Guest editors April and Lance Ledbetter spoke with Sarah Bryan, executive director of the North Carolina Folklife Institute and editor of the Old-Time Herald, and Emily Hilliard, program officer, Folk and Traditional Arts at Mid Atlantic Arts and former West Virginia state folklorist at the West Virginia Humanities Council, about tradition, authenticity, validation, and building creative cultural communities in our digital age.
September 28, 2021
While Bill Ferris and I were working on the “Voices of Mississippi” box set, he invited me to come speak to his Southern Studies class about my work at Dust-to-Digital. In the classroom was a student named Emily Hilliard. Over the years she and I have become friends, and it has been exciting to watch from afar as her career as a folklorist developed. I’m looking forward to her first book, which will be published in 2022, and the next release on the feminist record label she co-founded, called SPINSTER.
Sarah Bryan and I first crossed paths in her work as editor of The Old-Time Herald. She would get in touch with us from time to time seeking review copies of Dust-to-Digital releases for the publication. We became friends online, and I came to recognize her approach to collecting photos from the past as being both unique and fascinating. Her eye was really strong, and when I learned that she was married to a 78 RPM record collector named Peter Honig, I proposed the idea for the two of them to compile a set of music from his collection and photos from her collection for Dust-to-Digital to release. The two-disc set, called “Lead Kindly Light: Pre-War Music and Photographs From the American South,” was released in 2014.
— Lance Ledbetter
This interview has been edited for clarity:
April Ledbetter: Maybe it’s not a simple question, but what is folklore?
Emily Hilliard: I think it’s funny that there is this disconnect between the work of folklorists and everyday life, because we really study everyday life. We study the art and the creativity that is a part of everyday life. Defining folklore is complicated, but I have my elevator speech answer. One way I describe it is: The art of everyday life, and the creative practices that generally don’t come from formal training but are something we learn by living our lives and that are passed on informally from person to person, and often from generation to generation. Folklore is all of the different ways that a group expresses itself creatively. So that’s foodways and music and dance and story and language, memes, craft, dress — all of those creative forms are the stuff of folklore. I’ve been working on a project with West Virginia Public Broadcasting, and when one of their folkways reporters pitches a story about an artist, the main question that I always present to them is: “Is the tradition that this artist practices rooted in either community or place?” And with some of the artists, it’s harder to find how that’s the case. Sometimes that means that it’s more of a fine art tradition. But sometimes having that frame helps reveal the traditions they’re actually drawing from or how their work is part of a community in the place where they live. So I think that aspect of being tied to community or place is really important.
Sarah Bryan: I’ve never figured out a really solid answer with solid parameters. I’m not sure that those parameters can be defined in a hard and fast way, which is part of what I like about folklore. I think folklore is any kind of knowledge or means of expression that’s learned from other people, and not in a formal or institutional setting. That encompasses so much, it’s almost easier to say what’s not folklore. I think when most people who are not connected to folklore as a discipline hear about folklore, or folklife, their first thought is of what’s often called “folk art,” but it’s actually the work of an individual or outsider artist. It’s not necessarily coming from a community tradition; it may be one person’s really singular vision. So it’s ironic that the thing that most people think is folklore is arguably not.
April: You said it’s almost easier to list what is not folklore, I’d love to see that list. That would be pretty funny. Like, “You are not folklore. You don’t make the list.“ (Laughs.) It seems like a little bit of what you were saying, Sarah, is that there’s this space for the definition to change and evolve and grow as culture does. Would you say that that’s true, that folklore has evolved over time?
Sarah: Oh, yeah. I think that as long as more than one human exists, an infinite number of expressions of folklore can be constantly created. I think it’s really limitless.
Emily: Yeah, and digital forms have changed that. To complicate what I previously said, there are communities that transcend place, that are tied together by cultural forms, through the internet. I’m just thinking about all the people from other countries who learn traditional music very thoroughly and immaculately through YouTube and recordings. Maybe they come to Clifftop [Appalachian String Band Music Festival in Clifftop, West Virginia] and are part of that in-person community temporarily, and they might have their own musical community back in their home country, but traditional Appalachian old time music is a form that’s not from where they live. But that’s a way that folklore has expanded, as the digital world has.
