turn had been safe since the bridge had been opened in 1926 and made sense from a practical viewpoint. A compromise was reached with the redesign of the shape of the exit turn and the retention of Bridge Access Street. Additionally, community residents had become accustomed, as described earlier, to having block parties and ball games on the right-of-way

214 MIRIAM CAMITTA land. The mitigation plan developed for the area with participation of the community reflected the customary recreational use of the space by designing the right-of-way so that this use could continue after the highway Ss construction.

Even if consultants had decided that Franklin Bridge North fit the criteria for community originally developed for the Vine Street Expressway environmental review and had then conducted an adequate study of the social and cultural impacts to the community, the question of cultural significance would have surfaced. In determining the significance of cul-

tural resources, preservationists tend to emphasize historicity and uniqueness. The question then arises: are the values that Franklin Bridge North residents hold regarding the relationship of physical space to community life historically significant through their uniqueness? Given what is known about urban neighborhoods, it is highly likely that the values of place and neighborhood are found in communities that share similar histories and structures. Within the traditions of historic preservation informing the guidelines outlined by National Register eligibility criteria (36 CFR 800.10), Franklin Bridge North would probably have been judged culturally insignificant. Paradoxically, the history of the community provides a rare opportunity to study the variables contributing to the formation and maintenance of the value placed on home and neighborhood. And according to federal regulations, significance is determined by the potential contribution of the resource to the greater understanding of the history of our civilization. It is precisely the typicality of Franklin Bridge North that allows for the study of everyday life and the urban experience of the “common person.” This kind of perspective might, for example, illuminate the nineteenth century immigrant experience and its relationship to parish structure, two commonly reoccurring features of the Philadelphia neighborhood. The constitution and determination of significance cannot, as evidenced by the case of Franklin Bridge North, be assigned universally applied criteria. Clearly, the cultural expressions of home and neighborhood are significant by the community’s standards, a significance probably rec-

ognized by folklorists but not necessarily by the federal government. Those values have acquired their significance by virtue of the group’s experience over time. They are contextualized in the historical, social, and cultural development specific to Franklin Bridge North. Therefore, even though those values may be generalizable to other communities sharing a

similar urban experience, a shopping list of cultural attributes (such as those that make historic landmarks eligible for inclusion on the National Register of Historic Places) that would constitute significance and, thus, protection is not only inappropriate for Franklin Bridge North, but also inconsistent with the theories and methods of folklore scholarship.

Another question regarding the determination of significance re-

The Folklorist and the Highway 215 volves around authority. What was culturally significant about Franklin Bridge North was meaningful to its constituents. Members of the community were aware of what they held to be culturally and socially significant, and they were skillful in verbalizing these values as concerns to the consultants. Does this reflexivity suggest that communities be assigned a role in the environmental review process in representing their culturally significant resources? If so, what then is the role of the folklorist, or the cultural specialist, at this stage of the review process? Another question for folklorists participating in the environmental review process grows out of the development of the mitigation program. For Franklin Bridge North, the only alternative offered by both first and second versions of the draft EIS, prior to and after demolition, was the nobuild alternative. The reason for this choice lies within the structure of community life, where it is apparent that the physical aspects of the environment are of paramount importance to the maintenance of significant expressive behaviors and community values. Prior to the demolition, in fact, there would have been no mitigation acceptable to the community, whose residents wanted nothing more than to perpetuate the neighborhood as it then existed. Who, then, is mitigation for, if not for the community? Current preservation legislation equates mitigation with salvage or documentation that allows objects to be rescued from the steamroller or preserved in an archive on film, tape, or in drawings. This sort of preservation clearly has greater value to society at large than to an endangered community. What is the appropriate role for folklorists in the preparation of mitigation programs? ‘lo whom are we responsible: the community, in whose midst we find the folklore we report; the government, our employers, who may ultimately be the agent of the destruction of the context for that folklore; or society, which may, toa greater or lesser extent, appreciate or learn from that folklore? It is both clear and disturbing that certain cultural expressions depend for their existence upon specific physical environments and that those environments cannot always be protected from the wheels of progress. And it is even more disturbing to consider that the documentation of the value of place can be justified as mitigation when the ultimate aim is to eradicate the place. In this vein it is tempting to describe the Environmental Impact Statement and its relationship to community life in dialectical terms, in which

tradition and change, preservation and progress are polar opposites. In this model the community is the advocate for tradition and, hence, preservation; the government or its agents, the advocates for change and proeress. The Environmental Impact Statement process mediates these op-

positions by generating construction alternatives and mitigation procedures. This model is an ideal, however, which in reality may be so full of contradictions that it appears to be unworkable. In any case, the environ-

216 MIRIAM CAMITTA mental review process does serve to initiate an adversarial relationship between the community representatives and governmental agents. This relationship is both documented and pacified by the Environmental Impact Statement, which reflects an agreement struck between the adversaries.

Although environmental and preservation legislation has provided an opportunity for folklorists to participate in another dimension of public sector folklore, legal and political dimensions have strained the traditional theoretical underpinnings of our discipline. It is immediately necessary for folklorists to agree upon that which can be legislated as constituting traditional culture. While nomination to the National Register of Historic Places confers significance upon, and thus protects, historic resources,

what folklorists understand to be the fluidity of culture makes the development of appropriate criteria for a folklife register impracticable, if not impossible. Itis clear that within the context of the environmental review process, folklore acquires a political dimension that cannot be denied. It is just as clear that folklorists will have to confront those philosophical and political

implications raised by their participation in the public sector. The language of the National Environmental Policy Act is unavoidably clear: progress and preservation may be incompatible. The Environmental Impact Statement both documents that conflict and effects its mediation. If folklorists participate in the process, what role should we play? NOTES 1. The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 (P.L. 89-665, 80 Stat. 915, 16 USC 470)

established the National Register of Historic Places, which recorded “districts, sites, buildings, structures, and objects significant in American history, architecture, archaeology and culture.” 2. Ormond H. Loomis, coordinator, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United States (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1983), pp. 7, 108. See also

National Historic Preservation Act Amendments of 1980 (P.L. 95-515, 94 Stat. 2987, 16 USC 470).

3. Administrative Action Draft Environmental Impact Statement, Vine Street Expressway, I-676, FHWA-PA-EIS-77-03-D, L.R. 67045, U.S. Department of Transportation, Federal High-

way Administration and Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, March 1, 1977, p. 22. 4. Tape-recorded interview with Mary Sweeney, Jan. 10, 1977. 5. Preliminary Working Paper: Environmental Assessment of the Proposed Vine Street Express-

way (I-676), Prepared by Howard, Needles, Tammen and Bergendoff; subconsultant: BoozAllen and Hamilton, Inc., Feb. 1974, pp. II-31 and II-32.

MARY HUFFORD ~~ Stalking the Native View The Protection of Folklife

in Natural Habitats

In November 1983 fieldworkers Nora Rubinstein and Tom Carroll visited Ed Hazelton at his home in Manahawkin, New Jersey. When they asked him how he felt about the accelerating changes in his shore community, Hazelton replied: “I don’t like it. I like progress. It has been controlled

progress to a certain extent around here, but of recent years it’s really gotten out of hand. It’s really gotten out of control. You go down here to the

Shop Rite Plaza where I used to rabbit hunt and shoot quail and run with my dogs and all that kind of stuff, and now it’s loaded with cars and people and strangers—you don’t know anybody and all that sort of thing, and it’s altogether different. It’s altogether different.”! Hazelton’s complaint ad-

dresses a national problem—the disintegration of community, of places with character, of folklife habitats, and the destruction of vital cultural resources through haphazard patterns of development. Hazelton is not the kind of “native” that government agencies and tourists are used to recognizing. He is not native American or Pennsylvania Amish, nor is hea refugee from Central America or Indochina. Though some people would call hima piney, he is alsoa regular, middle-American citizen with a South Jersey accent, whose family has lived along Barnegat Bay for generations. As of 1978 he also lives in the Pinelands National Reserve.

Rubinstein, Carroll, and the other fieldworkers on the Pinelands Folklife Project were curious about the role of folklife studies in environmental impact assessments.? How can folklife documentation inform decisions to develop, whether development results in bedroom communities or wild and scenic areas? If folklife resource assessments were to augment the currently required historic resource surveys and natural resource inventories, how might they be structured? With what language can they best be justified? The first step is to identify and clearly describe the connections among folklife, historic resources, and natural resources. South Jersey’s Pinelands National Reserve comprises a million acres of diversified landscape. At its core is the Pine Barrens, immortalized by writer John McPhee as the epicenter of the eastern megalopolis stretching

218 MARY HUFFORD from Boston to Richmond. That upland tract of scruffy pine trees and scrub oaks is inlaid with a delicate system of wetlands—inland swamps, bogs, and streams that meander through salt marshes before emptying into Barnegat Bay, Delaware Bay, and the Delaware River. Its residents live in woodland settlements, fishing villages, lake communities, town centers, and, recently, in a spate of bedroom communities housing workers from Philadelphia, Trenton, and Atlantic City. While the Pine Barrens is truly a natural and cultural region, the Pinelands is an artificial construct, embodying an experiment in resource protection. Rather than purchase the land outright, Congress established in 1978 a fifteen-member commission to manage the region by coordinating

the resources of the federal, state, and local agencies that were already there. Those who lobbied so urgently for the reserve were most concerned for the future of rare flora, fauna, and habitats and of the Cohansey Aquifer, bearer of the famed seventeen trillion gallons of pristine water. However, despite the Pinelands’ status as a habitat for endangered species, it will continue to harbor human beings—those to whom the Comprehensive Management Plan refers as “‘traditional guardians of the land-

scape.’ These guardians are becoming increasingly encumbered by restrictions designed to protect the region’s natural, historical, and archaeological resources. The Comprehensive Management Plan, published in 1980, is best at pro-

tecting the resources it can count: 580 indigenous plant species, 72 of which are threatened or endangered; 299 species of birds; 59 reptile and amphibian species; 91 varieties of fish; 35 species of mammals; and 10,000 kinds of insects. One thousand forty-six prehistoric sites are mapped together with 71 “historic sites of cultural interest.” The plan compresses the

region’s 450,000 people into ten ethnic, religious, and occupational groups. Folklife resources are perhaps most threatened by their invisibility. They are not so neatly bounded as vernacular buildings or Indian shell mounds or, for that matter, the reserve itself. Folklife is not really collectible, although our discipline at one time approached folklore in this way. We are reluctant to itemize folklife resources, mindful that culture, as the Cultural Conservation report puts it, ‘“should be thought of asa verb, not as

~ a noun.”> What, then, do we mean when we say we “survey” for “‘resources,” as if they were things to count? In the Pinelands significant forms and practices do not conform to popular expectations regarding folk culture—the harvesting technologies are not archaic, there are no indigenous basket making or pottery traditions, nor are the musical styles distinctly regional. We have to resort to abstract nouns like woodsmanship and diversification to keep that elusive crux of expressiveness from slipping

through the cracks between our categories.°® .

This problem is not unique to cultural specialists. Physicists delving

The Protection of Folklife 219 into the realm of quantum mechanics face the same problem: is it particle or wave, matter or energy? Biologists wonder whether they are looking at species, subspecies, or varieties. They have their ecosystems to consider, while we wonder whether we should focus on the content or the context, the discrete form or the continuous process. Of course, the way in which we view our subjects influences the way we act on them, analogous to the way in which instruments for magnifying quarks bump into what they are looking at. We are all caught by the Heisenberg principle. Once we have identified them, should we evaluate our subjects with reference to standard folkloristic system or should we describe them ostensively, with reference to their particular surroundings? In 1937, for example, Herbert Halpert collected the only American version of ‘The Unquiet Grave” (Child 78) in Magnolia, New Jersey, a settlement near what is now the reserve’s northern boundary.’ That ballad exemplifies one kind of significance—that is, significance with respect to an external classification scheme. The significance of ““The Unquiet Grave” as a folklife resource is more related to its links with a classic collection than to its inherent signifi-

cance within the community. Songs like ‘The Ballad of Julie Jane” or “Forked River Mountain Blues,” on the other hand, are significant with reference to a local songwriting tradition in which local events and places are celebrated, evaluated, given shape. The second kind of significance erupts chaotically through the grids of the first one, like weeds disassembling the neat concrete squares of sidewalks. We take this cognitive dissonance into account, converting our verbs back into gerunds, gathering seemingly miscellaneous behaviors together under umbrellas like songwriting, nature reporting, and traditionalizing. Somehow we manage to deliver surveys, but our methods remain myste-

rious to historic preservationists and environmental protectionists. It must seem to them that we plunge into communities as if we are litmus paper, expecting to turn blue or red in the presence of folklife, depending upon whether the detected folklife is residual or emerging. Yet our work is not random, and we deplore “blitzkrieg” ethnography. We still do something that is between trial and error and rigid data collection. We do something that appears effortless to those we serve yet is impossible to hand over as a bundle of techniques. The folklorist’s strong suit is the ability to recognize the genres, codified idioms, or cultural texts of one community and make them appreciable to other communities. The Cultural Conservation report articulates this. ‘“Since culture is essentially abstract and ineffable, the approaches to its conservation often rely on the recognition of cultural expression, the overt evidence of cultural unity.’ There is a sense in which the law of the conservation of energy relates

to our work. ‘The total energy of an isolated system remains constant, irrespective of whatever internal changes may take place, with energy disappearing in one form and reappearing in another.’’? This is not unlike

220 MARY HUFFORD Dell Hymes’s assertion that “folklorists believe that capacity for aesthetic

experience, for shaping of deeply felt values into meaningful, apposite form, is present in all communities, and will find some means of expres-

sion among all.’’10 |

So often is Hymes’s address invoked by public sector folklorists that we might see it as a kind of manifesto or, even, whimsically, our own law of the conservation of meaning and form. Yet the forms, expressions, or texts that serve as our nouns differ dramatically from the buildings prized by historic preservationists and the rare species dear to environmentalists. We are generally more interested, as Hymes put it, in the problem of esthetic experience as part of everyday life, and we are more prone to collect evidence of esthetic resources that are ordinary but hidden, surfacing, for example, “in the voice of Mrs. Blanche Tohet of Warm Springs Reservation, Oregon, when, having finished fixing eels to dry one evening in the traditional way, she stood back, looking at them strung on a long line, and said, ‘There, in’t [sic] that beautiful?’ ”!

Apart from our penchant for what is ordinary over and against the penchant of historic and environmental preservationists for what is extra-

ordinary, there is another unavoidable asymmetry between our nouns and theirs: our nouns manipulate their nouns.” Local people in the Pinelands compete not only with each other, but with environmentalists and developers for the resources. Nationally significant landscapes generally emerge from an environmentalist esthetic, which means that the multivalent aspects of the landscapes are hidden when they should be actively read by planners for their varied meanings. Folklife expressions can provide planners with a basis for humanistic planning. They provide access to a portion of reality that is inaccessible to scenic preferences surveys, public hearings, and questionnaires. As Edmunds V. Bunkse put it: “Folklore can be. . . an indicator of the culture of a people, their collective sense of place in the world, and of the meanings with which they imbue the landscape. . . . By revealing actual, not ideal attitudes, folklore may be a better source of attitudes than the question-

naire, where an ideal (or colored) answer is almost unavoidable. .. . Moreover, folklore can open a window onto the world as it was experienced by common people in the past—an area that is altogether inaccessible to the tests and questionnaires of social and behavioral scientists.””! Furthermore, folklife expressions are frequently overlooked in esthetic resource surveys. In this connection folklorists can make a major contribu-

tion to the state of planning.

Consider nature contact as an esthetic resource. Aldo Leopold observed that people seek contact with nature in ‘‘overtly aesthetic exercises.”” Expressive features, he pointed out, are no less significant in a well-executed duck hunt than in a well-executed opera. However, the tra-

ditional avenues whereby people seek and display contact with nature

The Protection of Folklife 221 may place them in conflict. “The game-farmer kills hawks and the birdlover protects them in the name of shot-gun and field-glass hunting respectively. Such factions commonly label each other with short and ugly names, when, in fact, each is considering a different component of the recreational process.’’4 The kinds of things Ed Hazelton misses in a place are rarely inventoried because their significance is not understood by planners and only rarely articulated by local people. Rabbit dogs, for example, are for many local people what binoculars are to bird-watchers— they are a traditional means of bringing the natural world closer to its human observers. Those who consider themselves environmentalists have their own formalized ways of achieving nature contact, whereby they gather stories and images of the environment. Eugene Hunn, the project’s ethnobiologist, researched aspects of environmentalist culture as a participant-observer. For example, he documented the Christmas Bird Count, a ritual celebration, as he put it, on a par with deer hunting. That it happens each Christmas—an unusual time of the year for birding, since it is neither at the height of fall migration nor in the middle of winter—gives us a clue to its ritual value.45 As much as deer hunting reenacts the early frontier—in what Leopold called “‘the split-rail fence approach to recreation’ !6—the bird count could be seen as a formalized reenactment of what David Wilson calls “‘nature reporting”—which had its heyday in the time of William Bartram, Peter Kalm, and John James Audubon. Avid birders are collectors of rare and unusual sightings in nature.!” A good birder can name the bird from a flash of a wing ora characteristic dip in flight or from

partial clues in the bird’s environment. Jim Stasz, a biologist from Audubon, New Jersey, described birding virtuosity to Hunn. “’You could close your eyes, and listen to the birds and know what plants were there. Or you could look at the plants, even just smell them at certain seasons and you could predict what birds would be there.”’!® This is not radically dif-

ferent from the intimacy with nature displayed by a man whom Ed Hazelton described as a good duck hunter. He was the type of fella that thought like a duck. He thought like a duck. He

just knew every move they were gonna make. In other words, we'd sit there, gunning, and have the stools out, and in would come some ducks. And they wouldn’t come just the way he wanted ’em. Just exactly right. You could kill ’em, but he says, “They gotta do better than that.” And he would go out an he’d take this stool here and put it there, and this stool here and set it back there, and the next time they’d almost light in your lap. . . . He just thought like a duck all the time.’

This kind of artfulness persists whether the decoys are made of cork, shaped with rasps, or hollowed out of cedar. Many environmentalists are uneasy about the reserve’s commitment to traditional land-use patterns like agriculture, lumbering, and gather-

222 MARY HUFFORD ing. “Agriculture,” said one lobbyist to fieldworker Christine Cartwright, “is a selfish and anachronistic use of the land.”2? Another good-hearted nature lover asked dubiously, “Do we really want to let boatbuilders keep using up the cedar trees?’’2! Seen in this light, the widespread belief that folk culture belongs to a vanishing group of pineys could bea self-fulfilling prophecy. Although the reserve remains nominally in local hands, its official interpreters could unwittingly usurp it simply by renaming its parts. In an article on national parks in the West, David Stanley reminds us of the power invested in names and in naming. “In the tradition of Colum-

bus and the explorers that followed him, we assert our mastery of the landscape by naming its features, borrowing Native American names— or—more frequently—cancelling them in favor of terms borrowed from European geography, from fanciful resemblance (‘“The Castle,” “Citadel Mountain,” “The Great White Throne’”’) or from the egocentric act of memorializing oneself and. . . companions. It was Columbus, after all, who

reported the names he had affixed to the islands of the West Indies, concluding, ‘Thus, [renamed them all.’ ”22 When asked for their names of plants and animals, South Jersey people often said something like, ‘I don’t

know what the real name is—I call ’em ‘twinks’ (‘may pinks,’ ‘brown burrs,’ ‘green juggers,’ etc.).””3 When biologists use only Latin names or official English names for

flora and fauna and when historians exclude local interpretations of the past from their purview, they cancel out the hard-won authority of local people over their environments and pasts, no matter how open the public hearings are. Much of the literature on natural resource management is so technical that people who live on the land being diagnosed cannot understand it, though they deeply understand and appreciate their own environs. When George Campbell, a salt-hay farmer, wanted to develop a commercial campsite on his property near the Maurice River, there was a

hearing concerning the proposed campsite’s environmental impact. Campbell reported: “‘A big environmentalist around here testified against

the site that I picked. He said there were seven endangered species of grass there, you know. One of the people in the audience asked him what they was, and he said he just knew the Latin names. So he started to name them. So they asked him what they were in English. Well, he’s so worried about them, and he didn’t even know what they was! Them kind of things kind of destroy the credibility of environmentalists. They want to stop you just to be stopping you.’”4 Similarly, historians can unwittingly uphold the environmental bias by confining folklife to the past or by making it the province of the constantly vanishing breeds that pepper our country. For example, about fifty years ago, Elizabeth White began busily to propagate the world’s first cultivated blueberries from native huckleberry and blueberry bushes. She

The Protection of Folklife 223 found the best bushes with the help of local gatherers, for whom she named the bushes she used. In getting the early bushes I tried to name every bush after the finder. . . . And so I had the Adams bush found by Jim Adams, the Harding bush that was found by Ralph Harding, and the Dunphy bush that was found by Theodore Dunphy. When Sam Lemmon found a bush I could not name it the Lemmon bush, so I called it the Sam. Finally, Rube Leek of Chatsworth found a bush. I did not know it was anything special at that time, and I used the full name in my notes. . . . Coville called it the Rube, which I thought was a poor name for an aristocratic bush. He finally suggested that we call it the Rubel. And the Rubel has been the keystone of

blueberry breeding.”

