New York City is special by any measure.
Who would think that “Finnegan’s Wake”—
immortalized by James Joyce, the ultimate
Dubliner—was actually written in Manhattan?
It’s true. John F. Poole, a theater manager and
writer, composed “Tim Finigan’s Wake” for
the singer-entrepreneur Tony Pastor sometime
around the beginning of the Civil War. It appears
in Pastor’s “444” Combination Songster, first
published in 1864…
Journal Articles
From Wild Man to Monster:
When the first European settlers
entered what is now New York
State and its environs, they brought with
them not only their material culture, but also
an array of beliefs in mythical beings. Such
creatures had been part of the European
psyche for centuries. A central character in
this pantheon was the “wild man” thought
to inhabit the darker parts of the European
countryside. Also known as the woodwose,
wooser, or “wild man of the woods,” it
was conspicuous in folklore between the
thirteenth and fifteenth centuries and holds a
prominent place in later medieval European
artwork and literature.
Xiao Xiannian:
It was a beautiful spring day in Chinatown when I stopped by the Mencius Society to talk with Xiao Xiannian, a virtuoso of the Chinese hammered dulcimer known as the yangqin. Housed in a building on Grand Street near its intersection with Delancey, the Mencius Society—also known as the AiCenter, formerly the Wossing Center—provides instruction in Chinese and Western musical instruments, as well as a number of other arts education programs for youth and adults. It is also the home base of the EastRiver Ensemble, one of New York’s leading Chinese music groups.
Foodways
Long before our contemporary chefs developed
the New American cuisine, farmers
and horticulturists were the custodians of
taste, walking their orchards, vineyards, and
vegetable fields sampling fruits and saving
seeds from the most cleverly delicious tree,
bush, or vine. For a contemporary farmer to
grow a Bronx Seedless grape is to reclaim
that custodial role after almost a century
and reposition farmers as the guardians of
flavor and their family-owned farms as the
sanctuaries of quality.
Good Spirits
Two years ago, while preparing to teach
my fall Folklore of the Supernatural class, I
looked up “haunted dolls” on eBay. A folklorist
friend of mine had warned me never
to order a haunted doll, even at a good
price. “I’d never have one of those things
in my house!” my friend had told me. Like
the central character of the Grimms’ tale
“The Youth Who Wanted to Learn What
Fear Is,” I could not resist the temptation
to order a haunted doll. What harm could
possibly come from this simple transaction?
Fieldwork, Memory, and the Impact of 9/11 on an Eastern Tennessee Klansman:
I wish to share a personal account
of my first folkloristic encounter: the series
of events that led to my choice of a
career in folklore. While many folklorists
may recall their excitement and fascination
with their first informants and the unique
narratives or artifacts that they produced,
my tale involves near-accidental fieldwork
in the company of a less-than-savory group
in American society: the Ku Klux Klan
(KKK).
Still Going Strong
Images of jugglers appeared on the
walls of Egyptian tombs more than four
thousand years ago. They are the first known
representations of an ancient craft that
continues to entertain and fascinate. The
English word “juggler” derives from the Old
French jongleur, and these performers have
been common at public events, carnivals, and
on the streets since time immemorial. These
days, jugglers appear at circuses and variety
shows, as well as in public places.
Play
Abner Cartwright, Alexander Doubleday. . .
these composite names stand for an exceedingly
odd couple whose identities have been
stolen, accomplishments merged, and stories
intertwined for more than a century now. What
both men share is that their lives were hijacked
after their deaths, and as a result, each was
credited with something he did not do—that
is, invent baseball.
Reviews
(1) Girsa—pronounced geer-sha
and meaning “young girls ” in Gaelic—is
a group of eight Irish American teenagers,
two generations removed from the Emerald
Isle, who live in and around Pearl River in
Rockland County. Their new, eponymous
compact disc is as refreshing as a cool drink
of spring water on a sweltering summer day. (2) “Seeking out a region’s folk tales and
legends offers more than entertaining reading,”
Melanie Zimmer explains in Central
New York and the Finger Lakes: Myths, Legends,
and Lore. “It offers a piece of ourselves.” This book is a celebration of the
regional identity of central New York as
developed and preserved through folktales.
From the Director
Folklorists are uniquely positioned to lend
an important voice to the debates around
immigration and immigration reform. As
globalization brings the world together, folklore
works to draw attention to that which is
local, individual, and expressive. Throughout
the next decade, it will be important for
folklorists to continue to draw attention
to the field of folklore through alliances
with disciplines and organizations outside
of folklore, thus providing a folkloristic
perspective on contemporary life.
From the Editor
This issue of Voices offers readers a cornucopia of food for deep thoughts on New York. We experience the transcendent freedom of Vodou dancing in the city, survey the shape-shifting history of Rip van Winkle stories, and wend our way through the psychological landscape of a post-9/11 urban legend. We also encounter Afro-Colombian music in Queens and Native New York handcrafts.
The Vodou Kase:
Focusing inquiry on the kase, a drum pattern strongly associated with spirit possession, I compare episodes of transcendence that occur in Hall’s class [Pat Hall Dance and Movement Class, Brooklyn] with possessions that occur during the rites of Afro-Haitian Vodou, during acoustically similar if not identical performances. Reflections derive from documentation of classes; interviews with the instructor, lead drummer, and selected students; and my participation in classes. I argue that various experiences of transcendence in the class occupy points on a continuum, that the same may be true in the temple, and that an area of overlap may pertain. These statements challenge the divide between sacred and profane and bring nuance to notions of music and spirituality.
Saint Rip
Patron saint of the Catskills, Rip Van Winkle has belonged to all America, coast to coast, almost from the moment he was born, by passage through Washington Irving’s pen, in 1819. Only seven years later there was a Rip Van Winkle House along the road from Palenville to the nation’s first resort hotel, the Catskill Mountain House; in 1850 there was another Rip Van Winkle House on the corner of Pacific Wharf and Battery Street in San Francisco. Rip’s real-life presence was attested by nonagenarians who claimed to have known him and his hectoring dame.
Upstate
For those who have inhabited the North
Country in the last two centuries, rocks and
minerals have been valuable resources. Like
the virgin timber that provided easily accessible
building materials for settlers’ simple
cottages and barns, native stone was here in
rich variety, as well. There were quarries for
sandstone in Potsdam and Burke, limestone
in Jefferson County and the Champlain Valley,
Lake Placid granite, Gouverneur marble,
and Granville slate. Men with experience in
cutting and building with stone came from
places like Scotland, Italy, Poland, and Wales
to live and work.
Downstate
Fundraising
is about individuals and groups with
different resources collaborating around a
vision shared: a good and workable marriage,
like the simple tin cup I imagined picking
up in the forest. Funders are collaborators.
As Bob Dylan put it, “I’ll let you be in my
dreams, if I can be in yours.”