April: Yeah, that’s a very good point. And thinking about Clifftop, have you attended where there’s been some people from really far-flung places?
Emily: Yeah, for example, there are some incredible Japanese artists who maybe know the whole repertoire of a single West Virginia fiddler. Pretty amazing.
April: What’s that Japanese group that you shared on Instagram? They’re a bluegrass group from Japan that started in the ’60s?
Lance Ledbetter: Yeah, Bluegrass 45. Some of the members of the Hogslop String Band are making a documentary about them.
Sarah and Emily: Oh, so cool.
Lance: Yeah, I’m thinking about when Sarah was talking about the parameters, I remember talking — this is a little bit off the subject of folklore, but it’s another equally hard-to-define subject or term: authenticity — I remember talking to Art Rosenbaum about how he would define authenticity and he said that the way he does it is kind of like the way the Supreme Court dealt with pornography. [Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart] said, “I know it when I see it.”
Sarah: Right, right.
Emily: That’s a good one.
Lance: But it is hard. It’s challenging to come up with everything that fits within certain parameters. Like what Emily was saying, it’s like a digital community now where it’s global.
Sarah: And one thing I think about a lot is: Is there really a difference between somebody in Russia learning tunes from recordings of Sherman Hammons via YouTube and an Appalachian string band in the 1920s recording their version of a tune they themselves learned from a record? The technology is a lot more ubiquitous now than it was with a physical record that only certain people could have access to. I mean, it’s kind of the same, it’s all a continuum.
April: Yeah. I mean, really, if you think about the time to travel that you’d spend, and you think of the southern U.S. as being like there’s a commonality for those cultures, but then the time that someone would spend traveling from Atlanta to Oxford versus the time that it takes you to “travel” now off the internet — to access something, it is closer in a way. But does that make it more familiar? Not necessarily, but I don’t know. It’s kind of like you could convert “in today’s dollars,” you could be “in today’s travel.” One thing I’m thinking about is how studying folklore is a practice of not just the past, but also the present. I think people tend to associate it as being something that is sort of stuck in the past, but how it is living traditions.
Emily Hilliard
Emily: This is sort of the framing for the book I've been working on [Making Our Future: Visionary Folklore and Everyday Culture in Appalachia, UNC Press in Fall 2022]. I think a lot about what folklorist Henry Glassie says about tradition being the creation of the future out of the past. Working in folklore in West Virginia and starting a new state folklife program here, I encountered a lot of established conceptions and representations of what folklore was as, to generalize, "the old-timey ways of white people in the mountains." That interpretation of folklore was well established, but there was less focus on how tradition has evolved into the way it exists today among the diverse communities who live in the state. In that Glassie quote, he names the past and the future, but the present is merely implied. I’m interested in approaching folklore as a very present, contemporary form, and then considering how those forms might evolve in the future. As a folklorist, I want to think about how we can work to make sure the cultural forms that communities value are sustained. If you take the example of traditional music, you could map out how it’s evolved and what other forms its influenced and on one end you'd come up with old-time music as it is played today, which is contextually and often technically very different than how it existed 100 years ago even though some of the tunes may be the same. And then on the other side of the map you could trace forms like hip hop and punk. As American vernacular forms, they're all branches off the same tree. In my most recent work as state folklorist in West Virginia, I've been trying to reframe mainstream conceptions of folklore to the cultural practices of people and communities living today. Those draw from the past, but they're a very present and relevant part of everyday life.
April: I think people tend to devalue the present and attach a lot of meaning to the past and the future. And it speaks to our culture in a way that there’s sort of an inability to acknowledge that what you’re doing now is of value and is part of a bigger thing. That’s neat that that’s what your book is about.
Sarah: I think that that idea of devaluing the present, though, is the key to a lot of the questions about what’s authentic and what’s folklore. It reminds me of the perennial tensions in the old-time music community about who is authentic. And how arguably for 50 years, that question hasn’t been really all that relevant, because so much of the creative energy of old-time music is coming from a mixture of people who grew up in the tradition and people who’ve come from elsewhere. And so much of what people growing up in the tradition are learning is stuff that was collected and preserved by people from other parts of the country. I think the revival of old-time music is sometimes devalued because it’s seen as still being new and from the outside. But how long does something have to be around before it’s considered authentic?
