Folklore and Media

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A QUARTERYLY NEWSLETTER FROM NATIONAL FOLKLORE SUPPORT CENTRE
Volume 4 Issue 1 Serial No.18 January 2005
Folklore and Media

I N D I A N F O L K L I F E VOLUME 4 ISSUE 1 SERIAL NO. 18 JANUARY 2005
B O A R D
CHAIRMAN
Jyotindra Jain
O F
T R U S T E E S
NATI ONAL FOLKLO RE S UPPO RT CENTRE TIONAL LKLORE UPPOR

National Folklore Support Centre (NFSC) is a nongovernmental, non-profit organisation, registered in Chennai dedicated to the promotion of Indian folklore research, education, training, networking and publications. The aim of the centre is to integrate scholarship with activism, aesthetic appreciation with community development, comparative folklore studies with cultural diversities and identities, dissemination of information with multi-disciplinary dialogues, folklore fieldwork with developmental issues and folklore advocacy with public programming events. Folklore is a tradition based on any expressive behaviour that brings a group together, creates a convention and commits it to cultural memory. NFSC aims to achieve its goals through cooperative and experimental activities at various levels. NFSC is supported by a grant from the Ford Foundation.
Professor and Dean, School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi
TRUSTEES
Ajay S. Mehta
Executive Director, National Foundation for India, India Habitat Centre, Zone 4-A, UG Floor, Lodhi Road, New Delhi
Ashoke Chatterjee
B-1002, Rushin Tower, Behind Someshwar 2, Satellite Road, Ahmedabad
N. Bhakthavathsala Reddy Dadi D. Pudumjee
Dean, School of Folk and Tribal Lore, Warangal Managing Trustee, The Ishara Puppet Theatre Trust, B2/2211 Vasant Kunj, New Delhi
Deborah Thiagarajan Molly Kaushal
President, Madras Craft Foundation, Chennai Associate Professor, Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts, C.V. Mess, Janpath, New Delhi
C O N T E N T S
Folklore and Media ......................................... 3 Media Translation in the Production of Legendary Hawaii ........................................................ 5 Mythmaking in the Media. The Appropriation of the Traditional Ballad in the British Folk Revivals ................................................. 9 Orality transcription and construction of data ...... 12 Folklore, Copyright and Media: The First Page of My Field diary ........................................... 16 Book Review ................................................. 20 Review Books ................................................ 22 Book Shelf .................................................... 23 NFSC Publications ......................................... 24
Munira Sen
Executive Director, Madhyam, Bangalore
K. Ramadas
Karamballi, Via Santosh Nagar, Udupi
P. Subramaniyam
Director, Centre for Development Research and Training, Chennai
Y. A. Sudhakar Reddy Veenapani Chawla
Reader, Centre for Folk Culture Studies, S. N. School, Hyderabad Director, Adishakti Laboratory for Theatre Research, Pondicherry
EXECUTIVE TRUSTEE AND DIRECTOR

M.D. Muthukumaraswamy
S TA F F
Assistant Director T.R. Sivasubramaniam (Administration) Senior Fellow D. Seenisami Programme Officer (Publications) C. Kodhandaraman Librarian R. Murugan Programme Assistant (Public Programmes) V. Hari Saravanan Archival Assistant B. Jishamol Student Intern t pnka Bureov (Czech Republic) Support Staff Y. Pavitra P.T. Devan P. Sivasakthivel V. Thennarasu C. Kannan
NFSC RESEARCH COLLECTIVE FOR 2004-2005

Moji Riba (Arunachal Pradesh), Shikha Jhingan (Punjab), Kishore Bhattacharjee (Assam), Seshasastri and Peter J. Claus (Andhra Pradesh), Mahendra Kumar Mishra (Orissa), S. Srinivasan and B. Gandhi (Tamilnadu)
REGIONAL RESOURCE PERSONS V. Jayarajan Kuldeep Kothari Moji Riba K.V.S.L. Narasamamba Nima S. Gadhia Parag M. Sarma Sanat Kumar Mitra Satyabrata Ghosh Shikha Jhingan Susmita Poddar M.N. Venkatesha INDIAN FOLKLIFE EDITORIAL TEAM M.D. Muthukumaraswamy
Editor
NEXT ISSUE
Folklore Abroad: The diffusion and Revision of Sociocultural Categories Guest Editor Dorothy Noyes
See page 11 for announcement

All communications should be addressed to: The Editor, Indian Folklife, National Folklore Support Centre, 7, 5 th Cross Street, Rajalakshmi Nagar, Velachery, Chennai - 600 042 (India), Tele/Fax: 91-44-22448589 / 22450553, email: info@indianfolklore.org, muthu@md2.vsnl.net.in
Sadhana Naithani
Guest Editor
C. Kodhandaraman
Associate Editor
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Page Layout & Design
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Folklore and Media

Sadhana Naithani
Sadhana Naithani is Assistant Professor at Centre of German Studies, School of Language, Literature and Cultural Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Email: sadhanan@mail.jnu.ac.in
olklore and media are universal phenomena and I have the pleasure to put before the readers of Indian Folklife a very international issue. I thank the contributors Cristina Bacchilega, Gerald Porter, Marilena Papachristophorou and Kishore Bhattacharjee for responding to my call for papers at such a short notice and for sharing their research. However, for initiating this process by inviting me to propose the theme and edit this issue, I thank the National Folklore Support Centre. Each of the two terms folklore and media contains a world of meanings within itself. And to the student of each folklore and media the other seems to be the antithesis: folklore belongs to the pre-industrial rural world and media is the live wire connecting the contemporary world; folklore represents tradition, media represents modernity, folklore is created by the common people, media by financially powerful and technologically capable. And yet, in spite of these distances there is something in the two that connects them. The feeling is not one of ease and harmony, but of elective affinities between opposites. It probably arises from the fact that in dealing with folklore and media we are dealing with two powerful means of communication. Folklore, or orally transmitted narrative and poetic expressions have shown their capability to transcend linguistic, national and political boundaries for centuries, and the power of media today is determining every aspect of our aesthetic perceptions. Folklorists have discussed the relationship between the two for many years now and various questions have been posed. Does the power of one diminish the power of the other? Does folklore become more or less powerful when carried on the shoulders of media? Some would say that it gets disconnected from its performers; while others would
say that folklore and their performers both reach out beyond their own imagination. Both the arguments are legitimate in my opinion. Does media lose its modernity when it carries the traditional folklore? Not at all. On the contrary it gains admittance and acceptance far deeper in society. It is not a mere accident, that the first Indian film Sant Tuka Ram was not on a classical poet like Kalidas, or on a major Hindu God, but on a popular medieval poet, considered saint amongst the rural populace for his spiritual teachings in songs, that is oral lore. And again, in early 1980s it was the telecast of epics Ramayana and Mahabharata that established the television in the home and hearts of millions of Indians. It is at the level of receivers that folklore and media come on a competitive and comparable ground. Whether created by poor or by rich, they both reach out to the common people, capture their imagination and fulfill their fantasies. The idealized story teller of the pre industrial society fulfilled the same aesthetic need of his or her listeners as does the modern electronic and digital media. It is this role and space in society, which is now the contested space between the traditional folklore and modern media. While media clearly uses, utilizes and abuses the traditional folklore, the usage of media by folklore remains in the shadows. The above discussion concerns only a part of the relationship between folklore and media that between oral poetic, narrative and musical cultures and the media industry: print, television, film and music. Media, however, refer also to a set of technological possibilities that exist independently of the information and entertainment industry. This side of media has influenced the documentation of folklore throughout the modern history. Folk artists, like the Bnkersnger of Germany sold printed pamphlets of their narrative songs along with the performance since the 18th century. Folklorists have constantly updated their ways of documenting oral cultures in step with technological innovations. And each new technology has brought with itself fresh methodological and theoretical issues. Print made it possible to document
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and reproduce the text endlessly but made the oral culture silent, phonogram added the live voice but influenced the narrator by its presence, cinematograph made it possible to see and hear that which in reality experienced by seeing and hearing. Digital media has made it possible for any collector to document audiovisually without having to curtail the length of oral performance or narrative. The Internet has opened immense new possibilities for folklore, folk performers and researchers. Folklore and Media both deal with communication and therefore are connected with each other in far more complex ways than those of simple oppositional categories. Since the history of the modern media is itself more than a century old now, many experiences of this relationship can be put to analytical examination. And this is what the articles in this issue do. The four articles from four different parts of the world analyze different contexts and aspects of the relationship between folklore and media, but the issues they discuss will find parallels in many other parts of the world. Cristina Bacchilega discusses in her paper Media Translation in the Production of Legendary Hawaii the construction of Hawaii as a tourist destination through print and photography and points out the historical violence and subjugation involved in the process. The construction is not just a virtual reality because it determines the reality itself. The construction of Hawaii in print reflects American colonial usurpation of the island, and more importantly of its people and their identity. It also reconfirms, imposes and grafts this conquest on land and in its imagination. This experience of practically the other side of the globe from India can be seen reflected and repeated in the construction of Sikkim and Goa as tourist destinations after their annexation to India. The identity and culture of the conquered people becomes object of momentary curiosity displayed and satiated through the media aided tourist industry. They occupy your attention in your leisure time defined by carefree pleasure. The real life of the people becomes invisible, not because it is not there, but because the tourists eyes are filled with verbal, visual and audio images of reality. Gerald Porters article Mythmakng In The Media. The Appropriation Of The Traditional Ballad In The British Folk Revivals deals with construction of identity in an altogether different social context that of British folk song revival at the beginning of the twentieth century and the use of the traditional ballad therein. It is remarkable how in the most industrialized country of the world, identity is constructed in pastoral terms, and not only in the beginning of twentieth century but also at the end of it. Gerald Porters article brings to the fore the historical contradiction between traditional folklore and modern media as products of two different ages. Folklore is equated with pastoral in the popular media, but Porter is no purist and is willing to grant that the irreverent attitudes of the modern media can also be seen as parodic and oppositional readings that subvert the imperialist and patriotic halo attached to folklore at various historical times. In Orality, Transcription and Construction of Data Marilena Papachristophorou takes the discussion on the hard ground of field work and documentation and discusses the question of primary concern to all folklorists the very process of the transformation of orality into written word. Writing, whether by a feather or an electronic pen transforms the medium of orality into that of either written or recorded word. Papachristophorou gives an account of the history of documenting and archiving folklore in Greece and shows how closely this is linked to the history of modern media. However, she also brings to our notice, the problem areas that remain in spite of the powers of the audio-visual technologies. Is the situation of an audio-visual recording a natural situation of performance? This question reappears in another form in Kishore Bhattacharjee s paper Folklore, Copyright and Media: The First Page of My field Diary. This article reports an ongoing research project and we get a glimpse of the factors that a contemporary Indian folklorist is faced with in the process of documentation. From the politics of local cultural organization to the participation in the construction of the nation at a global scale, traditional folklore and folk artists are negotiating a new identity for not only survival, but for identity in the modern world. Bhattacharjee questions whether this relationship between media and folklore could be economically gainful for the practitioners of the latter. This issue reminds us that traditional practice of folklore was not just entertainment, but also economic activity for its performers. The role of media and media industry in the present and foreseeable future cannot be over emphasized. Nor can it be seen that the traditional folklore will disappear. The processes of transformation of traditional folklore are certainly active all over the world and present new methodological and theoretical challenges for folklore scholars. Research into the field gains in importance when we consider that such transformations are not free of social, political and historical implications.
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Media Translation in the Production of Legendary Hawaii

