The representation and application of folklore within new contexts, accomplished
through the actions of folklorists or other cultural specialists, frequently through
collaboration with concerned community members. A public-folklore activity may be
directed toward a community within which a tradition is customarily practiced or may
cross cultural boundaries through presentation to a general audience. Public folklorists
may represent and interpret the traditions of their own or of different communities. They
generally strive to collaborate with tradition bearers and community members to enable
them to represent, preserve, and perpetuate their own traditions. Through public-folklore
activities, folklorists “intervene” (see Whisnant 1983) in communities to achieve specific
purposes, such as the conservation or revitalization of traditional cultural practices,
reinforcement of group identities, or the amelioration of social problems.
Most contemporary public-folklore activity in the United States involves traditionalarts programming. Since these activities generally occur in new contexts removed from
their customary settings within communities, much of the creative challenge in public
folk-arts programming lies in the reframing of traditions (see Sheehy 1992). Through
reframing, a tradition receives special attention as an art form singled out from everyday
life. When presenting reframed folk arts, public folklorists strive to appropriately
represent how traditions are practiced in the traditional settings and sociable occasions
where they live and breathe in daily life—such as dance halls, duck blinds, kitchens, or
schoolyards and during weddings, tall-tale “lying” sessions, quilting bees, or at a
quinceanera.
The “representation” of folklore through public programming requires special artifice
to recapture such traditional contexts as well as interpretive strategies to help audiences
understand how tradition bearers infuse meaning, symbolism, order, and aesthetic
sensibilities within their folk arts. These techniques are employed within a wide variety
of genres of representation, including exhibitions, festivals, concerts, artists’ residencies
in schools and community arts organizations, film and media productions, lecturedemonstrations, and recordings. All of these types of public programming rely heavily
upon original field research among traditional artists.
The folklife festival is an especially complex mode of presentation. Growing out of
approaches developed by the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of American Folklife in
the late 1960s and early 1970s, folklife festivals in the 1990s utilize multiple techniques
of recontextualization and interpretation. In these festivals, traditions are often presented
within contexts that evoke or replicate the places and events where folk arts are found in
the artists’ own communities. Storytellers may swap tales on a porch of a vernacular
house, musicians play for a dance party, craftspersons make crafts in a setting like their
workshop at home, carnival reenactors process about the festival grounds. Festivalgoers
are encouraged to interact with artists as they dance to a traditional-music ensemble or
ask questions of crafts demonstrators.
The interpretation of traditions at festivals is also carried out through signage, program
booklets, and workshops. Festival workshops explore issues relating to featured
traditional cultures and delve in depth into stylistic elements of traditional art forms. They
combine artistic performances, demonstrations, and discussion among tradition bearers.
The use of such diverse media of interpretation reflects a strong emphasis on public
education in contemporary folkarts programming. Interpretation helps dispel stereotypic
distortions of folk arts as simple, unsophisticated, and resistant to change while providing
bridges to understanding other cultures when traditions are presented outside of their
communities of origin. Folklorists often collaborate with tradition bearers to prepare them
to interpret their folk arts without the folklorist’s mediation. Academically trained public
folklorists also work with “community scholars,” lay folklorists who document, interpret,
and present the traditions of their own communities. During the late 1980s and early
1990s, institutes to train community scholars were established by folklorists. These
institutes equip community members to effectively assume primary responsibility for
local folk-arts presentation and perpetuation.
Museums serve as venues for the exhibition and public performance of both
contemporary and historical folk traditions. While elitist resistance to folk culture persists
in some museums, many history and art museums find that folklife can provide palpable
links between past and present and open up new relationships with previously
underserved cultural communities. History museums provide opportunities for
representation of many different kinds of folklife. Ongoing presentations of traditional
work practices and recreational activities are key interpretive activities in “living history”
museums made up of reconstructed cultural landscapes of particular periods in the past.
