Charles Camp and Timothy Lloyd’s article drew my attention this week. Why would folklorists or people involved in folklife festivals want to publish a list of reasons not to produce the festivals? After getting over the initial shock of the title I dug into the article and began to understand what the authors were all about. They wanted to use the rationales that organizers use to justify and petition for funds to have festivals and then posit the problems in practice surrounding these justifications. All of their 6 points could be presented in such a way to be the 6 reasons to have a folklife festival.
While I found this article interesting, I don’t think that the authors were as convincing as they hoped to be. For me, many of their conclusions exclude the possibility of a thinking audience. They present the people who attend these festivals to be sheep attracted by the flashy colored tents and fried foods. They do not give the audience any benefit of the doubt that they may be able to decipher between a country fair and the educational type performances and handicrafts produced in a folklife festival. That said, I know that a percentage of the audience will be as mindless and sheep-like as Camp and Lloyd present them, but I am not convinced that that negates all the positives of the festivals, nor does it justify that the festivals should not be constructed around popular festivals if that model is successful in attracting greater audiences. After all, any educational endeavor (whether a folklife festival or a Friday afternoon history discussion center) does not touch everyone in the audience, but if just one person learns something new then something amazing has happened.
So… there may be 6 reasons not to have a folklife festival, but to me there are many more reasons, and at least one newly educated person, to have a festival.
- Sarah Howard
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