Cristina Bacchilega
Cristina Bacchilega is Professor of English Literature and Hawaiian Culture Studies at University of Hawaii-Mnoa. Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.A.
adhana Naithanis call for papers invites folklorists to move away from a model within which traditional folklore and modern media are considered in opposition to one another; rather, she suggests that the reciprocal influence of folkloric arts and popular media has been an ongoing process in the ever-changing history of folklore. Starting from an understanding of tradition that foregrounds history, Henry Glassie has reminded folklorists that the opposite of tradition is not change but oppression (396). Historical violence in other words is at the core of the rupture of tradition, a rupture that, at the hands of a new power, may take the form not only of unequivocal suppression, but often of translation, recontextualization, and recodification across cultures and media. The history of Hawaii and its traditions is marked by such violent ruptures: the 1893 overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy, the annexation of Hawaii as a Territory of the United States in 1898 against the will of the majority of Hawaiians, the subsequent suppression of Hawaiian language, and more (Silva 2004). Following the 1898 annexation of Hawaii to the USA, place-centered Hawaiian moolelo (stories/histories) or legendslike raw materialsserved, within popular and scholarly venues, to imagine and market a new product, legendary Hawaii: a space constructed for non-Hawaiians (and especially Americans) to experience, via Hawaiian legends, a Hawaii that is exotic and primitive while beautiful and welcoming. This production of legendary Hawaii de-legitimized Hawaiian narratives and traditions and at the same time constructed them as representative of Hawaiian culture. Starting from an understanding of tradition that foregrounds the violent change that colonialism can make, my larger study (in progress) on Legendary Hawaii investigates three modes of cultural production at the turn of the twentieth century in Hawaii as they intersect in the construction of legendary Hawaii: tourism, as a determining post-annexation economic and ideological machinery; translation, from the Hawaiian language into English, but also from one culture to another, from one genre to another, and from one medium to another; and photography, as the new technology that foremost contributed to the initial formation of a westernized imaging of legendary Hawaii. Here I provide a preview of how photography visually translated
Hawaiian folklore and contributed to the appeal that Hawaiian legends in English in the early twentieth century held for Euro-Americans. Imagine being quite wealthy, living in North America approximately 100 years ago, and thinking about going on vacation. You have mail-ordered a tourist brochure entitled Hawaii, and its first lines are: Have you heard of Hawaii? Do you know of the group of islands lying under the tropic of Cancer, which are at once the most perfect in climate and the most picturesque in scenery of all the Pacific groups? As the newest Territory of the nation, the latest star chaser in the Union, are you in touch with the country and the people? And if not, do you not think it worth while to know them? The Hawaii Promotion Committee that issued these booklets was formed in 1903, meaning that organized tourism was new to the islands and coincided with the loss of Hawaiian sovereignty. The style, visual layout, and tone of these tourist brochures was similar to that of the magazine Paradise of the Pacific, explicitly aiming to disseminate information concerning the advantages of the Hawaiian Islands as a place of rest and pleasure for tourists, health and change for convalescents, profit for those who have money to invest in new and growing industries. By 1901 Paradise of the Pacific had a circulation of 5,000, with 500 subscribers in the Islands. Since most people encountered Hawaii through such tourist-oriented publications, it became crucial for them to include photographic illustrations, which thanks to half-tone technology was cheaper and easier by the 1890s. Paradise of the Pacific began to feature such black and white pictures in July1894. Photographic illustrations, the technological innovation of the time, were clearly intended to enhance the appeal of the publication and even more so of Hawaii, which was in a 1937 Eastman Kodak advertisement identified as the Worlds Most Photogenic Land. The December issues, in particular, were richly illustrated so as to contrast the lushness of the tropics with the wintry bareness of many American readers surroundings. Furthermore, as two different pieces in the May 1901 issue of Paradise of the Pacific stated, there was the objective advantage of photography over verbal narrative: The camera has done more to present the beauties of Hawaii to the world than the most flowery
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effusions of the most imaginative story writers. While one invariably tells the truthand the truth is what the public wantsthe others practice deceptions on their readers that work harm to the Islands (14.5:8); and A well executed picture tells more than a column of type, sometimes, and in this age of rapid metal reproduction of the photograph the counterfeit presentment of everyday scenes can be given in the morning or evening papers at a small cost. The halftone is crowding much of the letterpress out of the page, and the public appreciates the change. The order of new things is apt to be: story the illustration, not illustrate the story (14.5:18). Photographic images were being marketed and read as reliable introductions to Hawaii. In the wake of the1888 publication of The Legends and Myths of Hawaii: The Fables and Folk-Lore of a Strange People by His Hawaiian Majesty King David Kalkaua, legends began to appear in Paradise of the Pacific in 1889, and by 1890 Legendary Lore had become a regular feature of the monthly publication; these legends were usually accompanied by photographic illustrations starting in 1894. Collections of Hawaiian legends in English published in the early twentieth century all featured an abundance of photographs: more than fifty in Emma Beckley Nakuina s Hawaii: Its People, Their Legends (1904); sixteen in Thomas G. Thrums Hawaiian Folk Tales (1907) and William D. Westervelts Legends of Ghosts and GhostGods (1915) ; twenty-one in Westervelts Legends of Old Honolulu (1915); eight in Westervelt s Hawaiian Historical Legends (1923); and eighteen in Thrum s More Hawaiian Folk Tales (1923). The notice in a 1904 issue of Paradise of the Pacific publicizing Emma Nakuinas collection articulates the work that legendary lore in magazines, books, and tourist brochures was to do: [Hawaii: Its People, Their Legends] takes up a novel line of tourist promotion endeavor, presenting in its 64 pages of pictures and narratives a good deal of Island folk lore that appeals to that class of tourists who always take an interest in the people of the strange places they visit. As the history of all unlettered nations is derived from their legends so are the deeds of the forefathers of the present Hawaiians brought to our knowledge by the old tales that have come down through the centuries of verbal recital. Reading Hawaiian legends is meant to be for a class of tourists a really good way to be in touch with the country and the people, to get to know them. How did legendary Hawaii serve the promotion of Hawaii as tourist destination at a time when Hawaii was a particularly fertile contact zone (Pratt 1992) for the American imaginary? I dont think I need to explain further in this short piece how tourism shapes and mediates that knowing. But I do want to point out briefly how translation and photography, while contributing to that construction, de-legitimized Hawaiian narratives and traditions. As Lawrence Venuti synthesizes, [a]lthough the history of colonialism varies significantly according to place and period, it does reveal a consistent, no, an
inevitable reliance on translation (Scandals of Translation 165). When missionaries, administrators, educators, and anthropologists translated the texts of the colonized, these translated texts discursively strengthened colonial governments and constructed representations of the colonized subject that justified the civilizing project of the colonial power (see Naithanis studies of British colonial translations of Indian folk and fairy tales). Because they are often perceived as faithful or innocent documentation paradoxically because they are translations, these texts go unquestioned in the western context and become the dominant representations of colonized peoples. I am using the present tense because the Hawaiian legends in translation available in the ABC stores of Waikiki today are the Thrum and Westervelt translations. Several consequences that are well known to folklorists follow: authoritative western translators become known as experts in non-western cultures their customs or literatureswhile Natives are recognized as informants only; texts selected for translation become canonical and determine the construction of non-western literary traditions and, by extension, comparative literature; the translated texts that form these indigenous literary traditions are often devoid of political content or strife; Hawaiians represented in the ethnographic present tense are forever in the words of Westervelt not inventive, but imaginative. Furthermore, because western and non-western languages are not equal, what Gayatri Spivak calls translation-as-violation (A Critique of Postcolonial Reason 162) is operative in moving from the colonized or Native language to that of the colonizer. This violation is in stark contrast with the faithfulness vs. freedom debate that dominated early and Renaissance translation in Europe because on either side of the argument the authority or complexity of the original classic language and text was assumed. With translation from colonized languages, it is instead common for the target language English in the cases I discussto dictate its cultural logic. The rewriting that all translation involves is thus driven in colonial translation by a discursive strategy of containment and brings about the re-writing of the other in the dominant languages terms. This violation is epistemic in that the colonized or Native world is recodified in terms of the colonizers (Spivak, Critique of Postcolonial Reason 161). Within the discipline of folkloristics, Lee Haring has critically documented such reframing into different generic shape (myth) of Malagasy narratives in early twentieth-century translations into French: what the west calls myth has no genre attached to it in this region, he writes, but western researchers took the privilege of naming certain narratives as myth (Pieces for a Shabby Hut 191 and 192). In folklore as in literature, this re-coding has significant genre implications, and that is why I have been referring to Hawaiian legends in quotation marks: the early-twentieth-century translation of moolelo (history and story) as legend, myth, and folktale, often
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interchangeably, exemplified such a domesticating and dislocating interpretive strategy. As a result of this epistemic violence, place was not in these English-language translations the narrative core that it was and is in Hawaiian narratives, and by the same token the relationship of Hawaiians with nature and land was also lost or misrepresented. In the photographs accompanying these translations, reductive tropes contribute to the representation of individuals as types and of places as generic landscapes. The most common iconic images of people were, not unexpectedly, young women wearing lei or garlands, hula performers, surfers, and individuals identified only by their workrelated tasks, especially fishermen. This pervasive imagery showed how Hawaiians were irredeemably in a legendary pastuntouched by progress and thus doomed in modern societyand encouraged viewers to think of Hawaiian storytelling and culture as primitive and unchanging. The most common landscape photos featured coconut trees often with reflection, waterfalls, valleys and peaks, hardened lava flows of the aa type: these icons are repeated over and over again both in the books of legends and on the pages of Paradise of the Pacific. These pictures projected Hawaii as an attractively mysterious space, an inviting and misty land with a generic story and look to which tourists could have easy and relatively safe access. The specificity that characterizes place-centered Hawaiian narratives was noticeably missing, unless as in the case of the Nuuanu Pali or cliff the place was to be publicized as a tourist attraction. The story told by this visual apparatus advertised Hawaii as a land filled with natural beauty and devoid of either dangerous or competitive Native others. Such natural beauty and softness have metonymically coalesced into the image that best represents Hawaii today as a tourist destination. As Native scholar and activist Haunani-Kay Trask wrote in her 1991/1992 groundbreaking essay Lovely Hula Hands: Corporate Tourism and the Prostitution of Hawaiian Culture,1 Mostly a state of mind, Hawaii is the image of escape from the rawness and violence of daily American life. Hawaiithe word, the vision, the sound in the mindis the fragrance and feel of soft kindness. Above all, Hawaii is she, the Western image of the Native female in her magical allure. . . . Thus, Hawaii, like a lovely woman, is there for the taking (136 and 144). I am arguing that we can trace at least partially the making of this image to the post-annexation Englishlanguage photographically illustrated volumes of Hawaiian legends. Does my argument implicitly condemn the translation of folklore across mediainto print or photographyas being nothing more than invented folklore? My brief presentation of a particular case of colonial promotion of Hawaii as violently disruptive of its traditions should not be generalized; the reinvention of folkloric arts is part of their dynamic tradition. Both historical and contemporary Hawaiian counter-narratives offer an invitation to unmake the imaginary or legendary Hawaii and to re-vision it as an indigenous storied place with a very different relationship to the land. My analysis, for instance, does not apply equally to all early twentieth-century translators of Hawaiian legends. Westervelt is the one writing most explicitly for tourists, inviting a touristic reading, acting as a tour guide while retelling ancient tales. But Emma Nakuina s book as the only photographically illustrated book about Hawaii by a Native Hawaiian in that period (Davis 289) is at the other end of the spectrum, standing out as an autoethnography in Mary Louise Pratt s terms. Her use of the new mediatourist publications in the English language and photographyexemplified resistance, both as resilience of Native traditions and as their adaptability to change. Photographs in her book featured portraits of chiefly Hawaiians from the past and modern-day legislators or Victorian-clad ladies; and the places shown were invested with historical and cultural significance, the way monuments would be in a European guide. But Nakuina s Hawaii: Its People, Their Legends was never reprinted: her Hawaiian perspective became unwanted or unnecessary as Thrum and especially Westervelt consolidated Hawaii as a tourist destination where the only Hawaiians seen were those of old, no Hawaiian storyteller could be heard, and hula became an eroticized image cut loose from the knowledge and stories it tells.
Courtesy: www.booklineshawaii.com/book/BAH/820592.htm
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This essay first appeared in Border/Lines 23 (1991/1992): 22-34 and is republished in Trask s From a Native Daughter. Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii (Monroe, ME: Common Courage P, 1993, 179-197; 2nd edition: Honolulu: U of Hawaii P, 1999, 136-147). I cite from the 1999 revised text.
1
References Cited
Davis, Lynn Ann. Photographically Illustrated Books about Hawaii, 1854-1945. In Photography in Hawaii. A special issue of History of Photography edited by Lynn A. Davis. 25.3 (Autumn 2001): 288-305. Glassie, Henry. Tradition. Journal of American Folklore 108 (Fall 1995): 395-412. Haring, Lee. 1995. Pieces for a Shabby Hut. Folklore, Literature, and Cultural Theory. Collected Essays. Ed. Cathy Lynn Preston. New York: Garland. 187203. Kalkaua, David. 1888. The Legends and Myths of Hawaii. New York. Landgraf, Anne Kapulani. 1994. N Wahi Pana O Koolau Poko. Legendary Places of Koolau Poko. Trans. Fred Kalani Meinecke. Honolulu: U of Hawaii P. . 2003. N Wahi Kapu o Maui. Honolulu: Ai Phaku P. Naithani, Sadhana. 2001. Prefaced Space: Tales of the Colonial British Collectors of Indian Folklore. Imagined States: Nationalism, Utopia, and Longing in Oral Cultures. Luisa Del Giudice and Gerald Porter editors. Logan, Utah: Utah State UP. 64-79. Nakuina, Emma M. 1904. Hawaii: Its People, Their Legends. Honolulu. Paradise of the Pacific. Honolulu, January 1888June1966. Pratt, Mary Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes. Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. Silva, Noenoe. 2004. Aloha Betrayed: Native Hawaiian Resistance to American Colonialism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. 1999. A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP). Thrum, Thomas G. 1907. Hawaiian Folk Tales. Chicago. . More Hawaiian Legends. Chicago, 1923. Trask, Haunani-Kay. 1999. From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawaii. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. [1st edition: Monroe, ME: Common Courage P, 1993]. Venuti, Lawrence. 1998. The Scandals of Translation: Towards an ethics of difference. London: Routledge. Westervelt, W.D. 1915. Legends of Honolulu. Boston. . 1916. Hawaiian Legends of Ghosts and Ghost-Gods. Boston. . 1923. Hawaiian Historical Legends. New York.
