A Measure of the Earth: The Cole-Ware Collection of American Baskets. By Nicholas R. Bell with foreword by Henry Glassie. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery, 2013. Pp. 192, foreword, preface, essay, plates, checklist, further reading, artist index, photo credits. $50.00 hardbound.)Based on the gift to the Renwick Gallery of a collection of the work of sixty-three contemporary basketmakers assembled by collectors Steven R. Cole and Martha G. Ware, A Measure of the Earth offers keen insights into what Nicholas R. Bell views as a kind of revival of traditional basketry in America over the past fifty years. All collections (whether they are developed by professional curators or passionate individuals) are shaped by forces such as personal preferences, scholarly perspectives, and particular circumstances. The selection of baskets in this collection was based on the collectors' knowledge of particular forms or traditions, geography, and financial resources. Cole and Ware started building their collection in 1986 with a clearly stated interest in collecting only American baskets that they perceived to be both functional and made without dyes. Special attention was given to collecting the work of basketmakers who had a deep knowledge of the materials they harvested and used in their baskets. In short, the focus of the collection was to be American baskets made by basketmakers for whom the process of making the basket was as important as the final form. In contrast to the highly interpretive contemporary basketry of, for example, the studio craft movement or contemporary fiber arts world of today, this collection was to celebrate the individual revivalist basketmaker as master craftsperson of functional baskets. The collection was built by meeting basketmakers in their communities-not in art galleries.The donation of this collection prompted the author and curator, Nicolas R. Bell, the Fleur and Charles Bresler Curator of American Craft and Decorative Arts at the Renwick Gallery, to undertake oral histories with those basketmakers represented in the collection (those who agreed to be interviewed). The result is reflected in this handsomely produced book that features an essay by Bell, who builds a case for this group of baskets and basketmakers as representing a revivalist movement that he connects to the back-to-the-earth movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He argues that this revival has taken place outside the typical folk process in which family and community inform the passing on of tradition. Rather, he believes that these makers of "proper baskets" were influenced by earlier indigenous, African, and European traditions that were once active in the United States but which, in his view, have been on the wane. He stresses that the basketmakers included in this collection (and the related oral histories that he has assembled) represent a response to this trend by a small group of individuals who are swimming upstream again
地球的量度:美国篮子的Cole-Ware收藏。尼古拉斯·r·贝尔著,亨利·格拉西序。(华盛顿特区:史密森尼美国艺术博物馆,伦威克画廊,2013。第192页,前言,序言,文章,板块,检查表,进一步阅读,艺术家索引,照片来源。精装的50.00美元)。由收藏家Steven R. Cole和Martha G. Ware收集的六十三名当代篮子制造商的作品,以送给Renwick画廊的礼物为基础,《地球的测量》提供了对Nicholas R. Bell所认为的过去五十年来美国传统篮子复兴的敏锐见解。所有的藏品(无论是由专业的策展人还是充满激情的个人开发的)都受到个人偏好、学术观点和特定环境等因素的影响。这个收藏中的篮子的选择是基于收藏家对特定形式或传统,地理和财政资源的知识。科尔和韦尔于1986年开始收藏他们的篮子,他们明确表示只收藏他们认为既实用又不含染料的美国篮子。特别注意的是收集编织者的工作,他们对他们收割和制作篮子的材料有深入的了解。简而言之,该系列的重点是由篮子制造者制作的美国篮子,对他们来说,篮子的制作过程和最终形式一样重要。与高度解释性的当代编织不同,例如,工作室工艺运动或当今的当代纤维艺术世界,这个系列是为了庆祝个人复兴主义的编织者作为功能性篮子的大师。这个系列是通过与社区的编织者会面而建立的,而不是在艺术画廊。这些收藏的捐赠促使作者和策展人尼古拉斯·r·贝尔(Nicolas R. Bell)——伦威克美术馆(Renwick Gallery)的弗勒(Fleur)和查尔斯·布雷斯勒(Charles Bresler)美国工艺与装饰艺术策展人——与这些收藏中所代表的篮子制作者(那些同意接受采访的人)进行口述历史。结果反映在这本出版精美的书中,其中包括贝尔的一篇文章,他将这群篮子和篮子制造者视为一场复兴运动的代表,并将其与20世纪60年代和70年代的回归大地运动联系起来。他认为,这种复兴发生在典型的民间过程之外,在这种过程中,家庭和社区告知传统的传承。相反,他认为这些“合适篮子”的制造者受到了早期土著、非洲和欧洲传统的影响,这些传统曾经在美国很活跃,但在他看来,这些传统已经衰落了。他强调,这个系列中包括的篮子制造者(以及他收集的相关口述历史)代表了一小群人对这一趋势的回应,这些人正在逆流而上,反对今天导致“篮子衰落”的全球力量。这篇文章试图通过以下几个部分来证明这一点:篮子的传统、竞争和篮子的衰落、重新发现篮子、收获和准备材料、与过去对话、与未来搏斗。贝尔总结说,虽然有些人认为“真正诚实”的篮子的未来看起来很黯淡,但这种做法仍有希望继续下去。…
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{"title":"Fairy Tales Transformed? Twenty-First-Century Adaptations and the Politics of Wonder","authors":"Bonnie D. Irwin","doi":"10.5860/choice.51-4806","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-4806","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71145462","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Formation of Candomblé: Vodun History and Ritual in Brazil","authors":"Jeffrey E. Anderson","doi":"10.5860/choice.52-0927","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.52-0927","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2015-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71147626","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Queer Enchantments: Gender, Sexuality, and Class in the Fairy-Tale Cinema of Jacques Demy. By Anne E. Duggan. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2013.Pp. ix +195, acknowledgements, introduction, epilogue, notes, filmog- raphy, works cited, index. $29.95 paper.)Queer Enchantments: Gender, Sexuality, and Class in the Fairy-Tale Cinema of Jacques Demy is an engaging, interdisciplinary study of Jacques Demy's films and aesthetics that brings together scholarship in queer theory, film theory, fairytale studies, and fairy-tale film. Anne E. Duggan's intersectional approach to what she describes as Demy's "queer reimaginings of gender, sexuality, and class" (8) addresses two aspects of his work that Duggan believes have been overlooked: "the importance of the genre of the fairy tale, on the one hand, and the queer sensibility of his films, on the other" (1). Duggan frames this as a dialogue suggesting that fairy tales can tell us a lot about Demy's films and, in turn, much is revealed about the significance of fairy tales and fairy-tale film through his work. While Duggan is attentive to the ways in which Demy's own queer sexuality inscribes his work and has influenced many other queer filmmakers, "queer" is also defined here as an umbrella term to describe that which is seen as counter to normative constructions of gender, sexuality, and class and therefore potentially destabilizing. What Queer Enchantments does exceptionally well is reveal the ways that Demy's films disrupt and challenge the normalizing binaries inherent in many traditional tales "which uphold a heterosexist, bourgeois order in which capitalists, men, and heterosexuals are privileged over the working class, women, and queers" (7).The book includes detailed discussions of some of Demy's films including Lola, The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Donkey Skin, The Pied Piper, and Lady Oscar. Duggan's analysis explores Demy's references to, and retellings of, fairy-tales such as "Cinderella," "Sleeping Beauty," and "Donkey Skin." She examines Demy's use of fairy-tale archetypes such as the maiden warrior, as well as the influence of film genres such as the Hollywood musical and Disney's fairy-tale films on Demy's work. Through a challenging and subverting of fairy-tale paradigms, Demy destabilizes and denaturalizes categories of gender and sexuality and interrogates social issues related to class.While the subject matter of Queer Enchantments is certainly fascinating, especially for readers new to Demy's films, it is Duggan's complex analytical framework that makes this book a vital contribution to fairy-tale scholarship particularly. For example, Chapter One explores the integration of motifs from versions of "Sleeping Beauty" and "Cinderella" by Charles Perrault and Walt Disney in Demy's Lola (1961) and The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (1964). These motifs are presented within the context of melodrama, where happy endings are never attained and loss and disillusionment are central tropes. …
酷儿魔法:雅克·德米童话电影中的性别、性和阶级。安妮·e·达根著。(底特律:韦恩州立大学出版社,2013年)。Ix +195,致谢,引言,后记,注释,电影目录,引用作品,索引。29.95美元。)《酷儿魅力:雅克·德米童话电影中的性别、性和阶级》是对雅克·德米电影和美学的跨学科研究,汇集了酷儿理论、电影理论、童话研究和童话电影方面的学术研究。安妮·e·达根(Anne E. Duggan)用交叉的方法来描述德米“对性别、性行为和阶级的古怪重新想象”(8),她指出了德米作品中被忽视的两个方面:“一方面是童话类型的重要性,另一方面是他的电影的酷儿情感”(1)。达根把这句话构建成一段对话,暗示童话故事可以告诉我们很多关于德米电影的信息,反过来,通过他的作品,我们也揭示了很多关于童话故事和童话电影的意义。虽然达根注意到德米自己的酷儿性取向在他的作品中所体现出来的方式,并影响了许多其他酷儿电影制作人,但“酷儿”在这里也被定义为一个总称,用来描述那些被视为与性别、性取向和阶级的规范结构相反的东西,因此可能会造成不稳定。《酷儿魔法》做得特别好,它揭示了德米的电影如何打破和挑战许多传统故事中固有的正常化二元性,这些故事“坚持异性恋、资产阶级秩序,资本家、男人和异性恋者享有高于工人阶级、女性和酷儿的特权”(7)。这本书详细讨论了德米的一些电影,包括《洛拉》、《瑟堡的雨伞》、《驴皮》、《魔笛手》和《奥斯卡小姐》。杜根的分析探讨了德米对童话故事的引用和复述,比如《灰姑娘》、《睡美人》和《驴皮》。她研究了德米对童话原型的使用,如少女战士,以及好莱坞音乐剧和迪斯尼童话电影等电影类型对德米作品的影响。通过对童话范例的挑战和颠覆,Demy颠覆了性别和性的分类,并质疑了与阶级相关的社会问题。虽然《酷儿魔法》的主题确实很吸引人,尤其是对于德米电影的新读者来说,但正是达根复杂的分析框架使这本书对童话研究做出了重要贡献。例如,第一章探讨了在德米的《罗拉》(1961)和《瑟堡的雨伞》(1964)中,查尔斯·佩诺特和沃尔特·迪斯尼的《睡美人》和《灰姑娘》版本的主题融合。这些主题是在情节剧的背景下呈现的,在情节剧中,幸福的结局永远不会实现,失去和幻灭是中心修辞。…
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Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century. By Ann K. Ferrell. (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2013. Pp. xv + 309, illustrations, foreword, a note on transcription, acknowledgments, introduction, conclusion, notes, bibliography, index. $50.00 cloth, $50 eBook.)During her fieldwork, Ann K. Ferrell set out to understand the tobacco farmer today in light of the huge shifts in public sentiment about tobacco in recent decades. Her goal was to document present-day farmers and their attitudes toward their crop during the transition away from tobacco production or towards diversification. The book blends ethnography, history, and rhetorical analysis, thereby placing current views on tobacco farming in their proper context. Ferrell, a folklorist, bases her presentation and analysis of the material on extensive