After quoting White in their official report to the Pinelands Commission, the Whitesbog historians comment: ‘Thus it was that the last generation of the highly skilled woodsmen-gatherers gave their names to the first cultivated blueberries”—as though the taming of blueberries coincided with the demise of woodsmanship. Nearly three generations later, in the summer of 1985, the Whitesbog

Preservation Trust sponsored the second annual blueberry festival at Whitesbog. In the course of the festival, local children went ona blueberry hunt. Each child was equipped with a five-eighths-inch gauge made by Mark Darlington (Elizabeth White’s great-nephew) and sent into the old blueberry fields around Whitesbog to find the biggest berries. The winner received a flat of cultivated blueberries. Thus, in a bit of historic reenact-

ment, the relationship between the landed gentry and the woodsmengatherers who produced the cultivated blueberry is commemorated. Meanwhile, woodsmen continue to gather wild material and to identify huckleberries. Their names are not necessarily the names given to the bushes by Miss White. ““To my knowledge,” said Harry Payne, a timberman from Whiting, “‘there’s three kinds of huckleberries and three kinds of blueberries. There’s the upland blueberry, and the swamp blueberry, and the spong blueberry. The upland blueberry got ripe first. Then the spong blueberry got ripe next. The swamp blueberry, big high bushes in the shade, got ripe later.” Other local names for the wild berries contain information about where to find the berries, what they look like or taste like, and what they are next to in the food chain: upland blacks, also called grouseberries and dwarf hucks (gaylussacia dumosa); black huckleberry (gaylussacia resinosa); hog huckleberries (gaylussacia baccata); swamp blacks (vaccinium attroccum); sugar hucks (vaccinium vacilans); and dangleberries or billberries (gaylussacia frondosa). Such names convey more about sense

of place than the standardized designations that enable scientific study and agriculture.” People who do woods work for a portion of their income readily de-

224 MARY HUFFORD fine what a woodsman is, giving us glimpses of their canons of excellence. “Hazy’s a good woodsman,” said Cathy Dilkes to Christine Cartwright. “He’s about the best I’ve ever seen. Knocking blueberries, cattailing, ev-

erything. . . . When he’s out to work, he’s out to work—he’s not out to play. That’s the best way to be when you're out there to work in the woods. You’re out there to work, you’re not out there to play around.’”’8 Woodsmanship rests on a shared view of the woods as a work space and a shared vocabulary. It also rests on a sense of intimacy with the environment, an ability to navigate with confidence through a sea of scrub oak and dwarf pines possessed of an undulating sameness. Jack Davis, a fox hunter from Browns Mills, elaborated on the idea of woodsmanship.

“I’m a woodsman. A woodsman likes the woods and stays in ’em. .. . You know what I calla good woodsman? Johnny Earlin. Good woodsman. I’ll tell you why. He can be on a gravel road, foxhuntin’, and if he knew

there was another gravel road—now this was at night—he’d say, ‘l’llmeet you over on the other road.’ I'll drive the truck and get over there, and here come Johnny walkin’ out. When you can get through them places in the night, then’s when you’re a good woodsman.”””? Woodsmanship, as essential to agriculture as to hunting and gathering, is steeped in notions of resource stewardship. According to blueberry

grower Brad Thompson, a good woodsman knows how to care for the . woodland or headland on which his pure water supply depends, understands its ecological balance, and works together with it.%° In his fieldwork among the fishermen in Isle Royale National Park in

Michigan, Timothy Cochrane discovered his informants divided classifiers into two groups: “‘slashers” and ““lumpers.’’3! In the Pinelands the slashes and lumps of woodsmen-gatherers and specimen collectors rarely converge. The collectors, who are usually tapped for interpretations of the region, know exactly where to find the pine barrens tree frog (hyla andersoni) and the curly-grass fern (schizaea pusilla) along with the other species

that have come to represent the region. ‘Some species,” notes the Comprehensive Management Plan, ‘‘like the curley-grass fern and the broom crowberry (corema conradii) are considered Pinelands symbols.’’*2

Yet as Elizabeth Woodford, a local botanist, noted, curly-grass fern was never significant to local people. It took ““ferners” to bring it to the world’s attention. “Outsiders discovered curly-grass fern, not pineys. It took an educated man to recognize it was even a fern. The pineys were interested in a living. The plant didn’t mean anything to them.” ‘They’re ferns, that’s all, to me,” said Jack Cervetto, aWarren Grove woodsman. “‘T never made a big issue out of ferns.” However, he identified sweet fern (comptonia asplenifolia) as ““woodjin’s enemy.” It was not a fern to him.

There are instances where scientists do not “slash,” and woodsmen do—applying different names to the same species, depending upon the

The Protection of Folklife 225 plant’s stage of growth and its utility to florists. The genus phragmites, for example, is gathered in the summer as “reed plume” and again in the fall as “‘foxtails,”” when the “‘reed plumes” have gone to seed. Serotinous

pinecones, which remain closed on the trees until opened by fires, are distinguished according to their shades as first-year (brown), second-year

(grayish-brown), and third-year (grayish-black) cones. Leo Landy of Nesco, who buys the pinecones from “pine ballers,”” disdains the thirdyear cones. “Those pinecones are old enough to vote.” The pygmy forest, a vast tract of mysteriously stunted pine trees and scrub oaks, celebrated among naturalists, also provides a cash crop for local gatherers. They call the area “the plains,” and it is in part the product of a local code of resource stewardship that dictates when and how often to gather pinecones. Winter is the proper season, when the sap is coagulated. “You wait till frost,” said Jack Cervetto. ““The cone is mature then and it’s kinda dryin’ up and it snaps off the vine easier. You go to pull that off [in June], that’s so sticky with pitch. . . you have to get half the branch with it. . . my God, do an awful lot of damage to the tree, lettin’ that sap run right out of it. Then for about five years you won’t get any more pinecones out of that tree. You got the best nourishment out of it.” such good judgment yields the best cones that the trees and the marketplace will bear, according to Jack Cervetto. ‘A Jersey cone, when it’s open, it has an oak-shiny finish to it. Beautiful. . . . It’s the hardest cone that grows in the world and when it opens up it looks exactly like a rose.” Ironically, it was the traditional patterns of land disturbance that produced habitats favorable to plants like schizaea pusilla, as botanist Eugene Vivian pointed out. “Disturbance by fire, lumbering, turfing, agriculture, road clearance and construction of roads and other rights-of-way have produced habitats favorable for the development and establishment of many rare, threatened or distinctive plant species in the New Jersey Pine Barrens. Evidence is mounting to indicate that succession in these areas of disturbance tends to reduce or eliminate these favorable habitats.’ The point is simply that natural habitats are also folklife habitats, and those who put the reserve together realized this. The Commission, for example, wants to encourage gathering but has no detailed body of documentation on it. Romantic views that confuse such gathering with subsistence life-styles fill the documentary void. One woman felt that we were going too far afield in documenting lumbering, hunting, trapping, food festivals, agriculture, and yardscapes, believing that the region’s folk culture belonged only to pine ballers. ““Men and women who give lectures on the folklore of the Pine Barrens, they show a pile of pinecones, people who come in with sacks on their backs of things they’ve collected. That, to me, would be what you would be after. That’s piney culture because it’s gone on for centuries.” Another woman added: “‘Like the Indians lived, with

226 MARY HUFFORD the environment. Well, pineys would be typical, and the ones you’d want

to study would be ones that lived here without changing the environment—without putting in lawns and chrysanthemums.’’6 On the ordinary side of things, the mosquito emerges in its own way as a symbol of insider/outsider dynamics and of the competition between recreational and occupational groups for the same resources. Centuries of interaction with mosquitoes have netted the region a rich store of hyperbole. The mosquito is referred to as the state bird. The insect, that original skin diver, is embedded in the region’s toponymy: Mosquito Cove and Skeeter Point. South Jersey men are supposed to be off-limits to mosquitoes. Lou Golin of Whiting, who buys cattails, pinecones, and sugar

huck from gatherers, told Eugene Hunn that true pineys are naturally repellent to mosquitoes and sand fleas that would keep regular people from doing woods work.*” Halpert recorded a story about ‘‘two Jersey moskeeters carryin’ a cow across the meader.’’* “The tourists move in here for what we've got,” said George Campbell to Eugene Hunn. “But then they don’t want everything we've got: they don’t want the mosquito.” A number of old-timers who work in the meadows complained about the imbalances wrought by the Mosquito Commission. They claimed that the Commission’s use of DDT to poison the mosquitoes, for the benefit of

newcomers and tourists, was destroying their own habitats. Bill Lee, an eighty-five-year-old fisherman and trapper, testified: ‘“We despise the. . . Mosquito Commission. Everybody. My, for the damage, and what they done, my gosh. Just spray and spray and spray and spray right on. We had grasshoppers fly, they would down to the beach. Millions of’em. And you can’t even see one anymore. They killed all the crickets, you know, and our little birds, I suppose, ate them. Killed them all off. We had blue birds and everything, and we don’t even have one no more. I forget the different

things they done on account of where they sprayed for mosquitoes. It’s positively awful.’’%?

The Mosquito Commission biologists have investigated the situation and have countered that their methods of mosquito control have nothing

to do with the annual fish kills and the death of young muskrats. The beliefs persist, unencumbered by presentations of scientific fact. For George Campbell nature contact is an important esthetic resource in his work as a salt-hay farmer, for which he is willing to endure mosquitoes. It infuriated me a few years ago. They was sayin’ I was raisin’ all the mosquitoes in the salt meadows, and I said, ‘Well, you come in and you wiped out all the natural enemies of the mosquito and then you claim I’m raisin’ ’em.” Because they wiped out the fiddler crabs. The whole meadows was sterile. The fiddler crabs was gone, the mussels was gone, the fish in the ditches was gone, the crabs in the ditches was gone. . . . 1 was pleasantly surprised how quick the meadows has come back since they quit using it. The fiddler crabs is back strong now. The mead_ ows just came back to life again. The dragonflies is back, and it’s good to see ’em.”

The Protection of Folklife 227 By some accounts, mosquitoes signify a society in good working order as well. Jack Cervetto made this point with a story about George Cranmer’s trip to Philadelphia. Cranmer, who would be more than a hundred if still alive, had never gone much beyond Warren Grove. In his later years, he accepted an invitation from some young friends to go to Philadelphia. His neighbors assembled on his return, curious to hear his impressions. What did he think of it? “Why, in Philadelphia,” he said, “people live on top of one another out there!’”” How were the mosquitoes? “Why a mosquito couldn’t live in Philadelphia!’’*! There is much room for collaboration among conservation specialists in cultural and natural spheres, and collaborative documentation should be ongoing. At the time of this writing, the American Folklife Center, with the Pinelands Commission, is exploring structures and strategies for requiring and implementing folklife resource assessments along with natural, historic, and archaeological resource assessments. Our research can complement the work of environmentalists and historians, documenting, for example, the foraging practices protected but not described by the Comprehensive Management Plan. Beyond this, it should also mediate cognitive dissonance by focusing on what we might call the vernacular management and interpretation of resources—cultural as well as natural. What are all the possible relationships between people and natural resources? How are those relationships formalized? How do ‘“euardians of the landscape” name, classify, and transform the land and its resources? How do they assemble their pasts and with what historic resources? How do their concepts align with those of formal history, ecolo-

gy, and science? How do they interpret natural resources and, through various kinds of cultural and natural display, present themselves to outsiders and to each other? Folklife resources do not parallel historic, archaeological, and natural resources—they are better perceived as extensions of them, as the knowledge of that enlivens the knowledge about the environment. What folklorists have to offer the planning profession is the concept of folklife expressions as resources that already solve many interpretive and managerial problems. Environmental stewardship would, thus, become part of the larger

enterprise of socionatural stewardship. NOTES 1. Nora Rubinstein and Tom Carroll, taped interview, Nov. 4, 1983. 2. The Pinelands Folklife Project was conducted in 1983 and 1984 by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. See Mary Hufford, One Space, Many Places: Folklife and Land Use in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve (Washington, D.C.: American Folklife Center, 1986). 3. roan McPhee, The Pine Barrens (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1968). 4. Comprehensive Management Plan for the Pinelands National Reserve (National Parks and

228 MARY HUFFORD Recreation Act, 1978) and Pinelands Area (New Jersey Pinelands Protection Act, 1979) (New Lisbon,

N.J.: Pinelands Commission, 1980). 5. Ormond Loomis, Cultural Conservation: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in the United States, Publications of the American Folklife Center, no. 10 (Washington, D.C.: Library of

, Congress, 1983).

6. For discussion of diversification and watermanship as cultural resources, see Paula Johnson, “Maritime Preservation and Cultural Conservation: The Future of Chesapeake Bay Waterman,” Paper delivered at the Third National Maritime Heritage Conference, National Trust for Historic Preservation, Baltimore, Md., Oct. 27, 1984. Unpublished manuscript. 7. Herbert Halpert, “Some Ballads and Folk Songs from New Jersey,” Journal of American Folklore 52 (1939): 52-54. Gerald Parsons pointed out that this is the only American version of ‘The Unquiet Grave.” 8. Loomis, Cultural Conservation, p. 7. 9. “Conservation of energy,” in Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster, 1983), p. 279. 10. Dell Hymes, “Folklore’s Nature and the Sun’s Myth,” Journal of American Folklore 88 (1975): 345-69, 348.

11. Ibid. The passages from Hymes, so sensible to public sector folklorists, originally comprised part of his testimony before the Senate in favor of the American Folklife Center. Thus, they are actually part of the history of public sector folklore. 12. The reason folklorists are uncomfortable in arts councils is because it creates a problem in logical typing. Our categories run counter to theirs. They say ‘‘art”; we say “‘esthetic systems,” and so the consumers of “high art’’ who employ us logically enter our purview, though we are, bureaucratically, contained within theirs. This is jarring for all of us. 13. Edmunds V. Bunkse, ‘““Commoner Attitudes toward Landscape and Nature,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 68 (1978): 560.

14. Aldo Leopold, ‘‘The Conservation Esthetic,” in A Sand County Almanac (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1949), pp. 165-77.

15. Alan Jabbour, himself an avid birder, pointed this out. 16. Leopold, ‘Wildlife in American Culture,” Sand County Almanac, p. 177.

17. David Wilson, ‘The Nature Reporter in the Presence of Nature and Culture,” in In the Presence of Nature (Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1978), pp. 1-12.

18. Eugene Hunn, taped interview, Dec. 19, 1983. 19. Nora Rubinstein and Tom Carroll, taped interview, Nov. 4, 1983. 20. Christine Cartwright, field notes, Oct. 23, 1983. 21. Personal communication to Mary Hufford, June 1984. 22. David Stanley, ‘National Parks as Cultural Artifacts,” in Parks in the West and American Culture (Sun Valley, Idaho: Institute of the American West, 1984), p. 15. 23. ‘“Twinks” is a local name for the rufous-side towhee (pipilo erythophthalmus), according to Clifford Frazee of Forked River. Alan Jabbour observed that it may be related to “Chewink,” an onomatopoetic rendition of the bird’s call, which Roger Tory Peterson also cites as one of its common names in A Field Guide to the Birds (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1947), p. 229. In the upland South, the bird’s call is heard as “Joe Reed,” the name it goes by in the mountains. 24. Eugene Hunn, taped interview, March 19, 1984. 25. Personal communication with Elizabeth White, 1953, cited in William Bolger, Herbert J. Githens, and Edward 5S. Rutsch, Historic Architectural Survey and Preservation Planning Project for the Village of Whitesbog (Morristown: New Jersey Conservation Foundation, 1982), p. 46. 26. Mary Hufford, taped interview, Nov. 16, 1983. 27. Plants keyed out by Eugene Hunn in “Pinelands Folklife Project: Final Report,” March 15, 1985. Unpublished manuscript. 28. Christine Cartwright and Sue Samuelson, taped interview, VFW pig roast, 1983.

The Protection of Folklife 229 29. Mary Hufford, taped interview, Nov. 1980. 30. Christine Cartwright, field notes, Oct. 1983. 31. Timothy Cochrane, ‘The Folklife Expressions of Three Isle Royale Fishermen: A Sense of Place Examination” (Master’s thesis, Western Kentucky University, 1982). 32. Comprehensive Management Plan, p. 63.

33. Mary Hufford and Sue Samuelson, taped interview, Nov. 13, 1983. 34. Eugene Hunn, taped interview, March 1984. (Clifford Frazee calls the plant ‘“sandtick weed,” because it is loaded with sand ticks, which climb onto anyone brushing against it. “Woodjin” is a local portmanteau word combining ‘“woodsman” and “‘injun.”’) Information in the next three paragraphs is also drawn from Hunn’s interviews. 35. Eugene Vivian, “Habitat Investigations of Threatened Plant Species in the New Jersey Pine Barrens,” in Natural and Cultural Resources of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, ed. John

Sinton (Pomona, N.J.: Stockton State College Center for Environmental Research, 1979), p. 132.

36. Mary Hufford and Sue Samuelson, taped interview, Nov. 13, 1983. 37. Eugene Hunn, field notes, March 21, 1984. Both Clifford Frazee and Jack Cervetto

claimed immunity from mosquitoes. Cervetto reports that mosquitoes shun the cedar swamps, disliking an “‘iodiney’”’ smell emitted by sphagnum moss. In 1940 Cornelius Weygant wrote that “the moot question as to whether a mosquito ever bites a Jerseyman.. . is not settled yet. [Down Jersey (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1940), p. 161.] In 1940

Herbert Halpert recorded the following story from Charles E. Grant. “I was down to Chatsworth about fifteen years ago talkin’ to George Bowers. And he was a-standin’ there, his face and neck was covered with mosquitos. I was a-fightin’ them off with both hands. And I asked him what was the reason he wasn’t brushin them off. And he said that he was used to them, and they had their holes already bored so they could stick their bills in and he didn’t feel them. They went right in the old holes where they had been. Everyone that stung me had to bore a new hole.” [” Folktales and Legends from the New Jersey Pines: A Collection and Study” (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1947), p. 364. ] 38. Herbert Halpert, interview with W.J. Richmond, ibid., p. 365. 39. Eugene Hunn, taped interview, June 24, 1984. 40. Jens Lund, taped interview, Nov. 7, 1983. 41. Eugene Hunn, field notes. 42. See Jonathon Berger and John Walter Sinton, Water, Earth, and Fire: Land Use and Environmental Planning in the New Jersey Pine Barrens (Baltimore: John Hopkins Univ. Press, 1985) pp. 155-93, for a discussion for the region as a socionatural system.