Courtesy: www.alternative-hawaii.com/anncecil/kids.htm
Recognizing an albeit marginalized agency of Hawaiians in the history of photography matters not only to document their resistance in the past but to provide a genealogy for Native Hawaiian artists in the present, like Anne Kapulani Landgraf who strongly represents and advocates a photographic vision that emerges from Hawaiian values and views. Landgraf s vision in her two volumes of black-and-white photography and bilingual textN Wahi Pana O Koolau Poko. Legendary Places of Koolau Poko 1994 and N Wahi Kapu o Maui 2003 foregrounds a Native visual and narrative perspective on place that entails a different epistemology, grapples with the history of land issues in Hawaii, and strengthens the value and creativity of Hawaiian narrative traditions today. Photography and bilingual poetic (hi)story in print are her chosen media for re-inscribing a Hawaiian connection with land, language, and traditions into contemporary consciousness. Thus, attending to the ideological powers of myth or traditional narratives in todays multi-media world means learning to recognize, in addition to the destructive uses we have put them, the constructive ones that narrative traditions have served and can serve. In Hawaii, contemporary artists like photographer Kapulani Anne Landgraf and poets Haunani-Kay Trask and Kuualoha Hoomanawanui work with an understanding of cultural memory that is not nostalgic but creative and emerges from the re-appropriation of multiple, emplaced stories. Against the violent translation that Hawaii has been subjected to, contemporary Native storytellers like themin whatever mediumnarratively and visually re-create tradition in the present for the future.
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Mythmaking in the Media. The Appropriation of the Traditional Ballad in the British Folk Revivals
Gerald Porter
Gerald Porter is Professor of English Literature and Culture at the University of Vaasa, Finland.
always had a ready market and a large audience on radio and TV, songs were altered to make them fulfil market expectations and in particular to conform to expected norms of Irishness. In a process of mediation that goes back to the mass production of parlour songs in the nineteenth century, a handful of Irish words repeatedly inserted into English texts with anglicised spelling. At the same time the practice of using internal rhymes was greatly exaggerated. Thus the stereotyped line Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen [A sweet girl came down a green path] was added to the song Star of the County Down to make it more Irish (O Boyle 1979: 21). In Scotland, a similar reduction of songs occurred in the 1950s. The Scottish revival was far more broad-based and democratic than the English one, based on People s Festivals and an extremely wide cross-section of Scottish society, including a central role for migrant workers, coal miners and the Roma (gypsies). The importance of this singing tradition to a broad recognition of Scottish cultural values meant that the mass media soon became involved. However, this was often done in a perfunctory way which showed a greater preoccupation with production flow than with the integrity of the songs. It was assumed that the attention span of listeners was only a few minutes. BBC Scotland requested performers of The Earl of Erroll, a ballad of marital discord, to reduce its length from 11 stanzas, to three for the purposes of a radio programme (J. Porter 1995: 294). The same happened to Scotland s leading traditional singer Jeannie Robertson, who was asked to cut the length of her compelling murder ballad My Son David before singing it on television. This had a permanent effect on her interpretation of the song (J. Porter and Gower 1995: 94). The effect of these interventions by the new media was to divorce these songs from their performing context of gender politics and ritual and open them up to the ideology of consumption. Folk narratives are frequently quoted in film plots: one might say it is the homage vice plays to virtue. Sometimes merely the title is left to offer a gratuitous association with a story that has a history long predating the film industry. The sentimental baseball film Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) and the Western Streets of Laredo (1949) appropriated in their titles a song about a hero who is variously described as a logger, a sailor or a rake who has been cut down in his prime. The song is rooted in African-American, Canadian, Texan and Irish
ll representation is interpretation. When the materials of folklore feature in the media, they are by definition mediated. In the first place, they are more often in the form of indirect than direct representation: the event takes second place to the commentary. In most cases, text is divorced from context, or rather harnessed to a new context in which all has been sacrificed to continuity and flow. In a discussion of advertising, Judith Williamson has shown how this process of recontextualising, speaking for rather than speaking by, is one which is saturated with ideology (Williamson 1978: 40). It is the process which Roland Barthes (1973) called mythmaking, where the exotic, the subversive and the particular are re-constituted into a form where they can be conveniently located in relation to supposed standards of what is normal or natural, and integrated into a grand narrative of progress. This became evident during the folk song revival in England at the beginning of the twentieth century, when cheap reprints of a careful selection of folk songs were adopted in schools to propagate a certain concept of Englishness that derived from the maypole, going to the fair and a pastoral sense of old England. The durability of this image was seen when the then Prime Minister John Major revived it in the 1990s in a partlyurbanised form. England is, he said, still the country of long shadows on county [cricket] grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and [football] pools fillers and - as George Orwell said old maids cycling to Holy Communion through the morning mist (quoted in Kumar 2003: 27). When traditional songs were recorded and broadcast on the radio and TV, they were expected to conform to this absurdly anachronistic stereotype. Since they were to be associated with a rural past, studios were adapted accordingly: in one 1960 series the presenters sat on bales of straw. Further radical changes were made. Narrative songs were drastically shortened. In recording the English ballad Scarborough Fair, a version of The Elfin Knight (Child 2), Paul Simon truncated the triadic structure of the verses and reintroduced the opening stanza at the end, making nonsense of the narrative development. After forty years this is still the bestselling recording of a traditional ballad in English. This doctoring of texts for the recording market was very widespread. In Ireland, where traditional music has
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traditions, and known from at least the eighteenth century, but the films appropriated it to a single simplified setting.i In Across the Wide Missouri (dir. William Wellman, 1951), also a Western, the title attempts to capture the aura of the African-American sea shanty that celebrates the Indian maiden Shenandoah. The very word glamour, which has come to evoke the charismatic quality of Hollywood and Bollywood stars alike, is derived from a Scottish dialect word describing the casting of a magic spell, and appears as such in the most widely-distributed of all Scottish folk songs, The Gypsy Laddie (Child 200): As soon as they saw her weel-fard face, They cast their glamourie owre her. (Sargent and Kittredge 1932: 484) As these examples suggest, the residual aura of songs half-remembered from childhood or local communities has been harnessed for purely commercial projects. By the process known as articulation, they are read against the grain of the narrative to reinforce, for example, racial stereotypes (Shenandoah) or purely bourgeois notions of marriage and the family. This is most noticeable in appropriations of the traditional tale known as Young Beichan (Child 53), where a previously betrothed woman turns up at a wedding feast to claim her husband. This plot is the basis of several Hollywood films: Move Over Darling (1963), My Favourite Wife (1940), Our Wife (1941) Three for the Show (1955) and Too Many Husbands (1940). The last two were both based on W. Somerset Maugham s play Home and Beauty. Tam Lin (Child 39), a song of abduction to the otherworld, has been called by far the most popular ballad for transformation and retelling in the modern media because of its detailed evocation of medieval magic and its independent and active heroine (Ringel 1997: 200). A film entitled variously The Ballad of Tam-Lin and The Devils Widow (dir. Roddy McDowall, 1971) was an attempt, in name alone, to harness the song to a supernatural horror tale of the beautiful people frequenting British and American campuses in the 1960s. Perhaps because of its matter-of-fact attitude to the supernatural, this ballad has provided the substance (and the illusion) for pop groups, films, video games and above all New Age novels, which not only favour happy endings like that of Tam Lin but also privilege the pagan over the Christian.ii M.J. C. Hodgart (1950: 27-8) pointed out the similarities between the montage techniques of Sergei Eisenstein and the selection and juxtaposition of rapid flashes of narrative in the traditional ballad. Directors were alert to this even before Eisenstein: the melodramatic Maria Marten, or Murder in the Red Barn, which sold millions of copies as a London street ballad in the nineteenth century, was successfully adapted several times to the silent film format before receiving feature length treatment with a soundtrack (dir. George King, 1935). At the same time, there is a recognition that the value systems of representatives of the folk tradition are often at odds with
those of a capitalist enterprise like a film company. This was particularly true of Hollywood in the 1950s. The presence of the singer (and folk song collector) A. L. Lloyd as a one-eyed shantyman in John Huston s film of Moby Dick (1956) has the effect of making the rest of the film appear factitious. The dislocation is also evident in the way folk songs became a metalanguage to evade the strict censorship that prevailed under the Hays code at the time: in the filmed version of Robert Anderson s play Tea and Sympathy (dir. Vincente Minnelli, 1956), the American folk song revival becomes a clandestine metaphor for homosexuality. This makes the dialogue at times quite obscure, as when a father exclaims of his sensitive teenage son: I have to tell my friends I dont know what hes going to be when he grows up. I just cant tell them he s going to be a folk singer. Traditional singing, with its endorsement of communal over national values, as well as its more recent association with protest songs, was being constructed as oppositional to the American way of life in the same way as homosexuality and Communism. They were all part of the queering of American society.
Conclusion
It can well be argued that the preferred readings of folklore - the affirmations of nature and wholeness, the empowerment of the poor and the dispossessed, the alliance of the ordinary with the extraordinary in opposition to the hegemonic can and should be broken down, in the spirit of Jacques Derridas aporia. The modern medias reading against the grain can also be regarded as an example of the parodic and oppositional readings that have long been celebrated as a component of traditional orature. One example came during the short American series of moon landings from 1969 to 1973 and became one of the defining media events of the late twentieth century. During a moonwalk, one of the astronauts unexpectedly sang: I was strolling on the moon one day In the merry, merry month of May, When much to my surprise A bonny pair of eyes [breaks off]iii This apparently improvised parody of one of the standard openings of the nineteenth century Irish street song is masterly. However, when such re-readings are merely in the interests of a an ephemeral Hollywood hit or the launch of a new consumer brand, or to reinforce national stereotypes, it is relevant to question whether they are made in the spirit of dissent from the dominant discourse or merely driven by a quest for new consumer markets. Folklore studies have in the past frequently served the interests of patriotic, imperial or romantic agendas. Such synthetic and totalizing worldviews may have no intellectual validity (and in the case of patriotism, are mutually cancelling), but they survive vigorously. Who could have predicted that, in Europe, nationalism would
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not merely survive Hitler but remain the dominant ideology of the states of the supranational European Union? In such an ahistorical discourse, the global reach of folklore has little place. In the British and American media, folk songs have a dispersed existence as the scattered representatives of an alternative but marginalised worldview. However, as many have observed, this fragmentation is proving to be its strength on the internet, which operates in precisely the same decentred way. The past appropriation of folk song by the media in the construction of a Scottish national identity, a historicized American individualism, and a concept of pastoral Englishness, has been undermined by the increased (but still far from universal) access that the internet offers.
References Cited
Barthes, Roland. 1973. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. St Albans, Herts: Granada. Hodgart, M. J. C. 1950. The Ballads. London: Hutchinson. Kumar, Krishan. 2003. The Making of English National Identity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. O Boyle, Cathal, ed. 1979. Songs of County Down. Skerries, Co. Dublin: Gilbert Dalton. Porter, James, ed. 1995. Ballads and Boundaries. Narrative Singing in an Intercultural Context. Los Angeles, CA: UCLA Press. , and H. Gower, eds. 1995. Jeannie Robertson. Emergent Singer, Transformative Voice. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Ringel, Faye. 1997. Stealing Plots and Tropes. Traditional Ballads and American genre Fiction. In Tom Cheesman and Sigrid Rieuwerts, eds, Ballads into Books. The Legacies of Francis James Child. Bern: Peter Lang, 1997. 199-209. Sargent, H. C., and G. L. Kittredge., eds. 1932. English and Scottish Popular 1904. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin. Ballads.
Endnotes
Gerald Porter, Singing the Changes: Variation in Four Traditional Ballads. Ume Papers in English 14. (Ume, Sweden: University of Ume, 1991).
1 2
These include Dahlov Ipcar s Queen of Spells (1973), Elizabeth Popes Perilous Gard (1984), Joan Vinges Tam Lin (short story, 1985), Diana Wynne Jones Fire and Hemlock (1985) and Pamela Deans Tam Lin (1991). Transcribed from a documentary film of the moon landings, The Last Frontier, shown on Finnish television, YLE 1, Jan. 11, 1986.
Williamson, Judith. 1978. Decoding Advertisements. London: Marion Boyars.
ANNOUNCEMENT
The theme of April 2005 issue of
Indian Folklife
is
uch has been written about the outdated, ambiguous, embarrassing, stigmatized word that gives the name to our field. Folklore is a word we can neither live with nor, apparently, live without. The term is a moving target, impossible to pin down. The folk, for some, refers to a submissive lower class deluded by paternalism and not yet awakened to self-consciousness; while for others folklore is a rich repository of resistance and alternative histories. Folklore can evoke both the pseudoculture imposed by an authoritarian government and the grassroots culture that refuses this. The word is variably tinged with condescension, nostalgia, and defensiveness. If folklore is a spoiled concept, bad to think with even in Europe where it was created; it is still more problematic when applied to nonWestern societies. Arriving with colonialism or other forms of modernity, it is imposed without understanding of local cultural distinctions, or simply applied as a blanket framework to all non-Western expressions. How do we, the folklorists who persist in believing there is a there there, save ourselves? Is it reasonable to talk of folklore and the folk in non-Western societies? Or even in the West itself? This special issue will explore the careers of folklore and related concepts in several national milieux. Roma Chatterji describes the trajectory in Bengal of the categories desha and marga, proposed by Ananda Coomaraswamy as indigenous substitutes for folk and high. Mbugua wa-Mungai examines the popular rejection in Kenya of the school-promoted category of oral literature. Ipek Celik documents the effect of changing attitudes towards ethnic diversity on the meaning of people and peoples culture in Turkey. In a similar development, Jing Li shows how the turn to a market economy in contemporary China has prompted a change in the definition of folklore, with ethnicity rather than class becoming the basis of authenticity claims. Dorothy Noyes provides a general discussion of sociocultural categories and observes the transition from folk to world in the contemporary U.S.
ISSUE 1 SERIAL NO. 18 JANUARY 2005
Folklore Abroad: The Diffusion and Revision of Sociocultural Categories
The Center for Folklore Studies The Ohio State University Email: noyes.10@osu.edu
Guest Editor Dorothy Noyes
12
Orality, transcription and construction of data

