City Lore

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City Lore: the New York Center for Urban Culture was founded in 1986 and was the first organization in the United States devoted expressly to the "documentation, preservation, and presentation of urban folk culture." [1] Their mission is to produce programs and publications that convey the richness of New York City—and America's—living cultural heritage. In addition to regular programming that includes the Place Matters Awards and the People's Hall of Fame, the organization works with a wide range of partners to develop exhibitions, publications, and documentary films, and to advocate for the rights of street performers, ethnic clubs, and other grassroots cultural expressions in New York City. City Lore works in four cultural domains: urban folklore and history, preservation, arts in education, and grassroots poetry traditions. Described by Sonnet Takahisa of the September 11th Memorial Museum as "wise renegades," their programs include People's Poetry Project, Place Matters (in collaboration with the Municipal Arts Society) and City of Memory.

Contents

City Lore works collaboratively with folk and community artists, embracing different aesthetics for the creation of art. Their collaborators include the Gotham Center for New York City History, the New-York Historical Society, Bank Street College of Education, and smaller groups such as Los Pleneros de la 21. City Lore’s staff consists of professional folklorists (Steve Zeitlin, the founder and executive director, Elena Martínez and Amanda Dargan), historians (Marci Reaven), photographers (Martha Cooper), ethnomusicologists (Roberta Singer and Lois Wilcken), and arts and education specialists (Anika Selhorst).

Projects and programs

Urban folklore

The City Lore office on First Avenue on the Lower East Side houses archives containing over 100,000 images, hundreds of oral histories, and traditional music and poetry performance tapes. [2] The archives are part of the ongoing documentation project featured on City of Memory, a participatory online story map of New York City.

City Lore's People's Hall of Fame, established in 1993, honors grassroots contributions to New York's cultural life and presents winners with a plate-sized bronze version of the New York City subway token. Recipients have included the Pearls of Wisdom Storytellers, Peter Benfaremo ("The Lemon Ice King of Corona"), Jim Power ("New York's Mosaic Man"), [3] and Renee Flowers (original member of the Gowanus Wildcats Girls Drill Team).

People's Poetry Project

In the aftermath of September 11, 2001 attacks, City Lore found and collected anonymous poems and other writings that had been left at memorials, hospitals and gathering places throughout the city. A selection of these anonymous poems was published in the book, Words In Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. [4] and appeared in Steve Zeitlin's essay, "Oh Did You See the Ashes Come Thickly Falling Down." [5]

Special projects

City Lore produces documentary films and collaborates with filmmakers whose work relates to the organization's mission. Sponsored films include Ric Burns' Coney Island and the five-part series New York: A Documentary Film ; City of Dreams, a film about female artists in New York City; From Mambo to Hip Hop, [6] a documentary which traces the history of music in the South Bronx; and the forthcoming DeAf Jam, which highlights the poetry and storytelling of the deaf performed in American Sign Language.

Funds were raised by City Lore to support Peter Siegel's project to restore and issue tapes he made in the 1960s of folk music concerts by Mississippi John Hurt, The Carter Family, Jesse Fuller, Bill Monroe, and others. The recordings became the box set Friends of Old Time Music released by Smithsonian Folkways in 2006 [7]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Folklore</span> Expressive culture shared by particular groups

Folklore is the whole of oral traditions shared by a particular group of people, culture or subculture. This includes tales, myths, legends, proverbs, poems, jokes, and other oral traditions. They include material culture, such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also includes customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, and the forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas, weddings, folk dances, and initiation rites. Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression. Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts. Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Folklore studies</span> Branch of anthropology

Folklore studies is the branch of anthropology devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. It became established as a field across both Europe and North America, coordinating with Volkskunde (German), folkeminner (Norwegian), and folkminnen (Swedish), among others.

Chinese folklore encompasses the folklore of China, and includes songs, poetry, dances, puppetry, and tales. It often tells stories of human nature, historical or legendary events, love, and the supernatural. The stories often explain natural phenomena and distinctive landmarks. Along with Chinese mythology, it forms an important element in Chinese folk religion.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Oral literature</span> Oral literature

Oral literature, orature or folk literature is a genre of literature that is spoken or sung as opposed to that which is written, though much oral literature has been transcribed. There is no standard definition, as anthropologists have used varying descriptions for oral literature or folk literature. A broad conceptualization refers to it as literature characterized by oral transmission and the absence of any fixed form. It includes the stories, legends, and history passed through generations in a spoken form.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuyorican movement</span> Cultural movement for Puerto Ricans living in or near New York City in the late 1960s / early 1970s

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bob Holman</span> American poet and poetry activist

Bob Holman is an American poet and poetry activist, most closely identified with the oral tradition, the spoken word, and poetry slam. As a promoter of poetry in many media, Holman has spent the last four decades working variously as an author, editor, publisher, performer, emcee of live events, director of theatrical productions, producer of films and television programs, record label executive, university professor, and archivist. He was described by Henry Louis Gates Jr. in The New Yorker as "the postmodern promoter who has done more to bring poetry to cafes and bars than anyone since Ferlinghetti."

Public folklore is the term for the work done by folklorists in public settings in the United States and Canada outside of universities and colleges, such as arts councils, museums, folklife festivals, radio stations, etc., as opposed to academic folklore, which is done within universities and colleges. The term is short for "public sector folklore" and was first used by members of the American Folklore Society in the early 1970s.