ethnographic research, which she conducted from 2005 to 2008.After a summary of the history of tobacco in the United States and its beginnings in Kentucky, Ferrell divides her material into three sections. The first is an ethnography of tobacco production itself, including current practices and changes in those practices over time. Her description of each step of the process is thorough and rich, combining the story of her own field work experiences with a description of the typical burley tobacco year. Ferrell is careful to include her own perceptions as she began her fieldwork and her own role in the data she collected, in a conscious effort to emphasize her recognition that fieldwork cannot be objective. She also attempts to bring in a variety of voices and experiences in order to accurately depict the vast array of attitudes among tobacco farmers. In this section, the author includes helpful and illustrative photos; although at times more photos would facilitate the reader's comprehension of unfamiliar agricultural terms and concepts. Despite any slight weakness, this section is a valuable example of occupational folklore research and documentation.The second section of the book is a rhetorical history and analysis of attitudes towards tobacco and its shift from essential cash crop to symbol of heritage, followed by its disappearance altogether from public discourse and celebrations. In this section, Ferrell uses archived copies of the Kentucky Department of Agriculture newsletter. In the third section, she then combines the contexts of the first two sections of the book in order to analyze farmers' own responses to the changing meanings of tobacco in Kentucky. The message that tobacco production is still strong in Kentucky and that these farmers should not be forgotten or presumed gone dominates the last section. As Ferrell outlines farmers' struggles with media and mainstream folk perspectives on the evils of tobacco, the reader sympathizes and understands the tobacco farmers' plight as their world threatens to collapse and they struggle to adjust. …
伯利:新世纪的肯塔基烟草。安·k·费雷尔著。(列克星敦:肯塔基大学出版社,2013。第xv + 309页,插图,前言,抄写注释,致谢,引言,结论,注释,参考书目,索引。布料50美元,电子书50美元。)在她的田野调查中,Ann K. Ferrell根据近几十年来公众对烟草的看法发生的巨大变化,开始了解今天的烟草种植者。她的目标是记录当今的农民以及他们在从烟草生产转向多样化生产过程中对作物的态度。这本书混合了民族志,历史和修辞分析,从而把烟草种植在适当的背景下当前的观点。法雷尔是一位民俗学家,她在2005年至2008年期间进行了广泛的民族志研究,并以此为基础对这些材料进行了介绍和分析。在概述了烟草在美国的历史及其在肯塔基州的起源之后,法雷尔将她的材料分为三个部分。首先是烟草生产本身的民族志,包括当前的做法和这些做法随时间的变化。她对每个步骤的描述都是彻底而丰富的,结合了她自己的田间工作经历和对典型白肋烟年的描述。法瑞尔在开始实地调查时小心翼翼地将自己的看法和自己在收集数据中的作用包括在内,有意识地强调她认识到实地调查不可能是客观的。她还试图引入各种声音和经验,以准确地描绘烟农的各种态度。在这一节,作者包括有用的和说明性的照片;虽然有时更多的照片会帮助读者理解不熟悉的农业术语和概念。尽管有一些轻微的缺陷,这一节是职业民俗研究和文献的一个有价值的例子。这本书的第二部分是对烟草的修辞历史和态度的分析,以及它从基本的经济作物到遗产象征的转变,随后它从公共话语和庆祝活动中完全消失。在本节中,Ferrell使用了肯塔基州农业部通讯的存档副本。在第三部分,她结合了本书前两部分的背景,分析了肯塔基州农民对烟草含义变化的反应。肯塔基州的烟草生产仍然强劲,这些农民不应该被遗忘或被认为已经消失,这一信息占据了最后一部分。法雷尔概述了烟农与媒体和主流民间对烟草危害的看法的斗争,读者同情并理解烟农的困境,因为他们的世界面临崩溃的威胁,他们努力适应。…
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Divining the Self: A Study in Yoruba Myth and Human Consciousness. By Velma E. Love. (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2012. Pp. xii + 152, preface and acknowledgments, a note on the text, introduction, photographs, illustrations, note, bibliography, index. $52.95 hardcover.)What happens to sacred scripture when the emphasis shifts from an unchanging word to a dynamic performance? This shift is a central preoccupation in Velma Love's careful description and analysis of African-American Yoruba practitioners. Love works among communities primarily in New York City, Georgia, and South Carolina, where-at Oyotunji African Village-she encounters practitioners from across the country on pilgrimage to this major center of Yoruba religion and culture. Love's theoretical approach is informed by ethnography, performance studies, and critical pedagogy in the quest to encounter "the dynamic, symbiotic nature of scripture as a religious and cultural phenomenon active in the lives of adherents" (14). As an uninitiated but well-informed outsider, Love interviewed 21 practitioners over the course of four years.The first chapter introduces the idea that performing a scripture enacts it in the life of the practitioner. The enactment of scripture is particularly vital for those practitioners of Yoruba religion who are consciously avoiding many of the numerous African-derived spiritual traditions already practiced in the Americas (most often Lucumi [Santeria], but also Candomble, Umbanda, Vodun, et al.). Love has chosen to focus on a group whose founding members first encountered Yoruba religion through some of these heterodox Christian practices (most directly Lucumi, among Cuban immigrant communities in New York), and who then chose to reject such mediating forms in favor of a form that was "more authentically African" (78). This should not be taken as suggesting