Marilena Papachristophorou
Marilena Papachristophorou is Research Fellow in
Academy of Athens: Hellenic Folklore Research Center, Greece.
French collectors of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such as J.F. Blad, F. Arnaudin, P. Perbosc, P. Luzel, P. Sbillot, were also taking down the narrations in shorthand on the field. With regards to some of them, we can neither exclude the possibility of their interventions in the texts, nor consider their transcriptions as genuine since they were made during a privileged tte--tte between the informant and the collector so privileged that the existence of J.F. Blads main informant (vieux Cazeaux, a fussy Gascon peasant) was never attested for sure (Salles Loustau 1985: 193). The history of Greek transcriptions has a similar type of mystery, though less known on an international level. Some of the best known published folktale collections were transcribed under imprecise circumstances, whereas for the rest of narrative genres detailed information is missing. One of the first Greek collections published by the Austrian Consul in Greece, Georg von Hahn in 1864 was made under unspecific circumstances. Von Hahn was mainly interested in the typological connection of folktales with Greek mythology; he was consequently collecting stories mainly for their content by using native transcribers who did the work for him (Pio 1879: IV-V). The exact transcribing conditions faced by von Hahn were lost, as he never had the time to reveal them (Pio 1879: VII). Similarly, the 45 stories from the Dodecanese published by R. Dawkins in 1950, come from an hypothetical context, as the main collector of those stories in the beginning of the twentieth century was an enlightened amateur in Archaeology, named Iakovos Zarraftis from the island of Cos, who has not left any information on his informants. R. Dawkins had tried to restore the context of the Stories, either by stating his own remarks or by arriving at logical conclusions according to A. Adamandiou2 (1875-1937) and M. MichaelidisNouaros 3 (1879-1954) testimonies (Dawkins 1950: 1-17). On the contrary A. Adamandiou transcribed his material either by attending evening gatherings especially organized out of season by his pupils in order to help him in his task, or under the dictation of his narrator (again during a privileged tte-tte). In a quite similar way MichaelidisNouaros restored the story-telling ambiance of his childhood, in order to transcribe meticulously the folktales conserved in his memory (Michaelidis Nouaros 1932: 266-267). Even more particular is the case of Marianna Kambouroglou s4 (1819-1890) published collection (1883) as she personally transcribed the narrations she was holding in her mind since her childhood; in fact she was dictating them to herself in order to publish.
ranscriptions of oral traditional material constitute an inherent part in the history of ethnographical research. The contradiction included in this assignment is a point of departure for the following discussion: to which degree do we (folklorists and ethnographers) affect and reconstruct oral narratives by transcribing / studying our data. After a short introduction to some representative initial European stages in the transcription of orality, that have been significant for the methodological and archived heritage they created, I shall treat the points of transformation, adaptation and archiving in this very specific procedure of (re)constructing oral material data going beyond textualization itself. The existing technological possibilities affect considerably the methods of collecting material on the field and accordingly the results. Collectors in the nineteenth century were writing down their informants narrations, some of them later treating their notes by filling the so-thought gaps and by adapting them to their own knowledge or to the taste of the public and the aesthetics of their time. Those treatments concern especially folktales and reflect early stages in the European literary history, introduced during the Italian renaissance by Boccace (1313-1375) and his Decameron.1
Brothers Grimm and their folktales collections, established transcribing and typological rules that remained valid for more than one century, until Propp s Morphology of the Folktale in 1928. The first volume of Grimms collection consisted exclusively of folktales collected inside the borders of their district (Hanau), especially in their own city (Kassel) by asking people they knew (friends, servants and nurses) and also some peasants in the country. Their narrators succeeded in remembering the narratives just for the specific occasion of collection. They recomposed the transcribed narrations, either because they considered them vulgar in some way, or by constructing their own variant combining two and three versions. However Nicole Belmont notes that their morphological interventions did not alter the narrative structure, as they were able to distinguish those points they had the right to intervene without affecting the fundamental ones that should remain untouched (Belmont, 1986: 39-40 44-45). Those interventions also concerned specific issues that could shock the pedagogical manners of the middle-class; that is the target recipients of the Grimms collection.
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The transcribing methods for oral narratives were enriched with the involvement of the Greek Ministry of Education in mid nineteenth century, encouraging teachers in collecting folkloristic material. Besides their own amateur collections, this lead to specific transcriptions made by the pupils themselves (remembering too, but in the abstract way children do, and self-dictating / collecting the transcribed tales). To summarise about existing Greek transcriptions, especially the unpublished ones, they vary from punctual long texts coming from collectors such as D. Loukopoulos or M. Lioudaki, to the shortened and clumsy texts coming from primary school pupils (1936-1939). The introduction of new technologies in fieldwork research permitted, quite recently of course, precise transcriptions of oral narratives, by preserving them on audio-visual media. In the same time collecting oral data using anthropological methods, such as participant observation, revealed that the question of fidelity to the original was complex and also dependent on the circumstances and the occasion for the narration transcribed, on the narrator s spontaneity etc. Thus the term authenticity, in folklore or other cultural theories, in order to describe texts relying more in formal standards and process of production (Mills 2000: 2) resolves to a certain degree the problem of description itself by putting precise limits. After a wider consideration and beyond these limits these questions essentially concern the transformation of the orality into written text and are quite common in the theory of folklore: to which degree can the narration transcribed be considered as traditional and produce further analysis? To which degree can the oral narratives be transcribed into written reference without considerable alteration? What remains and what perishes in passing from one form to the other? How common factors of human behavior, such as social gathering and communication, can affect the vocalization of narratives, well before and regardless of any transcription? How are silences and pauses registered, and what do they mean? How textualization affects narratives and to what degree does it dictate it? How faithful to any original can a text remain after being classified? Is it still a narrative or just a fossil? The questions of the kind, drawing upon each other, can infinitely spin around the initial paradox of ethnology itself: the transcription and (written) study of cultures without writing in the nineteenth century (cf Belmont 1997: 5). The societies that have been considered as primitive transmitted information with speech and conserved it by means of memory. It is obvious that the connection between orality and literacy has a prominent role in the passage from one kind of narration to the other. Narration constitutes anyhow an important way of human expression and characterizes most acts, from art to science, since human experience is textualized to be transmitted (Ong 1997: 200). Since the rules dominating oral speech
Extract from manuscript coming from the Pupils Collection (LA 1261 SM 91, p. 7) kept in the Hellenic Folklore Research Centers Archives.
are considerably different from the ones dictating written speech, we can presume that transcription in illiterate societies that produced many narratives is in fact a kind of adaptation of the products of an oral culture into the needs and ways of a literate culture. The obvious aims of this adaptation are conservation (beyond the limits of geographical borders and human time) and the study of the oral culture by the literate one. It is interesting to repeat how this adaptation has been and is still effected. A published or archived collection is the product of a fieldwork research; since the object is narrations (conserved by the mechanisms of collective memory and pronounced by the individuals who bear it) we can consider as fieldwork any memory research, whether it is individual or collective, which finally becomes the specific field of narration. The narration is extracted from the narrators memory, where it is first textualized, to finally pass from a mental text to a written text especially in the beginning his special expressive means were rarely depicted. Transcriptions of spontaneous narrations in real conditions - concerning contemporary fieldwork research or isolated archived variants - are rather rare. Normally narratives transcribed were previously ordered and produced during an interview, or
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following a questionnaire or answering to the collector s demand. However ordering includes the condition of personal choice, both for the collector and the narrator alike, who accepts being recorded a consent revealing a lot about his relationship with the ethnographer himself. When the choice concerns the story told itself, we remain more or less under the conditions of traditional storytelling: the narrator has a repertoire well known to his audience that asks for or encourages narration according to a general mood (the same happens with stories produced by chatting). In those cases the audience is the collector himself. However, his own previous choices have already affected the narration recorded, well before he planned which information to seek for 5. And of course, he has chosen willing informants to give it those called good informants, who are not necessarily the best storytellers in real conditions, but individuals who like being revealed and can express themselves under precise conditions. Recording narratives presupposes confidence and communication between both parts, as the relationship between informant and collector is a privileged one and happens in the course of a tte--tte. The ethnographer s intrusion into a real storytelling context presumes his acceptance by all participants; otherwise the spontaneous conditions are disturbed. We can assume that those storytelling conditions effectively constitute a performance. Records or transcriptions in a tte--tte are usually shorter and closer to typological standards. For the genres besides folktale, such as legends, anecdotes or life stories the storytelling conditions diverge considerably, at least as far as we know from contemporary research, by making each narrative part of a general collective discussion: the narrators succeed and complete each other with their own narration / experience which is much shorter than a fairytale. In these cases the terms repertoire and performance are restricted to their everyday use and meaning, whereas the storyteller is more a speaker than a narrator (cf Degh 1995: 79-89). The general context is in fact the frame of a discussion and the factors of confidence and communication are even more imperative. During private entertainment between the narrator and the ethnographer, most of the real conditions we have just mentioned are suppressed: the open discussion is not only restricted to tte--tte but also and mainly it is affected by the intervention of the transcription means, either pen/notepad, tape recorder or camera. Transcribed (= written) text dictates oral, in order to help the transcriber in his work or just because it gains a fixed form and the narrator knows it. The storyteller addresses the ethnographer himself and stresses the points he estimates more interesting for him. As for the other genres we can presume that even the intention of recording alters them considerably, because the relaxing conditions of chatting are eliminated to the point that the ethnographer is listening less and conducting his informant more according to his own research needs. We can assume that transcribing oral narratives equilibrates in between two distinct symbolic systems,
i.e. language and culture (Geertz 1973: 5-6, 21-29). At the same time transcribing goes well beyond textualizing oral narratives as it forms a procedure beginning at the very moment that the ethnographer expresses his interest towards a certain direction and ending with the publication of his written text. Transcription itself is a very tiny point in this procedure but together with the written study it inspires it is the most visible one. More importantly, archived transcriptions contribute decisively in the infrastructure for scholarly research. The existing transcribing and recording techniques certainly offer great possibilities in maintaining a lot from the original oral narration. However and regardless of them, from the moment that the oral narration is transformed into an archived text, all the elements related to the narrators physical existence (such as the timbre and the tones of his voice, his appearance, or even his expressive means and talents) are lost. Other elements are lost too: the air (lights, smells, temperature, etc), the audiences mood, and the very special time preceding narration. The only thing remaining in fact is its textualized content, with some information on the context. Fairytale transcriptions are luckiest, as their discourse is so poetic itself that it can resist the narrator s physical absence. I am not at all sure that this is also the case for the other genres of oral narratives (cf. Belmont, 1997: 219). In order to become exploitable and researchable, the transcribed oral text further undergoes the archivists / researchers treatment: recognizing and classifying the transcribed material are necessary stages in this procedure. In fact, even the most evident classifications, such as variant, presuppose a silent agreement with the existence of stereotypes and standardized reproduction procedures. Moreover we consider that a narration is part of the oral tradition if it is met in at least two variants. Classifying gets involved everywhere during this stage of treatment, as some of the most common research criteria indicate (place, genre, tale type etc) according to pre-existing theoretical treatment. However classifying constitutes an obvious need since it makes possible the management of large data: even a bad classification system (which often means a system resulting from a past and contested theoretical model) is preferable to not classified material. On the other hand organizing transcribed material is always a treatment, and consequently an alteration, since it is perfectly known that collective imagerys products do not obey strict borders. 6 The introduction of new technologies in archiving permits apparently more neutral data analyses, such as the keywords. In my opinion we stay in front of latent classifications, since we still chose one synonym among many, the terms must be compatible with a wider contemporary system of theoretical analysis and research, etc. Transcribing oral narratives is in fact a procedure producing texts reminding of (or even summarizing somehow) the oral originals, while at the same time it saves them from being forgotten in the process of sociocultural changes. Under the precise perspective of
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creating ethnographical data, we could even consider them as partial sketches of oral narratives created in between orality and written speech and giving new and permanently fixed versions of oral texts.
Kambouroglou Marianna: 1924. Paramythia epitheorithenta kai symplirothenta dimosievontai to defteron ypo D. Gr. Kambouroglou (Folktales - Second edition reviewed and augmented by D. Gr. Kambouroglou). Athens: Ioannis D. Kollaros. Maranho Tullio: The Hermeneutics of Participant Observation. In Dialectical Anthropology 10: 3-4, pp. 291-309. Michaelidis Nouaros, Michael: 1932 & 1934. Laografika Symmeikta Karpathou (Folklore Miscellanies from the island of Karpathos), t. I & II. Athens. Mills Margaret: 2000. On the Problem of truth in Oral and traditional texts , in Honko. Ong, Walter J.: 1997. Proforikotita kai eggramatosyni (Orality and Literacy : The Technologizing of the Word -1982). Heraklion: Panepistimiakes Ekdoseis Kritis. Papachristophorou, Marilena: 2002. Sommeils et veilles dans le conte merveilleux grec (FF Communications 279). Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Pio Jean: 1879. Contes populaires grecs: publis daprs les manuscrits du Dr. J.-G. De Hahn, Andr.-Frd. Copenhague: Hst & fils. Salles Loustau Jean: 1985. Le chant des Sirnes : la part de Blad . In Actes du Colloque de Lectoure (runis par Jean Arrouye), pp. 191-201. Bziers: Centre International de Documentation Occitane.
Endnotes
The main literary adaptations of oral folktales in the European culture can be summarized by the following flashpoints: Straparolas Pleasant Nights (Italy 16th century), Rabelais Gargantua (France 16th century), Basiles Pentamerone (Italy 17th century) [cf Belmont 1986: 40-41].
1
Eminent Greek scholar in Byzantine studies with a remarkable contribution in folklore research, including the first approach of storytelling in Greece.
2 3
Greek tutorial and historian, who also left considerable works in folklore. Athenian bourgeois lady and intellectual of the time with a considerable contribution in folklore studies. The ethnographer approaches his informants with a baggage of intellectual preconceptions given by his anthropological knowledge, of cultural preconceptions given by his sociohistorical background, and of psychological predispositions derived from his lifehistory. (Tullio Maranho 1986: 299, in Vasenkari & Pekkala 1999: (6). A typical example of such an archival misleading is the corpus of the Greek oikotype *514C: the classified folktale also incorporates a lullaby, rumors, anecdotes, songs, plus an entire communication system of representations (see Papachristophorou 2002: 201-224, 267-268, 319-331, 333-337). Vasenkari Maria & Pekkala Armi : 2000. Dialogic Methodology , in Honko.
References Cited
Adamandiou Adamandios: (1896-1900). Tiniaka (From Tinos island). In Deltion Istorikis kai Ethnologikis Etaireias tis Ellados E, pp. 277-292. Belmont Nicole: 1986. Paroles paennes: mythe et folklore. Paris : Imago. - et Jean-Franois Gossiaux (eds.): 1997. De la voix au texte: Lethnologie contemporaine entre loral et lcrit. Paris: Editions du CTH. Dawkins, Richard M.: 1950. 45 Stories from the Dodecanese. Edited and translated from the MSS of Jacob Zarraftis by -. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Dgh Linda: Narratives in Society: 1995. A Performer-Centered Study of Narration (FF Communications 255). Helsinki: Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia. Geertz, Cl. (ed): 1973. The Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic Books, Inc., Publishers. Hahn (von) Johan Georg: 1864. Griechische und albanesische Marchen. Leipzig : Berlag von Wilhelm Engelman,. Honko, L.(ed.): (2000). Thick Corpus, Organic Variation and Textuality in Oral Tradition
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16
Folklore, Copyright and Media: The First Page of My Field diary

