Introduction to ENG 549 by M. Alvarez, Ph.D.

One can hardly look anywhere these days without noticing the persistent, underlying assumptions that the idea of “authenticity” has imprinted all over our “way of life.” Beginning with foundational notions about the “self” and the idea that some things express what we really are, and others don’t, since its origins in the eighteen century the concept of authenticity implies, in the words of Lionel Trilling, a “downward movement through all the cultural superstructures to some place where all movement ends, and begins.” Coincidentally, the emergence of cultural analysis proceeded historically, since about the same period of the late 1700s, taking into account, already at its genesis as a formal field of inquiry, this longing for connecting to something deep and true ---in and about individuals, nations, art, experience, groups, ethnicities, identities, politics, beliefs, spirituality, vocation, grief, and happiness. In other words, the “whole enchilada” of human existence. The “wholeness” invoked here (i.e., the way that these values and ethics encompass a horizon of thought and possibilities) places us squarely in the realm of a phenomenon that is fundamentally ideological in nature. The fact that there is a symbolic order of things as well as a material reality that undergirds such totality does not detract from its ideological (phantasmagorical) character; quite the opposite, it is through the material that the symbolic gains traction and through both that an ideology of subjectivity is produced. 

While as a discipline "Folklore" may not have achieved quite the success of its biological parents (Literature and Anthropology), as a mode of inquiry it is fair to say that it has surpassed the expectations of its humble beginnings (and subject matter). First and foremost, Folklore has succeeded by functioning (almost in stealth mode) as an interpretative framework for all things cultural. It is out of Folklore's penchant for discovering "potentiality" in every aspect of society, no matter how oddly marginal, that the core idea of authenticity in all manners of being "in the world" obtains legitimacy. Folklore was present at the birth of anthropology and psychology; it holds bragging rights to the genesis of English Literature; it was the maiden that compelled exploration, discovery, nationalism, art......heck, the very idea of "community" (how it is constituted, by whom, and how it endures) is nourished by its key assumptions. Decidedly European in origin, in the United States folklore transforms into its most generative form yet: it supplies and shapes a truly original American rhetoric of pluralism (where being "authentic" is not longer just a right of the individual Self, but also the pride of the collective imaginary). This version of American pluralism would become distinct precisely in relation to its extreme dependency and attachment to mechanisms of "aesthetization" of groups of people marked by race, ethnicity, and class. We would come to know what "Americans" were, in the late 19th c., primarily as signifiers and signifieds of originality (Natives, frontiermen, ethnics, WASPs, etc.)  through the language and lens of Folklore. As a discipline in the academy and an administrative apparatus in government agencies and philanthropic institutions, folklore would carve for itself a niche: tradition and expressive forms of culture. In other words, the vernacular "structures of feelings" of localized groups as these go about their everyday lives (habitus) will become Folklore's expertise. 

In this seminar, we will explore each and everyone of the ideas expressed above in great detail.

Kumbwhat? Adrian Mendoza

Whenever I heard the word Kumbaya the first thought that crossed into my mind was camping. To be more specific, a group of children at a campfire with a man near the center with a guitar. The world itself would conjure images of the African content in my mind. Again the same style people gathered around a campfire singing but in the a different continent. In recent years, the song has come underfire for the fact that it has been dubbed a child's song. Stephen Winick's article explored the origin and importance of the song which can also be titled as "come by here". Furthermore, the idea that it originated in Africa was debunked. Instead the song traveled to the African continent and was reinvented. In the end, Kumbaya or come by here should not detract from the purpose of the song which is to bring people together.

meyerson on authenticity

Can I bail by saying that I've been thinking about a lot of the same things my classmates just blogged about?  Music.  Authenticity. Culture.  How to locate these terms seems to be the conundrum of the day and the great unanswerable.  I like the idea of locating.  In a sense, it's like citing other people's work in scholarly research.  The irony here is astounding...I lament taking time to look up citations and do bibliographies-  it's just boring. Of course, this applies to me, but authenticity matters when we're dealing with other people's work.  (Just call me a hypocrite and be done with it!)