In other history museums, public folklorists have curated exhibitions dealing with such
topics as urban play, local ethnic festivals, county fairs, and maritime traditions.
Two sharply contrasting approaches to exhibiting folk art are used in American art
museums. Exhibitions curated by public folklorists view folk art as embodying the
aesthetics and values of particular cultures. They stress contextualized interpretation of
the historical and social circumstances of the production of visual folk-arts. Objects in
these exhibitions are chosen as both representative and aesthetically exemplary examples
of the visual traditions of a culture. In contrast, folkart specialists (as opposed to public
folklorists) choose objects for exhibitions on the basis of putatively universal aesthetic
values and their own sense of connoisseurship (see Baron [1981] 1987:14–15). They
often consider folk art within the same framework as “outsider” or “naive” art, all said to
be expressions of the individual genius of artists who lack formal training. Folk-art
specialists are not associated with the field of folklore studies. They carry out their
research independently or in association with galleries and museums supportive of their
approach.
Exhibitions of contemporary folk art curated by public folklorists are based upon
documentation of living folk artists. Many of these exhibitions result from surveys of the
folk arts of particular states and regions within states. Interpretive programming
organized by public folklorists for folk-art exhibitions often involves demonstrations by
artists, ideally in galleries alongside their works on display.
Although many American museums contain collections of historical folk artifacts,
relatively few actively collect the works of living tradition bearers. Outstanding
exceptions to this pattern include the Museum of International Folk Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Roberson Center of Binghamton, New York, and the Michigan State
University Museum in East Lansing. All of these museums have curatorial departments
devoted to folk art or folklife.
Folk-arts-in-education programs utilize the indigenous traditions of local communities
to provide alternative learning experiences for young people. Through these programs,
students encounter tradition bearers teaching about their traditional knowledge and
demonstrating their artistry. These interactions occur in classrooms, in auditoriums, and
in student research projects guided by folklorists. They provide validation for the living
cultural heritage of students, thus building self-esteem and forging a stronger sense of
community. By enabling young people to experience the diverse cultural traditions
represented within a school population, folk-arts-ineducation programs contribute to
intercultural understanding.
Curricula designed for folk-arts-in-education programs integrate traditional systems of
knowledge and art with other school subjects. Art is viewed expansively as ubiquitous
among human cultures and accessible to the experience of a young person in his or her
own home and neighborhood. In socialstudies classes, students are equipped to learn
about the cultures they inhabit as well as those distant in time and space. Mathematical
learning is enhanced as students learn about pattern, order, and the uses of numbers in
folk arts. Communication skills are developed through the participation of young people
in school programs involving local oral traditions and through student writing about the
folk arts they have researched and observed.
Through documentary film, video, and audio productions, the reach of public folklore
extends far beyond the communities where traditions are practiced. They are frequently
broadcast through the Public Broadcasting System, National Public Radio, and local
public-radio stations. The form, length, and orientation of public-folklore productions are
strongly influenced by the interests of these broadcasting outlets.
The creation of documentary film and video productions is shaped by what Gerald
L.Davis calls the “cultural eye,” which selects out and “illustrate[s] significant elements
of expressive, aesthetic performance in contexts a mature community recognizes and
values as traditional” (Davis 1992:115). Comparable selectivity is exercised in radio
productions by what might be called the “cultural ear,” where context is evoked through
the use of ambient sound and excerpts from fieldwork interviews. Extensive editing
occurs in creating these productions, as the public folklorist creates a “story” that offers
native and folkloristic perspectives upon traditions and their contexts (see Spitzer
1992:88).
Recordings produced through public-folklore programs tend to deal with traditions
ignored or underrepresented in commercially issued recordings. They generally include
notes that provide detailed information about a music’s cultural and historical contexts,
its stylistic features, and the performers featured in the recording. Such recordings are
issued through independent record companies or by private not-for-profit and government
folklife programs.