Kishore Bhattacharjee
Kishore Bhattacharjee is Professor and Head of
Folklore Research Department, Gauhati University, Guwahati, India.
Ghanaian music suffered a reversal since the pirated foreign imported music was able to capture the market (ibid). The issue of community /national authorship, national culture, or national creativity were at stake. Betty Mould-Iddrisu, Chief State Attorney, International Law Division, Ministry of Justice, Ghana adds The government of Ghana, through the Copyright Office, was thus compelled to take the initiative in the fight against piracy. The Copyright Office, in close cooperation with the various organs of the music industry and with the technical cooperation of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) in London and its national group in Ghana, the Association of Recording Industries of Ghana ARIGh instituted the banderol system. The system was modelled along the lines of the Portuguese system, because after Portugal introduced this system, it achieved a near-zero rate of piracy. The WIPO model provision was adopted in Geneva in 1982 and intergovernmental committees welcomed it. According to Section 1 of the Model Provisions certain uses of folklore for commercial purposes require authorization. It distinguishes between cases where copies of expressions are involved and cases where copies of expressions are not necessarily involved. In the first category of cases, the acts requiring authorization are publication, reproduction and distribution; in the second category of cases, the acts requiring authorization are public recitation, public performance, and transmission by wireless means or by wire and any other form of communication to the public. WIPO Document Intellectual Property Protection of the Expressions of Folklore: Attempts at the International level 1989] The Model Provisions do not hinder the use of expressions of folklore without gainful intent for legitimate purposes outside their traditional or customary context. Thus, for instance, the making of copies for the purpose of conservation, research or archiving is not hindered by the Model Provisions (WIPO Document Intellectual Property Protection of the Expressions of Folklore: Attempts at the International level 1989). According to the provision it is an offence if, in the case of public uses, expressions of folklore are distorted in any direct or indirect manner prejudicial to the cultural interests of the community concerned. Provisions alternatively refer to competent authority and community concerned for protection of folklore and
auri Honko (2001) narrated the story of the song El Condor Pasa sung by Paul Simon that was later identified as a Bolivian song and how the song s success triggered an international debate on the question of copyright and folklore. He discussed the issue of copyright to the individual performer and the role of the community. These two issues depend on context and are very complicated. In this paper I report on a research being conducted by Folklore Research Department, Gauhati University concerning issues of copyright, commodification of folklore and its use by media among the Tiwa tribe of Assam. Fieldwork will be carried out among other communities of Assam as a part of this project. The UNESCO-WIPO model provisions for Protection of Expressions of Folklore Against Illicit Exploitation and Other Prejudicial Actions was adopted by WIPO and UNESCO in 1982. Till date different issues like protection of traditional cultural expressions and expressions of folklore and direct involvement of the stake holder(s) for the need of legal protection of their needs have been felt. It is realized that there is a relationship between expressions of folklore and the cultural and social identity, belief, spirituality and values of the communities (WIPO Outline for intergovernmental Policy on Protection of traditional Expressions and Expressions of Folklore 2004). In many counties of the world the issue of folklore and copyright have been publicly debated. For example, Ghana in 1970s and 1980s faced economic and legal problems when tape recording machines and videocassette recorders were used for the production of indigenous music that reached the audience in the country and abroad. Yet the musicians, artists, producers, and others involved in the legitimate production of music and the music industry as a whole had never been poorer due to the impact of these new recording technologies and their encouragement of piracy(Mould-Iddrisu 2004). The music industry in Ghana earned a bad reputation for careless reproduction of music and genuine artists suffered. It has also been observed At the same time,
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other related purposes. In the model provision the concept of ownership was avoided because in different countries different systems prevail. It recognizes that in some countries expressions of folklore may be regarded as the property of the nation, while in other countries, a sense of ownership of the traditional artistic heritage may have developed in the communities concerned. It was felt the if a community is well organised it may act as authorizing agency, the question of individual performers also came up. It was recognised that at the international level it is very difficult to go beyond recommendations. It was accepted that folklore items are subjects of a copyright-typebut sui generis protection. However, folk art cannot enjoy indirect protection by means of neighboring rights or related rights. Nevertheless, it was felt that for some items of folklore related rights may be used as a means of indirect protection. It was resolved that folk tales, folk poetry, folk songs, instrumental folk music, folk dances, folk plays and similar expressions actually live in the form of regular performances. Thus, if the protection of performers is extended to the performers of such expressions of folklorewhich is the case in many countriesthe performances of such expressions of folklore will also enjoy protection. The case is more complex when it comes to the protection of the rights of producers of phonograms and broadcasting organizations in respect of their phonograms and broadcasts, respectively, embodying such performances. Such a protection is indirect because what is protected is not the expressions of folklore proper. Related rights do not protect expressions of folklore against unauthorized performance, fixation in phonograms, reproduction, broadcasting or other communication to the public. Therefore, the Rome Phonograms and Satellites Conventions do not offer protection against national folklore being performed, recorded or broadcast by foreigners. It was reassuring to the members that when community members perform then their copyrights are protected. The issue of protecting and safeguarding folklore in the media or market has not been completely resolved. Moreover, there is a concern among many that a legal monopoly may be created through various legislations and artistic or poetic creations of communities may in the process may become equated with private ownership. These issues deserve sensitive understanding. In the WIPO document Performances and Phonograms Treaty adopted in Geneva on December 20, 1996 various aspects were included. Committees approved the idea of cooperation between WIPO and UNESCO in that field. Later, on the basis of a proposal of the Government of Thailand in the World Forum held in Phuket from April 8 to 10, 1997 the necessity of broader examination of the intellectual property aspects for the protection of traditional
knowledge, innovations and culture was stressed. These issues are also of importance in India and I discuss below some observations from my research.
Our Research Objective

