It was another dog day in August 2009 when we joined Diego Obregón for an interview at his Woodhaven, Queens, apartment. Diego kindly agreed to meet us at his home so that he could play a few tunes from his native Colombia, along with his vocalist Johanna Casteñeda. There in the basement, over the hum of the air conditioner, the sounds from his marimba (wood xylophone) were magical—all at once playful and effervescent—and with Johanna singing the traditional tune “Mi Canoita,” the sounds from Colombia’s Pacific coast spilled out over hot pavement.
Journal Articles
Song
The upcoming 150th anniversary provides
an incentive for those of us who sing, teach,
or write to conduct some research into Civil
War songs. Because the Civil War years coincide
with the rise of the American song
publishing industry, there is a large vault
through which to sort. Song artifacts relating
to New York are particularly easy to find, in
large part because the national broadside ballad
press was centered close to New York’s
City Hall and was at its zenith between 1861
and 1865.
The Grateful Terrorist:
The folktale of the grateful dead was
once widely known and passed on through
both religious and secular traditions. Today
most people would conjure an image of
the popular rock band, which is said to
have found its name from this story, as
well…. The story has evolved
throughout history in response to society’s
psychological coping needs during times
of crisis. This mythic theme has resurfaced
from the earliest Judaic scriptures to
contemporary urban legends.
Still Going Strong
Garrett Oliver, 47, is the brewmaster for the
Brooklyn Brewery, a regional brewery in the
Williamsburg section of Brooklyn that turns
out 310,000 gallons of beer annually. A native
of Queens, Garrett became interested in the
finer points of beer consumption when he
lived in London in the early 1980s. There he
discovered pub-brewed beers that were very
different from the “industrial-style” brews
that he’d known in the United States.
Good Spirits
Since “seeing is believing” in our culture, visual evidence of a supernatural presence seems especially compelling. Ghosts in photographs and on videos get more attention than ghosts that whisper in the night. It should not surprise us, then, that orbs—bright spheres of light in photographs—…Some people believe that orbs represent ghosts; others believe that orbs come from glitches in the photographic process.
North by Northeast:
The Hudson Valley Quadricentennial
in 2009 spurred all kinds of
special celebrations in cities along the
Hudson River, from flotilla parades and
festivals to art fairs, music performances,
and exhibitions…For its part in the Quadricentennial celebrations,
the New York Folklore Society commemorated these still-thriving cultural
traditions with “North by Northeast: Baskets
and Beadwork from the Akwesasne
Mohawk and Tuscarora.”
Play
Fleischmanns, New York, is an appealingly
forlorn spot thirty minutes from Woodstock
and fifty, if not one hundred years, from the
rest of America. Its old-fashioned Catskills
summers—fresh air, cool mountain nights,
porch sitting, ball playing, swimming, and
dozing off in lawn chairs…
In Praise of Women
Korean-born, New York City–based
educator and performance artist Maria Yoon
has been married forty-four times now, and
she’s only in her mid-thirties. Getting married—
in every state of the union—is her
primary focus at present, but not in the way
her parents might have anticipated….
With a B.F.A. from Cooper Union, Maria
serves as a teaching artist for New York
City museums. Since 2001 she has also been
working on a multimedia performance series
entitled “Maria the Korean Bride” (MTKB).
Books-to-Note
(1) Pauline Adema draws us into her world of
culinary superlatives, localism, and celebrations…By means of a comprehensive case study
of Gilroy, California—the self-proclaimed
garlic capital of the world—the author skillfully
guides the reader to consideration of
competing perspectives: resident/tourist,
exotic/classic, commodification/production,
personal/communal, global/local, dynamic/
stable, self/other, everyday/special,
contemporary/traditional. (2) Although it is well known that Kurt
Schwitters (1887–1948) created collages,
poems, and artistic installations in the 1920s,
1930s, and 1940s, his darkly satirical fairy
tales have been less accessible to scholars
and general readers. Lucky Hans and Other
Merz Fairy Tales not only gives us the tales,
but also provides a wonderful selection of
illustrations and helpful notes. (3) Sightings of large, elusive, hair-covered
bipeds in remote parts of the Northeast go
back to colonial times. Bigfoot: Encounters in
New York and New England is a useful and
well-researched collection of reports, from
both written and oral sources, of those
sightings.
From the Director
Folklorists can offer important insights on
a community as tourism site. Drawing upon
knowledge gained through ethnographic
fieldwork, folklorists are able to provide
interpretive frameworks for a better understanding
of a community’s traditions and
cultural arts and may have a broader vantage
point on a community’s cultural assets.
From the Editor
The Spring–Summer
2011 issue of Voices
brings readers another
tasty mix of story, ethnography,
and analysis
of New York traditions,
upstate and downstate.
We open with SUNY–Oneonta English
professor Jonathan Sadow’s “Bagels and
Genres,” an insightful and witty musing on
what—in critical theory, as in life—makes a bagel a bagel, from Vegas to Montreal to
New York.
Bagels and Genres
Conversations about bagels have something to teach us about the nature of genres and the study of material culture. I realized this a few years ago as I was sitting in an Einstein’s Bagels in Las Vegas that was decorated with standardized murals imitating 1930s Bauhaus design. I remembered a conversation with a friend a decade earlier about the authenticity of modern-day bagels—or lack thereof. But as I glanced at the “traditional” preparation with lox and capers alongside the sun-dried tomato variants, it occurred to me that it might be a false competition.
Upstate
Summer really begins in the North Country on the Fourth of July. It ends on Labor Day. Cruel as that may seem to someone living south of here, most of us have learned to adapt….Summer is precious to us, so we cram lots of fun things into a few weeks. Some of the special things of summer for me are food treats we can’t get any other time of year. I’ll share some of my favorites.
Downstate
“Unwittingly,” writes New York Times reporter Somini Sengupta, “I have turned into a student of light. The August light that envelops the beaten-down old streets of Red Hook, I have learned, is more melancholy than the morning light during lilac season in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. The sun sparkling on the crown of the Chrysler building is whimsical, ‘like a woman dressed for a party at high noon.’”
Petanque in New York
First practiced in New York City in the 1930s (Pilate 2005, 109–10), the bowling game petanque has become visible in the public spaces of Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens, next to frisbee, badminton, volleyball, and tai chi. Today, this urban game is played by players of French origin (binational and expatriate), French-speaking immigrants of African origin, and increasingly numerous English-speaking players. This article uses ethnographic data I collected in 2009 and 2011 to describe petanque play in New York City, including different playing areas, the history of local petanque clubs, the hot moments of the annual calendar, ordinary practice, and the personal journeys and motivations of the players.