Can something relying heavily on the course of the past have no future? Beginning last week and continuing through April 23, scholars and inquisitors conjoin on campus to tackle such issues in the hopes of understanding the future of folk. With only a week left of discussions and lectures, the role of folk culture in the future may not be resolved. Awareness of its endangerment will be.
It is no secret the American culture today moves closer and closer to the markets of mass appeal and homogenized industries. With that comes a less recognized — though equal — distancing from regional creativity and authentic tradition. Why sew patches of old fabrics to create a quilt when Ralph Lauren’s bedding collection is on sale? Why read myths from the Menominee tribe when Mary Higgins Clark’s latest novel is in paperback? Why seek out handcrafted jewelry when exact replicas are in every department store display case?
The schedule for the Future of Folk program offers a plethora of lectures and discussions, topics ranging anywhere from food to politics, music to technology. Once past the student hesitancy to see folk as anything more than a means of fulfilling a Humanities requirement, the issues become rather intriguing. Presentations of films depicting South Bronx survival or Cecil Brown’s lecture tracing the ballad to hip hop make clear: this is not the stale folk of museum displays or the exhausting grammar school field trips.
Many remember the stories from the 1998 flick “Urban Legends”: the pop rocks and soda theory, the awakening-in-an-ice-bath-sans-a-kidney scenario. Monday night at 7:30, University of Utah professor Jan H. Brunvand will present his lecture Urban Legends: Too Good to Be True? at the Wisconsin State Historical Society Auditorium. Unlike the oral traditions of urban legends passed around campuses or through generations, the tales today often circulate via the Internet.
Messages fill in-boxes warning women of male predators in grocery store parking lots. Mass e-mails profess of cell phone scams and means of avoiding victimization. Brunvand explores the origination of urban legends — more importantly why the public believes the stories and maintains their liveliness — and the decline in circulation of myths.
City Lore Executive Director Steve Zeitlin will present two documentary films for the audience in the State Historical Society Wednesday evening at 7:30. Of particular interest may be the recently finished “From Mambo to Hip Hop: Music and Survival in the South Bronx.” Looking at not only the role of music in the urban setting, Zeitlin’s accompanying lecture highlights the significance of the transformation of the sounds.
On a less academic note, the High Noon Saloon — an institution of folk culture in its own right — will host Dark Country Ballads and Twisted Folk beginning at 9 Friday night. Proving the state of folk music in our culture is not yet obsolete, performers range from sounds hauntingly reminiscent of Poe to the avant-rock of another realm. Eugene Chadbourne, Sir Richard Bishop and The Handsome Family put into action the scholarly discussions of the week.
A prime example of the reality of a folk culture comes from husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks. The duo of The Handsome Family create some of the most fatalistic lyrics put to country sounds. A cheating partner holds no weight against lines of “Emily Shore 1819-1839.” Hearing, She’d been coughing up blood since the dogwoods bloomed/Seventeen that spring and confined to her room/At night her heart pounded holes in her chest. Death, like a bird, was building its nest, will not bring any comfort. Similarly, they do not lack for the triumphant uniqueness sought after in the folk culture.
Is there a future of folk? Shifting from expressions of individuality to reinforcements of commonality threatens its cultural existence in the everyday. More importantly, it threatens the possibility of new folk ideals tomorrow. Examining the current state of folk in our country — the individual role in perpetuating authenticity, the rise of new tradition and respect of the old — the program answers its own question.
All events — except the High Noon show — are free and open to the general public. For more information, visit The Center for Humanities website, www.humanities.wisc.edu.
