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.
Journal Articles
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.
Dynamic yet Fragile:
Archives, historical societies, and museums
today have inherited the task
of caring for a swelling mass of audiovisual
materials. A 2005 Heritage Health Index
survey calculated a staggering 2,423,568
moving image collections and 2,189,992
audio collections safeguarded within the
United States alone. Alarmingly, more than
40 percent of audio and video collections
are maintained in unknown conditions. The
same report concluded that many cultural
institutions lack essential resources to care
for these artifacts. These collections are
in peril if left unattended, as over time the
fragile plastic-coated tapes can deteriorate
and fail to play.
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.
Set in Stone
Stonework must surely rank as one of
the oldest of folk arts, if only for the
longevity of the material used—hence its
presence in the historical record. While an
immense but finite supply of wood drew
Europeans to the shores of North America,
once they had exhausted local forest stands
through clearing, burning, ship building,
and construction, stone became the material
of choice. The ensuing works in stone
have been the longest lasting remnants of
vernacular architecture.
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.
Downstate
“I am the accumulated memory and
waistline of the dead restaurants of New
York,” writes the poet Bob Hershon, “and the
dishes that will never be set before us again…” I’m with
Hershon—for where but in memory can I
ever again find the spicy taste of the prah
prig sod at Siam Square, with its unique mix
of lemon grass and spiced peppers? Ingested
into our very beings, these tastes play a part
in our social gatherings and, later, can define
our fondest memories.
Chicago Folklore Prize Winner:
On behalf of the New York Folklore Society’s executive board and the editorial
board of Voices, I want to congratulate Faye McMahon for winning the American
Folklore Society’s 2008 Chicago Folklore Prize with her outstanding book Not Just Child’s Play: Emerging Tradition and the Lost Boys of Sudan, published by the University Press of Mississippi in 2007. It brings all of us great happiness to see Faye receive this richly deserved award….According to the American Folklore Society’s web site, the Chicago Folklore Prize, “awarded to the author of the best book-length work of folklore scholarship for the year, is the oldest international award recognizing excellence in folklore scholarship.”
Foodways
At Yankee Stadium, béisbol is as American
as alcapurrias—those plump, golden-brown
plantain patties stuffed with seasoned beef.
It’s so from the sunken rye and bluegrass
sod field to the breeziest bleacher top.
With roughly thirty percent of United
States baseball players now of foreign-born
Hispanic heritage and the House that
Ruth Built smack dab in one of the most
established Puerto Rican communities in
the nation, large, hungry, thirsty crowds
have directed the market toward foods
that reflect fans’ cultural heritage.
Mikvah Musings
The Friday before my wedding in November
of 2007, I drove to Mayyim
Hayyim, a new-style mikvah, or ritual bath,
in Newton, Massachusetts. Accompanying
me were my sister Lois and one of my oldest
friends, Roz, who had flown in from Seattle
for the event. Mayyim Hayyim (Living Waters)
was founded by Anita Diamant of Red
Tent fame. She had once visited a mikvah and
been underwhelmed by the experience. She
knew that there had to be a reason why this
tradition of dunking oneself had persisted
through the millennia. It couldn’t just be
about purifying oneself for one’s husband.
There had to be more.
Play
In the years before the Revolution made it
America’s patriotic anthem, “Yankee Doodle”
was a song of derision that the British
heaped upon ignorant colonists hoping to
attain foppish stature by aping English gentlemen.
In Praise of Women
At nineteen, Maeve Flanagan is one of the
finest young Irish fiddlers in New York and
the world. Daughter of fiddler and multi-instrumentalist
Mike Flanagan—“My dad
knows every tune imaginable,” says Maeve—
and fiddle player and teacher Rose Conway
Flanagan, Maeve is well aware of the Irish
American musical and cultural legacy she
has inherited:
How the FBI Proved that My Father Wore Overalls:
My late father, Samuel Margolis, was
unwittingly caught in the anti-Communist
hysteria of the early 1950s. His troubles
began when he was accused of being a
Communist by coworkers who disliked him.
He was investigated by the FBI and other
federal agencies and lost his livelihood for
several years, but he was eventually able to
clear his name.
Good Spirits
Have you ever spent a night in a haunted
bed-and-breakfast? Having stayed in several
inns that pride themselves on their resident
ghosts, I know that stories about these
ghosts’ appearances can be the best part
of overnight stays. Introduced at breakfast
along with blueberry pancakes, waffles, or omelettes, such stories add a dimension
of wonder to what might otherwise be a
humdrum stay.
From the Director
As we look back
on our organization’s
sixty-fifth year,
I would like to thank
all of our supporters
on behalf of the entire
New York Folklore
Society family.
2009 was a year of
great upheaval and rethinking of the organization….Partnerships in
2009 … helped us to realize programming goals: Union College, the Albany Institute
for History and Art, the City of Schenectady,
and the Erie Canalway National Heritage
Corridor were invaluable in helping us to
continue to provide folklore and folk arts
programming