Caridad de la Luz, a.k.a. "La Bruja", is a Nuyorican poet, playwright, actress and activist. She is considered one of the leading spoken word poets in the world. In 2005, El Diario La Prensa, the largest Spanish-language newspaper in New York City, named De la Luz as one of the "Fifty Most Distinguished Latinas in the United States".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Izzy Young</span> Noted figure in the world of folk music in America and Sweden

Israel Goodman Young, known as Izzy Young, was a noted figure in the world of folk music, both in America and Sweden. He was once the owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village, New York, and from 1973 until his death, owned and operated the Folklore Centrum store in Stockholm.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nuyorican Poets Café</span> Forum for Puerto Rican culture in the Lower East Side of Manhattan

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Sandra María Esteves is a Latina poet and graphic artist. She was born and raised in the Bronx, New York, and is one of the founders of the Nuyorican poetry movement. She has published collections of poetry and has conducted literary programs at New York City Board of Education, the Caribbean Cultural Center, and El Museo del Barrio. Esteves has served as the executive director of the African Caribbean Poetry Theater. She is the author of Bluestown Mockinbird Mambo and Yerba Buena. She lives in the Bronx.

The Center for Traditional Music and Dance (CTMD) is a leading folk/traditional arts organization based in New York City. Originally established as the Balkan Arts Center in 1968, CTMD assists the city's ethnic and immigrant communities in maintaining their traditions and cultural heritage. CTMD has developed a range of programs that emphasize research, documentation, collaboration, presentation, and education to help advance its mission of cultural equity. Over the past five decades, CTMD’s programs have led to the creation of nationally renowned ensembles, folk arts festivals, and community-based cultural organizations. CTMD provides the public with a full calendar of events designed to showcase and promote the diversity of New York City's performing arts traditions.

Family folklore is the branch of folkloristics concerned with the study and use of folklore and traditional culture transmitted within an individual family group. This includes craft goods produced by family members or memorabilia that have been saved as reminders of family events. It includes family photos, photo albums, along with bundles of other pages held for posterity such as certificates, letters, journals, notes, and shopping lists. Family sayings and stories which recount true events are retold as a means of maintaining a common family identity. Family customs are performed, modified, sometimes forgotten, created or resurrected with great frequency. Each time the result is to define and solidify the perception of the family as unique.

Folk and traditional arts are rooted in and reflective of the cultural life of a community. They encompass the body of expressive culture associated with the fields of folklore and cultural heritage. Tangible folk art includes objects which historically are crafted and used within a traditional community. Intangible folk arts include such forms as music, dance and narrative structures. Each of these arts, both tangible and intangible, was originally developed to address a real need. Once this practical purpose has been lost or forgotten, there is no reason for further transmission unless the object or action has been imbued with meaning beyond its initial practicality. These vital and constantly reinvigorated artistic traditions are shaped by values and standards of excellence that are passed from generation to generation, most often within family and community, through demonstration, conversation, and practice.

David "Doc" Rowe is a folklorist, author and film-maker who lives and works in the United Kingdom. A graduate of Hornsey College of Arts, he is a prominent lecturer on and advocate for folk traditions and folk music.

The Philadelphia Folklore Project (PFP) is a non-profit organization advocating for and providing documentation, presentation, education, and collaborative research to folk and traditional arts across the Philadelphia region in service of social change. Founded in 1987 by folklorist Debora Kodish, PFP offers workshops and assistance to local artists and communities through organizing concerts, events, and exhibitions. Their driving philosophy is that "diversity and equity are central elements of thriving communities." One of a handful of independent folk and traditional arts nonprofits nationwide, the organization is widely regarded as a powerful instrument for socially conscious and anti-racist activism and serves as a model for sustaining living cultural heritage in the fields of applied folklore, ethnomusicology, and anthropology. It seeks to foster growth in communities through access to grant funding and artistic venues, but also material and social infrastructure in defense against gentrification and through cultivating positive inter-communal relationships.

References

  1. American Folklore: An Encyclopedia. Brunvand, Jan Harold, ed. Garland Publishing, NY, 1996.
  2. Mooney, Jake. "Their New York, Lost and Sometimes Found" Archived 2008-11-19 at the Wayback Machine New York Times, 8 June 2008.
  3. Moynihan, Colin. "With Few Luxuries, an Artist Sticks to It" New York Times 12 December 2004
  4. Aptowicz, Cristin O'Keefe. (2008). Words in Your Face: A Guided Tour Through Twenty Years of the New York City Poetry Slam. New York City: Soft Skull Press, 288. ISBN   1-933368-82-9.
  5. Zeitlin, Steve. "Oh Did You See the Ashes Come Thickly Falling Down." Spontaneous Shrines and the Public Memorialization of Death. Ed. Jack Santino.New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006
  6. Pareles, John. "Mambo and Hip-Hop: Two Bronx Sounds, One Sense of Dignity". New York Times 14 September 2006.
  7. Ratliff, Ben. "Rounding Up the Best of the Boxed; Friends of Old Time Music -- The Folk Arrival, 1961-1965." New York Times 24 November 2006.