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House and Home, Wall and Door: Three 'Ages' of Form and Function in Plains Housing
| Article
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19201 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
3,582 Words |
| Author
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Roger L. Welsch
Plains folklorist Roger L. Welsch is professor of English and
anthropology at the University of Nebraska. |
One of the most remarkable features of folklore is that participants within a tradition think of their customs as being not only the way they do such things, but the way such things are done, the way such things should be done. I find it peculiar, for example, that some people eat Christmas dinner in the evening, when everyone should know that the main meal of Christmas is properly eaten at two in the afternoon--that is to say, at the time my family has traditionally eaten that meal. That's why it's called dinner.
(It should also be obvious to everyone, just as it is to me, that one eats dinner at noon and supper at five. How unnatural it is that my friends in New York eat "dinner" at eight!)
And, of course, Christmas dinner should be ham (not fish, as it is within my wife's family).
You get the idea. All traditions are, like language, arbitrary, conventional, adequate, and unself-consciously maintained. That last characteristic of folklore--unself-conscious performance--has always been the most fascinating to me: True folklore persists without its practitioners and adherents realizing that they are behaving in folkloric ways.
Therefore, the moment we hear someone announce that he is about to perform a traditional song (or dance, or narrative) in precisely the same way it was performed a hundred years ago and that we can be assured he is one of the last authentic singers within this tradition, we can be absolutely certain that we are not about to hear authentic folklore but a re-creation, interpretation, and imitation of the real thing. The performance may be instructive, entertaining, striking, and expert, but it is not likely to be folklore.
I once worked with a traditional German-Russian musician and hammered dulcimer maker on the western Plains. I knew that he was the genuine item because he made no self-conscious effort to be authentic; he didn't need to, because he was authentic. He did not choose his repertoire in order to be authentic; he sang and played whatever he liked, whatever spoke to him from his culture. In fact, I once asked him what he considered himself to be because I considered him to be one of the most remarkable folk musicians I had ever met. He called himself a Lutheran, a German, a Nebraskan, a Democrat, a man, a truck driver, a musician, a husband, a father, a veteran, middle-aged, lower class, on and on, but no matter how long I waited--and how hard we laughed at our curious exercise--he never did label
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