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A Tougher Politics

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DAVID E. WHISNANT ~WWH Public Sector Folklore as Intervention Lessons from the Past, Prospects for the Future

To engage with public issues and act in the public arena is to intervene— inescapably—in the lives of individuals and in the institutions that embody their collective will and vision. The question is not whether we shall

intervene, but how and with what effects, amid what particular set of historical, cultural, and political circumstances, and in the service of what values and social vision. Thus, the public sector folklore enterprise is unavoidably interventionist, and the high-minded nature of the work itself does not necessarily guarantee that its effects will always be desirable. Having admitted both of those things, one is better prepared to assess the implications of the activity. In this brief essay, I reflect upon public sector folklore in the light of

what writing All That Is Native and Fine taught me about cultural intervention, consider what the present reactionary political climate may imply for public sector folklore work, and suggest that effective and progressive intervention by public sector folklorists in the near future will likely require a tougher political analysis than has thus far frequently characterized their enterprise. ! The Mixed Legacy of Cultural Intervention

Since we have only lately begun to develop a cadre of publicly financed workers in traditional culture, much of what has been done in that sector (with the notable exception of the New Deal period) was done by

variously motivated private individuals who collected, archived, photographed, filmed, recorded, and established a variety of cultural programs and institutions. My prior study of the work of a few such people in

one region suggests that the record of their accomplishment is quite

mixed. Thus, however justifiably we may applaud some earlier intervenors for their energy, their frequent selflessness, their sometimes quite remarkable farsightedness and effectiveness, their willingness to swim against the current, and their championing of those who had few other champions, we cannot but observe that there were also serious problems

234 DAVID E. WHISNANT and miscalculations. Consequently, their legacy is replete with cautions for latter-day cultural intervenors such as public sector folklorists. As I understand public sector folklore (admittedly from some distance), the enterprise appears to have inherited, and to some extent preserved, both positive and negative aspects of that earlier history of private cultural intervention. The earlier experience lingers sometimes as a rather literal model (as, for example, in the case of festivals) but more often as nuance, tacit assumption, ingrained tendency. While one should not be ungrateful for the positive aspects of one’s professional heritage, in a reac-

tionary period such as this, when the odds are long, the funds are short, and the opposition strong, one should be particularly mindful of the hazardous baggage forwarded by one’s predecessors. I detect, for example, a residual element of elitism withinpublic sector folklore. It is different from the elitism of, say, John Powell, who promoted

the collecting of ballads (and the singing of them at the White Top Folk Festival) because they not only helped confirm what he considered to be the proud Saxon heritage of white FFV families, but also could be used as raw material and inspiration by elite composers of classical music. As a professional group, folklorists are beyond that. And yet the elitism lingers nevertheless. We who make traditional

culture our professional concern are the ones who—while the world watches television, plays golf, shops at the K-Mart, and thinks Judy Collins is a folksinger—know about pysanky and kachina dolls, bank barns and I-houses, corridos and blues stanzas. At this level the festivals we stage and the exhibits we mount are to some extent publicly funded monuments to our own collective good taste and ability to separate tradcult sheep from masscult goats. It is, of course, true that in order to function responsibly public sector folklorists must be both willing and able to make such discriminations. But the danger is that by doing so they may become insensitive to the more comprehensive cultural situation of the people whose lives and culture they undertake to represent. In my estimation too many festivals, phonograph records, and films produced by public sector folklorists continue to focus simply upon people who have opted to retain and practice tradition; they pay little attention to the pain or cost of such choices or the complex social circumstances in which they were made. In fact, however, most people have to contend daily with the seismic shifting of cultural, social, and tectonic plates, as a result of which the

challenge of surviving as individuals, families, and communities frequently raises the cost of relatively rarefied cultural discriminations and choices beyond the point of diminishing returns. It might in fact be possible to argue that most people (especially those with limited incomes) are continually squeezed between cultural preferences and economic and social realities. Sooner or later, those costs, pressures, and contradictions

Lessons and Prospects 235 must not only be admitted by public sector folklorists, but become the subject of films and festivals and exhibits. Another received hazard: Earlier intervenors also focused most characteristically upon the minute description or anxious preservation of supposedly exotic or endangered cultural artifacts. ‘To do so was more emo-

tionally satisfying as well as simpler socially and politically than other choices that might have been made. Although both description and preservation are necessary and worthy activities, one thing that frequently got left out was the understanding, interpreting, and reinforcing of vital and creative processes of cultural adaptation and change. For example, when Katherine Pettit and May Stone first came to the Forks of Troublesome in eastern Kentucky at the turn of the century to found Hindman Settlement School, they encountered a remarkable local man named Basil Beverly, a singer and composer of ballads. Because he knew a few older ballads, he was interesting to ‘‘the quare women.” Butas a composer of many new ones, he was not, because he wrote about what they considered to be merely trivial local events like the burning of the post office, or lamentable modern ones like the coming of the railroad into their

remote folkloric paradise. Thus, they saw merely as a partly corrupted bearer of tradition a young man who seems to have been struggling valiantly and creatively to keep his cultural balance in the midst of potentially disorienting cultural change—one foot on one tectonic plate and one on the other. For both Basil Beverly’s neighbors and the world outside the

mountains to whom Pettit and Stone mailed their fund-seeking brochures, that balancing act was more needful of being understood than were

the artifacts themselves—of either type. :

One day during her summer sojourn in the mountains, Katherine Pettit sat in her tent headquarters and wrote in her journal that Basil Beverly had told her he had written a ballad about “you’ns and the tents”— about, that is to say, how he viewed, understood, and was assimilating the advent of this most recent and perplexing social and cultural event into his life and consciousness. Had that ballad been recorded and had Basil Beverly’s act of creative synthesis and interpretation been more highly valued than his labored efforts at recollection, his ballad about “‘you’ns and the tent” might have been understood (and properly, it seems to me) as far more valuable than however many more versions of Child number whatever. In my view, attention to the socially, politically, and economically enmeshed process of cultural change is after lo these many years still not nearly as prominent in the work of public sector folklorists as it needs to be. Mere description of marvelous but essentially inexplicable survivals is still too dominant a preoccupation. Cultural survey after cultural survey is undertaken, and archives swell. But what has to be understood is that that choice—the choice of artifact description as opposed to process interpreta-

236 DAVID E. WHISNANT tion—is itself an act of intervention in the public understanding of culture and culture change and probably on the whole not a very helpful act at that. It is heretical to suggest but true, nevertheless, I think, that it is not self-evidently a good thing to collect more and more traditional and supposedly endangered cultural artifacts.

Indeed, to push this argument one step further, earlier intervenors such as Pettit and Stone were far too prone to treat culture—to understand it, collect it, preserve it, present it, interpret it—in relative isolation from its political and economic context. A primary reason why Olive Dame Campbell built her Danish folk school in Cherokee County was that the little community of Brasstown was (she thought) isolated from certain dis-

turbing currents of change. But when those currents turned out to be prominent rather than absent, the school lost its way and retreated into romantic cultural programming that was at best picturesquely irrelevant and at worst obfuscatory and reactionary. Thus, if public sector folklorists are to improve upon the work of the earlier generation of intervenors, they must pay greater attention to the

economic, political, and social matrix within which valued traditional forms of cultural expression and behavior are situated. That a fiddler or ballad singer or potter is in his or her daily life a bus driver or beautician or

insurance agent or furniture plant worker is not merely a biographical detail to be mentioned in passing; it is a key to possibilities of cultural analysis too infrequently encountered in record liner notes, festival programs, exhibit notes, and the like. And finally, earlier cultural workers bequeathed a tendency to sanitize and romanticize traditional culture. As an eclectic musician who had already recorded commercially, White Top Folk Festival banjo player Jack

Reedy naturally accommodated his playing to the more popular styles preferred by his listeners. But festival organizer Annabel Morris Buchanan spent hours teaching him how to “keep it modal” when he played on White Top so that the public illusion of an enclave of precommercial music could be maintained for the festival audience. We are sensitive enough these days not to tamper with style and re-

pertoire in such a high-handed way, but the sanitizing, romanticizing tendencies linger, nevertheless, in film after film, exhibit after exhibit, festival after festival that portrays native Americans, Appalachian whites, Cajuns, blacks, or whatever other group as creative, coherently and harmoniously ordered into organic communities, subtly in touch with their own feelings and with each other, gentle with their children, respectful of the land, mindful of the value of their cultural traditions, and so on. And indeed many of them are frequently many of those things. But not always, not unfailingly, not to the exclusion of other less admirable patterns and traits. Anyone who has worked extensively within any cultural group has

Lessons and Prospects 237 also encountered jealousies, hostilities, irrationalities, stresses, schisms, pathologies, and sundry other evidence that fiddlers, ballad singers, potters, weavers, and probably native American sand painters, too, for all I know, partake of the full range of the frailties of human nature and human society. However (and here is the crucial point), almost never does one catcha

glimpse of that dark side of traditional culture through public sector folklore presentations. It is discussed from time to time in scholarly monographs (as in the latter chapters of John Hostetler’s Amish Society, for exam-

ple), but the audience for public sector folklore presentations rarely is asked to deal with it.? J readily grant that to include such a perspective in public presentations is difficult. I grant also that we have at present virtually no models of how to do it. But I submit that until we develop such a capacity we will

. continue to do a disservice both to the represented cultures and to our audiences. The public wants and needs to be reassured that the past is not wholly devalued and lost; at that task public sector folklorists perform admirably. But it also needs to be reminded that people retain, employ, and celebrate what has long been good in human nature and human society

within (and despite) a constant struggle against human frailty, human cussedness, social pathology, and the irreducible tendency of all systems toward entropy. Thus, public sector folklorists draw upon a mixed set of examples in their work; the hazards should not be lightly dismissed. It is too easy to say

yes, but our predecessors were private, freewheeling entrepreneurs, while we are public servants whose work is subject to scrupulous peer review; they were self-taught amateurs, but we are formally trained professionals; their concept of culture was simple, romantic, and abstract, but ours is complex and grounded in research. All of this may be true, but because the deep structures of any discipline change slowly, the subliminal tendencies can be very durable. However useful the lessons of those earlier interventions may be, the comparison is, nevertheless, to some degree beside the point, for we live in such different times, and both the challenges and the risks are of sucha different order. Culture Workers and the Times

It is paradoxical that public awareness of and concern for cultural policy came to the fore just before the onset of what will certainly go down as one of the most reactionary periodsiin our national history. Thus, public sector folklorists who wish to have a substantial positive impact upon the formation of public policy with respect to traditional culture will face for-

238 DAVID E. WHISNANT midable obstacles for many years to come, since the central dynamics of the Reagan years are almost certain to continue considerably beyond the Reagan presidency itself. Animmediate problem is that public discourse is increasingly characterized by a cynical*(and essentially ahistorical) emphasis upon a sim-

plistically conceived private, insular self—an entrepreneurial, Algeresque, eye-on-the-main-chance striver, isolated and insulated from any common core of values and behaviors except those jingoistic ones celebrated by the sundry displaced admen, professional ideologues, and corporate hustlers who make up the Reagan entourage. We have never been particularly blessed in the United States with a very general or secure understanding of the grounding of identity in community, of the social costs or implications of private entrepreneurial acts, of structural inequalities based in, for example, race or culture. And that understanding is now particularly fragile and embattled. Hence, perspectives that emphasize a notion of the self rooted in communally shared

values and behaviors, that celebrate the humane interdependencies of small communities, and that demand structural equality within large ones are likely to have a hard go at the level of both discourse and policy. Second, and as a consequence of this shift in values and assumptions, public funds are being shunted increasingly into the hands of the upper class, private corporations, and the military. Clearly, it is not a shift that bodes well for public sector workers in traditional culture. Anyone who doubts that this shift is occurring rapidly need only peruse a few statistics that are almost daily available in the newspapers: the change since World War IT in the percentage of federal tax revenues derived from individuals as opposed to corporations, for example, the number of corporations that

pay no taxes at all, the projected gains and losses to persons at various levels of income from the Reagan administration’s proposed tax-reform schemes, the decreases in public assistance of all types to poor and lowincome families, or—to take the most egregious example—the latest Pentagon budget. Thus, for the foreseeable future, public sector folklorists (along with most other nonmilitary public servants) will have to scramble to survive on bake-sale budgets. Having to do so will challenge not only

their programmatic ingenuity as they try to remain effective, but their psychic resources as well, as they struggle to maintain self-respect and self-confidence. Third, as a consequence of the shift of public funds, we are witnessing

a broad destruction of public institutions and serious skewing of those that remain. Public schools, libraries, museums, archives, parks, health care facilities, communications (public television, for example), and mass transit are all favorites of the Reagan budget cutters. Even within public

universities, power is shifting dramatically to those disciplines and activities that are most immediately useful to corporations and the military.

Lessons and Prospects 239 Indeed, not only are the institutions themselves being destroyed and warped, but public understanding of, confidence in, and commitment to such institutions is being seriously eroded (whether permanently or not we will not know fora long time). Unfortunately, these cuts, shifts, erosions, and warpings are occurring regularly in institutions that are vital to the work of public sector folklorists. Fourth, we are witnessing a sustained drive toward a fundamentalist (in both the religious and the secular sense) WASP hegemony both domestically and internationally and a consequent suspicion of and pressure

against cultural differences, local autonomy, and marginal expressive forms. In the name of democracy, freedom, and equality, the Civil Rights

Commission is packed with racists, the Justice Department threatens states and cities that are trying to achieve racial balance in public schools, bilingual education programs are eliminated, and religious and ideological tests are proposed for appointees to federal judgeships. As a corollary it merits noting that within the Reagan policy-making establishment, simple answers, simple analyses, and bumper-sticker slogans are the norm. Reagan himself is a master of the label, the platitude, the one-liner put-down based on the latest Reader's Digest anecdote, and his propensity is regularly mimicked these days in public discourse. Ed Meese opines that so many people stand in soup lines because it is easier

than working, and Reagan says that South Africa’s state of emergency declaration is justified to ““keep down violence.” Moreover, such slogans are being marketed as powerfully and quickly as they are being generated. It is the epoch, we dare not for a moment forget, not only of Reagan, but also of high-tech sloganeer Richard Viguerie’s ever-ready supercomputer mailing lists, of Jesse Helms’s Congressional Club, and of Jerry Falwell in the pulpit every Sunday morning, asking the Lord to bless them all—including P.W. Botha’s South Africa—and to crush forever the Evil Empire. To be sure, this preference for platitude and slogan debases all public discourse. Whether the problems it poses for the making of cultural policy are greater than those in other policy areas, I cannot judge. But clearly it creates serious problems for culture workers, because in the realm of culture there are no simple answers, and no simple analysis will serve. Pub-

licly useful discussions of culture, of cultural differences, of cultural change cannot easily occur in a climate of simpleminded sloganeering. Hence, the very mode of discourse most needed by culture workers is out of sync with the times. And finally, the public sector itself is shrinking. We have never had a very broad conception of what policy concerns or institutions legitimately

ought—in line with our relatively liberal formal values—to be included within the public sector in the United States. During the half-century preceding the advent of the Reagan administration (with some periodic fluc-

tuations), the public sector had enlarged considerably. But that pattern

240 DAVID E. WHISNANT has now been dramatically reversed as agency after agency is cut back, phased out, or reoriented to serve the private interests of small elites or corporations. Thus, the expansion of public sector folklore during the past decade must finally be understood as a historical anomaly—as a sixties and seventies holdover that the New Right has not yet found a way to derail—or perhaps has not yet perceived as enough of a threat to bother with. If even part of what [ have suggested is true, then clearly public sector folklorists and all other culture workers (with the partial exception of those working with elite culture, who have both a preestablished legitimacy and more reliable access to foundation and corporate funds) havea hard row to hoe. Toward a Tougher Politics

Despite the perilousness of the times, public sector folklorists are especially advantageously situated to intervene positively and humanely in the development of cultural policy and, thus, in the evolving politics of culture in the United States. They are, first of all, some of the very few public agency personnel whose work brings them regularly and directly into touch with ordinary people in ordinary situations. Public health, public safety, and social service workers work directly with ordinary people but most frequently only in situations involving crisis or pathology. Public sector folklorists, on the other hand, have regular opportunities to observe how reasonably healthy and happy citizens live their lives, what their val-

ues and preferences are, what daily choices they make, and how they express themselves. Moreover, the public sector folklore enterprise is constantly informed by a perspective that characteristically emphasizes the vital social and cultural bases of individual identity, the crucial continuities and interdependencies within human communities, and the primacy of the values, creative energies, and expressive modes of ordinary citizens. The very nature of the work is such that it is the texture of life that is its central focus, instead of some abstracted aspect of it. Public sector folklorists are, thus, vitally positioned to help guide pub-

lic policy from within bureaucracies on the basis of both a historically grounded perspective and an intimate knowledge of the actual lives and communities within which the policy will be implemented. There are agencies to be shaped, policies to be designed, public funds (limited though they are) to be spent, personnel in other agencies to be educated concerning the cultural implications of policy-making. And above all, there is a public to be sensitized to the fact that, our pious national myths notwithstanding, cultural diversity has survived in the United States against the odds, in spite of policy; that culture is not only a legitimate but

Lessons and Prospects 241 also a primary policy concern; that making policy concerning culture is no more difficult or hazardous than making it in any other area; that there are important cultural dimensions to the making of all public policy. Public sector folklorists can, therefore, bring to public discourse and

policy-making not only their specific professional expertise, but also an alternative social and political analysis—one not notably in evidence in this reactionary period. Depressing as is the character of the times, it is bolstering to note that—paradoxically—the very reactionary characteristics of the present social and political order may themselves in time produce a more receptive climate for public sector folklore work. Consider the possibility, for example, that because the encroaching pressures, ironies, and contradictions of the current revolution from the right fall most heavily upon the more so-

cially, economically, and culturally marginal, they may eventually produce a more hospitable climate for work related to traditional culture. Such people are after all the principal focus for public sector folklore work,

and virtually no one else is taking them seriously. Beyond that I would suggest, however, that in a paradoxical way, the right-wing revolution itself may eventually produce a populace that is analytically tougher and

more competent, more politically enlightened and progressive, and among whom cultural work and cultural policy may achieve an enhanced status. A favorite code phrase of the Reagan revolution is less government. It, and the ideological complex of which it is a part, feeds upon a deep and perhaps characteristically American public paranoia concerning government itself, taxation, conscious political ideology, and the very formation of public policy. Consequently, it has wide appeal at the national level, which—I venture—is the principal context in which Americans hazard to engage in abstract political discussion. It has some appeal at the state level, obviously, as has been evident recently, for example, in the Helms versus Hunt Senate race in North Carolina or in the various tax-limiting and budget-balancing referenda. At the local level, however, the ideology is fraying as people begin to have to face the fact that less government means, in practice, a broad decline in public services and institutions, toxic waste dump-—ravaged local environments around which the cancer rates rise like contour lines on a Corps of Engineers topographic map, higher taxes propelled by a spiral-

ing national debt, and a future imperiled by the possibility of a nuclear war, which has as its sole rationale a conflict between two equally paranoid ideologies of the purest abstract sort. As people confront these problems at the local level, they are inevitably educating themselves concerning the concrete and daily implications of abstract ideology and remote national policy, as well as concerning the social, political, economic, and ideological structures in which their lives

242 DAVID E. WHISNANT are enmeshed. For as they touch the web at any one of its local intersections, the whole thing vibrates: toxic wastes are dumped in backyards, for example, by local subsidiaries of international corporations; those corporations are funneling the money to the PACs that are electing the legislators who in turn are rewriting the environmental regulations; the directors of any one corporation are interlocked with those of countless other corporations (and think tanks and universities) that are providing the money and shaping the arguments for the Falwells and Vigueries, whose constituents are lobbying Congress for funds to derail reform in Latin America in order to make the hemisphere safe for the same corporate expansion and cynicism that is fouling their own backyards. And what is it in all of that that augurs well for such an enterprise as public sector folklore? Several things, possibly. One is that people’s sense of the necessity of ahumane social contract may be reinforced: local experience is in this respect flying increasingly in the face of reactionary national ideology. So far as lam aware, virtually all signs of the development of a more enlightened politics are emerging at the local rather than at the national level. Another flicker of hope lies in the fact that a high percentage of local issues point naturally toward the necessity of reexamining a simple-

minded commitment to change and progress. Moreover, it is most frequently lower-class people who mount the challenges—since it is in their

backyards that chemical trash gets dumped, their neighborhoods in which vital public services are terminated—and who thereby become politicized.

Not to draw this observation out unduly, I simply note that these changes—if indeed they are occurring—are congruent with the commitments of public sector folklorists, rather than opposed to them, as are so

many of the changes at the national level. To take advantage of the congruence, however, public sector folklorists will have to develop a surer

sense of the inescapably political arena in which they work and greater skill in linking their efforts to movements toward liberation among those social, economic, and cultural groups to which their energies have long been committed. They will, in sum, have to develop a much tougher politics than they have thus far customarily employed. Those politics can have their origin at least in nothing more than a careful look at how the public sector folklore enterprise itself is situated within the current political dynamic.

| Obviously, the enterprise is expanding. Tentative beginnings were made by John Wesley Powell and the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879 and a half-century later by Robert Winslow Gordon at the Library of Congress. The first public sector folklorist was hired at the state level fewer than twenty years ago, at about the same time that Ralph Rinzler established the Festival of American Folklife at the Smithsonian. Scores have been hired during the past five years, largely as a result of Bess Hawes’s

Lessons and Prospects 243 indefatigable work as head of the Folk Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts. The August 1985 issue of the American Folklore Society Newsletter notes that eleven full-time positions were currently available. These are boom times for public sector folklorists, probably more so (in percentage terms) than for anyone else besides computer programmers. It is important to understand, however, that the expansion entails special perils that are accentuated to some degree by the very nature of the enterprise itself.

The first is simple and familiar: the possibility that the new professionals, weary from joblessness or a series of soft-money, short-term con-

tract positions and newly positioned in secure jobs within the bureaucracy, will be partly neutralized in their potential effectiveness by a prudential careerist conservatism—by placing personal and professional survival ahead of their accustomed and more principled, but riskier, commitment to those who have few other advocates within the public sector. How each public sector folklorist meets that challenge will be a function of both developed character and emerging political sophistication. The second peril has to do with co-optation of the enterprise itself. Why United Technologies Corporation—whose 189,000 employees produce military jet aircraft and helicopters, rocket engines, military electronic systems, and sundry other Pentagon desiderata, according to the 1984 Standard and Poor’s Register of Corporations—should have considered it

to be in its corporate interest during the early months of the first Reagan administration to sponsor the lavish American Folklife Center exhibit on the American cowboy I am not sure, but I have my suspicions.* Perhaps my suspicions are paranoid, but I don’t ordinarily think of defense contractors as eleemosynary institutions. Since at the very least one would not assume worldwide cultural harmony to be in United Technologies’ particular corporate interest, they must have considered it in some other respects desirable to help reinforce a renascent ‘‘Death Valley Days” mentality.

