Local, Popular, Folk Culture

Culture

• Society’s collective beliefs, symbols, values, forms of behavior, and social organizations, together with its tools, structures, and artifacts created according to the group’s condition of life; transmitted as a heritage to succeeding generation

Culture

Values

Political Institution

Material Artifacts

TYPES OF DIFFUSION

• Expansion Diffusion – idea or innovation spreads outward from the hearth• Contagious – spreads adjacently + rapidly• Hierarchical – spreads to most linked

people or places first.• Stimulus – idea promote a local experiment

or change in the way people do things.* Relocation Diffusion – spread of an idea through physical

movement of people from one place to another

Habit vs Custom

• Habit – A repetitive act that a particular individual

performs• Custom– A repetitive act of a group

habit custom

Folk Culture vs Popular Culture

Folk Culture• Traditionally practiced

primarily by small, homogeneous groups living in isolation

• Change little over time• More likely to have more

variance from place to place• Spread by relocation

diffusion

Popular Culture• Large, hetorgeneous

societies that share certain habits

• Modern communications facilitate frequent changes in popular customs

• In some manner for sale• Mass produced

Isolationism

• The key to keeping Folk culture is being Isolated.

• Few folk groups escape some interaction with the larger world

• Most commonly, the folk absorb ideas filtering down from popular culture

• The more contact the more that Popular culture influences the Folk

SIMON HARRISON

• Local or Folk Cultures have two goals– Keeping other cultures out– Keeping their culture in

• To much contact leads to Contamination and Extinction

• Cultural Appropriation: The process by which other cultures adopt customs and knowledge and use them for their own benefit

Cultural Appropriation

English Modern Rock music

Commodification

• The process through which something that previously was not regarded as an object to be bought or sold becomes an object bought, sold, or traded

Rural Isolation Delays Diffusion

• Anabaptist groups live in rural areas of US– From Pennsylvania to South Dakota

• Anabaptist believe in Adult Baptism• Amish, Hutterites, Mennonites • Pulled to Pennsylvania in the 1700’s for

religious Tolerance and affordable farm land• Later groups had to move further West for

more affordable land

Despite Desire to be Isolated

• http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10052007/watch4.html

MUSIC

• Folk– Multiple hearths– Anonymous sources

– Folk songs tell a story or convey information about an activity like farming, life cycle or events

• Popular– Written by an individual

for the purpose of being sold to a large number

– High degree of technical skill

Country Music

• Roots in the 1920’s – Sung Spirituals as one of the roots– Believed to come from Kentucky, Tennessee, West

Virginia, and Texas• Nashville is seen as the Hearth

Bluegrass Music

• Related to Country music – 1940’s– Appalachian highland region to Ozark Mountains– Hearth is considered to be in Kentucky

• Washboards, Fiddles, & Banjos

Blues

• Traces history back to Africa– Hearth is considered to be Mississippi Delta

region, New Orleans– Combination of Spirituals and working chants from

the fields• Blues is considered to be the father of Jazz

Tejano Music

• Named for the Tex-Mex Music• High Energy music with guitars and mariachi-

style• Style of Latino music in America• Selena is given credit for helping making this

music so popular in USA

Polka Music

• Upper Midwest origins– North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota,

Wisconsin, Michigan, and Ohio– Brought to USA from Scandinavia, Poland, and

Germany

Motown

• Originates in Detroit– Urban music of the 1950’s and 60’s– primarily feature African-American artists who

achieved crossover success– “Crafted with an ear towards pop appeal, the Motown

Sound was typified by: the use of tambourines to accent the back beat, prominent and often melodic electric bass guitar lines, distinctive melodic and chord structures, and a call and response singing style that originated in gospel music.”