I love music and film, and the amount of borrowing is astounding.  What's interesting is how "borrowing" is looked at in different fields.  In higher education, woe be the student who borrows and does not cite.  In music, borrowing and sampling is in the eye of the beholder.  Some like artists who sample freely.  Some dislike artists who do covers.  To me, it's hard to justify Amiri Baraka's stand on Blues music.  Not because I don't understand his argument, but it's never been that neat.  The Rolling Stones stole from Muddy Waters? They used Muddy's music, but that denies a dynamic relationship.  Taking Baraka's line of thinking, Muddy had nothing to learn by the time he was 50.  This is a paradigm that fades as older adults realize that life has more to offer.  I might have the same reaction as Baraka had Jay-Z released an album of Klezmer music.  It could happen!

Movies present another problem entirely.  I never discount film critique that remind us how subliminal the medium can be.  If this is true, we are in the dark about films that "borrow".  I would argue that most filmgoers do not take the time to connect individual film shots to past works and this makes it cumbersome to "cite" past filmmakers.  Brian DePalma did not take the time while editing "The Untouchables" to stop action and have the actors give Sergei Eisenstein a round of applause for his famous "Odessa Steps" sequence.  It was a total rip-off, yet no one gave a hoot because we are not so aware of the parts that make up the whole.

Whither music?  I was listening to Bob Dylan last night doing a guest DJ spot on satellite radio.  "I get excited about music from a hundred years ago, and I get excited about music made two days ago."  He warned listeners to not be so limited in their scope.  Yet, we still argue authenticity.  When W.A.S.P. covered "The Real Me" by The Who in the late 80s, I refused to listen to it.  Not only was it a Who song, but it was part of a larger story.  I thought taking it out of context was unthinkable.  Today, I feel different.  W.A.S.P. fans (a more commercially successful example is the Scorpions' cover of "I Can't Explain") got out of the song what they needed to.  Same with the Scorpions.  In an instant, one can discover (and cover) inspirational tunes and record them for mass appeal or other purposes.  I take great comfort knowing that the Scorpions will be remembered far more for "The Winds of Change" than "I Can't Explain".  I rationalize it by remarking that truer context stands up over time.  This is my homage to the word "authenticity".  Notice, though, I said I "rationalized".

"Four or Three Nights Drunk" (Joshua Salyers)

After Reading Stephen Winick’s article “The World’s First ‘Kumbaya’ Moment: New evidence about an Old Song,” I was reminded of a similar search for the origins of a folk song that I once conducted for my father. When I was younger and my grandfather (my dad’s father) would visit us, my grandfather would get out my small guitar and sing what he said was an old folk song while strum the instrument with coherent music. Yet, it was the words that he had remembered and consistently sang for us. With his rough voice the performance was funny and usually something of a joke. Yet, after he died, my father sought out things in which to remember his father. So, I began my search for a song I knew only as “four nights drunk.” The lyrics went something like this:

I came home one night as dunk as I could be…

Found a horse in the stable, where my horse ought to be.

I said come here my little wifey, explain this thing to me.

What a horse doin in my stable, where my horse ought to be?

(her reply in a woman’s voice):

You bling fool, you drunken fool, can’t you never see…

Why that’s just a milkin cow my mother gave to me.

(the husband):

Well, I traveled this wide world over, a thousand times or more….

A saddle on a milkin cow, I ain’t never seen before.

I came home the next night, as drunk as I could be…

Found a coat on the coat rack, where my coat ought to be.

I said come here my little wifey, explain this thing to me.

Whats a coat doin on the coat rack where my coat ought to be?

You bling fool, you drunken fool, can’t you never see…

Why that’s just an old bed quilt my mother gave to me.

Well, Well, I traveled this wide world over, a thousand times or more….

Pockets on a bed quit, I ain’t never seen before.

I came home the next night as drunk as I could be…..

Found a head on the pillow where my head ought to be.

I said come here my little wifey, explain this thing to me.

What’s a head doin on the pillow, where my head ought to be.

You bling fool, you drunken fool, can’t you never see…

Why that’s just a cabbage head, my mother gave to me.

(Slowing the song down a bit, it ends)

Well, I traveled this wide world over, a thousand times or more…

A mustache on a cabbage head I ain’t never seen before.