Fiddles made by Ray Fought, Parkersburg, West Virginia, 2017. Photo by Emily Hilliard
Lance: That question was running through my mind when Emily was talking about the newer forms of things that you could consider traditional. Like, what is the amount of time it takes to establish something as a new tradition or a new form of authenticity?
Emily: I think definitely to be accepted by the mainstream it may be longer, but the example I always give is, have you seen the documentary “Style Wars”?
Lance: Oh, yeah.
Emily: So just thinking about when that was happening in New York and Brooklyn, in the late ’70s, early ’80s, that was all new. Graffiti, hip-hop culture, b-boys and b-girls and breakdancing. It’s extremely, what I would call, authentic, and that culture that was emergent at the time was drawing from all these traditions and was rooted in community and place. Obviously, seeing it in retrospect, it’s easy to identify, especially knowing where hip-hop and graffiti have gone since. But it does seem like it had a very clear cohesiveness from the beginning.
Lance: It had to have enough of a cohesiveness to spark the filmmakers to make the film.
April: Yeah, that’s a great example. I’m curious, too — for, I mean, anyone that has an opinion — but is there anything that you can think of now that we’re all living with, in a way, that maybe we’re missing or not seeing
Sarah: In terms of a folk tradition that’s emergent?
April: Yeah.
Sarah: Again, I think it would be a question of what doesn’t fall into that category. I mean, like Emily said, memes all the time, you know — literally every minute, something new is being generated within a folk tradition. Yeah. I think it’s so pervasive and so around us.
Lance: Here’s a thought I had. Could we see in 20 or 30 years a National [Heritage] Fellow goes to a meme writer from 2021? Somebody who creates memes?
Sarah: Memes aside, there are some really amazing, emergent expressions of folk art online. One thing that does really fascinate me is how some gospel singers are using apps to make recordings of themselves singing all the parts in a quartet. And it’s really beautiful. I mean, there’s a young singer outside Raleigh named Kendall Kent, who is basically his own quartet. And Labarius [Torez] Edwards in South Carolina, too. It’s beautiful music, and it’s coming from a group tradition, but it’s one person performing it.
Lance: There’s the Sacred Harp CD we released on Dust-to-Digital called “I Belong To This Band” that Warren Steel wrote the notes for. He had a recording of Whit Denson performing all four parts of “New Morning Son” around 1960. He used multi-track recording and referred to himself as “a one-voice quartette.” That’s an example of someone using technology to kind of take a tradition in a different direction.
April: One question that I thought might be interesting is just thinking about, like, where would an average person see or experience the work of a folklorist? How does your work impact the average person?
Sarah: I would hope that for public folklorists, some of that would come through new learning opportunities for people who are just getting into a traditional art. Somebody who’s interested in playing music in a certain tradition might not have as many opportunities within the community as they would have 30 or 50 years ago. But ideally, part of what folklorists are supporting are new ways for traditional arts to be available and accessible to the average person: classes, in-person or online — things like the JAM [Junior Appalachian Musicians] Program in North Carolina, [South Carolina, Tennessee,] and Virginia. Re-creating opportunities that in earlier generations you hardly even had to look for to find them, but now they’re not as easily accessible.
Emily: I think folklorists can help conceptions of tradition and culture, which can often open up new possibilities for artists and practitioners. I’m thinking about Doris Fields, a great musician I’ve worked with in West Virginia. Lady D is her stage name, and she’s known as West Virginia’s First Lady of Soul, but she was a participant in our apprenticeship program in Black gospel and blues, so she performs in multiple genres. But the first time I interviewed her, she said [paraphrasing]: “When people want to book a West Virginia band, they think of old-time or bluegrass, not necessarily blues or soul, and I miss out on a lot of gigs and opportunities because of this.” Now, there is undoubtedly systemic racism at work in that stereotype, whether conscious or not, but there’s also a misconception of tradition too. She wrote a piece for our apprenticeship program that she then published in Goldenseal, about the interconnectedness of Black gospel and blues and how essential those forms are to the full picture of traditional music in West Virginia. She’s said that she does seem to be getting more opportunities now, in part due to that reframing she articulated in her apprenticeship, teaching and study. I think, too, of our apprenticeship pair in home birth midwifery, who through the framing of their work as an expressive tradition, have come to recognize and highlight the creative, storytelling aspect of their work — the stories they relay to expectant families about the birth experience, the lived experience midwives share with each other, the creativity they must bring to their practice daily. So that kind of behind-the-scenes, subtle reframing, and contextual shifts, the fact that we were able to give people support funds, though I wish it were more, can be that small boost that then the average person might experience through an artist’s performance, say, at a farmers market one Saturday, and they might never know.