We at the Folklore Research Department, Gauhati University have just initiated the process of creating a depository of folklore materials of Assam so that we can document the items, which require intellectual property rights protection, or more precisely, to initiate a discussion among the communities as to how those items could be protected from the invasion of the market. Particularly, how people could protect their rights and what is their opinion about benefit sharing. Do they consider giving prior informed consent as acceptable? Such questions are to be asked during fieldwork among different communities of Assam. We also intend to discuss the issue of authorization. For that field studies are being undertaken and review of the existing sources has been almost completed. We decided to undertake a pilot survey of one day to decide the fieldwork plan for future and sharpen the questions that we have.
The Beginning
The purpose of this visit was to identify the items of folklore that are being produced for the market. Furthermore, how performing arts, textiles and artefacts are entering media and market? We wanted to discuss with the community members and leaders what is their view about benefit sharing and community IPR. We wanted to understand how we would discuss the issues with the community members in our future extensive fieldwork? We also wanted to find out what is the viewpoint of the community about folklore in the market and what they feel about the use of their tradition by the outsiders in novel ways and in the process we wanted to learn about the cultural significance of the selected folklore items.
With the community leaders

We decided to start our work among the Tiwas whose items have been brought to media and market to a lesser degree. We wanted to start from there and then go on to work among the communities where the pervasive influence of marketing and reproducing folklore in the media has already been witnessed. We thought that on the one hand, we will be able to take the issue to the people who have been less affected and therefore, what would they feel when we discuss the issue of copyright with them and their participation in our work; on the other hand, we would learn more about dealing with a complex situation. Moreover, vested interest has not yet solidified among them. We started early in the morning from Guwahati and our destination was Jagiroad, 75 Kilometres away from
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Guwahati city, the capital of Assam. My colleagues were Dr.Anil Boro, lecturer in Folklore Research Department of the University and two members of our research team Ranga Ranjan Das and Karuna Kanta Kakati. The Tiwa tribe live around a small town and mainly in the plains of Assam. Their main concentration is in Morigaon and Nagon districts. Earlier they were known as the Lalungs. They have very close relationship with the Karbi tribe of Assam and with Khasi and Jaintias of Meghalaya. There is a considerable intercultural relationship with the Hindu society. The Tiwas still maintain a political structure of small chiefdoms and call the chief Raja. The Tiwa territory is divided into number of such kingdoms. Rajas have some social responsibilities and enjoy certain privileges (Das and Shyamchoudhury 1973). Their population is 61,315 according to 1961 census, however the ethnic organisations of Tiwas claim that at present their population is around two hundred thousand. Most of the Tiwas have speak Assamese and according to most enthusiastic estimation of the community leaders there are 32,000 speakers of Tiwa language, while others speak Assamese. We went to the house of Tulsi Bordoloi who was the president of the Tiwa Sahitya Sabha (literally,Tiwa Literature Society, however, in Assam community /ethnic Literary Societies are modelled like the Asom Sahitya Sabha which was established in 1917 by the Assamese cultural leaders and writers for the development of language, society and for articulating the community identity). Tulsi Bordoloi also teaches history in Jagiroad college. We discussed the issue of marketing of folklore items of the Tiwas. He said it is happening at a much smaller scale as compared to other tribal groups of Assam and that he supports the idea that community should get some thing back if its items are marketed. When we asked him who should be the stakeholders - artists or those who reproduce, that is, the businessmen who take the design and style and market traditional items or the community, he replied that it should be the community. But when we asked who represents the community: political parties or cultural organizations like the Tiwa Sahitya Sabha, he asserted that latter represents the community. The question was close ended because we are familiar with the role of the Sahitya Sabhas among the tribes of Assam. Sahitya Sabhas have become mass organizations of the communities. However, if we take a close up view there are internal differences and divisions within the societies. Notwithstanding the fact these organisations are representing the communities. He also said that prior informed consent for registration of an item for IPR protection may also be taken from the community in this way through organizations like Tiwa Shitya Sabha. He took us to a cultural organization known as Tiwa Kristi Vikash Sangha (literally, Tiwa Cultural Development Club) that often performs in public
programmes in the modern context of stage performance. They represent the community in the interethnic world of modernity where boundaries have become confusing - a predicament described poignantly by James Clifford (1988). We met an important office bearer of the organisation whose name was Nadiram Deuri. It was revealed to us they are compelled to pay bribe to perform in the audiovisual media. There are some more cultural organizations, which perform in the media, but even an organization close to Guwahati does not get their remuneration properly. In this situation the question of copyright looks like a furthest dream. Deuri showed us certain textile designs and taught us how to recognise Tiwa textile. Tulsi Bordoloi has informed us that a woman from Guwahati came to them and showed interest in producing their textiles for a wider market. I asked them if they have cooperative societies among them as such societies can fulfil the demand and community members will be direct beneficiaries. He said no such societies have been formed yet. He took us to a museum he has developed in his college focusing the Tiwa traditions. It was gratifying for us to observe that a local college is playing a role for protection and continuity of local culture. We asked Tulsi Bordoloi to suggest a name of a village where we can go for simple observation and scouting creativity of the local Tiwas. He suggested a village about 35-40 km from Jagiroad and located in the fringe of a hill area. The Tiwas live in two habitats and usually a distinction is made in the anthropological literature between hills and plains Tiwas. The said village is situated in this sense in the geographical centre and in Bordolois unstated assertion about the location being something like a cultural centre was a hidden notion: that it is in a far place culture is pure. Is this sense of purity not also a sense of hybridty? The place was far for one days pilot survey. We were concerned that the trip will curtail our actual time for fieldwork. We followed him although we were unsure whether we would be able to go back to Guwahati before it gets too late for us in the night.
Among the people

