In addition to providing technical assistance
and professional development to folk artists
and folk cultural specialists, NYF supports
a robust schedule of exhibitions, arts workshops,
and concerts. Our “Ancient Arts in
New Contexts” program focused on documenting
and presenting the traditional arts of
India and Guyana.
Column
From the Editor
The year 2023 marked the 200th anniversary of the opening of the Champlain Canal, the “little sister” of the Erie Canal that opened two years later in 1825. At the Folklife Center, we were able to join the celebration by producing a video mini-series called Champlain Canal Stories, funded in part by a grant from the Champlain Valley National Heritage Partnership.
Upstate
Countries have anthems, branches of service have marches, lovers share “our song,” and big cities like Chicago, San Francisco, and New York have million seller pop hits. So why can’t towns and villages celebrate with their own song? This is the story of one upstate hamlet in Essex County and how some elementary students created their very own hometown theme song.
Downstate
Every New Yorker who has ridden the subways for any length of time eventually cracks. The announcements are incomprehensible, the trains get stuck for seemingly no reason. On a particular day in 2003, even the air conditioner didn’t work in the car, and, yes, I cracked. I stormed out of the F train, which was stuck at West 4th Street, ran over to the motorman’s window and was about to give him a piece of my mind. When I saw the motorman and he saw me, we both burst out laughing.
From the Field:
As a statewide organization, New York
Folklore is always looking to strengthen
our reach to diverse regions of the state. A
grant from the National Endowment for
t he Arts is helping us do just that! New
York Folklore is prioritizing fieldwork. We
are developing a network of community
scholars who will document traditional
arts throughout the state. These fieldworkers
are supported by New York Folklore
staff, headquartered in the Capital Region.
Our fieldworkers represent diverse
communities and levels of experience. We
are excited to welcome (or welcome back!)
this exceptional group of women to the
field: Divena Ramessar, Akilah Briggs Melvin, Nada Odeh, and Ladan Nikravan.
The Poetry of Everyday Life
When we’re advocating for places we love,
or that embrace meaning in our communities,
we sometimes speak of those places
as harboring “cultural capital,” a kind of
“social currency.” But what if there were
an actual currency of memory and meaning
to prevent places with deep roots in a
community from being sold or displaced?
What if memories, associations, and values
were transformed into units of meaningful
exchange?
Foodways
“You’re my first customer!”
I was delighted to be greeted with this exclamation
when, after rolling up to Sasha Kocho
Williams’ annual plant sale, I got enticed
into picking up some gorgeous homemade
bread, muffins, and cranberry lemonade
before I even made it to the array of plant
starts. Two of Sasha’s four children were
running the tent, selling a beautiful array of
baked goods in paper packets, eggs, flowers,
homemade salves, and more. A nearby
homemade sign noted there would also be
music later in the day. A short walk past it,
down the path would take you into Small
Change Farm proper, Sasha and her husband
Ali’s homestead farm in Potsdam, New York,
with its extensive vegetable and herb patches,
high tunnel, greenhouse spaces, and barns
lively with goats, sheep, pigs, chickens, and
pigs.
From the Director
We are pleased and honored to introduce Rasel Ahmed, our Fall-Winter 2023 special issue editor. In early 2023, New York Folklore issued a Call for Proposals for guest editors and identified two talented emerging folklorists. Each proposed a specific theme or focus, with Rasel Ahmed’s issue focusing on folklore in a transnational context.
From the Editor
Folklore, not confined to boundaries of nationalism,
homogeneity, and diversity, manifests across
digital platforms, like TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook,
shaping how people navigate in the virtual
era. These platforms enable rapid dissemination
of cultural expressions, transcending geographical
and temporal boundaries. The shift challenges the
approach to studying and defining folklore.
From the Director
In early 2023, New York Folklore put out a Call for guest editors for our journal. Each potential guest editor proposed a special issue with a specific theme or focus. Two talented folklorists are being featured for the 2023 issues of Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore. This issue, by Sarah Shultz, has its focus on foodways.
From the Editor
I developed a research interest in foodways while doing my Master of Arts in Folk Studies & Anthropology at Western Kentucky University in 2015, but my cultural interest in food dates back much further, to when I was 18 years old and living in New York City for the first time as an undergraduate student. I remember that first semester vividly—the classes, meeting new friends, adapting to living in a city after having spent my entire life in a quiet college town. What I remember most of all are the tastes—meeting up with classmates for sushi during study breaks; sipping an egg cream for the first time at a diner at three o’clock in the morning; biting into a knish outside of Lincoln Center in the freezing February wind.
From the Director
Our History. The New York Folklore Society was founded in 1944 by a group of folklorists, historians, writers, and enthusiasts—dreamers and visionaries emerging from the Great Depression. Sharing a vision for cultural democracy after World War II, they felt that it was essential to collect, save, and share the folk arts and cultural traditions of the many cultures that made up the urban and rural areas of the state, its historic regions, and the American literary traditions it inspired. The founders’ goal was to “plow back”: to give back traditional arts to the people who created and maintained them.
From the Editor
A Call to Action.
Just before the new
year, along with hundreds of arts nonprofits across
the state, the New York
Folklore Society received
alarming news. New
York State’s deficit reduction
plan instituted in December 2008 included
extensive cuts to a number of state programs—
including the grants budget of the
New York State Council on the Arts. The cuts
to NYSCA meant that pending requests for
fiscal year 2008–9 funding, including the New
York Folklore Society’s request for general operating
support, could not be considered.
Still Going Strong
Karen Sell is a modern practitioner of
the age-old craft of wig making. A native
of Singapore, Karen studied hairstyling in
England, where she also took a course in wig
making. She worked as a stylist for the Vidal
Sassoon salons in London, then later in New
York when she immigrated to this country in
the late 1980s. In New York, she also worked
as a stylist at a salon that made wigs. There,
she styled and maintained wigs for clients,
then established her own wig-making business
about fifteen years ago.
Upstate
A
new web site that we recently launched at Traditional
Arts in Upstate New York (TAUNY),
which we call “W is for the Woods”: Traditional
Adirondack Music and Music-Making.
Located at www.northcountryfolklore.org, it’s
a very impressive piece of work, a thorough
introduction to the traditional music of our
region, collected over a period of at least 75
years.