(I am aware this is only three nights but he never sang the fourth. But this is an excellent lesson in oral history and transmission. While he knew the name of the song, he never bothered to explain the fourth “missing” night)

The problem with my search was that my father was particular about the version of the song being close to the one my grandfather used to sing. However, I became somewhat obsessed with finding the origins of the song. Each version I found significantly changed how I understood the song. I have determined that, tracing the origins of a folk songs is a natural impulse, especially ones that hold specific meanings for us. Yet, just as Kumbaya was became a cliché or childs song, so too had my grandfathers song been sanitized. I quickly learned that “four nights drunk” was in fact an Irish folk song (seriously) and not original to Appalachia. The Irish versions varied as well but were usually “seven nights drunk” (the other three nights removed for good reason). The “nights” that were removed included some graphic details of the singer’s wife’s infidelity. At one point, he catches them in the act and asked why another man’s…..(you get the point and if not, look up the Irish version).

My initial thought was that my grandfather might have removed the crude verses, not a stretch while singing in front of me. Yet, my research had showed that while several versions of the song in the U.S. had four or five nights, the crude verses were almost never present. For some reason, this obsession with song origins changes our perception of the folk song itself. Why did it matter whether “Kumbaya” was Angolan or Gullah? It just does. Mostly, because of our obsession with authenticity but folklore collection in part of historical practice and the search for origins, whether of a song or the of modernity, have long been an obsession among many historians and folklorists.

A Requiem for Authenticity - Lindsey's (last!) Post

When friends come to visit Tucson, I make a mental checklist of places we must go. As a girl born and raised in the Old Pueblo, I feel I have my finger on the pulse of what it means to be authentically Tucsonan, and to demonstrate what this elusive concept means to those who are here for a short time, I take them to the usual places: The Mexican restaurants on south 6^th along with the Food City there that sells, among fresh tortillas and churros, the plaster statues of the Virgin. I take them to the dive bars that feel seedy enough to give them a taste of ‘real’ Tucson (avoiding the U of A haunts, the locales of transitory populations who go for the thirsty Thursday specials and not the authentic vibe of a dive). And of course, I take them to the desert – what can arguably be the absolute truth of what it means to be a Tucsonan – to scrape bare legs against mesquite shrubs and deftly avoid the pincushion cacti. When I think about these declarations of my place based authenticity in light of this week’s readings, declarations that I have performed more times than I can count (after all, people love coming to visit Tucson in the winter months), I recognize my experience is a true Tucson experience because it is mine. But does this mean it is the real one?

In essence, the question I ask is one we have been grappling with throughout the course of the semester. Is it ever possible to truly grasp a real, true authentic experience? Or, phrased another way, can authenticity belong to a group (ethnicity, culture, class, community, individual) without it just as easily co-opted by another? Sometimes, when I am sitting at the taqueria pico de gallo with my friends visiting from San Francisco or New York, having declared their carne seca tacos the best in town, I feel like I am a fraud, that I am taking someone else’s actual true experience (the shop owner, the people of South Tucson) and making it my own. But is the fact that I frequent there enough to not feel this existential guilt that comes when wrestling with authenticity? I’m not quite sure. It seems, after reading many authors’ takes on the concept of identity and authenticity throughout the term, struggling with what it means to be folk, we are left at a theoretical and practical impasse (which is, in my opinion, the mark of a good graduate level course).

Maybe, as this term comes to an end, I can settle on a dialectical notion of authenticity. By dialectic, I mean that there is neither one definition nor one constitution of what it means to be a member of a group or of a place. In my years of making my own version of Tucson-ness, I have created a meaning of what this town is, and through the act of creating this meaning it continues to re-create itself. Perhaps it becomes useful to imagine myself as a point of intersection through which signs and signifiers pass – the full belly after a Sonoran hot dog, the sound of a quail calling to its young on a desert trail – and though I am but one intersecting point, I am the only point I can truly understand. This all sounds very partial and rather influenced by the deep ecology movement or David Harvey, but a concrete conception of authenticity or identity seems not only problematic, but rather besides the point. Whether I aim to create a real ‘Tucson’ that I belong to or assert my identity in any other way (grad student, wife, mother of a dog who looks like a muppet), I can only do so recognizing the fact that my very assertions continue to reshape the meaning of these things themselves. Authenticity is co-constitutive, made up of one’s own personal experience and the broader societal factors that allow one to experience something in a certain way in the first place. Music can be the deciding factor for an individual’s identity formation, as can knowing the streets of the place you call home. But in this process of one’s own identity formation, there lies an always evolving, always dialectic sense of authenticity – an identity that is inherently partial, but uniquely your own.