In any case, the recent heated exchanges between Michael Owen Jones, Robert McCarl, and others over the ethics and politics of ‘“organizational” (principally business and corporate as I understand it) folklore suggest that the discipline is as yet of no settled opinion about the dangers of

co-optation. And while those dangers exist in most times and places for any discipline and especially for those that adopt a social or political posture that is in any sense critical, I suggest that they are particularly acute in these times for this discipline. This is so, I think, because like most reactionary regimes (one recalls Franco in Spain, not to mention other even less savory examples) the current administration is attempting to legitimize and sell its program under the very banner of tradition. And in such circumstances, those who claim expertise in the area of tradition are likely to be both in great demand and

244 DAVID E. WHISNANT at great peril ethically and politically. The importance of Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger’s recent study, The Invention of Tradition, lies, in my view, not so much in its argument that “traditions” have been rather pro-

lifically invented within modern times, but in its demonstration of the extent to which invented traditions have been systematically used by nation-states to legitimize themselves both vis-a-vis their own citizens and within their colonial possessions (by Great Britain in Victorian India and colonial Africa, for example).4 Thus, it appears to be a characteristic of modern times that the imperi-

al flag is so regularly and so firmly planted in the midst of the territory called tradition. The Reagan administration has shown a particular genius for that, having managed to appropriate as its own not only most of the symbols (school, home, church, flag), but many of the very words themselves: tradition, freedom, democracy. Itis of enormous import to students of traditional culture that the red, white, and blue balloons go up at the end of

a Reagan speech in which the Contras have been identified with the Founding Fathers, new cuts in social services have been announced, and the Evil [Soviet] Empire blamed for everything except the common cold. Hence, public sector folklorists not only have to do with insight and effectiveness what they have been trained to do, but also have to defend the very territory and concept of tradition itself against ahistorical understanding and manipulative use. For the latter task, few have been trained well, if at all. They must train themselves in the midst of a period of acute conflict within which culture and tradition have become crucial factors in the power equation. So of what might a tougher politics consist, and how would its relative toughness distinguish it from the politics of the earlier intervenors? Those earlier politics varied somewhat, of course, but in the main they

were soft in that they did not question either the consensus version of American history or its associated consensus ideology. Thus, the politics of most earlier intervenors amounted at best to a genteel liberalism. They assumed most characteristically that the institutional structures within American society, if not always ideal, were at least legitimate. Consequently, their approach to redress, to social change and reconstruction, was meliorist, gradualist, hortatory, moralistic, suasive, polite, and on the

whole deferential. On the rare occasions when they demonstrated an awareness of structural inequality, they opted for local, private, voluntarist approaches to change, rather than for the structural reform that was logically called for.

If public sector folklorists are to develop a tougher politics, of what components might it consist? It would first be characterized by a structural approach to change; it would address social, political, and economic structures as central and primary in every policy and program consideration. It

Lessons and Prospects 245 would, therefore, aim to develop more substantial mechanisms of change— mechanisms conceived of and designed as inseparable structural features of policy and public institutions. It would understand, analyze, and inter-

pret culture (characteristically, normally, habitually) in relation to power. Thus, it would include—as a central feature within its conception of culture—the role and function of culture as an item in the overall social and political power equation: culture as used by elites to legitimize and protect themselves and to manipulate and control those below them; culture as a potential means of empowerment for those who lack power. And finally, it would in my view be a politics (and a politics of culture)

conceived of in a much larger context than that which has most usually characterized much of the folklore enterprise. It would be informed by the issues, analyses, and dynamics of national and international movements

to preserve and enhance the environment, to reduce nuclear arms and prevent nuclear holocaust, and to secure and protect human rights. It would in a word bea politics that, however locally implemented, would be conceived globally. As such, it would continually refine its analysis and strategy partly by reference to the history and current cultural-political situations of embattled cultural minorities throughout the world—from the Miskitos of Nicaragua to the Inuit of Alaska, to the Catalans and Basques of northern Spain, to the myriad of such groups in the Soviet Union, the Middle East, and elsewhere. In my view, such an internationally comparative approach to the politics of culture would enable us to push our analysis beyond where it ever has been, or is now, to consider even the unsettling possibility that traditionality itself is an at least occasionally misleading criterion for making cultural or social judgments. As the world continues to shrink, as nationstates behave less and less responsibly in the service of an ever more cynical self-interest, as terrorism (whether practiced by individuals, political sects, or nations) becomes an increasingly frequent instrument of policy, it is the legitimacy and long-range serviceability of systems of value that must

be the primary consideration. In the tiny, overcrowded modern world, there are all sorts of traditional beliefs and practices that are no longer serviceable, if they ever were. Perhaps for the first time, our critique of culture must have not only a comforting retrospective, but also a disquietingly projective component. Unfortunately, the world into which we must project is not that of Cecil Sharp in the laurel country of western North Carolina at the turn of the century or of ballad hunter Josephine McGill, riding her horse into eastern Kentucky on the eve of World War I and being smitten by the beauty of “’a lonely spot at the head of a narrow creek in a world of green and silver.” Instead, it is the world of Robert Heilbroner’s An Inquiry into the Human Prospect: a world of uncontrollably burgeoning population, a

246 DAVID E. WHISNANT nightmarish threat of nuclear war, and an increasingly resource-scarce and heat-saturated ecosphere.° So how may we best project? In what new ways do we have to learn to think? At the Learning Center of the Smithsonian’s 1985 Festival of American Folklife, the public was advised that cultural conservation was a central focus of the festival. The festival program book contained a number of

articles that explored the history and meaning of cultural conservation efforts in various contexts and reprinted an abridged version of Alan Lomax’s 1977 article on cultural equity.© As one who has long been interested in the problems associated with designing public policies to achieve some measure of cultural equity within a multicultural political democracy, I was pleased to note the centrality of that concern in the conception of the festival. Learning Center visitors were asked to consider the parallels between the movements for environmental and cultural conservation: the concept of an ecosystem or cultural system, the limitations upon natural and cultural resources, and the cost in “social dysfunction and alienation” when cultural resources are irretrievably lost. So far, so good. A serious problem arises, however, when the Smithsonian, through its Folklife Program staff, informs the public that “‘we have finally come to

understand that it is possible to foster the continued vitality of ‘endangered species’—natural or cultural—without dismantling or derailing national and international economic, political and social institutions” [italics added]. I suggest that the confidence of the Smithsonian’s Folklife staff in the truth

of that assertion is prima facie evidence of the need for tougher politics

programs. |

(indeed, for a substantially altered worldview) within public sector folklife

What, after all, did the environmental movement teach us? Precisely that it is not possible to foster the continued vitality of endangered species or to use limited resources ina responsible way without fundamental structural changes in our political and economic system and in the values and assumptions upon which it rests. Since such changes proved to be costly in the short term, especially to multinational corporate interests, environmental policy was dismantled piece by piece and has been effectively buried by the current administration in active collusion with reactionary interests elsewhere in the world, capitalist and socialist alike. One might argue, in fact, that our history on the whole shows that virtually every substantial impulse for progressive change carries within itself an ultimately inescapable requirement for dismantling and derailing certain established structures, beliefs, and institutions. Indeed, within the Smithsonian’s festival program book itself is an article by anthropologist Duncan Earle on the forcible “dislocation and cultural conquest” of a million Guatemalan Mayan Indians by the military between 1980 and 1984, a process in some respects even worse culturally

Lessons and Prospects 247 than the actions of the conquistadores 450 years earlier.’ It would be difficult to find a starker or more fully illustrative example of the impossibility of achieving even a modicum of cultural conservation without ‘“dismantling and derailing national and international economic, political and social institutions.” Central America is at present (and has been since it freed itself from Spanish imperial control in the early nineteenth century) a principal theater of operations for an increasingly tightly networked system of

profit-maximizing multinational corporations and their vassal nationstates. Anyone who believes that cultural conservation of any substantial sort is compatible with the agendas of that complex of ideology, vested interest, and power is in for some startling disappointments. At the same time, however, it would be difficult to imagine a better way to toughen one’s cultural politics than by examining how and why and with what effects two bully superpowers are treating so many of the comparatively defenseless cultural minorities of the world as expendable pawns. In any case, the cultural policies of the future must be conceived and implemented in such a context, for it is after all the world in which it is our particular historical fate to live and work. NOTES 1. David E. Whisnant, All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1983). 2. John Hostetler, Amish Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980). 3. On the exhibit itself, see Archie Green, “The Library of Congress’s Cowboy Exhibit,” JEMF Quarterly 19 (Summer 1983): 85-102. 4. Eric Hobsbawm and Terrence Ranger, eds., The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1983).

5. Robert Heilbroner, An Inquiry into the Human Prospect (New York: W.W. Norton, 1974).

6s Alan Lomax, “Appeal for Cultural Equity,” 1985 Festival of American Folklife (Wash-

ington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1985), 40-46. 7. Duncan Earle, ‘Dislocation and Cultural Conquest of the Highland Maya,” 1985 Festival of American Folklife (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution, 1985), pp. 52-56.

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Appendix: ts

A Historical Archive

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JOHN WESLEY POWELL ~~ Letter to S.F. Baird, April 2, 1880

Major Powell discusses plans for the Bureau of American Ethnology in this letter to Spencer Baird, secretary of the Smithsonian Institution. The letter is reprinted from the original in the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History, National Anthropological Archives (NAA), BAE file 4677. For a complementary statement of BAE purpose, see Powell’s “Report of the Director,” in his First Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, 1879-1880 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1881), pp. xiXXXI111.

Prof. S. F. Baird Bureau of Ethnology Secretary Smithsonian Institution Washington, D.C., April 2nd 1880 Dear Sir:

Ethnographic researches among the North American Indians have been carried on by myself and under my direction for the last ten years. During the second session of the 45th Congress, the various geographical and geological surveys were consolidated and reorganized by the establishment of a Geological Bureau in the Interior Department. In the act effecting this change it was provided that the ethnographic researches previously conducted by myself should be continued under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution, and an appropriation was made therefor. These ethnographic studies have heretofore embraced the following subjects: 1. That portion of Somatology relating to the skeleton and especially to the crania of the North American Indians. In this department large collections have been made. 2. Philology Under this head a great number of the languages of the North American Indians have been studied and a tentative classification of the linguistic stocks have been made. In connection with this work a map of the United States has been prepared exhibiting the original homes of the several linguistic families. 3. Mythology

A very large collection has been made of the myths of the various tribes of Indians scattered throughout the United States. 4. Sociology The line of investigation originally pursued by Mr. Lewis and Morgan, the re-

sults of which were published by the Smithsonian Institution, has been continued under my direction and a large body of material relating to the organ-

252 JOHN WESLEY POWELL ization of the family, clan, tribe, and confederacy among our North American Indians has been collected. 5. Habits and Customs In this field also much has been done, especially in relation to their mortuary observances and religious ceremonies. 6. Technology In this field extensive investigations have been pursued relating especially to the pristine dwellings of the Indians; beginning in caves and lodges made of brush and bark and culminating in the Pueblo structure of the southwestern portion of the United States. This rude architecture has been studied with special reference to the domestic life of the Indians. Their arts as exhibited in their stone implements, their pottery, their bows and arrows, their clothing, ornaments, etc., etc., have been studied and a large collection made for the National Museum. 7. Archaeology Much has been done in this branch of investigation especially in California, where the works of extinct races are buried in great profusion. Throughout Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Utah, anda part of Wyoming, ruins of ancient Pueblos are also found in great abundance. The researches in this field have been of wide extent. 8. History of Indian affairs, including treaties, cessions of lands by the Indians, removals, the progress of the Indians in industrial arts and especially the efforts made to induce them to become Agriculturists and Manufacturers, the distribution of lands among them in severalty, and the efforts made to establish schools among the Indians and elsewhere for their education. A large number of persons including Missionaries and teachers among the Indians. Indian agents, Army officers, scholars connected with the colleges of the United States, and others are assisting in this general work. In the progress of settlement the western portion of the United States is being rapidly filled by people from the eastern portion, so that at present there is no valley of magnitude uninhabited by white men. Rapidly the Indians are being gathered on reservations where their original habits and customs disappear, their languages are being modified or lost and they are abandoning their savagery and barbarism and accepting civilization. If the ethnology of our Indians is ever to receive proper scientific study and treatment the work must be done at once. In view of the facts briefly set forth above I would respectfully request that you forward to Congress this statement with an estimate for fifty-thousand dollars ($50,000), for the purpose of continuing the ethnologic researches among the North Ameri-

can Indians under the direction of the Smithsonian Institution if the same meets with

your approval. Iam, with respect, Your obedient servant, J.W. Powell

ROBERT WINSLOW GORDON ~W_________W_L_E

Archive of American Folk-Song

Reprinted from Report of the Librarian of Congress for the Fiscal Year Ending June 30, 1932 (Wash-

ington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1932), Gordon’s report is the most substantive of his early director’s reports on the work of the first of our federal folklife agencies. Located in the Library of Congress, the Archive was established to serve as a repository for the materials garnered in a period of great interest in documenting grass-roots musical traditions. Gordon’s report gives us some indication of the Archive’s concerns. Documentary techniques and equipment were being tested, forinstance. At the same time, in its discussion of Afro- and Anglo-American musical influences, Gordon’s report manifests an issue that has run through public folklife programs and projects from the very start—the role of cultural diversity in a distinctively American culture. The major study of Gordon is Deborah Kodish’s Good Friends and Bad Enemies: Robert Winslow Gordon and the Study of American Folksong (Urbana:

Univ. of Illinois Press, 1986). For more on Gordon and the Archive, see idem, “ ‘A National Project with Many Workers’: Robert Winslow Gordon and the Archive of American Folk Song,” Quarterly Journal of the Library of Congress 35 (1978): 218-33; as well as Norm Cohen, ‘Robert W. Gordon and the Second Wreck of the ‘Old 97,”” Journal of American Folklore 87 (1974): 12-38; and Archie Green, “The Archive's Shores,” Folklife Annual 1 (1985): 61-73.

The work of the archive up to July 1, 1931 has already been summarized in the various Reports of the Librarian of Congress for the years 1928, 1929, 1930, and 1931. The present report, therefore, will confine itself so far as possible to listing the work since July, 1931.

Routine A large amount of time has been spent necessarily in sorting and putting in

order voluminous personal correspondence of Mr. Gordon during the years 1923-1927 in order that folksong texts included in this correspondence might be copied for the Library collection and assembled in useful form.

A considerable amount of time has been spent in locating and assembling American songsters, particularly those issued in cheap paper form and containing the vaudeville and minstrel songs of the period 1840-1890. Over 900 of these have been brought together, arranged, and indexed. Many of these came from the basement of the Library where they were discovered among copyright storage deposits. Although the Library possesses probably the most important collection of dime songsters in this county, numbering about 4,000, these songsters have previously been shelved in various sections of the main Library and in the division of music. They have been found in more than 50 separate places in the stacks. The majority of them were uncatalogued until the archive took up the task. The importance of these songsters and the various discoveries already made or to be expected from

254 ROBERT WINSLOW GORDON them will be discussed more fully in a later section of the report. Meanwhile it is interesting to note that in them has been found the first printed version of “Dixie,” which has so far escaped the notice of all collectors or investigators. Aid and advice has been given freely to folk-song collectors, especially to those who were actively engaged in field collecting or who were planning the publication of books on the subject. It is interesting to note that practically every serious book published since 1927 has included a word of thanks for aid from the archive. Though the requests coming by mail have not been particularly numerous, the archive has answered countless inquiries by telephone coming from the division of music, the Copyright Office, the main reading room desk, and various readers and visitors to the Library. Experimental Work on Sound Recording

Considerable work, especially in the last four months, has been done in sound recording with the view of finding a satisfactory method adapted to field work. The previous experiments with both the Ediphone (wax cylinders) and the Telegraphone (steel wire) had proved very disappointing. Although the faults and merits of these two machines have been very carefully studied, and although it is highly probably that either or both could eventually be developed into a satisfactory field machine, such development would involve an amount of money far beyond that at the disposal of the archive. New developments made within the past five months in the recording on metal disks have made this process at the present time the most promising of immediate practical results. Though this process (formerly reported on unfavorably) is apparently not capable of reaching scientific accuracy which is essential if the records made are to be fully acceptable to future investigators, the recent developments and reports have eliminated many of the objections formerly stressed and give promise of future improvement. Various machines which record on metal disks, such as the Speak-O-Phone, the Amplion, the Fairchild recorder, and the Tonophone, have been thoroughly investigated and compared. Through the kindness of the Fairchild Aerial Camera Co. a Fairchild recorder was loaned for a period of two weeks for experimental use. The Amplion Corporation loaned one of its newest models for a period of five weeks and permitted it to be taken on a field trip through West Virginia, Kentucky, and Virginia. Field work

Owing to the absence of any satisfactory field recording machine, no field work was undertaken until the Amplion Corporation made this possible by the loan of a recorder. As a result of the trip already mentioned above, a group of recordings of 58 songs was brought back from Point Pleasant, W. Va. These purport to be songs sung by negroes in the Ozark district of Missouri years ago. They were recorded by a white lady, Mrs. Betty Winger, who had as a child learned them from the singing of the negroes. Some years ago Mrs. Winger, realizing that these negro songs, both in words and music, were quite unlike songs published as typically negro, decided to write them down and preserve them. In order to insure

Appendix 255 accuracy she went back to Missouri and checked carefully with the older negroes in the district. An old negro, Aunt Hulda, who claimed to be 104 years old, proved

the greatest assistance and sang for Mrs. Winger other songs which she (Aunt Hulda) had sung as a girl and had learned from her parents. This group of songs is unquestionably genuine although in all probability

both the words and the tunes have been unconsciously somewhat changed by Mrs. Winger. They constitute one of the most interesting and important finds made in the history of negro folk song. In them is found further confirmation of the fact that the negro adopted into his spirituals fragments of white tunes and white words, that he built his stanzaic spirituals almost entirely on white models, that he

possessed prior to 1840 a quite different, and now practically unknown type of non-stanzaic spiritual, that the negroes in the Missouri district, separated by mountain ranges from the great plantations of the Atlantic coast, developed a different set of spirituals and tunes. Investigation of Folk Song Problems

In order to understand the bearing of the statements which follow, certain basic but often forgotten facts are restated in brief form. The amount of oral literature is comparable to and perhaps greater than the total amount of printed literature. Written documents or printed books that have preserved in any form a record of the oral literature of past generations are few. Many of the more important of these documents have never been discovered and studied by students of the subject.! Any sound interpretation of folk song can be made only on the basis of the entire field and not ona study of one particular racial or geographical type. To interpret, for example, the songs of the Southern negro requires an intimate knowledge of nearly every other type of folk song known by whites up to and including the time when the spirituals were developing. No attempt has up to this time been made to survey the entire field or to discover the interrelations and influence of one type upon the other. Hence many of the most basic and vital problems have remained undiscovered and uninvestigated.

Though the importance of such documents has been frequently mentioned, no attempt, so far as lam aware, has previously been made to bring them together and study them in mass. To list the various problems that have arisen as a result of the bringing together of previously uncodified material or to attempt to outline the theories— many of them decidedly revolutionary—which have grown up would be imposible. Many of the theories await further proving and testing before they can be reported as sound. The gain, however, lies in the discovery of the existence of such problems and in the knowledge of where the material is to be found which makes their investigation possible. The following specific problems are offered only as illustrations:

A. The problem of the influence of genuine folk material on the vaudeville and minstrel stage between 1830 and 1890 and of the minstrel conventions upon folk song, both white and negro, of this period. Material for the investigation of

256 ROBERT WINSLOW GORDON . the problem is ample and may be found in the songsters of the period, now first assembled in chronological order. The following discoveries, though not yet carried to the point where they can be publicly announced, are already sufficiently established to warrant their being announced as definite theses:

1. That the first influence of the negro upon the stage was largely that of rhythm and dance rather than song. 2. That at various periods from 1850 to 1890 quite different concepts of stage conventions of the negro appeared upon the stage. 3. That the white man’s burlesque of the negro in these different periods after 1840 reacted upon the negro himself and caused him to modify the form in which his folk song appeared.

4. That in the white songsters are preserved numerous bits of genuine folk songs, both white and negro, which constitute often our only evidence of what the folk song of the period actually was. 5. That the American sailor chanteys belong to a much more recent period than that has formerly been believed, and that they are very greatly influenced by and indebted to vaudeville and minstrel stage material on the one hand and negro-folk material on the other. B. Problems concerning the origin, growth, and development of folk tunes. Materials for investigation in this field must of necessity be varied. To a certain extent the earlier printed books which contain music ranging from the popular state material to the religious camp-meeting tunes are useful, especially when compared with the same tunes as recorded on modern commercial phonograph records and as taken down directly from folk singing. Almost no work in this field has been done in America, although a good deal of progress has been made in Great Britain in both Irish and English tunes. On the basis of work already accomplished it may be said: 1. That the so-called mountain fiddle tunes are very closely interrelated and that many of them form family groups progressing from a common original into widely diverging variants and versions. 2. That the origin of the tunes of certain sailor chanteys can be discovered. 3. That the folk have often adopted author or stage tunes and recomposed them in folk form, and that many popular hits of recent times can be traced directly to folk-tune originals. C. Problems relating to differentiation of folk and author materials and leading toward a final definition of exactly what folk song is. Here it may be said: 1. That the mountain fiddle tunes have as a body certain essential differences in technique which mark them off definitely from the same or similar tunes as played by a violinist, and that these differences are greatly similar to the literary differences existing between folk and author songs. 2. That a further study of the family groups in tunes will explain and confirm many of the theories now held on the basis of words alone. 3. That all previous definitions of, or attempts to define, folk song have been too narrow and have, most of them, failed to give sufficient acknowledgment of the part played by various authors and individuals in the growth and development of the type.

Appendix 257 NOTE 1. For example: Early and local hymn books which contain genuine white folk songs originating in campmeetings, a type out of which later grew the negro spiritual. Paper-covered songsters of the vaudeville and minstrel type which contain genuine folk material sometimes readapted for stage use. Newspaper files, etc., etc.