HIP HOP

• CLIVE CAMPBELL OTHER WISE KNOWN AS "DJ KOOL HERC" WAS BORN IN KINGSTON JAMAICA, – THE FATHER OF HIP HOP

CULTURE• DJ KOOL HERC first plays

at sister’s birthday party Bronx NY - 1973

HIP HOP

• “THE ZULU NATION” WAS FOUNDED BY “AFRIKA BAMBAATA” first BBoy group

• 1975

DJ GRAND WIZARD THEODORE" INVENTS THE SCRATCH WHILE TRYING TO HOLD A RECORD IN PLACE WHILE HIS MOTHER WAS YELLING AT HIM. THE NEEDLE WAS STILL ON THE RECORD SO IT MADE THAT SHIGA SHIGA SOUND WHICH HE LATER ON TURNED INTO THE SCRATCH.

HIP HOP

• From 1973 till 1979 DJ Kool Herc with microphone help from Coke La Rock and Clark Kent plays local parties and some clubs.

• The style spread to all 5 parts of NY

A Step Toward Popular Culture

• 1979 the music style made a huge step toward Popular Culture – The first hip hop recording is widely regarded to

be Sugar Hill Gang's Rapper's Delight, from 1979

HIP HOP goes National then International

• During the 80’s HIP HOP begins to spread around the country

• MTV began in 1981• Predominately still only made in NY the music

genre was spreading• 1983-1984 the early records of Run-D.M.C.

and LL Cool J.

Early Peak of NY HIP HOP

• Public Enemy 1988 album “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back”

Hip Hop goes West

• Gangsta rap • In 1988, N.W.A. released Straight Outta

Compton, which formalised the style, as well as cementing Los Angeles as its main centre

http://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com

Go to Genre Hip Hop

Folk Culture includes Sports

• Cricket• Ice Hockey• Basketball• Lacrosse• Baseball

Cricket

ICE HOCKEY

Ice hockey is most popular in areas that are sufficiently cold for natural reliable seasonal ice cover, such as Canada, the northern United States, the Nordic countries (especially Sweden and Finland), Russia, the Baltic States, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia

Ice Hockey

Basketball begins as a way to get exercise during the winter at the YMCA

Baseball

• Was a Folk culture game but has grown and spread to many parts of the world.

• Generally when people begin to pay for the privilege to view sports make them less part of Folk culture and more part of the Popular Culture

• Baseball becomes more and more global• http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/rough/20

07/07/ghana_baseball.html

Folk Culture includes Sports

• Soccer started as a folk culture but now is the worlds most popular sport in the world.– Many of the branches of Soccer remain parts of

Folk Cultures

Soccer

American Football

Gaelic Football

Australian Football

RUGBY

Side effect of POPULAR CULTURE

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/video/flv/generic.html?s=frol02p70&continuous=1

Local vs Popular Culture

• The Great struggle is to keep local culture local • While contact with Popular culture drives to

take an idea global or at the very least popular beyond the local

• Geographer Edward Relph coined the word Placelessness to describe the loss of uniqueness– One place begins to look just like the next

Pizzeria Uno's Chicago Grill in New Hartford, NY

Pizzeria Uno - birthplace of Deep dish pizza Chicago

Where is this Strip

What is this called?

Homes

Folk culture and the home you live in

What kind of House you live in reflects your culture

Building materials

• Environmental conditions influence choice of construction materials– Climate– Vegetation

How is this vernacular architecture (folk architecture) suited to its environment? (house from Orchid Island, near Taiwan)

• readily available materials

• form responds to climate and weather patterns

the “dogtrot”

What kinds of environmental adaptation can you identify?

How else could you build a house to do the same thing?

Sedentary subsistence farming peoples of adjacent highlands, oases, and river valleys of the Old World zone

Rely principally on earthen constructionSun-dried (adobe) bricksPounded earthIn more prosperous regions, kiln-baked bricks are available

Northern New Mexico

Pre-Columbian “condo”

Suited to dry climate with cold, sunny winters

Pueblo Architecture

• Shifting cultivators of tropical rain forests build houses of poles and leaves

• People in the tropical grasslands, especially in Africa, construct thatched houses from coarse grasses and thorn bushes

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

What elements of the Quebec farmhouse respond to climate?

Do any elements seem to respond more to social factors?