The village Marjong is located near the Amsoi forest, next to a road which goes to Karbi-Anglong District of Assam. Villagers can speak Tiwa language. There is a traditional community house, which in the ethnographic literature has been described as dormitory. Tulsi Bordoloi said dormitory does not convey the sense of cultural significance of the institution. It is more communitycentered place and male members assemble there for festivals when they narrate their history and for many other purposes. There are wooden reliefs of female breasts now explained and narrated in an intercultural narrative related to Hindu deities Siva and Parvati. These points need more reflection and time, yet for finalising field work strategy for a project on community Intellectual Property Rights these also open our mind and show how even traditional institutions are wrongly understood. If in the marketplace or in media a replica of it is produced
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even by protecting community rights then what will be the nomenclature in the context of cultural translation? We realised that where there are contacts and an identity of the fieldworker is known or a researcher is acceptable there the data collection could be started easily and copy book style of rapport establishment is not necessary; general human concerns and respect for the people is enough. Tulsi Bordloi sent us to Moheswar Pator - a resident of the village. Pator teaches in a school in Karbi Anglong. Luckily he was in the village, but at the time of our sudden arrival he had gone to the market, perhaps to spend some leisurely time with his friends there, where people gather. I immediately went there and met him. It was around 4 pm and he readily came back with me to the village. He has published a book on myths and legends connected with Tiwa festivals in Assamese and a collection of Tiwa songs in Tiwa language. This also showed us that as many as available printed texts may be collected and in a single day we collected many. The popular collections and locally printed books are usually possible to collect in such a visit. There are thirty peasant households in the village and most of the houses have corrugated iron roofs. They consume a few varieties of rice; prepare a rice beer known as jo. The tradition of rice beer and distilled liquors of the people of the northeast is very rich and needs extensive documentation, registration and promotion. We observed their knowledge of their environment and felt that it is our discussion about trees, hill, flood, birds was a way to identify traditional knowledge. We made a plan to document some of this knowledge during future field trips in the area. We went to the community House Samadi and started our discussion with a number of people who gathered there. We asked them to sing some mythological songs; the elders who knew them said they cannot sing them just any time. This brought a question to my mind: then how do the cultural clubs perform for media, during Sahitya Sabha programmes, and All India festivals in Guwahati. Even at the time of our visit a rehearsal was going on. The two parts - elders and younger - of the society view it differently. Cultural capsules for the media and community context of performance are probably two parts of a continuum. Why and how the people like to present their item in media and in the context of intercultural interactions? These will be pressing questions in the coming days of our research. At the end of the day while coming back it got dark. I was thinking what needed to be collected and documented in future: local knowledge, material culture, oral literature, and performing arts. And also understand the important process of abridging and editing tradition for presenting them in media. Moreover, what media does with them and what are the feelings of community clubs who make those performances? There is an enthusiasm among the younger of the community members to perform in the media and use folklore for intercultural communication. The questions of presenting folklore in media and community festivals like Sahitya Sabha or Youth festivals deserve sensitive study and participatory research.
References Cited
Clifford, James.1988 The Predicament of Culture: TwentiethCentury Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge :Harvard University Press. Das, M.M. and Shyamchoudhury, N.K. 1973: The Lalung Society. Calcutta: Anthropological Survey of India. Honko, Lauri 2001: Folklore and copyright. Folklore Fellows Network 21, 8-10. Pator, M. 1997: Muhuri (A Collection of Tiwa Folk Songs). Morigaon: Tiwa Matonlai Tokhra. Mould-Iddrisu, Betty 2004: A Developing Countrys Perspective. http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/intelprp/ perspect.htm Pator, M. 2000: Phera. Jagiroad: Tiwa Matonlai Tokhra. WIPO Document Intellectual Property Protection of the Expressions of Folklore: Attempts at the International level.1989 h t t p : / / w w w. w i p o . o r g / a c a d e m y / e n / p u b l i c a t i o n s / Coll_of_documents_on_IP/pdf_img/12_IPPROT.pdf. WIPO Outline of Intergovernmental Policy on Protection of Tradtional Expressions and Expressions of Folklore.2004 http:/ /www.wipo.int/edocs/mdocs/tk/en/wipo_grtkf_ic_7/ wipo_grtkf_ic_7_4.pdf
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Syncretism April, 2000
City Landscapes and Folklore July, 2000
Ecological Citizenship Local Knowledge and Folklife, October, 2000 3
Arts, Crafts and Folklife January, 2001
The Advent of Asian Century in Folklore April, 2001
Religion and Folklife July, 2001
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Indian Folklore and Comparative Political Theory