Public folklore is viewed by some folklorists as part of a larger enterprise of “cultural
conservation.” Nonartistic dimensions of traditional culture are especially apt to be
considered within the domain of culture conservation. As cultural conservationists,
folklorists join with specialists from other disciplines concerned with “heritage
protection” in an “integrated approach based on grass-roots cultural concerns and guided by ethnographic perspectives” (Hufford 1994:3). The efforts of cultural conservationists
are often directed toward research and advocacy about environmental protection and
historic preservation. Folkloristic interests in cultural conservation include the
preservation of traditional land-use and work practices within environmental planning,
incorporation of traditional cultural activities within economic development schemes,
mitigation of the effects of highway construction and other public works upon traditional
community life, and planning for cultural tourism that allows for the perspectives and
directions desired by local traditional cultures. Challenging dominant standards for
designating places of historic and cultural significance, folklorists argue for official
recognition of places of local, vernacular significance.
Public folklore has been known by several names in postwar America. Each term
reflects the concerns of folklorists of particular periods. During the late 1940s and early
1950s, “the utilization of folklore” referred to activities that put folklore materials to use
within new contexts. In referring to folklore as “materials,” this term reflected the textcentered orientation of folklorists at the time. Folklorists expressed considerable concern
about the authenticity of adaptations of folklore to new audiences, accuracy of sources,
and appropriateness of altering folklore in new contexts.
“Applied folklore” supplanted “the utilization of folklore” as the term of choice in the
1950s and was used with increasing frequency over the next two decades. The practice of
applied folklore entailed the application of folkloristic knowledge for socially useful and
ameliorative purposes as well as traditional arts programming. Folklore was “applied” in
such arenas as health care, urban planning, education, and the fostering of intercultural
understanding (see Botkin 1953; Sweterlitsch 1971). During the 1960s and 1970s, the
term “applied folklore” addressed concerns of social relevance, advocacy, and activism.
In the late 1970s, the term “public-sector folklore” came into use. The use of this term
reflected the dominant role assumed by folklife programs in the government “sector” at
the time. As government folklife programs spawned new programs by nongovernment
entities in the late 1980s, the term “public folklore” was adopted. Both “public-sector
folklore” and “public folklore” encompass activities covered by “the utilization of
folklore” and “applied folklore” earlier in the postwar period.
The establishment of the Smithsonian Institutions Festival of American Folklife in
1967 signaled a renewal of federal folk-cultural initiatives, which had previously
included the Bureau of American Ethnology, established in 1879; the Archive of
American Folk-Song of the Library of Congress, founded in 1928, and the folklore
program of the Works Progress Administration, which was in operation during the 1930s.
Major federal-government folk-cultural programs were established at the National
Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in 1974 and the American Folklife Center of the Library
of Congress in 1976. Under the leadership of Bess Lomax Hawes in the late 1970s and
into the 1980s, the NEA’s folk arts program developed a national infrastructure for folkarts programming. It provided initial funding for folk-arts coordinators at state agencies
in virtually every state and jurisdiction. These coordinators survey and document
traditions, produce folk-arts presentations, assist artists to promote and market their
traditions, and provide financial support and technical assistance to local organizations
interested in developing folkarts programs. Beginning in the mid-1980s, public-folklore
programs spread beyond government agencies to museums, regional arts organizations,
local arts councils, and, with increasing frequency, private not-for-profit organizations
devoted exclusively to folk-cultural programming.
American public-folklore activities undertaken by government and nongovernment
programs are informed by ideologies, even if they tend not to be explicitly stated. In
contrast, the “ideological” manipulation of folklore for Romantic nationalist and
authoritarian purposes in other countries is easier to adduce. American public-folklore
programs are characterized by a culturally relativistic approach to cultural difference,
regarding each group as possessing worth and value and subject to evaluation on its own
terms. American culture is considered to consist of multiple group identities within a
pluralistic nation. “Cultural equity” is often viewed as a fundamental tenet of publicfolklore work. First formulated by Alan Lomax, it refers to the global defense of cultural
and stylistic diversity against the hegemonic, homogenizing forces of mass culture and
electronic media (Lomax [1972] 1985).
