Volume 34
Fall-Winter
2008 |
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For Elena Martínez, folklorist at City Lore
in Manhattan, it’s been a good year. Fellow
folklorists Hanna Griff-Sleven and Jean
Crandall made this observation as they nominated
Elena to be profiled in this issue’s “In
Praise of Women.” Last summer, the dance
documentary Elena produced with City Lore
colleagues—From Mambo to Hip Hop—won
the National Council of La Raza’s prestigious
ALMA award. NCLR, the nation’s largest
Latino civil rights and advocacy organization,
presents the ALMAs on a televised show
“like the Latino Oscars,” Elena explained.
“We were up against some really amazing
documentaries...but everyone really liked
our film.” With prime footage of South
Bronx mambo, salsa, and hip hop by Latinos
and insightful conversations with the genres’
leading proponents—from Eddie Palmieri to
Willie Colón and the late Ray Barretto—From
Mambo to Hip Hop has been screened widely,
to strong reviews, and will be released shortly
on DVD. For Elena, co-producer Steve Zeitlin,
director Henry Chalfant, and all involved in
creating the film, the rewards are long-awaited
and sweet. This year’s highlights for Elena also
included the popular Aguinaldo Navideño
program—City Lore’s second annual Puerto
Rican holiday dinner, with music, poetry,
dance, and song—co-produced with Teatro
LA TEA. A Mohawk poetry dinner is in the
works, too, along with a large-scale program
comparing the performative, material, and
ritual traditions of Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican
Republic.
For Elena, interviewing artists is a joy and
privilege. “You’ll be calling cabs and booking
hotel rooms...but you also get to meet these
amazing people.” Meeting John Trudell, a
Native American singer, poet, and activist she
had long admired, at the 1999 People’s Poetry
Gathering was a thrill. Even more meaningful,
she says, is the element of advocacy in her
work. Elena assisted Mike Amadeo, owner
of Casa Amadeo, New York City’s oldest
continuously run Latin music store, in getting
the store into the National Register of
Historic Places. She also had the pleasure of
nominating Rosa Elena Egipciaco, a New
York–based Puerto Rican mundillo lace maker,
for the NEA’s National Heritage fellowship,
which Rosa won in 2003. Elena lauds City
Lore and its founder, Steve Zeitlin, for envisioning
programs that incorporate advocacy.
The People’s Poetry Gathering has raised
awareness of endangered world languages,
and City Lore’s People’s Hall of Fame “counters
mainstream celebrity,” Elena says, by
honoring ordinary people for extraordinary,
community-enriching achievements within
the everyday life of the city.
Elena’s path into folklore can be traced
from her native New York to the West Coast
and back. “The funny thing is,” she began,
explaining at high speed, with typically dry
humor,
there were two things I wanted to do
when I was a kid. One was, I just loved
reading about Roman, Greek, Egyptian
myths...and thought about something
like that when I was older. Then you
know, you think of practical-type jobs,
so I never followed it. Then the other
thing was...I always saw Joan Embery
[of the San Diego Zoo] on TV. On
Johnny Carson. And wanted to work in
a zoo like she did. So I ended up being
a zoology major for a while. But then
the, um, the organic chemistry kicked my
ass. So I thought, I’m going to go into
anthropology, because that was what I
had always really liked.
At SUNY–Oswego, where she earned a bachelor’s
degree, she encountered anthropologist
Ivan Brady, who encouraged her in folklore.
As a graduate student in the early 1990s, she
discovered the University of Oregon could
offer her a master’s degree in folklore as well
as anthropology, so she earned the two degrees
in rapid succession. Before graduating
she completed an internship at the Smithsonian
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
and another unpaid internship at City Lore.
As a City Lore intern, Elena finally met “Dr.
Roberta Singer” face to face:
Roberta Singer. I used to read her articles.
When I was in Oregon I would
devour anything I could find on Puerto
Rican culture. Of course I always found articles by Roberta on various Latin
musics, and when I first came to intern
at City Lore—she wasn’t in the office
that day—but someone said, “Do you
want to meet Dr. Singer?” “OH, MY
GOD! YES!”
“Who called me Dr. Singer?” Roberta asked
Elena when they met, insisting she address her
as Bobbi or Roberta instead. Elena describes
Roberta as a mentor and views her own work
at City Lore as “following in [Singer’s] footsteps.”
She credits City Lore’s strong Puerto
Rican and Latino programming to Singer’s
decades of work in these communities. The
two still work closely on Latino projects and
have co-written some of New York’s finest,
most in-depth interpretive materials on
Puerto Rican cultural traditions.
Upon graduation, Elena phoned Steve
Zeitlin to ask whether he could suggest any
grants that might allow her to return to work
at City Lore. To her astonishment, Zeitlin
explained there was a position open and
offered it to her. She accepted on the spot.
That was eleven years ago. Elena continues to
value the “freedom and flexibility” she has at
City Lore to work not only on City Lore’s renowned
core programs, but also on programs
entirely her own, like the well-traveled Puerto
Rican photographic exhibition “¡Que Bonita
Bandera!” which considers the Puerto Rican
flag as folklore, politics, and history.
New York folklorists Jean Crandall and
Hanna Griff-Sleven find Elena an exemplary
researcher and programmer and a
good friend. Jean praises Elena’s passion and
tough integrity, while Hanna thanks Elena for
sharing resources: referrals, references, transcribers,
time, talk. Hanna also acknowledges
Elena for helping her, Jean, and others in
the field realize the importance of chocolate
breaks in the afternoon. |
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This column appeared in Voices Vol. 34, Fall-Winter 2008. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society today.
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