Folklore Performance - Verbal Art

It is clear that the folklorist looks at performance differently than I have. The knowledge gained from this chapter has broadened my understanding of performance. An analytical point-of-view can now be added to my assessment of a performance, which should deepen my connection and comprehension of the performance as an audience member. It has also provided me the opportunity to better interpret a folklorist’s perspective and the pitfalls in the evaluation of a performance, as a folklorist is both an observer and a participant.

I already understood the general definition of performance, “an expressive activity that requires participation, heightens our enjoyment of experience, and invites response” (128). However, the message in this chapter is that folklore performance is more than just its entertainment value. It brings the performer and the audience together, creating an event, encouraging “lively communication . . . through the sharing of folklore” (173). It had not occurred to me that conversation between people could be a folklore performance, or said another way, “verbal art” (133). To think that telling an unrehearsed story or reciting a proverb in a casual setting, is conversational performance makes performance as much an everyday occurrence as the more obvious performance in venues where preparation, rehearsals and more structured surroundings are utilized (141).

The markers that frame a verbal performance, that is the signaling of its beginning and end, are now recognizable to me as playing a role in the performance (133). There are different kinds of performance markers that are subliminally understood, depending upon what type of verbal text is to be framed. As examples:
· for storytelling, “Once upon a time” and “They lived happily ever after”,
· for proverbs, “You know what they say, …”,
· for jokes, “Did you hear the one about …”,
· as gestures or tonal signals, as in eye contact or lowering one’s voice for emphasis,
· as evaluative markers, like laughter, and
· as customary markers, like “knock on wood” (142-143).
These categories of verbal folklore can be used as sparks for change, as in political jokes or trickster antics (153), and they also can express continuity, connecting to and reinforcing folk traditions, as in the story of the miner father’s lunch bucket (146).

The authors brought clarity by the comparison of fine art performance to folklore performance. Folklore performance is evaluated by “community consensus”, by those in the audience who are within and outside the folk group (157). Fine art performance is only a personal evaluation, either by the person looking at the object or by the critic, with specific, formal knowledge of the art form. Folklorists are interested in the group’s interaction and reaction, not the individual’s. Folklore performance texts combine the artistic, or aesthetic, and utilititarian qualities, typically having a practical role in the community to teach a lesson, to emphasize a moral value, or to pass on history and heritage to “reinforce past group aesthetic” (157). Fine art typically has no utility and is new and artistic for art’s sake.

Context is important to a performance assessment. One should understand the relationship between the listeners, the text and the performers’ expressions (137). Additionally, both the physical context (the setting, the text and other physical elements) and social context (broad elements of community and culture) of a performance not only can affect each performance differently, but also can affect differently the performance’s interpretation by the audience (149). In performance, ultimately it is people who are the key to the sharing of folklore: the performers with their expressions of the text, and their skill and competence to do so, and the audience with their aesthetic reaction, their history with the art form and their judgment of the performers.

This blog entry is my response to the Chapter Five Reflection Question.


Works Cited

Sims, Martha C., and Martine Stephens. Living Folklore An Introduction to the Study of
People and Their Traditions. Utah: Utah State University Press, 2005.