Folklore Matters gathers over a half-century of articles, memoirs, field studies, and more by master folklorist Bruce Jackson. Jackson’s wide-ranging view of what makes up folklore, his affection for his subjects, and his keen-eyed ability to observe and record without prejudice stories, songs, and lore from everyone from death-row inmates to numbers runners, hustlers, and legendary blues musicians shines through. In his own words, Jackson’s essays ‘bear witness’ to worlds that others have too easily ignored. This book includes Jackson’s landmark work on prison lore and toasts (the predecessor of rap); labor and criminology; his wide-ranging interest in African American lore and legend; his encounters with legendary figures including Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger; and articles that challenge the many traps and pitfalls that plague much of academic study.
Folklore Matters will delight, inform, and inspire all those who value America’s deepest traditions and the endless creativity of the unrecognized masters of our national culture.
Table of Content
Introduction: Getting Here
Part I: Scenes
1. Prison Folklore
2. In the Valley of the Shadows
3. In the Arctic with Malaurie
Part II: Outside the Law
4. From
In the Life
5. From
A Thief ‘s Primer
Part III: The Folksong Revival
6. The Folksong Revival
7. Skip James: ‘Skippy been places . . .’
8. Liner Notes: Phil Ochs
Part IV: Black Studies
9. The Glory Songs of the Lord
10. The Other Kind of Doctor: Conjure and Magic in Black American Folk Medicine
11. Foreword to Lydia Parrish,
Slave Songs of the Georgia Sea Islands
12. Introduction to
The Negro and His Folklore in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals
13. Prison Worksongs: The Composer in Negatives
14. What Happened to Jody
15. The Afro-American Toast and Worksong: Two Dead Genres
Part V: People
16. Benjamin A. Botkin (1901–1975)
17. Remembering Alan Lomax (January 31, 1915–July 19, 2002)
18. Legman: The King of X700
19. In Prison with Pete Seeger
Part VI: The Folklore Business
20. Things That from a Long Way Off Look Like Flies
21. Folkloristics
22. Arctic Silence: Icy Terror in the Heart of the Smithsonian
23. ‘Only the Sailor Knows the Archipelago’
24. From the Editor: The Humanities at Risk
25. From the Editor: Dead Soldiers and the Arctic Night
Index
About the author
Bruce Jackson is SUNY Distinguished Professor and James Agee Professor of American Culture at University at Buffalo. He is author or editor of more than forty books, including
The Story Is True, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded: The Art and Meaning of Telling Stories and
Ways of the Hand: A Photographer’s Memoir, both published by SUNY Press.
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