B.A. BOTKIN ~~ SSSSSSsSsssssssee WPA and Folklore Research: “Bread and Song”

Originally a paper presented at the 1938 meeting of the Modern Language Association, Benjamin A. Botkin’s essay on the folklore research sponsored by the Works Progress Administration is reprinted from Southern Folklore Quarterly 3 (1939): 7-14. Reading it along with Jerrold Hirsch’s essay in this volume, one gains a sense of Botkin’s pluralist cultural vision. Hirsch has written elsewhere on Botkin’s notions of folklore. See his ‘Folklore in the Making: B.A. Botkin,” Journal of American Folklore 100 (1987): 3-38. For an appreciation of Botkin and an

overview of his life’s work, see Bruce Jackson’s essays, ‘Ben Botkin,” New York Folklore 12:3 and 4 (1986): 23-32; and ‘Benjamin A. Botkin (1901-1975),” Journal of American Folklore 89

(1976): 1-6. Jackson’s “Bibliography of the Writings of Benjamin A. Botkin” in idem, ed., Folklore and Society: Essays in Honor of Benjamin A. Botkin, reprint 1966 edition (Norwood, Pa.:

Norwood Editions, 1974), pp. 169-92 is an almost complete chronological listing of Botkin’s publications, many of them on the subject, or written during the era, of folklore and the New Deal. For another appraisal of Botkin, see Ronna Lee Widner, ‘Lore for the Folk: Benjamin A. Botkin and the Development of Folklore Scholarship in America,” New York Folklore 12:3 and 4 (1986): pp. 23-32.

A New York City field worker was interviewing a Croatian tailor on Jugoslav folk songs. ‘Business is bad,” he said. “I have a big family. I just can’t put my head to anything. The chain stores—they just—” and he made cutting gesture across his throat. ‘“We ought to live, too. Something happen if this keep up. . . . If I could only put my head to it for a few hours, I could make a few songs.” “Oh, don’t be worried,” replied the interviewer. “I understand. You see, I don’t come from Park Avenue either. Millions of people have a hard time now. People will be ordering things for Christmas. Cheer up! Think of the folk melodies you sang as a youth. Forget bread fora few hours!” Then to herself she thought: ““My, how you lied! You certainly didn’t sing when you had no bread! You couldn’t remember your own name, never mind about where you lived four years ago. And your voice was so weak the relief investigator told you to take a couple of sips of water to moisten your throat! . . . Great thing this bread and song business! Messy world, messy world! We’re all in the same boat— Yugoslav, American, Mayflower descendant, all mixed up in this bread and song thing. . . .”

Bread and song have always had an intimate relation to each other in the creation and preservation of folklore, and they have an even more peculiar significance in WPA folklore research. Throughout we stress the relation between art and life, between work and culture. And our security-wage field workers, earning a precarious living of some twenty dollars a week, or much less, need not be taught

this lesson. They learned it on the sidewalks of New York skipping rope and bouncing ball:

Appendix 259 Left! Left! I had a good job and I left!

First they hired me, then they fired me, Then by golly I left! Left! Left a wife and fourteen kids. Right! Right! Right on the kitchen floor.

I should worry, I should care, I should marry a millionaire

He should die, I should cry ] I should marry another guy. ,

At school they wrote in each other’s autograph albums: Take a local,

Take an express. Don’t get off Till you reach success.

And in the shadow of war and hunger they jingled this ironic bit of nonsense: Hallie Selassie was a kind old man, He lit the match to the frying pan. When all the people tasted the beef They all trucked off to the home relief.

Aninventory of the 355,000 words of New York City folklore copy collected by a staff of 27 workers in 88 working days from September through December, 1938, reveals in its titles and text the predominance of industrial and occupational interests in the folklore of the metropolis. The childhood level of playing at work and at being grown-up becomes the adolescent and adult level of work and amusement—

the epic of construction, excavation and wrecking (subways, skyscrapers, bridges), transportation (taxi, bus, subway), shipping (railroads, trucking, longshore and maritime industry), the needle trades (garments, fur, hats), the white collar professions and retail trades (department stores, peddling, markets), and the symphony of New York night life—taxi dance halls, night clubs, honky

tonks. ...

“When we got a little older,” says one informant, “we stopped chasing the white horse [a game like “Follow the Leader’’] and started chasing the girls, yeh, and instead of shooting the cannon we began to shoot the dice. And plenty of other things. Yeh, and then I went to college, but it didn’t exactly reform me.” For example, the Negro street cries of Harlem are work songs, just as surely as are the Southern Negro’s songs of the cotton, cane and tobacco fields, road-construction, sawmill and turpentine camps, and chain gangs. And they have social significance. Thus Mobile Mac, the Hoppin’ John King, seasons his invitation to buy with a slap at the boss: An’ Hoppin’ John Wit’ plenty red-hot sauce Will make a po’ man Tu’n aroun’ en slap de boss.

260 B.A. BOTKIN New York Jewish needle workers sing at their work—and like the Negroes of the South they protest against too much or too little work, too little or too much love. ‘““Yes making a living,” said one to an interviewer, “this is like climbing the Alps.” Greenwich Village and the Seamen’s Union have both produced their minstrels, whose repertoire is also part of our New York City collection. The more folkish of the two, ‘‘Forty Fathoms,” describes himself and his songs simply: “I’m just a seaman who writes his stuff for seamen; just a message to seamen.” In “Johnny Kane,” to the tune of “The Butcher Boy,” he has written a classic stanza: So dig my grave both wide and deep, Place a Union banner at my head an feet. And on my heart let my strike card rest To show my mates that I did my best.

Bobby Edwards, “King of Greenwich Village,” 1913-18, editor of The Quill,

deliberately sought to keep his songs from becoming folk songs in diffusion, though many of them originated by improvisation and the collaboration of his audience. “I always tried to make my songs as difficult as possible. . . . lused up all the rhymes, so that they couldn’t be added to, or improved upon. . . . so you see, I deliberately frustrated what might have become a field for a genuine growth of folk songs. Sometimes, though, Harry Kemp or somebody would add a verse or two and burst out with it when I got through, and, well, ifit was good enough, I'd keep it and use it—but most of the time what the others wanted to add was too good, and would have to be deleted out when we sang for the public.” Bread and song—Bobby Edwards sang derisively of Bohemian ladies and bootleggers, of the real-estate speculator’s invasion of the Village, and of police raids (to divert attention from the police’s shortcomings), songs in which the accents of Tin Pan Alley mingled with those of Whiz Bang. She was only a bootlegger’s daughter, And her face it was somber and sad As she sat in her golden Packard, The only one that she had.

Bread and song. In New England a regional collection is investigating the lives and lore of Connecticut clockmakers and munitions workers, Rhode Island fishermen and French-Canadian textile workers, Maine clam diggers, Vermont Welsh slate workers and Italian granite workers, and a half-dozen additional nationality and occupational types of Massachusetts. In New York, Roland Palmer Gray is collecting canal and lumberjack songs. Pennsylvania is collecting, among other industrial lore, the hero-tales of Joe Magarac, the Hungarian strong man of the steel mills. Tales of railroading, brickmaking, and steel mills from Chicago; tales of the Oklahoma oilfields; tales of the Montana and Arizona copper mines; tales of Southern textile millworkers and service occupations. Meanwhile we are not neglecting the lore of the more strictly rural folk, past and present—folk songs of the Cumberlands from Virginia; life histories and lore of the Southern tenant-farmer, of the Conchs and Latin colony of Florida; Negro spirituals and play-party songs from Alabama and South Carolina; Louisiana

Appendix 261 Voodoo and Creole lore; stories and songs of the Creole pioneers of Indiana; Spanish-American folk songs from New Mexico; oldtimers’ and tall tales from Iowa, Idaho, and Washington. II

“If I could only put my head to it for a few hours, I could make a few songs.”

Fortunately, people are never too busy to make and swap and gather folk songs and tales. In the depths of the depression the WPA is not too busy building roads and bridges to collect and study American folklore. And those of us who have come to it from the academic groves feel that we are participating in the greatest educational as well as social experiment of our time. It is idle to talk of the dangers of vulgarization and amateurishness. If giving back to the people what we have taken from them and what rightfully belongs to them, in a form in which they can understand and use, is vulgarization, then we need more of it. For the task, as we see it, is one not simply of collection but also of

assimilation. In its belief in the public support of art and art for the public, in research not for research’s sake but for use and enjoyment by the many, the WPA is attempting to assimilate folklore to the local and national life by understanding, in the first place, the relation between the lore and the life out of which it springs; and by translating the lore back into terms of daily living and leisure-time activity. In other words, the WPA looks upon folklore research not as a private but as a public function and folklore as public, not private property. This function is a collective and cooperative one, asynthesis of anthropology, sociology, psychology, and liter-

ature, the results of which are being pooled and cleared for an ever widening public. Specifically, the folklore program of the WPA falls into two parts; first, the folklore work of the individual projects; and second, the work of the Joint Committee on Folk Arts, WPA, which, with the help and approval of the American Council of Learned Societies, has recently been set up in Washington to integrate and coordinate all the folklore, folk music, folk drama, and folk art and craft activities of the WPA, both within itself and with outside agencies. The original aim of the Joint Committee is to avoid needless duplication and overlapping and to insure complete coverage of the field, but more than that it will provide new directives and objectives in the training of personnel and the utilization of materials. The Committee is composed of technical (not administrative) representatives of the various branches of the WPA which in any way touch the field of folk culture. These branches include the five arts projects of Federal Project No. 1, which in the latter part of 1935 was organized in the division of Women’s and Professional Projects (the non-construction division of the WPA), and four other divisions of the WPA: the Education and Recreation Divisions, the National Youth Administration, and the Technical Services Laboratory. The particular folklore activities covered by these branches of the WPA, together with their supervisors, are as follows: the Folklore Studies of the Federal Writers’ Project, under B.A. Botkin; the Index of American Design of the Federal Art Project, under C. Adolph Glassgold; the folk music recording and social music of the Federal Music Project, under Charles Seeger; the Folksong and Folklore De-

partment of the National Service Bureau of the Federal Theater Project, under

262 B.A. BOTKIN Herbert Halpert; the inventories of the Historical Records Survey, under S.B. Child; the adult and workers’ education program of the Education Division, under Ernestine L. Friedman; the leisure-time program of the Recreation Division, under Nicholas Ray; the art project of the NYA, under Grace Falke; and the special skills of the Technical Services Laboratory, under Grete M. Franke. Consultants are being drawn from government and private agencies. Among these are Donald H. Daugherty, of the Executive Office of the American Council of Learned Societies, who in June, 1938, called the first meeting of technical workers in the Arts Projects and so gave the impetus to the formation of the Joint Committee; and Harold Spivacke, chief of the Music Division of the Library of Congress, who is cooperating “in every way consistent with the Library’s policy and within the limits of the Library’s facilities,” specifically through the Archive of American Folksong, which is “ready to receive, shelve, and make available recorded material” and to ‘aid in the actual recording by supplying discs and lending recording machinery.” The list further include Ralph S. Boggs, George Herzog, Alan Lomax, Louise Pound, and Reed Smith. To consult and cooperate with the Joint Committee on request, the Executive Committee of the American Council of Learned Societies, on the recommendation of the newly established Committee on American Culture, has approved the appointment of a subcommittee of the Joint Committee on Materials for Research of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council.

The services offered by the Joint Committee to date are as follows: (a) the effecting of cooperation among the various workers and their projects; (b) the preparation of directives for the technical handling of folk arts contacts

and materials; |

(c) the preparation and issuing of lists and descriptions of informants, materials, intermediaries, technical services and equipment available; (d) the sponsorship of publications. As its first field trip the Joint Committee is planning a three-months’ record-

ing expedition through the Southeastern region. Using the sound truck of the Federal Theater Project, Herbert Halpert will collect both musical and speech material and suitable information regarding it from the informants and their communities. The list of informants and intermediaries is being pooled from all available

sources. The material collected will be used in the furtherance of various pro- grams, such as the productions of the Federal Music and Federal Theater Projects, the folklore publications of the Federal Writers’ Project, and the work of the Education and Recreation Divisions. A complete set of discs, photographs, texts and accompanying information will be filed with the Library of Congress, which is to provide the necessary materials and duplicates.

Il Basic to the program of the Joint Committee is the plan and procedure of the Folklore Studies of the Federal Writers’ Project, as set forth in the Manual for Folklore Studies, September, 1938. Throughout the work the Federal Writers’ Project will serve as a clearing-house and central depository, a link between the various projects and between the national and regional committees.

Appendix 263 The folklore program of both the Federal Writers’ Project and the Joint Committee owes a debt to the sympathetic encouragement and stimulation of Henry G. Alsberg, director of the Federal Writers’ Project, who in 1936 initiated our folklore studies under the direction of John A. Lomax. Mr. Lomax served until July, 1937,

and amassed a great deal of Negro lore and ex-slaveinterviews and stories and recorded a large number of folksongs. In the folklore publications of the Writers Project Mr. Alsberg is intent upon maintaining the high standards of accuracy and interest set by the twenty large-city, state, and interstate-route guides already published, most of which contain folklore data or chapters. Since the inception of our present folklore program in August, local, state, regional and national studies are well under way or nearing completion in 27 states. Scheduled publications include local, state, regional, and national collections: Idaho Lore, Hard Rock (Life and Lore of Arizona Mining Towns), Living Lore in New England, Chase the White Horse (New York City Songs and Stories from the Life), and American Folk Stuff (A National Collection of Folk and Local Tales). In addition, writers are being encouraged to do individual and collective creative work with the folk materials collected.

The benefits of this varied activity are many. In addition to its folkloristic value, its popular interest, and its creative uses, the material collected will have important bearings on the study of American culture in both its historical and functional aspects, including minority groups (ethnic, geographical, and occupational), immigration and internal migration, local history, regional backgrounds and movements, linguistic and dialect phenomena. The knowledge and leads supplied will be of particular interest to students of popular literature, American literature, contemporary literature, present-day English, and the relations of literature and society. Perhaps the most conspicuous benefit to scholarship will be the establishment of a national folklore archive in Washington and possibly of state and regional archives. But to the success and the very life of the undertaking the support and cooperation of all scholars and their groups are necessary. Their advice and assistance are needed in the vast task of accumulation and evaluation. Beyond this, the most important task confronting the folklorist in America is that of justifying folklore and explaining what it is for, breaking down on the one hand popular resistance to folklore as dead or phony stuff and on the other hand academic resistance to its broader interpretation and utilization. Upon us devolves the tremendous responsibility of studying folklore as a living culture and of understanding its meaning and function not only in its immediate setting but in progressive and democratic society as a whole. Washington, D.C.

DELL HYMES —~W—W Preservation of Indian Lore in Oregon

Dell Hymes’s letter to Sen. Mark Hatfield in support of the American Folklife Preservation Act so impressed the senator from Oregon that he had it entered in the Congressional Record of July 19, 1973 (24882-24883). First introduced in Congress in 1969, the Folklife Preservation Act

eventually led to a national center with the broad mission of documenting, preserving, and presenting American folklife. Hymes is an internationally respected scholar whose work ranges over folklore, linguistics, and anthropology; his letter provides a powerful rationale for a federally supported folklife center. For more on his work with native American texts, see his ‘In vain I tried to tell you”: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1981). Mr. Harrtetp. Mr. President, my own State of Oregon is rich in folklore. Deep pioneer roots and an ancient Indian culture combine to produce a uniquely indigenous atmosphere. The need to preserve this heritage, in Oregon, and elsewhere led me to cosponsor S. 1844, to establish a folklore office in the Library of Congress. I have just received an excellent letter from Mr. Dell Hymes, president of the American Folklore Society, professor at University of Pennsylvania, and Oregon resident, about the need to preserve Indian lore in Oregon. Iam sure that the situation he describes so well exists in many other parts of this country. Because this letter is such an eloquent statement in behalf of S. 1844, Mr. President, [ask unanimous consent that Professor Hymes’ letter be printed in the RECORD. There being no objection, the letter was ordered to be printed in the RECORD, as follows:

Senator Mark Hatfield. The American Folklore Society, Inc., Senate Office Building. Rhododendron, Oreg., July 6, 1973. Washington, D.C. Dear Senator Hatfield: I write in appreciation of your sponsorship of Senate Bill 1844—The American Folklife Preservation Act. This is a new step for our country—but it is really shameful that it has taken so long to take it. Much smaller and poorer countries, such as Finland and Ireland, have for years provided national support for the preservation of folklife. I believe the billis long overdue, and hope very much that you will do everything you can to secure its enactment, and to see to the appropriation of the necessary funds. The provisions of this Bill are of importance to me, personally, not just as the President of a scholarly society concerned with the study of folklife. For many years I have worked with the traditions and languages of some of the Native American peoples of Oregon. (Although currently Professor of Folklore and Linguistics

Appendix 265 at the University of Pennsylvania, I was born and raised in Oregon, as were my parents, and lived here until graduated from Reed; and come back each summer). Trained as a linguist, anthropologist and folklorist, first at Reed, then elsewhere, I have been able to do something to help preserve knowledge of Indian traditions and languages—as I thought, at first, for the ‘““world” and scholarship, but as I have learned, for the descendants of American Indians themselves. My own involvement has been most with the Wasco people at Warm Springs, and Iam now writing a practical grammar of Wasco for some of the people there to use themselves in maintaining and learning about their traditional language. I am editing and analyzing texts of traditional myths, collected years ago, which turn out, on close scrutiny, to contain verse-structures, to be really a special kind of oral poetry—belying the rambling appearance of the pages of scholarly

monographs. A young printer in Portland and I hope to be able to manage to publish a few of these myths, in poetic format, in both languages, to show their true nature. From this scholarly and practical side, one realizes how much more there is to be done, and learned, with regard to what already exists. But in all this one feels the crushing waste of knowledge and insight year after year, as people die without what they know being passed on or recorded. One sees a young man, invited to learn the repertoire of an aged woman, her traditional

songs, but unable to do so because he must earn $800 during the summer for school the next year; and no one seemingly able to find $800 to maintain that portion of tradition for use in the community itself in future years. One feels the shame

of knowledge that has been recorded, but lies far from the communities from which it came, communities which now want it but cannot get it. One notices the frequent lack of knowledge of the existence of such material, or of its location, on their part. A national center, able to obtain and coordinate information, and to meet often modest but crucial needs for preservation of materials, could go far to remedying such situations. The needs of work in this area often are small financially, compared to many fields of endeavor, and compared, of course, to the cost of a

bomber or bomb. But these sums can mean a very great deal to people in our country. I should not pretend that this effort is an entirely innocent and “safe” one. This is more than a matter of decorating national life. If I thought that the only purpose of sucha bill and center was to adorn ceremonial occasions for sentiment, I would not support it. | would attack it as offensive to the true situation and needs of many people. The truth of the matter is that folkloristic research not only preserves traditional ways of life, their artifacts, languages, and the like, but also enters as a factor into what we take our present way of life to be. We can admit into folklife only those things which seem safe to us, and which add charm; or we can recognize that there are interests in the preservation of traditional ways of life, of parts of them at least, that are uncomfortable. I am speaking for the uncomfortable part. It is really something to remark that the best of what we can know of many American Indian traditions in Oregon is through the work of Franz Boas, and his students, Edward Sapir, Leo Frachtenberg, and Melville Jacobs—men trained in painstaking, accurate recordings of native tradition, wherever possible in the native language—men whose concern came not from being from Oregon, but from

266 DELL HYMES the scientific concern of a great German-born and trained scholar, who themselves came from Germany and New York City. Today toa very large extent our museums along the Columbia and elsewhere in Oregon preserve in visibility only the memo-

ry of pioneer culture (one can tell some amusing, some bitter stories from the Indian side about this.) So far as I know, only one Oregon State Highway marker speaks favorably about Indians—the one on the Columbia for Memaloose Island (/mimalus/ in the original Wasco). By the Dalles Dam a sign speaks of “Ancient Indian Fishing Grounds.” Ancient? They were not ancient when I was there in 1951, fishing from scaffolds with Indian friends. They became “ancient” when the dam was built, destroying them. Therein, I think, lies a clue to much of the present situation. We—Oregonians and anthropologists, folklorists, linguists as well—have tended to think of what is Indian only as what is safely gone—the romantic, or romanticizable remote past;

no embarrassment, no sense of guilt there, in what cannot be changed. What living Indians remember as highpoints of their lives—the salmon fishing at Celilo, lost now—is transmuted by a highway marker into a safely ancient past. For the current problems, efforts, struggles of Indian people—people confusingly partly traditional, partly modern, partly exotic, partly like us—are an uncomfortable re-

minder, a “social problem,” not a romantic idea. | But these people are in fact partly traditional, partly modern; and part of their “social problem” is exactly in their relation to tradition. Many of them, increasing numbers of them, are concerned to preserve, maintain, restore, recreate, revitalize traditions, often in new viable forms within a contemporary context. They wish neither to return to the lost past or to become just like non-Indians; they wish to maintain what they find to be the best of both cultures.