The ideologies informing American public folklore can be evaluated as part of a
cultural critique. For Barbara KirshenblattGimblett, a public-folklore ideology that
celebrates diversity and affirms unity in diversity may “mask inequity and conflict” and
uncritically embrace “received notions of ethnicity and ethnic group, of heritage and
traditions.” She believes that academic folklorists have a special responsibility to
contribute to critical discourse about these matters (Kirshenblatt-Gimblett [1988]
1992:33, 42). Since American public-folklore programming tends to celebrate traditions
and defers to the stated interests of the communities whose traditions are presented,
critical discourse about ethnicity, heritage, tradition, and social inequity usually does not
occur in public programs. However, public folklorists are mindful of these issues as diey
choose who and what to present and develop interpretive approaches for presentations in
collaboration with community members.
Much of contemporary critical scholarship about public folklore assesses the impact of
the intervention of folklorists upon traditional communities. David Whisnant contends
that “the public sector folklore enterprise is unavoidably interventionist,” impacting upon
“the lives of individuals and in the institutions that embody their collective will and
vision” (Whisnant 1983:234). Public folklorists often reflect upon how their involvement
with tradition bearers changes the forms and contents of art forms and the relationships of
artists to their communities. Artists who formerly created only for friends, family
members, and neighbors redirect their work to new markets opened up by public-folklore
presentations. Their work may become commodified, created for a cash economy, and
changed in its cultural significance and formal qualities. The changes resulting from a
folklorist’s intervention can also be beneficial, resulting in new sources of income for
low-income tradition bearers, validation of devalued art forms, creative stylistic
innovations, and new personal horizons for artists enjoying travel and enhanced
recognition.
Critical scholarship about public folklore also analyzes the power relationship of
folklorists to traditional communities. By choosing to present certain aspects of
traditional cultures to the public, the folklorist is said to act as the authenticator of
traditions deemed worthy of preservation and presentation. Folklorists may “invent”
traditions in selecting out particular dimensions of a culture as embodying continuity with
the past. The folklorist thus exercises power to define a culture and objectify artists (see
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett [1988] 1992). Others writing criticaily about public folklore stress the dialogical character of transactions between the folklorist and the tradition bearer.
Within such a relationship, the representation of traditions is a collaborative, mutually
defined undertaking rather than a starkly contrastive subject-object encounter. Through
equipping community members to document and present their own culture and by
training community scholars, public folklorists engage in the empowerment of traditional
communities (Baron and Spitzer 1992).
Public folklorists tend to place special emphasis upon the preservation, presentation,
and perpetuation of traditions no longer widely practiced. However, their rhetoric of
presentation stresses that folk arts are “living traditions” rather than residual remnants of
past practices. The act of public presentation may be intended to revitalize traditions that
are endangered within their communities of origin. Newer, emergent folk arts rooted in
older traditional forms are also presented in public-folklore programs. For example,
community-based African American hip hop may be presented in programs that provide
information about its antecedents in older Black musical and movement styles.
The choice of traditions to present to the public involves a kind of curatorial decision
making. The folklorist selects traditions that can be made accessible to the public and
meet criteria of skill or artistic excellence. Through the exercise of such selectivity, some
aspects of culture are necessarily excluded. The traditions represented may appear to
audiences as normative, although differences may exist within a community with regard
to traditional cultural practices associated with gender, age, sexual orientation, or social
class. As Mary Hufford indicates, reliance of folklife projects upon funding from arts
agencies beginning in the 1970s led to an emphasis upon traditions that could be justified
as aesthetic in order to obtain support (Hufford 1994:3). This situation began to change
by the early 1990s, as a diversification of funding sources and broadening interests of
public folklorists engendered representation of a wider spectrum of folklore traditions to
the public.
Robert Baron
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