Toward a Definition of Folklore in Context

Abstract

Definitions of folklore are as many and varied as the versions of a well-known tale. Both semantic and theoretical differences have contributed to this proliferation. The German Volkskunde, the Swedish folkminne, and the Indian lok sahitya all imply slightly different meanings that the English term "folklore" cannot syncretize completely. 1 Similarly, anthropologists and students of literature have projected their own bias into their definitions of folklore. In fact, for each of them folklore became the exotic topic, the green grass on the other side of the fence, to which they were attracted but which, alas, was not in their own domain. Thus, while anthropologists regarded folklore as literature, scholars of literature defined it as culture. 2 Folklorists themselves resorted to enumerative, 3 intuitive,5 definitions; yet, while all these certainly contributed to the clarification of the nature of folklore, at the same time they circumvented the main issue, namely, the isolation of the unifying thread that joins jokes and myths, gestures and legends, costumes and music into a single category of knowledge. Disciplines

Folklore and Sociolinguistics

“…These variegated threads of commentary on language as a social resource are stitched together into a folkloristic enterprise as our field transitions from text-orientation to behavior-orientation in the last quarter of the twentieth century, putting into place a contextual approach to verbal performance (Ben-Amos 1971;Bauman 1971). Drawing on this confluence of ideas, the generation of folklorists coming of age in this period crafts a folkloristic project with sociolinguistic factions, with the following premises: that language is realized through speech, as Ferdinand de Saussure (1959) held, and hence speech is the proper object of study; that speech naturally occurs in real-world verbal performances; that these performances are creative and emergent, guided but hardly controlled by generic conventions; and, crucially, that verbal performances are not merely reflections of social conditions, but that they frequently shape and can actually constitute these conditions (Rosaldo 1972;Bauman 1992).…”

¿Eso es tradicional? Contexto, geografías y trayectorias musicales en la construcción de una noción sobre lo “tradicional”. El caso del Trío Los Cholos en Lima Metropolitana

“…En ese sentido, el autor no dudó en señalar la naturaleza eminentemente académica -antes que cultural-de la idea de lo tradicional dentro de los estudios de folclor (Ben-Amos, 1972). La etnomusicología llegaría a un balance similar.…”

“…1 Creado en 1992 tras la fusión de dos colectivos. El Grupo de Folklore de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (FOLK-PUCP) y el Núcleo de Arte Colectivo de la PUCP (NAC-PUCP), agrupaciones de música y danzas peruanas que ya operaban al interior de la PUCP desde 1975. Sin embargo, a medida que avanzaba en mis estudios de antropología, empecé a problematizar la sostenibilidad de estas categorías y relativizar sus límites, poniendo especial atención en la idea de lo tradicional, dada su centralidad en los debates sobre la autenticidad en áreas como la etnomusicología (Myers, 2001), la antropología (Roel, 2000) y el folclor (Ben-Amos, 1972). Pero en lugar de intentar determinar qué era o no tradicional, busqué identificar qué tipo de significados y representaciones eran puestos en juego al usar esta noción para calificar la música interpretada por uno mismo, así como la interpretada por otros.…”

Di Çarçoveya Teoriya Performansê De Nirxandina Vegotinên Gelêrî

“…Xebata wî bi navê 'toward a folklore definition in to context' (1971) girîng e. bnr. Ben-Amos (1971). 12 Di serdema me de tişta herî sereke ku di nav jiyana me de cih digire internet û teknolojî ye û ev yek wek her tiştî bandorê li vegotinên 'gelêrî' jî dike.…”