There is a tremendous outpouring of desire for this today, in many very young people as well as in others more fully part of traditional communities. It isa matter of an inescapable question of the meaning of their lives, of their senses of personal identity. Young Native Americans find themselves to be Indian, willynilly, however much they may have for a time forgotten or dismissed the fact. As one young man I know said, when at his high school he was chided for wearing nothing Indian to an Indian day, ‘I brought my skin.” That one is Indian cannot be forgotten, even if one tries to forget. One meets a young man who was a model student, a college graduate, a graduate student, headed into the orbit of a profession (and professions seem always to teach people in ways that require them to leave their communities rather than permitting them to return to them), who suddenly becomes as traditional as he can. One finds dances long lapsed being revived by young people, and everywhere a desire to learn as students a language that was not learned as children. One finds a desire to accumulate information, from whatever source, about one’s own people and culture—to learn not just about the famous tribes in school, but one’s own community. There is a tremendous outpouring of desire for such things. There is a clear breakdown in the traditional mode of transmission. Pressures from without and within have disrupted the contexts of learning and identification that in the past

insured the continuity of traditional ways and understandings. Indians themselves turn to scholarly skills for help in bridging the gap, scholarly resources, where they have the chance to know of them and to acquire them. Such skills and resources can indeed help to create what is wanted, a basis for what is distinctively

Appendix 267 valued in traditional ways to remain part of a more complex contemporary way of life, and to inform new creative activities. And there are non-Indians who are eager and willing to help, and in many individual cases, are helping. But there is great lack of information from one effort to another, and within the communities themselves. And there is great lack of effective support for what is needed. One hears again and again of desire for a museum, of help in building one, of help in training local people to handle one. One meets a brilliant high school student who has begun trying to write and analyze his traditional language on his own. There is concern that so many artifacts perish in fires, or remain where sold and boughtin stores. One finds local people wishing to tape and transcribe what is valuable to them from older people, but without skills to do so. One also finds people and money coming from the outside, especially in connection with efforts in education and curriculum development, where, despite good intentions, the role of collectors and scholars is taken on in ignorance of what is already known, and how one goes about learning and handling such knowledge. Local people may even be mis-trained and given quite false experiences as to what such work is like, because training in curriculum, say, leaves one ignorant as to writing languages or interviewing about traditions. (I am experiencing such a situation now. In this case, the outcome will probably be all right, at least with regard to what is done about the native languages in the schools, because my wife and I [she is expert in the other main language of the community] happen to be here this year and able to help; but that is chance, so far as the educational project is concerned.) What particularly is not happening in more than a few cases in the country is the training of Indian people themselves in skills for dealing with their traditions, dealing with them in the partly scholarly, partly analytic way that is necessary today. It may seem odd and wrong to talk about preserving and maintaining something that needs emergency efforts, special expertise, for its maintenance. If the Indians have not managed by themselves, why interfere “artificially”? But Indians do want to manage, and the reasons for not doing so in the past havea great deal to do with forces from outside the Indian communities. And the situation is not so foreign to our own experience as one might first think. We do not have immediate access to the life of the community around Jesus in Palestine, nor a direct continuity of its way of life in any simple or obvious sense. We don’t dress like Palestinians then or eat like them in normal meals, any more than many Indians dress or eat normally like their forebears of a century ago. We depend mightily on scholarship, on skills in archeology, philology, history and the like, to maintain and enhance what we can know and consistently believe about a tradition we value. We do not think that it invalidates Christianity to have it pointed out that Christians no longer live as did the community around Jesus. We think

that there are truths and values and practices that survive even quite drastic changes in the content and circumstances of civilization. There is an exact parallel for members of communities such as those of Native Americans, and especially Native Americans, where a religious element (not necessarily in conflict with Christianity) is so often important. There is no question of returning to the aboriginal ways of life as such. There is very much in question the survival of truths and values and practices that are meaningful, to them, and ultimately, I think, to all of us, through them. There is a great surge of the wish and

268 DELL HYMES will to do this, but too little in the way of means and opportunity to accomplish it. A bill such as this, if it takes into account the active participation of members of the communities whose folklife is of concern, can doa great deal to provide means and opportunity. I have stressed that it is a question, not only of objects and traditions themselves, but of meaning in personal and community lives, of senses of identity. The identities of non-Indians are ultimately involved as well. It will be a much healthier state of Oregon, and United States, when we can bridge the gap between legiti-

mate “white” history and Indian history, white cultural tradition and Indian. When we can accept the continuation of aspects of Indian tradition and values in contemporary society—not manifested perhaps in a Plains Indian headdress or war dance—but perhaps in a distinctive way of recounting personal experience in English (one of the most moving experiences in my life was to hear Larry George, a Yakima, recount in Portland the meaning of growing up and being expected to war dance at white occasions—a long intricate story, circling perfectly upon itself at the

end with the repetition of the phrase, ‘But I don’t want to war dance’’). The continuation will be a selective preservation of feelings for land and ceremonies that express it, of modes of mutual support, expressed in certain rituals of exchange, of use of traditional languages in certain contexts; and in a creative vitality, manifested in forms of course not part of Indian aboriginal life—film strips, videotape, drawings, etchings, paintings, poetry—but all expressions not possible out of other than an Indian experience. We will all be the richer for these things, and understand our own places, Oregon in this case, better. This letter is not the letter one would write solely as President of a concerned scholarly society. Folklorists take in the full range of American traditions and ways of life, the native American being just one of those. Iam writing to you now, about this, because of my involvement and concern with native American traditons within Oregon. In the Folklore Preservation Act, I see hope fora help in meeting a great and pressing human need. Sincerely yours, DELL HYMES.

ARCHIE GREEN —WHHessssssssssssssssssssssssse

P.L. 94-201—A View from the Lobby A Report to the American Folklore Society

First published January 18, 1976, in pamphlet form, ‘““A View from the Lobby” is Archie Green’s summary report of the passage, both literal and figurative, of the American Folklife Preservation Act on January 2, 1976. Green’s report is particularly valuable because he writes from the vantage point of insider or eyewitness, having spearheaded the lobbying that led to congressional and presidential approval of the legislation. The act resulted in the establishment of the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, a signal accomplishment and the only contemporary federal agency solely devoted to American folklife. For more on the history of the American Folklife Preservation Act, see the bibliographic appendix that ends Green’s report.

Late in the evening of January 2, 1976, President Gerald Ford signed the American Folklife Preservation Act, thereby transforming H.R. 6673 into P.L. 94-201. This latter numerical designation indicates that our bill became the two-hundred and first public law enacted during the Ninety-Fourth Congress. January 2 was the first working day of the bicentennial year. However, if the President sensed any calendric symbolism in making a gesture to the folk on this special day, he did not reveal it in his brief statement accompanying the new law. This report will sketch the legislative history of H.R. 6673 but not that of its various predecessor bills during four (two-year) Congresses. Also, it will mention some of the problems we can anticipate as the Folklife Center is actually established within the Library of Congress. My report of last year, ‘“The Folklife Act in the Ninety-Third Congress” (December 31, 1974), is still available; it supplements this 1975 account. Our legislative chronology runs from March 20, 1969 when Senator Yarborough (D. Texas) introduced the first folklife bill in the Ninety-First Congress, to the signing of H.R. 6673 at the White House on January 2, 1976. After Ralph Yarborough left Washington, Senator Fred Harris (D. Oklahoma) became our principal Senate sponsor; when he left, Senator James Abourezk (D. South Dakota) assumed this role in the Ninety-Third Congress. The two chief Representatives who successfully shepherded folklife legislation through the House were Lucien Nedzi (D. Detroit) and Frank Thompson (D. Trenton). The former is chairman of the Joint (House-Senate) Committee on the Library of Congress, and the latter is especially active in shaping federal policy for the arts. In these five enthusiasts for folk culture, we found men coming from divergent positions: southwestern populism, Indian rights advocacy, Great Plains progressivism, blue-collar ethnicity, liberal enlightenment. In talking to Yarborough, Harris, Abourezk, and Nedzi, I heard them identify the strands which tied each to folk society. Curious about Frank Thompson’s determined loyalty to our cause, I

270 ARCHIE GREEN once asked him why he had worked so diligently for the bill. His reply, almost brusque, was, ‘Because | listen to people.” This evocation of spirits from Johann Herder to Carl Sandburg is as good a statement as I heard in our long endeavor. Men and women from both parties contributed to folklore’s legislative victory. For example, Congressman John Ashbrook (R. Johnstown, Ohio), an articulate spokesman for libertarian views, was an early and consistent supporter of the bill. Unlike some of his conservative peers, he understood our potential in making heard the understated voices of isolated citizens. Essentially, Mr. Ashbrook knows that a nation is unhealthy if its microphones and amplifiers, presses and cameras belong to one set of entrepreneurs or to a single governmental bureau. He knows also that when powerful institutions threaten individuality, they also flatten cultural expression. Perhaps the highest compliment our bill ever received in Con-

gressional offices was that it brought together, as active cosponsors, John Ashbrook and Bella Abzug. Highly influential in shaping our House strategy was the powerful chairman of the Appropriations Committee, George Mahon, who has served in Congress for 21 terms. During the first House hearings on our bill (May 10, 1974) he dropped in to pay his respects to Chairman Nedzi. When the folklife bill reached the floor for its first House vote (December 16, 1974), Mr. Mahon spoke extemporaneously, touching on life in rural Texas during his childhood. In the Senate throughout 1975 we mustered support which clearly brought contrasting values together. This point is made dramatically by but a handful of names among our cosponsors: Barry Goldwater, Strom Thurmond, James Eastland, Gary Hart, Edward Kennedy, George McGovern. Balancing their positions

was Mark Hatfield, a strong friend, and minority member of the Senate Rules Committee’s Subcommittee on the Library. Senator Hatfield not only championed traditions of native Americans in Oregon, but also held firm whenever opposition to our bill surfaced.

Enlisting the aid of key Senators and Representatives constitutes but one aspect of a legislative campaign. A parallel is education—alerting Congressional members to the deep issues hidden within a bill. At the surface we called only fora small national center, in a library setting, to preserve and present folklife. Below

this proposed structural entity, however, lies a congeries of forces, some with explosive potential. Many polarities divide the American people: native/foreign origins, melting pot/pluralistic commitments, commercial/community endeavors, cultivated/popular esthetics. We are still a restless nation, ambivalent about the past, apprehensive about the future. Although no one expects a library center, with a small staff and modest budget, to resolve long-standing stress in national life, there is no way folklorists can escape large issues. Folkloric work involves commentary on artistic and symbolic forms which, in turn, derive from and speak to identity, ethnicity, and community. Several years ago it dawned on me that my lobbying was an extension of teaching, from the campus to Capitol Hill. But what was the subject? Folklore, of course, but folklore understood pragmatically by members of Congress, many who knew intimately the contours of vernacular speech as well as those of ver-

. nacular architecture. Within the discipline, we know that the word “folk” originally meant members of tribal societies or peasants, and more recently that this restricted usage has been enlarged so that “‘folklore’” now encompasses eth-

Appendix 271 nographic description of expressive culture and communicative behavior. Between these dual formulations, Congressmen see ‘‘the folk” as persons within enclaved groups (regional, ethnic, religious, occupational) and “‘folklore”’ as mate-

rial of special quality (unofficial, overlooked, denigrated, spontaneous, indigenous, natural). It is not my suggestion that Congressmen endlessly debate folkloric definitions. However, after spending some years explaining what actual substance or process it was that we wanted to preserve or present, I learned that most members had very clear pictures of folklife in mind, such as a cowboy ballad, a Cajun fiddle tune, a Holiness shout, or a holiday delicacy. Beyond these specifics, some Senators and Representatives were forceful spokesmen for cultural autonomy, egalitarian virtue, or rural lifestyle. It was refreshing to be told in a House corridor by one of our partisans, James Mann of South Carolina, that Jefferson had not yet lost his battle with Hamilton. There is no present-day term available to combine diverse political beliefs in

causes such as family farms, bilingual education, historic preservation, and resource conservation. In a sense, our bill did bring pluralists and ecologists together. Is this Jeffersonianism for America’s third century of nationhood? Practically, will folklorists acutely touch and shape educational and cultural policy in future decades? Before turning to public problems ahead, I shall outline the movement of our bill during the First Session of the Ninety-Fourth Congress, and also treat a little of the “prehistory” of folklife legislation in the United States. Upon the opening of the House of Representatives, January 14, 1975, Con-

gressman Frank Thompson introduced the American Folklife Preservation Act (H.R. 41), similar in form to his bills of previous years. Openly, he sought a firstday low number to inform his colleagues that this legislation was long overdue. Privately, he expressed his concern that the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities had not developed strong folk programs in their formative years. (These sister agencies were formed in 1965 under the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act.) His basic strategy was to persuade both Endowment staffs that they could not divide culture into high and low categories, lavishing funds on the former, and starving the latter. Congressman Thompson has never posed as a backwoodsman, wearing either Natty Bumppo or Davy Crockett leathers. His deep grasp of history and literature has told him that the tension between common and privileged artistic forms has been etched into American life since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. Within the first three months of the Ninety-Fourth Congress, more than half the House membership became cosponsors in a series of bills parallel to Thompson’s H.R. 41. This widespread support was encouraged with active endorsement of the folklife bill by the American Library Association. On May 1 the Library and Memorials Subcommittee of the Committee on House Administration took up the

several folklife bills before it, then submitted a new one in the name of Library Chairman Lucien Nedzi. It was this “’clean’’ May Day bill (H.R. 6673) which threaded its way through the House and the Senate, gathering amendments and, eventually, a Presidential signature. Folklorists can be grateful that the Library’s principal ‘overseer’ in Congress, Mr. Nedzi, knows from his childhood at Hamtramck, Michigan, the lives of immigrant workers in heavy industry. The amendment sequence cannot be discussed in legal terms alone, for it was

272 ARCHIE GREEN the actual amendments which embodied the various compromises necessary to bring the Folklife Center into being. On May 14 the full Committee on House Administration took up H.R. 6673 and responded favorably, after hearing its purpose explained by Nedzi and Thompson. Chairman Wayne Hays liked the bill but questioned the specific provision which allowed the Librarian of Congress to appoint eight of the seventeen members on the Center’s Board of Trustees. Under this seemingly technical point was hidden a keg of dynamite. Mr. Hays had been critical of the former Librarian, Quincy Mumford, who had retired on December 31. Early in May, President Ford indicated that he would nominate historian Daniel Boorstin for the vacant position, a choice of concern to some Democratic Congress-

men. .

Not only was the matter of Mumford’s previous record on Chairman Hays’ mind, but he was also distressed that the House would have no voice in Boorstin’s forthcoming Senate confirmation hearing. This “tar baby” problem was simultaneously personal, political, and constitutional. In name, the Library of Congress lies within the legislative branch of government; in practice it combines extensive legislative research functions with diverse cultural/educational/economic functions (for example, the Copyright Office). In short, the LC is the American national library; as such it plays an executive-branch role. Asa folklorist [had no wish to see our proposed Center embroiled in constitutional conflict; as a lobbyist I could only pray that political innocence would protect us in the shoals and rapids ahead. Mr. Hays suggested to the Committee on House Administration that H.R. 6673 be amended to give equal appointive power for eight members on the Center’s Board to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate. In effect, these eight citizens appointed by the two Congressional heads would help “execute” a law. The Hays suggestion was adopted (18 to 5), but it prompted an immediate criticism by Congressman Bill Frenzel (R. Golden Valley, Minnesota), until then a supporter of the bill, who now labeled the newly-amended folklife bill an infringement on the constitutional doctrine of separation of powers. Hopefully, the ultimate duality built into the Library of Congress's very charter will be resolved in the distant future, but not at the expense of a national commitment to folk culture. Time may or may not tell this particular tale’s end. At this juncture, however, it is necessary to report that when President Ford signed H.R. 6673, he found two weaknesses in the bill. The President stated that he had “‘serious reservations concerning the constitutional propriety of placing the functions to be performed by the Center outside the executive branch and the assignment of executive duties to officers appointed by Congress” (Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, January 12, 1976, p. 19.) For half a century, folklorists have been more conscious of the Library of Con-

gress’ ambivalence towards folklore than of the LC’s ambiguous constitutional status. During 1927 the Library’s musicologist, Carl Engel, approached ballad scholar Robert Winslow Gordon to begin the Archive of American Folk-Song within the Library’s Music Division. Initially, Engel drew on “outside” (philanthropic) funds to finance this embryonic folk center. Not until John and Alan Lomax arrived in Washington to work at the Archive through the New Deal years did Congress make a direct appropriation, in 1937, for folk-song activity. To recount in detail at this point all the administrative constraints externally imposed on the Archive, as

Appendix 273 well as those accepted by its various heads, would represent a major digression from my report’s chronology. Regardless of the Archive's past record, folklorists and their friends in Con-

gress must know that it will demand strong commitment and much energy to build a dynamic folklife center within the Library. As far back as 1937 the president of the American Folklore Society, Stith Thompson, called for an enlarged Archive: “It should embrace folklore in the larger sense, so that all our traditional material may find a home in the Library, where it can be adequately preserved and made available to students.” We applaud Professor Thompson’s foresight and, in 1976, we do want the Library to preserve all traditional material and to make it available to all citizens, not to students alone. I wonder whether any legislative history can be outlined without awkward digressions which distort chronology. It is impossible to describe sequentially how our folklife legislation fared without dealing with anomie and anomaly—the long

months of dreary waiting and the last-minute surfacing of quixotic intrusions. , During May and June, I attempted to assimilate, in structural terms, the impact of Wayne Hays’ assessment of the separate Mumford and Boorstin roles. My concerns were abstract, of course, for the amended folklife bill was at that time on the move towards floor debate and a vote. On July 14, Mr. Nedzi appeared before the Rules Committee to request ‘that a rule be granted for H.R. 6673 to be considered by the House.” This procedural step insured that the bill could be passed by a majority vote. (We had failed in the previous Congress, December 16, 1974, to receive a two-thirds margin under a suspension motion.) Our new day in the House, September 8, 1975, came after the summer recess.

On behalf of the Rules Committee, Congressman Andrew Young of Atlanta moved to call up our bill under an open rule which permitted germane amendments. In addition, he lauded the bill for its recognition of cultural diversity, equated in his mind with a belief in democracy. Mr. Young’s procedural motion was accepted, setting the stage for floor debate. Lucien Nedzistated the case for folklife legislation, ably assisted by Frank Thompson, Millicent Fenwick, Henry Gonzalez, Thomas Downey, Paul Simon, Charles Whalen, Alphonzo Bell, John Anderson, Herman Badillo, Bill Alexander, Joseph Fisher, Jake Pickle, and James Oberstar.

The main burden of opposition was carried by Henson Morre, Robert Bauman, Steve Symms, Henry Hyde, and Bill Frenzel. The full transcript of all their remarks, found in the Congressional Record (September 8, 1976), comprises a fascinat- : ing commentary on national understanding of folkloric substance as well as needs. The basic arguments against the bill were made by members committed to

limited government, by fiscal conservatives, and by others who felt that the Library of Congress was an inappropriate site for the proposed Folklife Center. Mr. Moore from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, summarized: “It is the wrong agency to set up at the wrong time and for the wrong amount of money.” To the great credit of all the opponents, none raised the chauvinistic issue of the previous year’s debate that belief in cultural pluralism by ““‘hypenated citizens” was un-American. Here, I shall select only three fragments to illustrate the color and style of the floor action. Mr. Hyde, from Park Ridge, a Chicago suburb, had objected to the proposed cost of the bill (administrative costs and potential grants together totaling $2.5

million for a three year period). Mr. Simon from downstate Carbondale responded: “I came on the floor and heard my distinguished colleague from Illinois

274 ARCHIE GREEN take out after the bill. It so happens that in his county, Cook County, one mile of expressway costs about $50 million to construct. We are talking about a bill that will

take roughly one-twentieth of that amount for three years. . . . [think we have to recognize that we as a civilization ought to be remembered for something other than the ribbons of concrete with which we mar the landscape.” One unusually mordant role for our bill was tendered by Mr. Bauman, from Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Noting that a dead civilization left records of its true nature in tombs, he stated: ““Some day when the archaeologists, if there are still any left, come back and dust off the 60 feet of earth over this building, and get to the House document room and find this particular [folklife] legislation, they will say to

themselves that this kind of activity was. . . symptomatic. . . of the malaise that pervades this floor and the minds of those members [folklife proponents]. . . .” Presumably, our bill itself (a “symbol of Congressional irresponsibility” according to Mr. Symms from Caldwell, Idaho) was destined to bring down the seat of government under great mounds of dust. It fell to Mr. Gonzalez of San Antonio, Texas, to respond to the fiscal litany of _ Mr. Symms, who feared that our bill was “destroying the integrity of the American dollar” and dooming us to the condition of Revolutionary War ‘‘continental cur-

rency.”’ Behind this anxiety was the unmentioned reality that federal funds in cultural areas were already heavily committed to proponents of elite art and formal

learning. Mr. Gonzalez, dipping into memory for a folk rhyme, concluded his remarks: Higgledy, piggledy, my little white hen She lays eggs only for gentlemen. I cannot persuade her with pistol or lariat To come across for the proletariat.

