Folklife
Definitions
What is Folklife?
Folklife is a broad term that encompasses the creative expression of a culture. Communicated and learned informally among people who have a shared identity, folklife is passed down through time, a testament to its value for the people who practice it.
Folklife can be found in many forms: handmade objects, stories, customs, musical traditions, poetry, folksongs, jokes, dances and legends are only a few. Every group that shares a common identity also shares folklife, from people with a common ethnic heritage, to individual families, to the local Elks chapter and the road construction crew.
What are Folk/Traditional Arts?
Folk/Traditional Arts include arts indigenous to an identifiable group. This group could be any community defined by such qualities as its ethnicity, geography, language, religion, or occupation. In some instances, it can also include familial groups.
The folk/traditional arts contain arts such as fine handcraft, decorative arts, dance, songs and poetry, instrumental music, storytelling, and even local architecture. These arts are tied to identity, reflecting the aesthetics and values of that specific community from which they arise. They often become symbols of a group's identity or heritage, communicating the group's values to the outside world.
Montana holds a rich heritage in the folk and traditional arts. Some examples include saddlemaking, cowboy poetry, Blackfeet storytelling, Norwegian hardanger embroidery, Salish basket weaving, Cheyenne traditional singing, and Hmong funeral music and many others. These traditional art forms are a strong source of pride for the groups that create them, and in many communities their continued existence is threatened. If traditional art forms are lost, so is a piece of a Montana community and an important link to our state's rich cultural heritage.
Although included in some traditions of traditional arts, such lifeways as food traditions, dialects, ways of celebrating, ways of work, and belief systems are generally placed in the broader category of folklife. However, all these grassroots ways of living have evolved through time, becoming a way of knowing within the groups that have woven Montana's rich heritage.
Traditional arts are generally learned informally within the community, through careful observation and practice. Historically, these arts have been learned from elders and masters and are often passed on from one generation to the next. However, they can be self-taught within a tradition. Even though an artist may work within a given tradition, individuals may be recognized for their excellence, their extensive repertoire or their particular style. It is also important to note that because these arts reflect a community and because communities are ever-changing with the forces of time, folk and traditional arts are also fluid and not frozen in the style of a set time.
Although inherently created for a specific use, traditional arts can move beyond functionality. Many of these arts, in spite of having roots in utility (quilt design, wheat weaving) have become primarily decorative. Because of this marriage of function and aesthetics, both qualities must be inherent in the art of fine handcraft.
