Folk Culture

1. Folk Culture Around the World

2. Cultural integration in folk geography • Interaction between folk and popular cultures • Few folk groups escape some interaction with the larger world • A lively exchange is constantly on-going between folk and popular cultures • Most commonly, the folk absorb ideas filtering down from popular culture

3. Cultural integration in folk geography • Interaction between folk and popular cultures • Occasionally elements of folk culture penetrate the popular society • Folk handicrafts and arts often fetch high prices among city dwellers • They may exhibit quality, attention to detail, and uniqueness absent in factory-made goods • Some folk goods are revised to make them more marketable • Popular folk items include-Irish fisherman sweaters, Shaker furniture, and Panamanian Indian molas

4. Cuzco, Peru • Cuzco, an Inca capital, is a major tourist destination. • Llama wool sweaters, ponchos, and rugs displayed for the tourist trade. • Woven on hand-looms

5. Cuzco, Peru • Natural wool colors or are colored with mineral or vegetable dyes. • Similar products are also produced by factory machines using chemical dyes for trendy colors for appeal to mass market.

7. Mountain moonshine • Mountain folk accepted markets offered by popular culture but rejected its legal and political institutions • By the 1950s, some 25,000 gallons of white lightning reached the market each week from the counties of eastern Tennessee alone • In spite of numerous raids by federal authorities, production continued unabated • Today, a substantial amount of illicit whisky still reaches markets from southern Appalachia

9. Mountain moonshine • Whiskey production, legal and illegal, in Kentucky and Tennessee represents an impressive survival of folk industry to serve a market in popular society • Illegal whisky production and popular culture integration led to the creation of the “folk automobile” • A fast vehicle needed to outrun the law, but humble in appearance • Some have claimed these vehicles were the forerunners of the basic American stock car • Stock-car racing then is considered another result of interplay between folk and popular cultures

11. Country and Western music • Upland Southern folk music had a very impressive impact upon American popular culture • Derived to a great degree, from folk ballads of English and Scotch-Irish, who settled in the upland-South in colonial times • Some have hypothesized use of the fiddle (violin) is an effort to recapture sounds of the Celtic Scottish bagpipe • Gradually, Upland Southern folk music absorbed influences of the American social experience

12. Country and Western music • Entry of country music into popular culture began about the time of World War I • Diffusion was facilitated by the invention of the radio • Popularization brought changes • Themes of lyrics increasingly addressed life in the popular culture • Acceptance remains greatest in its Upland Southern core area in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina • Most performers come from this core area • Music retains strong identification with Appalachian places

13. Country and Western music • Impact of migration of Upland Southern folk on bluegrass music • Migrated to Missouri, Arkansas, Texas, and Oklahoma plus the Depression era movement of “Okies” and “Arkies” to the Central Valley of California • Provided natural areas for bluegrass expansion in the mid-twentieth century

15. FOLK LANDSCAPES • Folk architecture most visible aspect of the landscape • Comes from the memory of traditional people • Built on mental images that change little from one generation to the next • Folk buildings are extensions of a people and their region • Provide the unique character of each district or province • Offer a highly visible aspect of the human mosaic

16. Folk landscapes • Seek in folk architecture the traditional, the conservative, and the functional • Expect from it a simple beauty • Harmony with the physical environment • A visible expression of folk culture

17. Folk Architecture: Maasai House, Kenya • The Maasai are pastoralists who bring their cattle into their circular housing compounds (engangs or manyattas) at night. Maasai bomas (houses) are built by women. • Latticed frames are constructed with termite, ant and beetle resistant wood poles, insulated with packed leaves, and covered with cattle dung readily available in the engang.

18. Folk Architecture: Maasai House, Kenya • A snail-shell entry inhibits entry of human or animal intruders. • Lattice sleeping platforms covered with cowhide are attached to internal walls. • No windows, only vents for the central fire.. • Plastic sheeting as a roof cover is a modern luxury few can afford.

