what was the folk music festival as an event? notes from digitizing folk music history 2012 seminar readings.
Ronald D. Cohen points out that festivals tell us about historical contexts *and also what people make of their historical contexts.*
For Murray Lerner, you might ponder what’s the research question and argument he implies in the form of a documentary film such as Festival? Think of the prologue of the film, which asks something like, how might people create their own sense of self and shared culture in the machine age? And it argues, in a suggested way, that the answer might be found in “playing machines” in new ways? The folk revival takes place at the intersection of people and machines, perhaps?
Posen’s essay explores “kitchen” vs. “festival” modes of authenticity.
Cantwell contends that festivals are not places for naming things, but rather for “unnaming” them?! A social space that starts in archetypes, even stereotypes, but in which cultural transformation occurs through the uncertainty of ritual exchange. The undo things as well as do things?
Ran across this this afternoon through a perusal of the “Digital Humanities Now” site. It was a great presentation this week. Many things I’d like to talk about from your talk. The reason I was poking around: Jillana Enteen has asked me and a library colleague about doing some tutorials/projects with a seminar she’s doing in the fall on humanities tools.
Maybe lunch sometime fairly soon?