that the Yoruba practitioners are hostile to Christianity-indeed, as one priestess says, "A large percentage of orisha worshippers in America are Christian . . . Baptist" (40). Instead, this attitude toward the Caribbean forms speaks to the felt need for AfricanAmerican Yoruba practitioners to reinvent their selves from the ground up, to recreate their identities in a holistic fashion.The book effectively doubles as an introduction to Yoruba religion, which has a complex pantheon of "gods" or orisha, whom Love also presents as archetypal energies or divine principles. These include: Esu/Elegba, the interpreter deity who "opens the way"; Ogun, the deity of iron, metal, and war; Oshun, the deity of water, dawn, and hope; and Oya, the deity of the wind, change, and progress. These deities become known through odu, the sacred scripture. But there is no authoritative canon of odu; instead, the scriptures are retold through an apataki, a story or saying that expresses the meaning of the odu within a performed situational context, usually of healing or self-discovery. Love cites the scholars who
{"title":"Divining the Self: A Study in Yoruba Myth and Human Consciousness","authors":"J. Schaefer","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-4947","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-4947","url":null,"abstract":"Divining the Self: A Study in Yoruba Myth and Human Consciousness. By Velma E. Love. (University Park, PA: Penn State University Press, 2012. Pp. xii + 152, preface and acknowledgments, a note on the text, introduction, photographs, illustrations, note, bibliography, index. $52.95 hardcover.)What happens to sacred scripture when the emphasis shifts from an unchanging word to a dynamic performance? This shift is a central preoccupation in Velma Love's careful description and analysis of African-American Yoruba practitioners. Love works among communities primarily in New York City, Georgia, and South Carolina, where-at Oyotunji African Village-she encounters practitioners from across the country on pilgrimage to this major center of Yoruba religion and culture. Love's theoretical approach is informed by ethnography, performance studies, and critical pedagogy in the quest to encounter \"the dynamic, symbiotic nature of scripture as a religious and cultural phenomenon active in the lives of adherents\" (14). As an uninitiated but well-informed outsider, Love interviewed 21 practitioners over the course of four years.The first chapter introduces the idea that performing a scripture enacts it in the life of the practitioner. The enactment of scripture is particularly vital for those practitioners of Yoruba religion who are consciously avoiding many of the numerous African-derived spiritual traditions already practiced in the Americas (most often Lucumi [Santeria], but also Candomble, Umbanda, Vodun, et al.). Love has chosen to focus on a group whose founding members first encountered Yoruba religion through some of these heterodox Christian practices (most directly Lucumi, among Cuban immigrant communities in New York), and who then chose to reject such mediating forms in favor of a form that was \"more authentically African\" (78). This should not be taken as suggesting that the Yoruba practitioners are hostile to Christianity-indeed, as one priestess says, \"A large percentage of orisha worshippers in America are Christian . . . Baptist\" (40). Instead, this attitude toward the Caribbean forms speaks to the felt need for AfricanAmerican Yoruba practitioners to reinvent their selves from the ground up, to recreate their identities in a holistic fashion.The book effectively doubles as an introduction to Yoruba religion, which has a complex pantheon of \"gods\" or orisha, whom Love also presents as archetypal energies or divine principles. These include: Esu/Elegba, the interpreter deity who \"opens the way\"; Ogun, the deity of iron, metal, and war; Oshun, the deity of water, dawn, and hope; and Oya, the deity of the wind, change, and progress. These deities become known through odu, the sacred scripture. But there is no authoritative canon of odu; instead, the scriptures are retold through an apataki, a story or saying that expresses the meaning of the odu within a performed situational context, usually of healing or self-discovery. Love cites the scholars who ","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2014-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71141893","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Encyclopedia of Jewish Folklore and Traditions","authors":"A. Fromm","doi":"10.5860/choice.51-1247","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.51-1247","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2014-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71143082","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience. By Stephen Wade. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Music in American Life Series. Pp. xvii + 477, preface, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, music examples, notes, works cited, a note on the recording, index. 13-track CD included. $24.95 cloth.)Stephen Wade's The Beautiful Music All Around Us is a collection of musical histories that animates thirteen field recordings made for the Library of Congress between 1934 and 1942. These field recordings, collected by such folklorists as John and Alan Lomax, are included on the accompanying CD. Combining multisited ethnographic work, archival research, and oral histories from surviving musicians, family members, friends, and community members, Wade details his investigative process that led him to places such as Appalachia, Huntsville, and the Mississippi Delta in pursuit of the backstories of the recordings. He shares with readers the diverse life stories of the individual performers whose unique iterations of folk songs have shaped American musical culture, from the local to national level. The musicians (seven black and five white) featured in this book span a wide range of personalities and include a "charismatic" convict, Mississippi schoolchildren, housewives and mothers.The book is organized into twelve chapters that bear the names of "the twelve singers and instrumentalists," who, according to Wade, "show us the irrepressible admixture of music in America" (4). He notes, "Their stories are metaphors for how this country has lived" (4). Their stories, it seems, are metaphors for perseverance amidst adversity, often relying on creative methods of "getting by," such as using song as support, archive, and a performance of renewal. We hear these themes in the uncovering of often-silent histories of familiar songs, both as sonorous texts and cultural productions. While these stories resound the striking diversity and talent of the folk, Wade is careful to contextualize the songs within America's complex socio-economic milieu. He draws from the musical textures strands of concrete historical issues that find resonance today, such as slavery, racism, poverty, hunger, unsafe working conditions, and lack of access to education.In Chapter 3, for example, Wade explores the racial past of "Shortenin' Bread," performed by Ora Dell Graham and her classmates as a call and response style playground song in 1940. The song, known to many Americans as a nursery rhyme or lullaby, is posited to have its roots in blackface minstrelsy when performers would often mock the diets of slaves. While there is no historical documentation of this origin from the early nineteenth century, "Shortenin' Bread" audibly extends back to minstrelsy with lyrics in an exaggerated style of black vernacular that have become softened over time given commercial pressures. Wade traces the song's evolution as "community lore" and as "a commercia
{"title":"The Beautiful Music All around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience","authors":"Jessica A. Schwartz","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-3184","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-3184","url":null,"abstract":"The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience. By Stephen Wade. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012. Music in American Life Series. Pp. xvii + 477, preface, acknowledgments, introduction, photographs, music examples, notes, works cited, a note on the recording, index. 13-track CD included. $24.95 cloth.)Stephen Wade's The Beautiful Music All Around Us is a collection of musical histories that animates thirteen field recordings made for the Library of Congress between 1934 and 1942. These field recordings, collected by such folklorists as John and Alan Lomax, are included on the accompanying CD. Combining multisited ethnographic work, archival research, and oral histories from surviving musicians, family members, friends, and community members, Wade details his investigative process that led him to places such as Appalachia, Huntsville, and the Mississippi Delta in pursuit of the backstories of the recordings. He shares with readers the diverse life stories of the individual performers whose unique iterations of folk songs have shaped American musical culture, from the local to national level. The musicians (seven black and five white) featured in this book span a wide range of personalities and include a \"charismatic\" convict, Mississippi schoolchildren, housewives and mothers.The book is organized into twelve chapters that bear the names of \"the twelve singers and instrumentalists,\" who, according to Wade, \"show us the irrepressible admixture of music in America\" (4). He notes, \"Their stories are metaphors for how this country has lived\" (4). Their stories, it seems, are