Keeping It Real

Keeping It Real

Weekly Blog

12.5.11

Pat Bc

This past weekend I learned a lot about blues and Grazian’s discussion of authenticity ( Black and Tan Fantasy, 2003) through a special fashion show that comes to Phoenix once a year.  Held in an elegant resort setting I made serious observations and notes on the commentator, models, clothes, and use of pop music.  As the show began the commentator invites you in to a world brought to you by way of Chi-CA-go blended through her smooth sultry persuasive command of English, fused with a formal Black vernacular.  Most of the models seem to glide down the runway in dramatic precise steps and the  designer clothes moved in that same formal fashion. However one model came out unique in a healthy body style, she was a regular size middle aged model that commands your attention as she makes the clothes talk and this large audience spoke. Much like the blues singer works that guitar he commands your attention as the chords sing in his own authentic way conveyed through the words he or she speaks a message much like the model’s clothes make a statement.  They both speak to you what you may feel at the time, and all the time the crowd is responding by clapping, talking, moving, and singing almost much like the blues player’s call to the audience. There is a cultural relationship that is sold and the consumer hopefully buys (Grazian, p. 8-9) Fantasy, 2003).  Now I understand the blues a little better, authentic blues is felt deep down it is an emotional response spoken through the chords of the guitar and the words of the artist-he or she does not  just sing , anyone can sing but they convey a feeling that cannot be copied or manufactured it is authentic at that time (Grazian, 2003).

Although I grew up listening to the blues I did not particularly care for it. My mother played a lot of blues and jazz but only certain blues artists.  However, now I understand why some music wasn’t played because  it was too adult (Grazian, Black and Tan Fantasy, 2003) and you learn that going to “those” venues was just not acceptable. However, through time it has managed to come into a life of its own by fusing a part of life in others.  Perhaps blues helps others to get in touch with the real self or to reminisce over days of old entertainment(Blues in Black and White, The Politics of Race and Authenticity).  Therefore it seems to serve a purpose for those who seek it out. 

 Yet I see now that blues on a record does not convey the same message as blues that is produced live with an audience. There is a different emotion when you are with others, therefore going to see a jazz or blues performance allows the consumer to take part of that action and respond.   Being a part of the performance makes it authentic.   

Where everybody knows your name...

I went to college in a small town in Eastern Washington surrounded by monoculture.  The term is agricultural, referring to the endless powerful earthy roll of the silt-heavy Palouse hills… deep black after they have been tilled in the spring, then sprouting a nearly imperceptible hint of green as the seeds awaken… and then the green almost overwhelms until August turns the wheat gold.  The hills themselves are uneven, and farmers draw the boundaries of their crops based on the rise and fall of the land rather than by square hectare plots or circular watering wheels.  It is one of the most curious and breathtaking places on earth.  Somehow, I always felt like I had reached the end of the universe by living there.  If I were to step in the wrong direction at any given moment, I might fall off.  I lived in Pullman for six years.  It does have that effect on one.

The monoculture in Pullman has other significance as well.  Despite WSU's best attempt to display a variety of skin colors in the students it promotes on its webpage (http://about.wsu.edu/admission/), the campus population and the surrounding community is predominantly white.  As a student athlete from 1993-1996, I can tell you that students of other colors existed on campus … and they predominantly occupied roles on the football field, outdoor track, and basketball court.  But we lived in this segregated, odd, isolated reality.  Our telephone numbers had five digits (landline... nobody had cellular back then).  We were seven miles from the Idaho panhandle, home of some of the most active and vociferous Aryan nation communities in the country (http://aryan-nations.org/?q=node/5).   A black professor at Gonzaga university in Spokane had his mailbox bombed.  A young and popular gay gentleman simply disappeared one night in Moscow -- leaving his car, keys and art portfolio behind (http://www.unsolved.com/ajaxfiles/mur_william_hendrick.htm).  And me, so clearly marked white and heterosexual, struggled to smile at every person as I walked through campus.  I am NOT like them, as I stumbled over myself to open the door for a Puerto Rican professor.  I am NOT like them, as I smiled too broadly and friendly at any student darker than me (which was most of them).   It was a sad and true reality. 

