Folk
Life
Read the new COAHSI Folk Life Blog!
COAHSI’s Folk Arts program explores, documents, and shares the folk
life of Staten Island. COAHSI supports traditional artists and folk arts
through programming and technical assistance. Please contact COAHSI for
more information on how we may be able to serve you, as a traditional
artist, or your community through folk arts programming. We would love
to hear from you, and are happy to share information on funding sources,
grant writing, festival and event planning, and other topics. To make
an appointment, please e-mail our folklorist or call (718) 447-3329.
Documenting
and Nurturing Rich Cultural Traditions
Within the Staten Island Community
We all belong to groups.
We all belong to groups with whom we share ethnic, religious, professional,
geographic, or other kinds of associations. And every group has its own
distinctive identity.
Kente Cloth Weaving on Staten Island from COAHSI Folk Arts on Vimeo.
People tend to express group identity and basic values through highly stylized customs, or folk arts, which they practice with or for other members of their group. These arts are learned by informal rather than formal means and transmitted through imitation, direct participation, or verbal direction.
Folk
Arts May Take the Form of...
• Storytelling and other kinds of verbal expressions like jokes
and fairytales
• Ethnic foodways
• Vernacular architecture
• Seasonal and regional customs
• Festivals
• Devotional rituals
• Performances of dance, drama and music
• Occupational traditions
• Other manifestations of what a folk group says, believes, makes
and does
Folk arts are dynamic. They are both conventional and innovative in the ways they articulate steadfast and evolving community values. And they are often so ubiquitous that we tend to overlook them, whether we take part in them or pass them on our way to work. They give us a sense of the past, connect us to our present and guide us into the future. COAHSI’s Folk Arts Program provides the traditional artists of Staten Island with the technical and financial assistance they require to sustain and to spread the beauty of their most essential folkways.
The folklorist's fieldwork is two-fold: It is to uncover representative artists of the many new cultural communities and groups on Staten Island, while seeking to reach wider audiences. COAHSI makes a concerted effort to create programs highlighting folk arts in more established communities so that recently-arrived Staten Islanders will have the opportunity to become acquainted with their new neighbors while sharing time-honored traditions.
Such public programs – indeed all folk arts projects produced under our auspices – are developed through close collaboration with local community leaders, social service organizations, and, of course, the artists themselves. They are fashioned to educate and stimulate audience appreciation for the social and historical contexts from which they have sprung so that the performance experience is accessible to the general public but also recognizable and meaningful to the folk group from which these arts originate. To this end, the Folk Arts program documents the processes and products of those folk artists with whom we work, to provide the most authentic experience. All documentation is maintained in archives accessible to the public for educational and research purposes.
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Folk Arts Links
Visit these
links to learn more about folklore in general:
The
American Folklore Society >
The
American Folklife Center >
The
New York Folklore Society >
Visit these
links to learn more about folklore in New York City:
Center for Traditional
Music & Dance >
City Lore >
World Music Institute
>
Brooklyn
Arts Council >
Queens Council
on the Arts >
Bronx
Council on the Arts >
International recording artist, and Staten Island resident, Milton Henry, digs down to the root of his Jamaican heritage, with the Milton Henry Trio at the United Multicultural Center in Stapleton. Photo by Anna Batcheller, 2010.