The actual House vote on the folklife bill (272-117) not only gained the needed majority, but exceeded the two-thirds margin as well, thus assuaging some of the pain of the previous year’s failure. With this House vote of confidence in hand and more than two-thirds of the Senate membership signed up as cosponsors of the American Folklife Preservation Act, it seemed only a matter of time before the Abourezk bill would reach the Senate floor. S. 1618 had been introduced on May 1, 1975, and referred to the Committee on Rules and Administration, Subcommittee on the Library. From our perspective, the key Rules member who needed to be persuaded of the bill’s worth was Claiborne Pell (D. Rhode Island), an effective spokesman for high culture and author of the 1965 legislation which created the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. In my lobbying I was made aware that Senator Pell perceived our efforts as “competitive” to the jurisdiction of the twin Endowments. Not all the nuances of a Senator's position are detailed in print. Whether Mr. Pell genuinely was distressed by our lobby-in-a-hat-box, whether he judged folk art to be shabby, or whether he merely reflected the anxiety of both Endowment

staffs, I do not know. Nevertheless, I sensed that our bill would not pass if he found it personally objectionable. Hence, I spent considerable time during 1975 educating myself in the legislative history of the National Endowment for the Arts and in asking its staff people to articulate their response to folk art. Fortunately, I could talk directly to Nancy Hanks, the Arts chief administrator, and Michael

Appendix 275 Straight, her deputy, although I had no similar association with heads of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Officials in both Endowments cited two possible areas of conflict holding them away from folkloric support: (A) if money is diverted to “low” folk expression, the “high” subsidized forms (for example, humanities lectures, opera, ballet) will suffer; (B) the egalitarian partisans of folklife (rurality, ethnicity, artisanship) are more numerous in Congress than their elite peers; hence, a folk center will dilute the political support needed by other cultural institutions. As these two positions, esthetic and political, are linked rhetorically in debate, dissimilar values are compressed into a single argument. For example, does “bad” music deserve as much support as “good” music? I shall not use my report to explicate this argu-

mentive query; but I hope that other folklorists will address themselves to it elsewhere. After the positive House vote on the folklife bill (September 8, 1975), our problems in the Senate became two-fold: persuading Mr. Pell that folk and high culture hold parallel value; indicating to him that the scale of support to the NEA-NEH (about $150,000,000 in 1975) precluded any genuine rivalry on the part of a tiny, modestly-funded Library of Congress Folklife Center. Characteristic of much of

the Senate’s traditional process, there was no single encounter at any time between a folklorist and Mr. Pell. He talked once or twice with Congressman Thompson about folklore. I talked a few times with three of the Senator’s aides. Our messages were conveyed by indirection—they seemed to be carried by the breeze rather than the voice. Coincidentally, during 1975 Senator Pell himself became interested in altering several of the standards and procedures within the two Endowments. These complex matters can be cited here briefly for reference purposes. In the first decade of Endowments’ existence, each held to a sharp and principled distinction between granting and operating functions, eschewing the latter. Simply put, with one example, the NEA could award a monetary grant to a film maker but could not produce or distribute a film directly. In 1975 Senator Pell and Congressman John Brademas joined to blur this dichotomy by guiding the Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Act through Congress. This new legislation gave the Federal Council on the Arts and Humanities (established under the National Foun-

dation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965) a day-to-day operating role of insuring against loss or damage [of] works coming to the United States from other countries. In effect, the Federal Council, an “uncle” to the twin Endowments, will assume operating functions such as appraising, writing policies, providing indemnity payments, and improving museum service. While this technical bill was before Congress, Senator Pell also took up the matter of establishing state humanities councils parallel to existing arts councils. Here, he parted with Ronald Berman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, over the latter’s opposition to state units. Their essential conflict centered on Washington-directed as against community centered activity. As Senator Pell placed a little distance between himself and the dual Endowments, both administratively and politically, he also positioned himself to accept a folkloric toein-the-door within the arts and humanities establishment. Perhaps the major problem faced by each Endowment in 1975 was the question of its funding level. President Ford (and his Office of Management and Bud-

276 ARCHIE GREEN get) proved to be less generous to the NEA-NEH than his predecessor had been. When staff people from each Endowment talked to Senators and Representatives in 1975, they heard considerable complaint from the “boondocks,” in that the Ninety-Fourth Congress was dominated by a recession mentality. Against this grim backdrop it became difficult to justify grants for esoteric projects. Conversely, folkloric consciousness seemed to make sense in hard times—folk artifacts and projects carried modest price tags. More importantly, every Representative or Senator could identify quilt makers and ballad singers or wood carvers and yarn swappers back home, but not every district or region supported an opera company. I do not assert that our sun ascended while night cloaked the fine offices of the two Endowments. Rather, members of Congress and their aides knew not only that our bill made a symbolic statement about the intrinsic value in folklife, but also that it might make a positive contribution to internal reforms needed within the NEA-NEH. In effect, we came to life in the Senate well before our bill reached the floor for a formal vote. This new status was defined succinctly within Senator Robert Byrd’s (D. West Virginia) report of November 19, 1976, ““Department of the Interior and Related Agencies Appropriation Bill.” Itis customary for Congressmen to utilize appropriation reporting to shape policy—one can give much money or withhold it, one can also attach strings or homilies to the purse. When the Senate Committee on Appro-

priations took up the 1976 budget for the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, Senator Mark Hatfield (R. Oregon) inserted into the Committee report a strong, admonitory statement on the responsibility of the twin agencies to folklife. The Byrd-Hatfield passage can help all of us as we articulate concern about our lives and land, communities and culture. In passing the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965, the Congress intended that the two granting Endowments provided by the Act support the study and presentation of folk culture. The National Endowment for the Arts established its formal Folk Arts program only as recently as 1975. The National Endowment for the Humanities, although granting some funds over the years to folkloric study, has not yet seen fit to add trained folklorists to its staff or to initiate a formal folklore program. In short, the Committee finds the Endowments’ support for American folklife has been woefully inadequate. The Committee believes the Endowments should see the Bicentennial year as an opportunity to expand dramatically their commitment to the simple beauty and natural expression of tens of millions of citizens to whom the avenues of high culture are not open. The mandate which stands behind the National Foundation for the Arts and Humanities is a charge that

the culture of all Americans is intrinsically worthy of support. Congress expects the administrators of arts and humanities policy to act responsibly and imaginatively in the area of folk culture. The two Endowments, in particular, should expand and improve their programs in support of American folk culture. (Senate Report No. 94-462, page 47.)

On December 19, the Senate Rules Committee finally took H.R. 6673 under consideration, substituting it for Mr. Abourezk’s S. 1618. The staff aide who handled the bill was Ray Nelson, representing Mr. Pell. Technically, this markup session combined language from the Nedzi and Abourezk bills, with other suggested amendments also coming from the Librarian of Congress. At this meeting Senator Pell wished principally to protect the jurisdiction of the Endowments in regard to their grant-making power. No one took issue with this position, and the amended

Appendix 277 bill (which retained contractual power on the part of the proposed Center) cleared the Rules Committee easily. Two days later it passed the full Senate by a voice vote without opposition. Warm statements on behalf of the bill were inserted in the: Congressional Record by Republican minority leader Hugh Scott and by its principal sponsor, James Abourezk. On December 19, the very last day of the First Session, the amended H.R. 6673 was returned from the Senate to the House of concurrence. There it was passed for a final time under a unanimous consent motion. I enjoyed the symmetry established by our progression during 1975. H.R. 41 was introduced on the first day and passed in amended form on the last. The Christmas vacation period, for me, was a time of waiting for President Ford’s return from Vail, Colorado, to the folklife bill on his desk at the White House. Were this report to end here, it would suggest mechanically that folklore came to life in Congress on the day Senator Yarborough dropped his folklife bill into the hopper, March 20, 1969. Such an impression would be unfair not only to all the members of both chambers who took up the bill, but also to many scholars and collectors who, for more than a century, labored to make a discipline professional, as well as to alert a citizenry to its heritage. Figuratively, at Senator Yarborough’s elbow stood J. Frank Dobie, John Avery Lomax, John Wesley Powell, and Lucy McKim Garrison. To perceive folklore, the academic discipline, as one mainly focused upon the study of “popular traditions” is accurate, but limiting. Despite its appeal, the “‘ivory tower” has never been fenced off completely from society at large. To consider the “‘prehistory” of our bill is but to seek perspective. When did folklorists in the United States step across the line separating collection from interpretation? Within the academy this duality is debated endlessly. On Capitol Hilla few Congressmen, intrigued by precedent, asked me when folklorists actually undertook to save and salvage threatened material. More than one member, in highly complimentary terms, likened folkloric workers to John Muir, Gifford Pinchot, or Rachel Carson. In my attempts to place our discipline on a historical plane meaningful in Congressional offices, I generally referred either to a specific book inspired during the Civil War, or to the achievement of a Civil War veteran. During 1867 three collectors—William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, Lucy McKim Garrison— published a collection of sacred and secular music, Slave Songs of the United States.

These authors did not perceive themselves to be ethnographers or folklorists; rather, they were abolitionists fired with conviction that spirituals and work chants could display usefully the accomplishments of recently freed slaves. Allen, a Harvard-trained Latinist, was employed during the war in new schools for freedmen established in the Sea Islands between Charleston and Savannah. Ware, also from Harvard, similarly taught at Coffin’s Point, St. Helena Island, South Car-

olina. The trio’s best musician was Mrs. Garrison, sister of architect Charles McKim and daughter-in-law of the noted reformer William Lloyd Garrison. After the Carolina Sea Islands fell to Union forces, Lucy, then nineteen, accompanied her father to Port Royal, where she heard and transcribed “‘contraband” (Negro)

songs, conscious of their difference from conservatory music. In the year after Slave Songs appeared, Major John Wesley Powell, a onearmed Civil War veteran, led a group of explorers and adventurers ona spectacular descent of the Colorado River. Powell, a self-educated geologist and anthropolo-

278 ARCHIE GREEN gist, was an early enthusiast of native Indian culture as well as an effective lobbyist. In 1879 he convinced Congress to appropriate $20,000 for the study of Indian languages. Single-handedly, he established, as an “‘office” within the Smithsonian Institution, the Bureau of Ethnology (renamed Bureau of American Ethnology in 1894). Until his death (1902) he dedicated the BAE to the scientific study of America’s native inhabitants. By any contemporary standards, Powell was a superb folklorist; indeed, he joined the American Folklore Society as a charter member upon its organization during 1888. Lucy McKim Garrison and her compatriots in the Port Royal Experiment

knew at first hand the complexity of integrating private and public zeal in the journey from bondage to freedom. Also, she was not immune to the national political controversies which swirled around any notion of Negro worth. Major Powell was as much a Washington-based Indian advocate as he was a scholarly linguist and pioneering folklorist. I believe that in spirit Miss Lucy and the one-armed Major were both at President Ford’s side in the Oval Office when he signed the folklife bill. I cite a pioneering collection of Afro-American songs, as well as the work of the BAE’s founder, not to assert an antique “prehistory” for our bill, but rather to demonstrate that some individuals who took up folkloric collection and study were engaged in the political process a century ago. To move from 1867-79 to 1967-76 is to offer formal thanks in this report to two folklorists, Ralph Rinzler and Alan Jabbour, for their recent contributions to the enactment of P.L. 94-201. In time, Ralph will tell his own story of the Smithsonian Institution’s innovative annual Festival of American Folklife. Here, I need only mention that his boundless energy and sensitivity to traditional expression have been strong enough to overcome either jungle heat or gumbo mud on the National Mall during each Festival since 1967. It was this specific happening every summer in Washington for the past decade which gave members of Congress an immediate and tactile sense of folklife. An imaginative Texan aide to Senator Yarborough, Jim Hightower, translated this Smithsonian event into a legislative proposal for the Ninety-First Congress. Within this report I have already touched upon Congressional perception during 1975 that a folklife center might complement rather than compete with the dual Endowments. Credit for this rapproachment goes partly to Alan Jabbour, oldtime fiddler, musicologist, and Director of the Folk Arts Program within the National Endowment for the Arts. Alan, like Ralph, will tell his own story at his own time. It is my desire here to note only that Alan is wisely protective of folk performers’ rights to their creative contributions, and that he is a persuasive spokesman for applicants who submit out-of-the-way or colloquial requests to the Arts Endowment. It has been my assumption in this report that its readers will have examined one of the drafts of the American Folklife Preservation Act. A copy of P.L. 94-201 is appended, obviating the necessity fora summary at this juncture. Also appended is a partial bibliography of Congressional hearings, reports, and statements on the bill. [The partial bibliography is appended; the copy of the legislation is not.] As we all look forward to the physical establishment of the Center, a few problems already mentioned in this commentary and its previous reports can be reformulated: (A) Is the Library of Congress an appropriate place for the Center?; (B) How will the ongoing folkloric work of the twin Endowments, the Smithsonian, and the

Appendix 279 Library be coordinated?; (C) Can these four large Washington agencies delve into all the nooks and crannies of America-across the tracks, up the hollows, and deep within urban enclaves?; (D) Finally, will a corps of public-spirited folklorists rise to fulfill our bill’s promise? These are not rhetorical queries. They involve specifically the Librarian of Congress, the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution, the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. These four persons, by virtue of their offices, are already members of the Board of Trustees which will advise and govern the American Folklife Center. We can expect that in the next few months this full seventeen-member Board will be constituted and begin addressing itself to our concerns.

The formal charge in P.L. 94-201 is “‘to preserve and present American Folklife.’” However, I do not feel that a single law or agency absolves Americans of

responsibility constantly to define and refine their expressive symbols—those which set us apart as well as those which bond us together. Whether or not an academic or professional folklorist recognizes the political dimensions of his work, the world of power, of class, and of moral choice continues to spin. Folkloric items alone do not constitute a magic elixir to remedy all of society’s wrongs. Nevertheless, every item—blues or doll, proverb or moccasin—holds exceedingly complicated layers of meaning and utility. There will never be enough folklorists, either within the Library of Congress’ Folklife Center or the American Folklore Society, to complete the large tasks enumerated in our bill. I close by inverting a lobbying tradition. It is normal in reports on the legislative process to name Senators and Congressmen, but hardly their tireless aides.

Defying this convention, I have already indicated the pioneering work of Jim Hightower (Yarborough) and the wind-up work by Ray Nelson (Pell). Let me thank publicly and deeply all of the many aides who brought P.L. 94-201 into being. A

few who became folklorists-without-portfolio are: Jack Bose and Bill Canfield (Nedzi), George Gaverlavage and Robert Reveles (Thompson), Phil Straw (C. Miller), Bill Nelson (Annunzio), Alma Alkire (Rhodes), Tina Johnson (Mahon), Bruce Collins (Downey), John Childress (Percy), Polly Dement (Ervin), Janet Anderson and Keith Kennedy (Hatfield), David Voight (Abourezk). Hopefully, by the time this report is in the mail, the seven-year-old Citizens Committee for an American Folklife Center will have been dissolved. Whatever

enthusiasm its amateur lobbyists generated should now flow to the Library of Congress’ Center. The CCAFC has only figurative doors to close. For the crucial years we used a corner of Ted Schuchat’s National Press Building office in Washington. It will be a long time before folklorists measure fully his contribution. Finally, we shall balance financial books, repay a few loans, and terminate our Washington account. Holding CCAFC funds in a Capitol Hill bank was one of the most daring—even fantastic—gestures marking our existence. Ina personal vein, it was pleasant to walk past “our bank” to the five Congressional buildings (Cannon, Longworth, Rayburn, Dirksen, Russell). lam happy that within their marble corridors I could speak for many folklorists and teach on the Hill. For a moment, I could be involved closely in our nation’s political life. January 18, 1976 Austin, Texas

280 ARCHIE GREEN Bibliographic Appendix I. Congressional Hearings and Reports in Chronological Order United States Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. American Folklife Foundation Act. Hearings on S. 1591 before the Subcommittee on Education. Ninety-First Congress, Second Session. May 18, 1970. United States Congress. Senate. Committee on Labor and Public Welfare. American Folklife Foundation. Report No. 91-1274 to accompany S. 1591. Ninety-First Congress, Second Session. October 6, 1970. “American Folklife Foundation Act.” Insertion by Senator Fred Harris of transcript of “Folk Hearing” of 5. 1930 held during Festival of American Folklife on National Mall, July 2. Congressional Record, Volume 117, Part 2 (July 28, 1971), pp. S 27641-6.

‘American Folklife Foundation Act.” Insertion by Senator Fred Harris of transcript of hearing on S. 1930 held at the Grand Ole Opry, December 4. Congressional Record, Volume 118, Part 2 (February 1, 1972), pp. S 1947-54. United States Congress. Senate. Committee on Rules and Administration. American Folklife Center. Hearing on S. 1844 before the Subcommittee on the Library. Ninety-Third Congress, Second Session. May 8, 1974. United States Congress. House. Committee on House Administration. To Establish an American Folklife Foundation in the Library of Congress. Hearings on H.R. 8770 before the Subcommittee on Library and Memorials. Ninety-Third Congress, Second Session. May 9 and 10, 1974. United States Congress. House. Committee on House Administration. Providing for the Establishment of an American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, and for

Other Purposes. Report No. 93-1527 to accompany H.R. 17382. Ninety-Third Congress, Second Session. December 9, 1974. United States Congress. House. Committee on House Administration. Providing for the Establishment of an American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, and for

Other Purposes. Report No. 94-273 to accompany H.R. 6673. Ninety-Fourth Conegress, First Session. June 10, 1975. United States Congress. Senate. Committee on Rules and Administration. Providing for the Establishment of an American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, and

for Other Purposes. Report No. 94-527 to accompany H.R. 6673. Ninety-Fourth Congress, First Session. December 10, 1975. II. Statements, Insertions, and Debate in the Congressional Record (March 20, 1969) “’S. 1591—Introduction of a Bill Relating to the American Folklife Foundation.” Statement by Senator Ralph Yarborough, pp. S 2928-30. (May 24, 1971) “’S. 1930—A Bill entitled . . .”. Statement by Senator Fred Harris, pp. S 16584-7. (May 24, 1971) “H.R. 8672—A bill to establish. . .” (list of initial cosponsors only), p- H 16574.

(May 17, 1973) “S. 1844—A bill to provide . . .” Statement by Senator James Abourezk, pp. 5 16064-6.

Appendix 281 p. H 20140. ,

(June 18, 1973) “H.R. 8770—A bill to provide. . .” (list of initial cosponsors only),

(July 19, 1973) “‘Preservation of Indian Lore in Oregon.” Statement of Senator Mark Hatfield and insertion of letter from Dell Hymes, pp. S 24882-3. (August 3, 1973) “In Support of Establishing an American Folklife Center.” Statement by Representative Frank Annunzio, p. H 28158. (September 13, 1973) “American Folklife Preservation Act.” Statement by Senator James Abourezk and insertion of letters from Francis Lee Utley and others, pp. S 29571-3.

(December 13, 1973) “Additional Support for the American Folklife Preservation Act.” Statement by Senator James Abourezk and insertion of letter from the American Library Association, p. S 41450. NOTE: Pagination above is from CR bound volumes; below from unbound daily issues. (March 14, 1974) ““American Folklife Preservation Act.” Statement by Representative John Conyers and insertion of letter from William Wiggins, p. E 1404. (December 16, 1974) “’Providing for Establishment of an American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress.” (Debate and House vote), pp. H 11952-8, 11986. (January 14, 1975) “H.R. 41—a bill to provide. . .” (list of initial cosponsors), p. H 131.

(May 1, 1975) “’S. 1618—a bill to provide . . .”” Statements by Senators James Abourezk and Hugh Scott, pp. S 7303-5. (September 8, 1975) ‘““Providing for the Establishment of an American Folklife Cen-

ter in the Library of Congress, and for Other Purposes.” (Debate and House vote), pp. H 8410-11, 8427-38. (December 11, 1975) ‘“American Folklife Preservation Act.” (Senate vote), pp. S 21733-4.

(December 19, 1975) “Providing for Establishment of American Folklife Center in Library of Congress.” (House vote), pp. H 13066-7. III. Reports to the American Folklore Society

(December 31, 1973) “Report on the American Folklife Preservation Act,” by Archie Green. (December 31, 1974) “The Folklife Act in the Ninety-Third Congress,” by Archie Green. (December 1, 1975) ‘An Institute for Folk Culture: A Feasibility Study,” by Janet Anderson.

Contributors

For the past eight years, JANE Beck has served as Vermont Folklorist for the

Vermont Council on the Arts. With her husband, Horace, she has done fieldwork in the British Isles, the Lesser Antilles, and the Kingdom of Tonga.

ERIKA Brapy has worked with federal collections of ethnographic field recordings since 1973, serving as Technical Consultant and Researcher for the Federal Cylinder Project of the American Folklife Center from 1979 until 1986. She is currently Adjunct Professor of Folklore at Southeast Missouri State University.

After serving as Folklore Coordinator for the Appalachian Museum in Berea, Kentucky, PEGcy BULGER was hired as Florida’s Folk Arts Coordina-

tor. She has worked for the Florida Department of State as a public sector folklorist since 1976. Currently working on her Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife at the University of Pennsylvania, Miriam Camirta teaches school in Philadelphia. Baltimore City Folklorist ELAINE Err received her M.A. in Museum Studies

from the Cooperstown Graduate Programs and her Ph.D. in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. Burt FEINTUCH is Professor of Folk Studies at Western Kentucky University, where he also coordinates that institution’s Programs in Folk Studies. He is currently studying the revitalization of a regional music in Britain. Retiring in 1982 from teaching at the University of Texas, Austin, ARCHIE GREEN now serves in several voluntary organizations and archives deal-

ing with vernacular expression, laborlore, maritime culture, recorded sound, and folk music. JERROLD Hirscu teaches history at the University of the South. He is coeditor of Such as Us: Southern Voices of the Thirties and is working on a cultural history of the Federal Writers’ Project and a biography of B.A. Botkin.