metaphors for perseverance amidst adversity, often relying on creative methods of \"getting by,\" such as using song as support, archive, and a performance of renewal. We hear these themes in the uncovering of often-silent histories of familiar songs, both as sonorous texts and cultural productions. While these stories resound the striking diversity and talent of the folk, Wade is careful to contextualize the songs within America's complex socio-economic milieu. He draws from the musical textures strands of concrete historical issues that find resonance today, such as slavery, racism, poverty, hunger, unsafe working conditions, and lack of access to education.In Chapter 3, for example, Wade explores the racial past of \"Shortenin' Bread,\" performed by Ora Dell Graham and her classmates as a call and response style playground song in 1940. The song, known to many Americans as a nursery rhyme or lullaby, is posited to have its roots in blackface minstrelsy when performers would often mock the diets of slaves. While there is no historical documentation of this origin from the early nineteenth century, \"Shortenin' Bread\" audibly extends back to minstrelsy with lyrics in an exaggerated style of black vernacular that have become softened over time given commercial pressures. Wade traces the song's evolution as \"community lore\" and as \"a commercia","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2013-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71140734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Baggy Pants Comedy: Burlesque and the Oral Tradition. By Andrew Davis. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. xiii + 288, illustrations, preface, notes, bibliography, index. $95.00 cloth.)Andrew Davis in his book flaggy Pants Comedy: Burlesque and the Oral Tradition works to classify American burlesque comedy as part of the oral narrative tradition. He explains that despite the written tradition of the sketches, comedians never actually performed the sketches as written; they would improvise the scene on the spot based on all their previous performances of the sketch and their knowledge of what worked or failed in past performances. Davis links the working practices of burlesque comedians to the "composition in performance" of other oral narrative performance, like the Yugoslavian epic singers studied by Albert Lord and Milman Parry. Davis includes multiple written variants of sketches with the handwritten notes from the performers, which indicate alternate sections of the sketches or alternate endings.The book is loosely organized into sections outlined by the author in the preface. The first three chapters present the theoretical approach, chapters four through seven explore the craft of the performances, chapters eight and nine present the scenes themselves and the final chapter wraps everything up and explains that the lasting appeal of burlesque style humor is rooted in its ability to connect with a working class sensibility.In the interest of full disclosure, I am actively engaged in theater and identify as a playwright before identifying as a scholar. I have been involved in theater since grade school and have an intimate knowledge of the social norms and group practices of theater. With that in mind, I found flaggy Pants Comedy both incredibly entertaining-I guffawed, giggled and plain laughed out loud while reading-and very informative, especially because it provided answers to the origins of modem social quirks and jargon of theater performers.Davis' primary audience is performers and potential performers, with the hope that this book will facilitate the revival of burlesque sketches. His secondary audience is folklorists, for whom he hopes this book will open up a new realm of study that could also potentially lead to the expansion of non-textually based theater scholarship.Although Davis is targeting modern comic performers as his audience, he needs to take into consideration other readers who are not familiar with the colloquialisms of modem performers. …
{"title":"Baggy Pants Comedy: Burlesque and the Oral Tradition","authors":"C. Stout","doi":"10.5860/choice.49-6165","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.49-6165","url":null,"abstract":"Baggy Pants Comedy: Burlesque and the Oral Tradition. By Andrew Davis. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. xiii + 288, illustrations, preface, notes, bibliography, index. $95.00 cloth.)Andrew Davis in his book flaggy Pants Comedy: Burlesque and the Oral Tradition works to classify American burlesque comedy as part of the oral narrative tradition. He explains that despite the written tradition of the sketches, comedians never actually performed the sketches as written; they would improvise the scene on the spot based on all their previous performances of the sketch and their knowledge of what worked or failed in past performances. Davis links the working practices of burlesque comedians to the \"composition in performance\" of other oral narrative performance, like the Yugoslavian epic singers studied by Albert Lord and Milman Parry. Davis includes multiple written variants of sketches with the handwritten notes from the performers, which indicate alternate sections of the sketches or alternate endings.The book is loosely organized into sections outlined by the author in the preface. The first three chapters present the theoretical approach, chapters four through seven explore the craft of the performances, chapters eight and nine present the scenes themselves and the final chapter wraps everything up and explains that the lasting appeal of burlesque style humor is rooted in its ability to connect with a working class sensibility.In the interest of full disclosure, I am actively engaged in theater and identify as a playwright before identifying as a scholar. I have been involved in theater since grade school and have an intimate knowledge of the social norms and group practices of theater. With that in mind, I found flaggy Pants Comedy both incredibly entertaining-I guffawed, giggled and plain laughed out loud while reading-and very informative, especially because it provided answers to the origins of modem social quirks and jargon of theater performers.Davis' primary audience is performers and potential performers, with the hope that this book will facilitate the revival of burlesque sketches. His secondary audience is folklorists, for whom he hopes this book will open up a new realm of study that could also potentially lead to the expansion of non-textually based theater scholarship.Although Davis is targeting modern comic performers as his audience, he needs to take into consideration other readers who are not familiar with the colloquialisms of modem performers. …","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71138103","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A Companion to Folklore. Edited by Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem. (Malden, M.A.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012. Pp. xv +660, introduction, photographs, notes, index. $207.95 cloth.)A Companion to Folklore is a collection of thirty-one essays, contributed by an impressive group of international folklore scholars, that "seeks to represent the state of the art for readers intrigued with the field's theoretical potential and international scope" (2). In an effort to present organizing principles for bodies of knowledge comprising the field of folklore studies and concentrate on overarching concepts that problematize the field rather than describe it (3), editors Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem bring together articles that examine the development of folkloristics. They explore central disciplinary concepts such as tradition and social base, trace its history in countries around the world, investigate its interconnections to fields like film, cultural heritage and law, and reflect on folklorists' work in both public and academic contexts.The editors organize essays into four sections: Concepts and Phenomena, Location, Reflection, and Practice. The first section contains nine articles: Dorothy Noyes on the social base of folklore, Francisco Vaz da Silva on tradition, Amy Shuman and Galit Hasan-Rokem on the poetics of folklore, Peter Seitel on oral textuality, Richard Bauman on performance, Hagar Salamon and Harvey E. Goldberg on myth-ritual-symbol, Sabina Magliocco on religion, Gertraud Koch on work and professions, and Orvar Lofgren on material culture. Each article traces the development of a concept in a way that contextualizes contemporary approaches and several, such as Bauman's discussion of performance, provide masterful overviews of topics central to the discipline. Importantly, even as they tackle the large development of theoretical concepts, authors consistently root their discussions in concrete cultural examples. Peter Seitel actually includes directions so that readers can listen to his field recordings online.Whereas the first section situates key concepts in a timeframe, the editors see the second section as one that "pays full tribute to the weight of local specificity and 'local knowledge' in the field of folklore studies" (3). The book's truly international character takes shape through thirteen articles that trace the histories of folklore studies in locations around the world: China (Lydia H. Liu), Japan (Akiko Mori), India (Sadhana Naithani), Oceania (Phillip H. McArthur), Latin America (Femando Fischman), United States (Lee Haring and Regina F. Bendix), Turkey (Arzu Ozturkmen), Israel (Dani Schrire and Galit HasanRokem), the Sudan-Sahel region (Ursula Baumgardt), German-speaking Europe (Regina F. Bendix), Finland (Lauri Harvilahti), Ireland (Diarmud O'Giollain) and Russia (Alexander Panchenko). It is hard not to read this list, let alone the essays, without raising questions about selection. Although as a Canadia