Pullman was also the home of the university Greek system on steroids.  With little else to do, students "went Greek" in droves.  The guys wore similar clothes.  The girls wore the same color lipstick (I have the most AMAZING photo that I can't find right now!  Gr!).   The only student riot that occurred during my time in Pullman had nothing to do with civic rights, student fees, or the racial/homophobic tensions mentioned above, but about BEER.  The campus tried to make Greek Row dry, and they had to call in the National Guard.  Lest you think I jest: (http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&File_Id=7876) .  AND If anyone wonders, I was HERE that morning:  (http://www.bloomsdayrun.org/). 

Honestly, you can't blame the people.  The rolling Palouse fields surround Pullman, Washington as far as the eye can see, and the isolation starts to take its toll.  I worked side by side with a Y2Ker… the guy spent most of 1997-1999 constructing an entirely self-sufficient underground labyrinthine bunker for him and his family of five, complete with electricity-generating exercise machines, oxygen tanks and masks, and enough fuel, water, food, and necessities to live underground for three years.  I left for Tucson in August of 1999, and I have always wondered what happened to that family.  I am quite sure they entered their bunker in December 1999.  I'm pretty sure they've come out by now, too.  How long were they in there?  And what were their thoughts when they came out….?

 But I digress.  The point is, there was so much space, so much time, so much isolation in Pullman, that people found their own authenticities, and they weren't always in social, loving, ways.  I found my own comfortable place at a bar in town called Rico's.  Perhaps because of my study abroad experience, perhaps in response to Pullman itself, I stepped slightly away from the mainstream students, the greeks, the athletes and the others... whatever they were.  I stopped wearing makeup.  And jewelry.  I threw away my TV and my watch.  I stopped eating and wearing animal products.  I carried around my guitar.  I wore long skirts and my hair long, straight, and down.  I sunk myself into music, into poetry.  I relished the deep earthy smell of the Palouse,  the night stars that Tucson can't shake a stick at, but I also found the isolation daunting.  I had friends -- musicians.  If we weren't out soaking up the night on the Snake River, we would meet there, at Rico's.  There were no Greeks here -- it was reputed to be the gay bar.  Thankfully!  It was not a gay bar per se, but it was the place gays could BE, and perhaps for that reason it felt more real to me than the bars inhabited by people who seemed to find their worth in relation to others rather than asking questions about themselves.  There were rarely blacks here, but I think that was because of the music -- it was classic rock and roll on the speakers mixed with some occasional odd bits of alternative, grunge, and  random Americana.  The blacks I knew were all out practicing stomp or listening to R&B and rap.  Hip-hop had not yet entered the Pullman vocabulary… perhaps it had elsewhere. 

The popcorn was free.  Smoke filled the establishment (back then), which had once been a theater, so it was a deeper room in the back than the front -- with a hanging balcony for pool tables and PacMan (yes, PacMan) machines.  They were free.  It was the local jazz and blues bar, and the only one within 80 miles.   It was also a book exchange -- with ceiling-high bookcases filled with volumes you could take with you for free -- as long as you left one behind, and perhaps even if you didn't.  The brick walls-- once an exterior space of another building complete with faded lettering, rose cold and high on one side.  Benches were built into them, so the cold ran straight through you in the winter.  But the beer, wine, cigarette smoke, fast service, and simply-built sandwiches with chips kept us warm as we sang our way through the long, dark winter nights.  The microphones were deep in the bottom of the establishment, under the pool table balcony.  It was here the musicians gathered to sing.

People seek authenticity in places like Rico's, like the blues bars in Chicago.  Like some parts of Chicago, it was whites like me both playing and singing the blues, rifting jazz melodies, or imagining themselves to be the next Indigo Girls while the young blacks of the town kept far away from the scene.  There is something about music that helps pull someone together when the world seems fragmented around them.  Grazian is correct -- this authenticity is not a set feature.  It has everything to do with what the person judging the authenticity is seeking, what they need, and what they value.  Some seek it in sitting next to the books at Rico's and reflecting on academia and philosophy.  Others found it in the vigorous pace of stomp or the crooning voices of R & B.  Still others found it in solidarity with their sisters, marching forward undaunted, unafraid, and un-alone with their matching lipstick and lettered t-shirts.  I put my own 22-year-old search for authenticity to music.  For better or for worse, the Rico's crowd put up with me week after week until I finally left the Palouse behind and them in peace:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1865411/04_A_Shoebox_Full.wma

Thanks for a great semester!