Contributors 283 A folklife specialist at the American Folklife Center, Mary Hurrorp directed the Pinelands Folklife Project for the Center. ORMOND H. Loomis directs the Bureau of Florida Folklife Programs. He

has worked with folk museums, arts and historical agencies, and other cultural organizations since the mid-seventies. Folk Arts Coordinator at the Idaho Commission on the Arts, ROBERT

McCart has done extensive fieldwork in contemporary occupational folklife. His monograph on the folklore of urban fire fighters was recently published by the Smithsonian Institution Press. Jack SANTINO teaches folklore and popular culture in the Department of Popular Culture at Bowling Green State University. He was a staff folklorist for eight years at the Smithsonian Institution. JEAN HASKELL SPEER is Director of the Appalachian Studies Program and on

the faculty in Communication Studies at Virginia Tech. Currently, she serves as Cultural Resources Adviser to the Blue Ridge Parkway and researches Appalachian folk culture. SHALOM STAus served as Director of Pennsylvania’s Office of State Folklife

Programs in the Governor's Heritage Affairs Commission from its inception in 1982, and now serves as the commission’s executive director. Rosert T. TEsKE is Associate Curator of Exhibitions for the John Michael

Kohler Arts Center in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. He has taught at Wayne State University, Western Kentucky University, and George Washington University, and he has served on the staff of the National Endowment for the Arts’ Folk Arts Program. Davip E. WHISNANT is Professor of American Studies at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. His most recent book is All That Is Native and Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. He is currently writing on cultural policy in Nicaragua.

An assistant professor of folk studies at Western Kentucky University, MiIcHAEL ANN WILLIAMS formerly worked as an architectural historian and

as a public sector folklorist.

Index

Abourezk, James, 269, 277 Bass, Reba, 114

Abzug, Bella, 270 Bauman, Richard, 48 Adams, John Quincy, 25 Bauman, Robert, 273, 274 advocacy, 11, 84 Beck, Jane C., 8, 113 Allen, William Francis, 277 Bell, Michael E., 113

All That Is Native and Fine (Whisnant), 12 Benedict, Ruth, 24, 51

Alsberg, Henry, 54-55, 263 Benga, Ota, 37

Always in Season (exhibition and catalog), Berman, Ronald, 275

88-89 Benjamin, Walter, 164

American Antiquarian Society, 23 Beverly, Basil, 235

American Council of Learned Societies, bicentennial celebrations, 71

261, 262 Black, Patti Carr, 112

American Dialect Society, 22 blueberries, 222-23

American Folklife Center, 2, 3, 13, 35, 42, Boas, Franz, 35, 38, 51, 265-66 47,71, 186-87, 192, 227, 243, 269-81 Boggs, Ralph S., 74, 81-82 n 5, 262 American Folklife Preservation Act, 13, 14, Boltin, “Cousin” Thelma, 74, 75

19, 21, 35, 74, 81, 264-68, 269-81 Boorstin, Daniel, 272, 273 American Folklore Society, 2, 13-14, 19, 22, Botkin, Benjamin A., 7, 13, 22, 24, 46-67,

35, 269-81, 278; and legitimacy of public 258-63

sector work, 81; Newsletter, 243 Bourne, Randolph, 50 American Guide Series, 49, 52-54 boxed construction, 201 American Jewish Committee, 105n8 Brady, Erika, 7, 13 American Library Association, 271 Brooks, Van Wyck, 22, 52

Antiquities Act (1906), 23 Brown, Jerry, 114 anthropology, 50; applied, 2 Brown, Sterling, 59

Apprenticeships in Traditional Crafts Buchanan, Annabel Morris, 236

program (Pennsylvania), 170 Bulger, Pegey A., 8

applied folklore, 46-47, 48, 49, 63 Bunkse, Edmunds V., 220 Archive of American Folk-Song, 13, 74, Bureau of American Ethnology, 7, 13, 35-45, 253-57, 262, 272-73: work with songsters, 242, 251-52, 278

253-54; fieldwork, 254-55 Burrison, John, 112

Archive of Folk Culture, 3, 13, 188 Byrd, Robert, 276

arts agencies and councils, 7, 17, 228 n 12 See also National Endowment for the Arts; Cadaval, Olivia, 123

Vermont Council on the Arts Cahill, Holger, 22

Arts and Artifacts Indemnity Act, 275 California Public Resource Code, 192

Ashbrook, John, 270 Camitta, Miriam, 11-12

assimilation, 125 Camp, Charles, 115 authenticity, 10, 16 n 29, 166-79, 178n5 Campbell, Emory, 4

“A View from the Lobby,” 13-14, 19, 269-81 Campbell, George, 222, 226 Campbell, Olive Dame, 236

Bachelard, Gaston, 203 Canton Community (Baltimore), 99-100, Baird, Spencer F., 13, 38, 251-52 102

Baltimore, Md., 95-105 Cantwell, Robert, 4-5

Baltimore Museum of Art, 98 Carolina Playmakers, 19

Barnes, Mark, 183 Carroll, Tom, 217

Barnicle, Mary Elizabeth, 22 Carson, Rachel, 23

Index 285 Cartwright, Christine, 222, 224 conservationists linked to

Center for Southern Folklore, 92 preservationists, 23; and folklife, 217-29;

Center for Western Folklife, 193 lessons from, 246

Cervetto, Jack, 225, 226 ex-slave narratives, 52, 55 Chamberlain, A.F., 38

Child, S.B., 262 fakelore, 176

Christmas Bird Count, 221 Falke, Grace, 262 Christmas gardens, 103 Federal Council on the Arts and Citizens’ Committee for an American Humanities, 275

Folklife Foundation, 20, 279 Federal Cylinder Project, 42

City Lore, 16n 26, 105n8 Federal Music Project, 56, 262

Cochrane, Timothy, 224 Federal Theatre Project, 56-57, 63, 261, 262

Congressional Record, 13, 264-68 Federal Writers’ Project, 7, 46-67; in Florida,

commodification, 150 73; Stetson Kennedy’s work in, 74; Cooper, James Fenimore, 21 Folklore Studies, 262-63

Corcoran Gallery of Arts, 109, 115 Festival of American Folklife, 2, 4, 20, 74,

corporate culture, 31, 243 120, 242, 278; raises national awareness of Cowboy Poetry Gathering, 91 folklife, 81; cultural conservation section,

Cranmer, George, 227 187-88, 246

cultural conservation: defined, 1-2; Fewkes, Jesse Walter, 35, 40 American Folklife Center report, 3, 11, field research: and public presentations, 8; 183, 187, 193, 218, 219; viewed politically, conference on, 80-81; necessity of in 10, 12; and environmental protection, 12; Vermont program, 85-86; problems in

as culture change, 12, 246-47; and public sector work, 91; and folk arts

Smithsonian Folklife Festival, 187-88, 246. exhibitions, 110-11; as rite of passage, 155

cultural intangibles, 11, 89, 186-87 Fletcher, Alice, 41, 42

cultural intervention, 10, 12, 77, 149, Florida Federation of Music Clubs, 74

156-57, 160, 168-69, 233-47 Florida Fine Arts Council, 72

cultural pluralism, 21, 23-26, 46-67, 139, Florida Folk Festival, 71-72, 74-75, 76-77

156-57, 166, 185-86, 188, 258-63 Florida Folklife Programs (Bureau of), 8,

Cunningham, Ann Pamela, 23 71-82 cylinder recordings, 441-43 folk art exhibitions, 9; 109-17 . folk festivals, 17; organizers and folklorists,

Darlington, Mark, 223 75; as vehicle for communication of new

Daugherty, Donald H., 262 ideas, 133. Davis, Jack, 224 “Folklife and the Public Sector” (1985

Davis, Pappy, 114 conference), 6, 14

Dawes Severalty Act (1887), 43 folklife-in-education programs, 10; in

definitional ceremonies, 128 Vermont, 88-89 Deloria, Vine, Jr., 40 “Folklore and the Public Sector” (1979

Densmore, Frances, 40, 41 conference), 72

Department of the Interior (U.S.), 37, folk revival, 71: focuses national attention

186-87 on traditional music, 74; in Florida, 76; vs. Dewhurst, Kurt, 112 authenticity, 173 Dewey, John, 56 root traditions in Florida, 78; and

Dilkes, Cathy, 224 Folk Songs of Florida, 74

Dobie, J. Frank, 277 Folk Tunes of Mississippi, 57 Dorson, Richard M., 20, 46 _ Fontana, Bernard L., 40

development: and Georgia Sea Islands, 4; Ford, Gerald, 269, 272, 275-76

and Pine Barrens, 217-29 Frachtenberg, Leo, 265-66 Franke, Grete M., 262

Earle, Duncan, 246-47 Franklin Bridge North, 206-16

Eff, Elaine, 8 Frenzel, Bill, 272

Ellison, Ralph, 60-61 Fredman, Ruth, 123

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 50 Friedman, Ernestine L., 262

Engel, Carl, 272 functionalism, 47, 57, 58 Engles, Friedrich, 38

environmental impact studies, 12, 206-16 Gadow, Gus, 114

environmentalism, 5, 11, 12, 245; Garrison, Lucy McKim, 277, 278

286 INDEX Georges, Robert, 155 Hufford, Mary, 12

Gilinsky, Magdalena, 119, 123 Hughes, Langston, 22

Gillespie, Angus, 140 Hunn, Eugene, 221, 226

Glassgold, C. Adolph, 261 Hunt, Marjorie, 91-92 Glassie, Henry, 164, 171 Hurston, Zora Neale, 22, 73-74

Goldstein, Kenneth S., 58 Hyde, Henry, 273 Golin, Lou, 226 Hymes, Dell, 13, 21, 119, 219-20, 264-68 Gonzalez, Henry, 273, 274 Gordon, Robert Winslow, 13, 55-56, 242, Index of American Design, 22, 261

253-57, 272 International Association of Machinists and

graduate students: employment Aerospace Workers, 133-39

opportunities for, 11; preparation for International House (Philadelphia), 105 n 8

work in public sector, 72-73, 81; Irving, Washington, 21

motivations for becoming folklorists, 80 Green, Archie, 3, 6-7, 13, 14, 35, 43, 48, 72, Jabbour, Alan, 72, 187, 228 n 23, 278

74, 188, 253; and presentation of Jackson, Aunt Molly, 22 occupational culture, 132-33, 140-41, 144, Jackson, Bruce, 48, 258

150-51 Jackson, George Pullen, 22

Greenberg, Susan, 191 Jacobs, Melville, 265-66

Grouse Creek Cutlural Survey, 193 James, William, 24

Johnson, James Weldon, 22 Halpert, Herbert, 7, 49, 261-62: WPA field Joint Committee on Folk Arts, 55-56, 261,

project, 56-57; in Pine Barrens, 219, 226 263 Handler, Richard and Joyce Linnekin, Jones, Michael Owen, 155, 171, 243

171-72 Journal of American Folklore, 35

Hanks, Nancy, 274-75 Judd, Neil Merton, 36 Harrington, John Peabody, 35, 43

Harris, Fred, 269 Kadman, Gurit, 175

Harris, Marvin, 35-36 Kallen, Horace, 24, 50-51

Hastings, Dennis, 42 Kennedy, Stetson, 74 Hatfield, Mark, 13, 21, 264, 276 Kirkland, Edwin, 74

Hatton, Charles, 99-100 Kittredge, George Lyman, 23 Hawes, Bess Lomax, 72, 242-43 Knott, Sarah Gertrude, 19, 20-21, 24, 74 Hawkins, Samantha, 119 Kodish, Deborah, 253 Hays, Wayne, 272, 273 Korson, George, 140-41, 144, 151 Hazelton, Ed, 221 Kundera, Milan, 2 Heilbroner, Robert, 245-46 Kuralt, Charles, 89 Hemphill, Herbert, Jr., 112

Herzog, George, 57, 262 LaFlesche, Frances, 41

Hightower, James, 20, 278 Leach, MacEdward, 19-20

Hindman Settlement School, 235 Ledbetter, Huddie, 22

Hirsch, Jerrold, 7, 13, 258 Lee, Bill, 226

historic preservation: legislation, 11, 184, Leopold, Aldo, 220, 221 186-87, 206-07; links to folklife programs, | Lewis-Crosby, John E.C., 184 183-95; as cultural intervention, 197,200, Library of Congress, 278-79 204; in western North Carolina, 198-200, _Little Italy (Baltimore), 101-02 201, 202-03, 204 n 2; of the unique vs. the _ Living Celebrations Series, 9; relationship

typical, 200-202, 204, 214, 216, 220; to Celebrations exhibit, 118; objectives and

Advisory Council on Historic strategies, 119-21; as cultural validation,

Preservation, 207. 122, 126, 127; format, 122-23; and rites of

Historic Preservation (magazine), 185-86 passage, 123, 126, 129-30; evaluation,

Hmong immigrants, 4, 5, 114 123-24: as rite of intensification, 124-25, Hobsbawm, Eric and Terrence Ranger, 77, 126; celebration defined, 128; and

244 dominance by powerful agencies, 128-29

63 277

Holmes, W.H., 36 Living Lore Units, 59, 60

Honko, Lauri, 5 Lomax, Alan, 4, 7, 22, 48, 73-74, 188, 246, “Hootenanny” (television program), 74 262, 272-73

House Un-American Activities Committee, | Lomax, John, 23, 49, 53-54, 59, 263, 272-73,

Howell, Benita, 188 Loomis, Ormond H., 11

Index 287 Culture, 105n8 184-85.

Los Angeles Department of Arts and National Trust for Historic Preservation,

Lunsford, Bascom Lamar, 19 Nedzi, Lucien, 269, 271, 272 Nikova, Rina, 174-75

MacCannell, Dean, 172 North Avenue project (Baltimore), 97 McCarl, Robert, 9, 10, 243 Nusbaum, Elliot, 115 McCulloch-Lovell, Ellen, 85, 87

MacDowell, Marsha, 112 occupational folklife. See Working

McKim, Lucy, 227, 278 Americans presentations

Maguire, Marsha, 123 Omaha Allotment Act (1882), 43 Mahon, George, 270 oral history, 18, 52, 55, 59-60, 97, 102-03, Manning, Frank, 128 154, 156, 158-59, 164-65, 201, 212 Martin, Charles E., 201 Orhn, Steven, 110, 112-13 Marx, Karl, 38

Maryland folklife program, 8, 186 Painter, Gamaliel, 93

Matthews, Washington, 35 Palmetto Country, 74

Mead, Margaret, 24 Paredes, Americo, 23

Meany, George, 137-38 Parsons, Elsie Clews, 22 Melville, Herman, 21 Patterns between the Rivers, 14n1 Middlebury College, 92-93 Payne, Harry, 223

Missing Pieces (exhibition), 112 Pell, Claiborne, 274, 275, 276 Mississippi Folklife Project, 110 Pennsylvania Folklife Festival, 140-41

Modern Language Association, 258 Pennsylvania folklife program, 8, 169-70, Monroe, James, 25 185 Morre, Henson, 273 Pennsylvania Historical and Museum

Morris, Alton C., 74, 81n5 Commission, 185 Morgan, Lewis Henry, 38 Percy, George, 183

mosquitoes, 226-27 Pettit, Katherine, 235 Moyers, Bill, 26 Philadelphia, 11-12 Muir, John, 23 Pinelands Folklife Project, 217-29 Mumford, Lewis, 54 Point Park College, 46

Mumford, Quincy, 272, 273 politics of culture. See cultural intervention Museum of American Folk Art, 110, 114, Pound, Louise, 262

115 Powell, John Wesley, 7, 13, 22, 35-45, 242,

Museum of International Folk Art, 109-10 251-52, 277-78

Myerhoff, Barbara, 128, 129 public sector folklorists: need for critical studies, 14, 63, 84, 157, 204, 234; as

Nadav, Rachel, 175 neologism, 17; networks of, 80; compared

National Acceleration Laboratory, 135 to academic folklorists, 83; and format for National Council for the Traditional Arts, 71 folk arts exhibitions, 110; as culture National Endowment for the Arts, 2-3, 114, brokers, 129-30, 166; as shapers of public 160-61, 170, 186, 243-44, 271, 274-76, perceptions of folklife, 167, 168; and

278-79; and state folklife programs, 8; commonsense definition of tradition, raises national awareness of folklife, 81, 172, 177; presenting folk culture to 83; funds Vermont folk arts coordinator, cultural outsiders, 176-77; elitism among, 84; study of agency-funded folk arts 234; mixed legacy from earlier culture exhibitions, 109; funding guidelines, 111; workers, 233-37, 244; need to attend to

National Heritage Fellowships, 169; culture change, 234-36; and the “dark definition of field and scope, 178n5 side” of culture, 236-37; and the current

National Endowment for the Humanities, political climate, 237-47; and the texture 109, 154-55, 160-61, 186, 271, 274-76, of life, 240; positioned to help guide

278-79 public policy, 240-41; positions available

184 culture change, 244-45

National Environmental Policy Act (1969), for, 243; and structured approach to National Folk Festival, 19, 74

National Foundation on the Arts and Queens Arts Council, 105n 8 Humanities Act, 276

National Heritage Fellowships, 169 Ray, Nicholas, 262 nationalism, 47, 50, 51, 52, 54, 59, 62 Reedy, Jack, 236 National Register of Historic Places, 184 regional folklife centers, 71

288 INDEX Reinhart, Lewis, 169-71, 172 Thompson, Brad, 224

Renwick Gallery, 114 Thompson, Frank, 269, 271, 272 Rinzler, Ralph, 4, 72, 139, 242, 278 Thompson, Paul, 158-59, 165

Ripley, S. Dillon, 139 Thompson, Stith, 273

Robb, een Barre, 112-13, Rogers,Christina, Gamble,115 75 totalitarianism, 51 186 Roosevelt, Franklin 61 ounem Po. 85,178 172-73 Rosebrook, Rod, Delano, 114 tradition-bearer, n2

Rourke, 50 exhibition), “exhibition ) B87. A Folklorist’s View” Royse,Constance, Morton,22,59 86-87

Rubenstein, Nora, 217 Taner Vator, wain, Mark,teh 128

Santino, Jack, 9,265-66 10 Udall. Sapir, Edward, all,Lee, L€e,75

Schaefer, William Donald, 98-99 ieee pub Programme on Non-

Schoolcraft, Henry Rowe, 22 ysical reritage, Schuchat, Ted, 37) “Unquiet Grave, The” (Child 78), 219 Scott, Hugh, 277 urban folklife programs, 8, 10, 16 n 16,

screen painting, 98, 100 7 aa ‘Re ng 105 n8

Seeger, Charles, 7, 48, 49, 56, 261 rban Traditions, 105n

Sharp, Cecil, 201-02 U.S. Geological Survey, 37 Si , Paul, 273-74 , Siporin Steve 113 Vermont Council on the Arts, 8, 83-94 slave narratives, 59 55 Vermont Folklife Center, 90, 92-93

Slave Songs of the United States, 277 vermont be bade 88° 83-94 Smith, Reed, 57-58, 262 ae ’ Smithsonian Institution, 2, 13, 37, 40, Virginia folklife program, 10, 154-65 132-53, 278-79; folklife office, 71. Seealso Vivian, Eugene, 225 Festival of American Folklife; Living

Celebrations Series; Working Americans Wooowort A 09 a, 112

presentations; Bureau of American War Charles Pickard. 277

Eumolesy 128 Wendell, Barret, 22

Coun di vos (eochibi fi 111.115 Western Kentucky University, 6, 72 oundings (exhibition), 111, _. Whisnant, David E., 12-13, 75, 77, 156-57 South Central Pennsylvania Ethnic Folklife White. Elizabeth. 222-23

F F estival fue Quarterly, 74 White Springs, Florida, 74 Gove ern 0 H. “ek 1 10 y) Whitesbog Preservation Trust, 223

peer, Jean Haskell, White Top Folk Festival, 236 Spivacke, Harol d, 262 Widner, Ronna Lee, 258

Stanley, David, 222 Wigginton, Eliot, 112

state folklife programs, 3, 7-8, 9, 10, 92, 186; - Williams, Michael Ann, 11

need for analysis and assessment, 81, 84. Willett Hen 115 ’

See also individual states Wilso n D svi 771

Staub, Shalom, 10 Wilso n. Joe 75, Chae im o.K., aps Winger, Betty, 254-55138 epnens, Winpisinger, William, Stephen Foster Center, 72, 78-79, 80 Wise, Chubby. 75

Stevenson, Matilda Coxe, 41, 42 aL yy Stone C The. 91.92 Witherspoon, John, 22 S tome May. 235 €, 71 Woodford, Elizabeth, 224 One, NNAY, Working street arabers, 101 Americans 132-53 presentations, 9, Sturman, Rivka, 175 Works Progress Administration, 49-64,

Swanton, John Reed, 35 258-63

Taft, Ann, 109 . | Yarborough, Ralph, 20, 269

Tennessee folklife program, 8, 186 Yemenite Jewish dance, 174-76

ferminolsy: Young, Andrew, 273 eske, Robert T.,

Texas Historical Commission, 192 Zeitlin, Steven, 105 n 8