April: Yeah, I could see that. Like, you’re working on this tapestry that’s like, the background of somebody’s life, and without the folklorist working, that tapestry is very plain. You’re filling in and creating more diversity and interest and beauty in people’s lives, and they may not even realize it, but it’s there.
Lance: When I learned about this line of study, I feel like it unlocked something in myself. It’s kind of like, create your own adventure. And, of course, I did that mostly through tracking down music, and listening and reading, and things like that. But I guess this is kind of several questions into one, I could see people wondering: How would you decide something is considered a tradition? And then the follow-up to that would be: What is worth documenting? I think that could be a subjective answer for people within themselves, but I’d be curious to hear what you both think about that.
Sarah bryan. photo by Hal Pugh
Sarah: One of the great pleasures of our work is showing people that what they do is worth documenting. Oftentimes — of course not all traditional artists are elderly, but I meet a lot of elderly artists who have been doing whatever their art form is for decade after decade, but their children and grandchildren have not picked it up, and maybe have even been dismissive of it. Sometimes the folklorist coming around to document their work is the first validation that they’ve gotten of their work’s value to others — that somebody understands that a huge amount of knowledge and creativity and passion go into what they’ve been doing all these years. I love being able to show that to somebody. You know, to demonstrate that I am passionately interested in what they do and know that other people will be, too. Because so often, nobody has ever shown them that.
Emily: Yeah, I think that’s really well put and so important. There is a recognition process that happens in the dialogue between folklorist and artist. Many people I work with might not even consider themselves artists, but have an incredible body of work. There’s one person I’ve worked with who creates dollhouse-scale miniatures of tools in his workshop. I think he knows he's artistically inclined and creative, but I don’t know if he would call himself an artist. I would hope too, that from this interview, that readers of The Bitter Southerner might be compelled to think about how community-based or place-based creativity functions in their own life. What are the parts in their day-to-day life where they have creative agency? I often ask people to think about a favorite family recipe that they like to make. That extra spice or ingredient or twist that they add to it to make it better or suit their own taste? I mean, that’s folklore evolving. And it happens every day.
Lance: Yeah, it’s like, once you start tuning in to those little things, they can start taking on a bigger meaning.
Sarah: And talking about an elderly artist who hasn’t received recognition — the equivalent can also be true of working with a really young artist who’s just emerging into their form. Sometimes they have not received the encouragement to think of themselves as artists, to take themselves seriously, to honor the passion that they have and the will to create and be part of a tradition. Sometimes a young artist also needs that recognition and validation. And that’s yet another thing that’s a real joy of doing this kind of work, being able to encourage them.
April: That’s a great point. Having people be seen and valued, it can transform someone’s life. Is there anything else you think we’ve overlooked?
Sarah: I have an idea that I’m still trying to articulate, but I could sort of take a stab at it. I’m thinking about how frighteningly divided people are these days. The skills of a folklorist may become a really valuable thing in society — to be able to listen to people who are not necessarily from the same community as you. Most folklorists, in my experience, nowadays, have politics fairly left of center and mine are way left of center. But a lot of the tradition-bearers that we work with, probably even half — fifty-fifty, for me — are people of very different political persuasions. Every day I’m communicating with people who vote in the polar opposite way from how I do, and, you know, each of us if we sat down and had a political conversation might be horrified by some of the things that the other believes. But in some ways, I like to think of myself as an ambassador from my side of the divide. I almost never actually talk politics with somebody I’m working with as a folklorist unless they initiate it, but they can see from my bumper stickers what my politics are. I think that just by showing up at their home, showing respect and having good manners, appreciating them for their place in the tradition I’m documenting —I hope that in itself goes some ways towards, maybe not healing, but at least making it easier for people to talk across these divisions.
April: Yeah, I think that’s an excellent point.
Lance: It is. Like finding the commonalities that connect us all.
