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.
New York State
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Bringing Old-Time Fiddling into the Twenty-First Century
The North American Fiddlers’ Hall of Fame and Museum is located in the township of Osceola, New York, in the Tug Hill region of northern New York. The hall of fame and museum was born along with its sister, the New York State Old Tyme Fiddlers’ Association, in 1976…. My grandmother, Alice Clemens—three times New York State ladies’ fiddling champion—was a cofounder of the museum and association. She thought it was important to document not only the lives of the hall of fame inductees, but also the lives and music of other fiddlers. She also worried that some of the older fiddlers might soon pass away without teaching anyone the tunes they played.
Songs
Over an average twelve-month period, the restaurant [Grand Central Oyster Bar] serves between fifty and seventy-five varieties of oysters. Each is somewhat different in appearance and taste, but nearly all are variants of the eastern oyster or Crassostrea virginica, the species native to the Atlantic and Gulf seaboards.
Good Spirits
It was late at night, and the ICU’s waiting
room looked dark and shadowy. On cots,
chairs, and couches slept other patients’
family members. One kind nurse handed
me two sheets; another gave me a list of
nearby restaurants. Someone who had
been resting in one of the chairs helped
me transform a small couch into a bed.
Annual Conference Roundup
The New York Folklore Society decided
to blend these traditions at the 2010
conference with a new element: student
presenters. In collaboration with New
York University’s Latino studies and Latin
American studies programs, we invited
graduate students to present their work
on the theme of Latino Folk Culture
and Expressive Traditions on Saturday,
November 20, at NYU.
Still Going Strong
The earliest head coverings were probably
animal skins and were used primarily for
warmth, rather than style. Over the millennia,
however, women’s hats have reflected
contemporary fashions, as well as the hairdos
that were in vogue. During Greek and Roman
times, women’s headwear included headdresses
made of metal and ribbons intertwined in
elaborate coiffeurs. In more modern times,
women’s hats have gone in and out of style,
but there has always remained a niche for
milliners to create and modify women’s hats.
From the Editor
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has been the inspiration for my work in public sector folklife for some 30 years….Some 10 years later, in the mid nineties, AFC helped create my home base, the Folklife Center at Crandall Public Library