《民间传说指南》由Regina F. Bendix和Galit Hasan-Rokem编辑。文学硕士:布莱克威尔出版有限公司,2012。Pp. xv +660,引言,照片,注释,索引。布207.95美元。)《民俗学指南》是由一群令人印象深刻的国际民俗学学者撰写的31篇论文的合集,“旨在为对该领域的理论潜力和国际范围感兴趣的读者呈现最新的艺术状态”(2)。为了呈现包括民俗学研究领域的知识体系的组织原则,并集中于使该领域成问题而不是描述它的总体概念(3),编辑Regina F. Bendix和Galit Hasan-Rokem汇集了研究民俗学发展的文章。他们探索传统和社会基础等核心学科概念,追溯其在世界各国的历史,调查其与电影、文化遗产和法律等领域的相互联系,并反思民俗学家在公共和学术背景下的工作。编辑将文章分为四个部分:概念与现象、定位、反思和实践。第一部分包括9篇文章:多萝西·诺伊斯论民俗学的社会基础,弗朗西斯科·瓦兹·达·席尔瓦论传统,艾米·舒曼和加利特·哈桑·罗克姆论民俗学的诗学,彼得·塞特尔论口头文本,理查德·鲍曼论表演,夏格·萨拉蒙和哈维·戈德堡论神话-仪式-符号,萨比娜·马格利奥科论宗教,格特劳德·科赫论工作和职业,奥瓦尔·洛夫格伦论物质文化。每篇文章都以一种将当代方法置于背景下的方式追溯了一个概念的发展,其中有几篇,比如鲍曼对表演的讨论,对该学科的核心主题进行了精辟的概述。重要的是,即使他们处理理论概念的大发展,作者始终扎根于具体的文化实例的讨论。彼得·塞特尔实际上包括了指南,这样读者就可以在线收听他的现场录音。虽然第一部分将关键概念置于一个时间框架中,但编辑们认为第二部分“充分赞扬了民俗学研究领域的地方特殊性和‘地方知识’的重要性”(3)。这本书真正的国际特色是通过13篇文章在世界各地追溯民俗学研究的历史而形成的:中国(Lydia H. Liu)、日本(Akiko Mori)、印度(Sadhana Naithani)、大洋洲(Phillip H. marthur)、拉丁美洲(Femando Fischman)、美国(Lee Haring和Regina F. Bendix)、土耳其(Arzu Ozturkmen)、以色列(Dani Schrire和Galit HasanRokem)、苏丹-萨赫勒地区(Ursula Baumgardt)、讲德语的欧洲(Regina F. Bendix)、芬兰(Lauri Harvilahti)、爱尔兰(Diarmud O’giollain)和俄罗斯(Alexander Panchenko)。阅读这份清单,更不用说这些文章了,很难不引发对选择的质疑。虽然作为一个加拿大人,我承认我有偏见,但我想知道,当大洋洲这个没有引起太多民俗学关注的地方被包括在内时,为什么加拿大没有得到自己的历史待遇。…
{"title":"A Companion to Folklore","authors":"Diane Tye","doi":"10.5860/choice.50-1530","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.5860/choice.50-1530","url":null,"abstract":"A Companion to Folklore. Edited by Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem. (Malden, M.A.: Blackwell Publishing Ltd., 2012. Pp. xv +660, introduction, photographs, notes, index. $207.95 cloth.)A Companion to Folklore is a collection of thirty-one essays, contributed by an impressive group of international folklore scholars, that \"seeks to represent the state of the art for readers intrigued with the field's theoretical potential and international scope\" (2). In an effort to present organizing principles for bodies of knowledge comprising the field of folklore studies and concentrate on overarching concepts that problematize the field rather than describe it (3), editors Regina F. Bendix and Galit Hasan-Rokem bring together articles that examine the development of folkloristics. They explore central disciplinary concepts such as tradition and social base, trace its history in countries around the world, investigate its interconnections to fields like film, cultural heritage and law, and reflect on folklorists' work in both public and academic contexts.The editors organize essays into four sections: Concepts and Phenomena, Location, Reflection, and Practice. The first section contains nine articles: Dorothy Noyes on the social base of folklore, Francisco Vaz da Silva on tradition, Amy Shuman and Galit Hasan-Rokem on the poetics of folklore, Peter Seitel on oral textuality, Richard Bauman on performance, Hagar Salamon and Harvey E. Goldberg on myth-ritual-symbol, Sabina Magliocco on religion, Gertraud Koch on work and professions, and Orvar Lofgren on material culture. Each article traces the development of a concept in a way that contextualizes contemporary approaches and several, such as Bauman's discussion of performance, provide masterful overviews of topics central to the discipline. Importantly, even as they tackle the large development of theoretical concepts, authors consistently root their discussions in concrete cultural examples. Peter Seitel actually includes directions so that readers can listen to his field recordings online.Whereas the first section situates key concepts in a timeframe, the editors see the second section as one that \"pays full tribute to the weight of local specificity and 'local knowledge' in the field of folklore studies\" (3). The book's truly international character takes shape through thirteen articles that trace the histories of folklore studies in locations around the world: China (Lydia H. Liu), Japan (Akiko Mori), India (Sadhana Naithani), Oceania (Phillip H. McArthur), Latin America (Femando Fischman), United States (Lee Haring and Regina F. Bendix), Turkey (Arzu Ozturkmen), Israel (Dani Schrire and Galit HasanRokem), the Sudan-Sahel region (Ursula Baumgardt), German-speaking Europe (Regina F. Bendix), Finland (Lauri Harvilahti), Ireland (Diarmud O'Giollain) and Russia (Alexander Panchenko). It is hard not to read this list, let alone the essays, without raising questions about selection. Although as a Canadia","PeriodicalId":44624,"journal":{"name":"WESTERN FOLKLORE","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2013-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"71139222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}