Emily: Being a folklorist has given me a greater understanding of the lived experience and reality of many different kinds of people. In the 60s and 70s there was a movement that emerged among historians of the New Left, known as “history from below,” focusing on the experiences of ordinary, working people, rather than the more formal approach of top down, imperial history. And I definitely think of folklore as culture from below — the people’s culture. It also can be subversive, valuing people who are often on the margins, silenced or undervalued. And that’s definitely a big part of what drew me to the field, initially. To see another folklorist’s work, like Mary Hufford, who in her Coal River Folklife Project was really thinking about how folklore could be used to advocate for people’s well-being, in terms of health, economically, and environmentally. It really is about valuing the whole picture of a person and their experience. I’m kind of rambling, but ...
Lance: Oh, no, you’re good. This may be too broad of a question, but what do we have to gain from what you just described, like the unheard voices getting heard? Where does that benefit the society?
Emily: Well, I would hope that it could make it more equitable. Advocating for the sustainability of communities and their traditions sometimes goes outside of folklore fieldwork. I think about Tim Duffy’s work with Music Maker [Foundation] helping elderly musicians buy homes or cars or helping them get insurance or covering medical bills. I think we need to think more about how artists’ and communities’ economic and environmental circumstances also compromise these traditions. That’s not really answering your question, but my hope would be that doing this work, could contribute to a more empathetic and differently structured society, or at least better support systems of mutual aid in the meantime.
Sarah: I think for us in the role of folklorists, that’s really a privilege to have the opportunity to go outside our own community, or political bubble, and that we do, I think, naturally approach other people with respect in a time that so many people have this sort of knee-jerk disrespect for each other. I think it’s a gift to have the opportunity to approach other people that way. And also, just a privilege to have the chance to meet and talk with and get to know people from so many walks of life.
Roy Caines, decoy carver, Georgetown, South Carolina. Photo by Sarah Bryan for the South Carolina Arts Commission.
Emily: After the IPCC [ United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] report came out, it got me thinking: What is the imperative for folklore and folklorists in climate change, and climate crisis? And how might that change the work, or make it more important? To do this work, we kind of have to believe in the future: Oh, I’m going to put this recording in an archive and in 100 years, someone will be able to come and listen to it and learn from it. But where a future is more uncertain, maybe that even puts more emphasis on the act of sitting down with someone knee to knee and listening to them. Or are there other things we need to do to advocate so people can be safe in an environmental crisis? What’s the imperative for this cultural work? Now, in these times?
Sarah: Maybe it’s the study of resilience. Maybe we need to be learning how other people, and maybe we ourselves, have been resilient, and how can we make that knowledge available on a global scale.
Emily: Yeah, definitely. We’ve worked with communities who have developed coping strategies. They’ve had to. So what can we learn from them?
Sarah: Exactly. Refugees who’ve been through unthinkable wars; Holocaust survivors. People whose physical environment has disappeared because of a natural disaster or climate change. They have wisdom that all of us may need in the coming years.
April: That feels hopeful, too.
Sarah: Yeah.
Emily: I hope so.
April: It’s so grim. That’s kind of amazing to think that you can look around and see what surrounds you and access things that can help give you hope, coping, resiliency, all that. I like that.
Sarah: But then a grim flip side of that is, how do we keep some aspects of folklore from becoming repackaged in ways that support bigotry? Because folklore is so concerned with cultural markers. But nationalism and racism are also concerned with cultural markers for entirely different reasons. But how do we keep folk tradition everybody’s? I had a Norwegian great-grandfather and I’m really interested in the Norse sagas and folklore, but I find it really disturbing how much that’s been co-opted by white nationalists and white supremacists. And I worry about what could be co-opted next. Yeah. How to keep folklore from being weaponized. Because folklore is powerful. And it can be used in that way.
Emily: Lance and April, when you were working on the B-sides anthology, I know you learned this lesson, but folklore isn’t inherently good. I mean, there’s definitely racist, sexist traditions that should go by the wayside. So how do we reckon with that and advocate for community sovereignty while ensuring that hate and oppression are not a part of that? I also think about how using the word heritage can be a dog whistle.
Sarah: Which is such a shame, because heritage is such a useful word for what we do.
Editor’s note: Updates made on September 28, 2021, 9:45 am