19. Building materials • One way we classify folk houses and farmsteads is by the type of building materials used • Structures tend to blend nicely with the natural landscape • Farm dwellings range from: massive houses of stone for permanency, to temporary brush thatch huts

23. Building materials • Environmental conditions influence choice of construction materials) • Climate • Vegetation • Geomorphology • Shifting cultivators of tropical rain forests build houses of poles and leaves

26. Building materials • Sedentary subsistence farming peoples of adjacent highlands, oases, and river valleys of the Old World zone • Rely principally on earthen construction • Sun-dried (adobe) bricks • Pounded earth • In more prosperous regions, kiln-baked bricks are available • People in the tropical grasslands, especially in Africa, construct thatched houses from coarse grasses and thorn bushes

27. Building materials • Buildings of Mediterranean farmers and some rural residents of interior Indian and the Andean highlands • Most live in rocky, deforested lands • Use stone as principal building material • Create entire landscapes of stone • Walls, roofs, terraces, streets, and fences • Lends an air of permanence to the landscape

28. China

29. Folk architecture: China • The Kazak practice transhumance, spending the summer with their horses, goats, sheep and cattle in high pastures of the Tien Shan (Heavenly Mountains) of northwestern China. • These yurts have wooden trellis walls and are covered with felt which is pressed animal hair.

30. Folk architecture: China • The top flap can be opened to vent a central fire or closed to keep out rain. • As winter approaches, the yurt is dismantled and carried by pack animals to lower elevations.

31. Folk architecture: China • Many Kazak now winter in Chinese style, mud-brick, sod-roofed houses. • Yurts are experiencing technological change as wood gives way to plastic and felt to canvas.

32. Building materials • Housing in the middle and higher latitudes • Houses made of wood where timber is abundant • In the United States, log cabins and later frame houses • Folk houses of northern Europe and in the mountains of eastern Australia are made of wood

35. Building materials • Housing in the middle and higher latitudes • In some deforested regions — Central Europe and parts of China • Farmers built half-timbered houses • Framework of hardwood beams with fill in the interstices of some other material • Sod or turf houses typify prairie and tundra areas • Russian steppes • In pioneer times, the American Great Plains • Nomadic herders often live in portable tents made of skins or wool

36. Floor plan • Unit farmstead • Single structure where family, farm animals, and storage facilities share space • In simplest form is one storied — People and animals occupy different ends of structure • More complex ones are multi-storied arranged so people and livestock live on different levels

39. Floor plan • Communal unit housing common among some shifting cultivators • Multiple families live under the same roof • Sleeping and cooking done in separate alcoves • Living space is shared

40. Floor plan • Communal unit housing common among some shifting cultivators • Example — the Sarawak longhouse found on the Malaysian portion of the island of Borneo • Accommodates between 5 and 8 nuclear families • An elongated dwelling • Raised above forest floor on stilts • Reflect a clan or tribal social organization

41. Folk Architecture: Manali, India

42. Folk Architecture: Manali, India • This house has been constructed by the Kullu people who live in the lower Himalayas of Himachal Pradesh. This is a steeply sloped, rocky and forested area and people make the best use of local materials.

43. Folk Architecture: Manali, India • Noted for their woodwork, the Kulli carve and paint religious and tribal designs toe propitiate the gods and ward off evil • The substantial stone roof will support a heavy winter snowfall. • Fodder and cattle are kept below the living quarters.

44. Floor plan • Most common are farmsteads where the house, barn, and stalls occupy separate buildings • Example of the courtyard farmstead • Various structures clustered around an enclosed yard • Appears in several seemingly unrelated culture regions • Found in Inca-settled portions of Andes Mountains • Also found in the hills of central Germany, and eastern China • Have wide distribution — offer privacy and protection

48. Floor plan • Strewn farmstead prevails in countries where Germanic Europeans immigrated and settled • Anglo-America, Australia, and New Zealand • Buildings lie spaced apart each other in no consistent pattern • Especially common in zones of wooden construction where fire is a hazard • Poorly suited for defense • Often associated with rural regions of more than average tranquility