Herbert Reid
Herbert Reid is Professor of Political Science at The
University of Kentucky where he has also served as Director of Environmental Studies and Director of the Appalachian Center. He may be reached at hgreid01@uky.edu. it a key cultural resource in the construction of a larger civil society (22). Most of the authors appear to share a combined sense of the momentous contribution of Habermas historical study of national public spheres and the limitations or biases of his communication theory neatly summarized in Eric Millers refreshingly hopeful paper that appropriately concludes the volume. In documenting such themes as the role of performative folk traditions as public spheres and the extent to which folk s general culture remains at the deepest level of political institutions, the cumulative impact of these 23 studies (may I say their rolling thunder) is to remind that legitimacy crises, aggravated increasingly by corporate globalisation, will not soon abate. As Jawaharlal Handoo astutely suggests, folklorists are strategically situated to assist in the much needed rethinking of the palace definitions of history and the subconscious structures of the palace paradigm which, besides the historian, people still collectively share (62). I have to add that this contribution may have the remarkable virtue of helping explain both the recent Indian national election and the U.S.A. presidential election, although his point about popular hunger for kings (57) applies more to the latter. (Americas mainstream palace paradigm specialists would be, of course, unable to agree).
he American political theorists Fred Dallmayr and Hwa Yol Jung working with colleagues in various Asian countries have taken the lead in advancing the timely enterprise of comparative political theory. Their recent separately edited volumes materialize tasks of border crossings that forge insights of comparative political culture. Working independently and in dialogue, each has made a durable contribution to moving Western political theory beyond Orientalism and Eurocentrism. Dallmayrs Beyond Orientalism discusses Thomas Panthams comparative analysis of Habermas and Gandhi, attending especially to the extent they shared a criticalemancipatory concern with a revitalized public sphere promising a reduction of structural exploitation and violence. It is from this general vantage point that I am able to express great enthusiasm for this fascinating collection of folklore studies as a significant contribution to deepened understanding of public spheres in new formations of civil society and political coexistence.
The volume is brilliantly organized and introduced by M.D. Muthukumaraswamy and Molly Kaushal, who rightly insist on the importance of broadening Folklore, Public Sphere and Civil Society Y.A. Sudhakar Reddy Edited by M.D. Muthukumaraswamy the outreach of Habermasian makes the important point that in and Molly Kaushal notions of public sphere and the wake of globalisation the thin Chennai: Published by NFSC and IGNCA, communicative action (3). The 23 line between popular and folk 2004, Pages 317, ISBN 81-901481-4-1, essays assembled here do a culture is gradually fading away Price Rs.400/- US $ 20 (34). His observations on the dalit remarkable job of placing folklore at the center of the public sphere (2), a move that should movement and the adaptation of their lore to new media be of much interest to those of us concerned with the environments follow a useful commentary on relevant critical reconstruction of public sphere theory. There is theoretical perspectives including critical globalization certain courage here in the recognition, quoting Alan studies by Harvey, Ritzer, and Bauman as well as s essay offers what probably Jabbour, that it takes nothing away from folklores Habermas. Roma Chatterji intracultural face to note that its intercultural face makes is a more positive (and controversial) view of a
B transformative situation under the impact of commodification that some might call hybridity. The more significant issue may be the questions raised by Molly Kaushals paper: the movement from mythic to political identities, the possibility of counter-hegemonic voices, the contest and competition of multiple public spheres (194). As a matter of fact, Kaushal s essay begins by marking this volumes contribution vis--vis Habermas public sphere theory: its failure to take cognizance of a genuine public sphere within the framework of traditional societies (186). It is especially here that Kailash K. Mishras contribution on the Chaupal as Multidimensional Public Space garners importance. Mishras discussion of Gandhis roots in the chaupal and his contribution to the Panchayati Raj deserves highlighting in exactly this context. Pulak Duttas essay on Tagores experimental application of the principles of the cooperative movement at Santiniketan is at once candid and suggestive. The editors alertly re-formulate Duttas point about Santiniketan as a third space as a challenge for an inescapably interventionist folklore. I must also quote Duttas observation that at Santiniketan conscious attempts were made to keep a flow of aesthetic sensibility in the objects of daily use (165). This challenge of recovering the
21
continuity of esthetic experience with normal processes of living is at the center of John Dewey s philosophy of Art as Experience (1934: 10) and critically important for his theory of democracy. A number of scholars (e.g. Bilimale on folk theatre of Karnataka and Khanna on Tamil Nadus traditional theatre) suggest ways in which performative folk traditions relate to the development of democratic public space(s). Alas, it is impossible for me to comment on each and every contribution to this volume. As a student of politics, I must say there is an impressive grasp by many authors of the political relevance or implication of what Michael Nijhawan calls processes of discursive resignification (269). Mention must also be made of Anjali Capilas account of the role of folk songs in womens lives in the Garhwal Himalayas and their issue-based, dynamic, and changing nature. This collection documents an amazing range of expressive space and performative tradition involved in the generation of public opinion. In doing so we are reminded of the unfortunate degree to which national histories tend to operate under monolithic concepts of social time and action. However, those of us interested in expanding the enterprise of comparative political theory would do well to pay sustained attention to the public sphere of folklore.
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Museums, Folklife and Visual Culture October, 2001
Public Sector Folklore January, 2002
NFSC Festival Review April, 2002
Folklore of the Nomads July, 2002
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New Delhi Symposium Special October, 2002
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Tribal Lore January, 2003
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FREE CIRCULATION Request for copies can be sent to The Editor All the previous issues of
Folk Medicine and Biodiversity April, 2003 Folklore and Biopolitic December, 2003 Chennai Conference Special Folklore as Discourse March, 2004 Life and works of Padma Bhushan Shri Komal Kothari (1929 to 2004) July, 2004 16
Indian Folklife
Genre, Community, and Event October, 2004
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The Oxford India Ramanujan

Edited by Molly Danniels - Ramanujan New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0 19 566478 7 Price Rs.875/-
Postcolonial Theory: A critical introduction

Leela Gandhi New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998, Pages x + 200 ISBN 091 564 7619 Price Rs. 225/-
The New Social Theory Reader

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Edited by T.V. Sathyamurthy New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996, Pages xvi + 606 ISBN 0 19 564434 4 Price Rs.395/-
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Chennai: C.P.R. Environmental Education Centre, 2002, Pages 328
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The Kolam Tribals

S.G. Deogaonkar, Leena Deogaonkar-Baxi New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, 2003, Pages 95 ISBN 81-8069-011-3 Price Rs.150/-
Temple Towns of Tamil Nadu

Edited by George Michell Mumbai: Marg Publications, 1993, Pages viii + 128 ISBN 81-85026-21-1 Price Rs.1850/- (US $54.00)
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Editor Elaine J. Lawless American Folklore Society 107 Tate Hall, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211. www.jstor.org
Editor Jennifer Westwood Folklore Society Warburg Institute London WC1H 0AB enquiry@tandf.co.uk
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Editors Felicia Faye McMahon Voices: The Journal of New York Folklore, New York Folklore Society, Inc. 133 Jay Street, P.O. Box 764 Schenectady, NY 12301 frmcmaho@maxwell.syr.edu
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Volume 1, Issue 1, December 2001 Contributors:
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Published by M.D. Muthukumaraswamy for National Folklore Support Centre , No.7, Fifth Cross Street, Rajalakshmi Nagar, Velachery, Chennai - 600 042 (India), and printed by M.S. Raju Seshadrinathan at Nagaraj and Company Pvt. Ltd., # 4/262, Old Mahabalipuram Road, Kandanchavady, Chennai 600 096, INDIA. Ph:+91-44-24489085 Editor : M.D. Muthukumaraswamy (For free private circulation only.)

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A QUARTERYLY NEWSLETTER FROM NATIONAL FOLKLORE SUPPORT CENTRE

Volume 4 Issue 1 Serial No.18 January 2005

NATI ONAL FOLKLO RE S UPPO RT CENTRE TIONAL LKLORE UPPOR

B-1002, Rushin Tower, Behind Someshwar 2, Satellite Road, Ahmedabad

N. Bhakthavathsala Reddy Dadi D. Pudumjee

Deborah Thiagarajan Molly Kaushal

Executive Director, Madhyam, Bangalore

Karamballi, Via Santosh Nagar, Udupi

Director, Centre for Development Research and Training, Chennai

Y. A. Sudhakar Reddy Veenapani Chawla

EXECUTIVE TRUSTEE AND DIRECTOR

NFSC RESEARCH COLLECTIVE FOR 2004-2005

See page 11 for announcement

Page Layout & Design

Folklore and Media

Media Translation in the Production of Legendary Hawaii

Williamson, Judith. 1978. Decoding Advertisements. London: Marion Boyars.

The theme of April 2005 issue of

Folklore Abroad: The Diffusion and Revision of Sociocultural Categories

Guest Editor Dorothy Noyes

Orality, transcription and construction of data

INDIAN FOLKLORE RESEARCH JOURNAL (IFRJ)

Folklore, Copyright and Media: The First Page of My Field diary

Our Research Objective

With the community leaders

Among the people

INDIAN FOLKLIFE A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FROM NATIONAL FOLKLORE SUPPORT CENTRE

Syncretism April, 2000

City Landscapes and Folklore July, 2000

Ecological Citizenship Local Knowledge and Folklife, October, 2000 3

Arts, Crafts and Folklife January, 2001

The Advent of Asian Century in Folklore April, 2001

Religion and Folklife July, 2001

Indian Folklore and Comparative Political Theory

INDIAN FOLKLIFE A QUARTERLY NEWSLETTER FROM NATIONAL FOLKLORE SUPPORT CENTRE

Museums, Folklife and Visual Culture October, 2001

Public Sector Folklore January, 2002

NFSC Festival Review April, 2002

Folklore of the Nomads July, 2002

New Delhi Symposium Special October, 2002

Tribal Lore January, 2003

in pdf format are available at www. indianfolklore.org

The Oxford India Ramanujan

Postcolonial Theory: A critical introduction

The New Social Theory Reader

Region, Religion, Caste, Gender and Culture in Contemporary India

Sacred Tanks of South India

Indian Folk Music BHAWAIYA Ethnomusicological Study

The Kolam Tribals

Temple Towns of Tamil Nadu

Dalit Movement in South India (1857-1950)

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Folklore, Public Sphere and Civil Society

Indian Ocean Folktales:

Folklore and Historiography:

Voicing Folklore: Careers, Concerns and Issues:

NFSC Folk Festival 2002

INDIAN FOLKLORE RESEARCH JOURNAL

INDIAN FOLKLORE RESEARCH JOURNAL

INDIAN FOLKLORE RESEARCH JOURNAL

Volume 1, Issue 4, December 2004 Contributors:

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