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Public Folklore in Eastern Kentucky
A shorter version of this article will appears in The Encyclopedia of Appalachia, edited by Rudy Abramson and Jean Haskell, University of Tennessee Press, 2006.
As with public folklore anywhere, the history of public folklore in Appalachian Kentucky cannot be separated from the public concept of folklore, and the image that outsiders have of the culture of eastern Kentucky. The ÒopeningÓ of the mountains in the late nineteenth century due to the coming of mines and railroads also opened the area to educated outsiders seeking "authentic" mountain culture. The expansion of the American industrial revolution into the mountains brought with it cultural dissenters looking for alternatives to industrial capitalism in the perceived purity of pre-industrial forms that were thought to be surviving in the mountains: ballads, quilts, baskets, fiddle tunes.
In Kentucky, as elsewhere in Appalachia, the earliest examples of "public folklore" were associated with the settlement school movement. This meant, initially, the Hindman Settlement School, founded in 1902, and the Pine Mountain Settlement School, founded in 1913, both by Katherine Pettit. Others, including the Hazel Green and Oneida schools, were founded later along similar lines. Such schools provided a "superior basic education" for hundreds of children in eastern Kentucky while providing food, clothing, shelter and medical care. They also, as been abundantly documented by David Whisnant and others, attempted to preserve or revive a kind of "safe" version of "Appalachian culture while teaching mountain people genteel middle class values and, in some cases, "reviving" traditions that were not indigenous at all, such as teaching Morris Dancing at the Hindman School. Hindman and other settlement schools became centers for the collecting of Appalachian traditions, especially ballads, by folklorists from outside; they also became the center for the marketing of traditional crafts, such as Fireside Industries, which operated out of the Hindman School for six decades. The marketing of crafts at settlement schools paralleled similar programs at Berea College beginning in the 1890s. Such crafts were influenced by outside ideas such as those of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts Movement, but they created a kind of core repertoire of what the public came to think of as Appalachian crafts: baskets, brooms, quilts, coverlets, chairs, and so on. Berea College (and the Berea area more generally) has continued to have an important role in the marketing of Appalachian crafts.
Hindman School was also notable for its connection to the Ritchie family, especially Jean Ritchie, who became, through her writings and recordings, one of the best known "ambassadors" of Appalachian music to outsiders.
By the twentieth century, the academic study of folklore was established in Kentucky. The Kentucky Folklore Society was founded in 1912 as a local branch of the American Folklore Society. From 1916 to 1950, its annual meeting was held in conjunction with the Kentucky Education Association in Louisville. Consisting largely of academics and school teachers, the Society emphasized research and teaching, both in public schools and at the college level. Presidents of the society included Herbert Halpert, D. K. Wilgus and Gordon Wilson. During the 1920s and '30s, the Society had two irregular publications, the Bulletin of the Kentucky Folk-Lore Society and the Kentucky Folk-Lore and Poetry Magazine. These published articles both scholarly and amateur, much of it from Appalachia, including materials for use in schools. The Kentucky Folklore Record debuted in 1955 and gradually evolved into a more professional or academic journal with a scope that was not limited to Kentucky, especially under the editorship of Camilla Collins in the 1980s. Both the Kentucky Folklore Record and the Kentucky Folklore Society ceased to exist in approximately 1986.
During the Great Depression, the Federal Writers Project and other New Deal programs were active in Kentucky, as they were throughout the country. The Kentucky branch of the Federal Writers Project was directed by Urban R. Bell of Paducah, an academic and former Disciples of Christ minister. Approximately one hundred field workers spread out over the state, interviewing Kentuckians and photographing people, landscapes and architecture. Out of this abundant documentation, approximately fifty researchers, writers and editors (including folklorist Gordon Wilson) created The WPA Guide to Kentucky, published in 1939. The chapter on "Folklore and Folk Music" deals primarily with Appalachia, describing Appalachian culture as a "survival" of Elizabethan England and Appalachians as "on the defensive" against the encroachment of the modern world. In addition, the sections of the guidebook on "Cities and Towns" and "Highways and Byways" describe numerous local traditions and cultural landscapes. The twentieth century was also characterized by entrepreneurial ventures that celebrated or made use of Appalachian folklife. One of these was the American Folk Song Festival, staged annually in Ashland, Kentucky, from 1932 to 1942, and again from 1949 to 1972. The festival was organized by Jean Thomas, a photojournalist and native of Ashland. Thomas conducted extensive fieldwork in the area, collected folk songs, promoted the careers of selected artists, published several books, and organized the festival until poor health forced her to retire.
Also deserving mention is Louisville native John Jacob Niles, a lifelong folk song collector, song writer, performer and promoter of folk music, born in 1892. The songs Niles wrote were closely related to the songs he collected. His collecting included but was not limited to Kentucky or the Appalachians; his books include collections of southern African-American music and songs sung by soldiers. His passion was for ballads. In 1936, after a brief stint as Music Director at the John C. Campbell Folk School in North Carolina, Niles settled in Kentucky where he became a prolific recording artist and an important figure in the post war folk song revival. He died in 1980.
Perhaps the most influential Kentucky folk music entrepreneur was John Lair. A native of Renfro Valley in Rockcastle County and lifelong promoter of folk music, Lair became a pioneer in broadcasting folk and country music on the radio. While working on radio barn dance programs for WLS in Chicago and WLW in Cincinnati, Lair began to promote Kentucky performers. This led him back to Kentucky, where he became an avid collector of sheet music and gained a reputation as an authority on folk music. He published five books and became a prolific songwriter. While broadcasting the Renfro Valley Barn Dance show on WLS, Lair developed a country music tourist complex in Renfro Valley, which opened in 1939. Part of the complex was a large barn from which he broadcast the Renfro Valley Barn Dance live over the radio. Focusing on comedy, old English ballads and string band music among other things, Lair's shows were heard widely across the United States and had a significant impact on the public image of Appalachian music. In the 1950s, Lair's show made it onto television. Although less active after 1968, Lair continued to promote Kentucky music until his death in 1985. The complex at Renfro Valley currently includes the non-profit Kentucky Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Public folklore was revived in late 20th century Kentucky, in several different forms. Appalshop, a non-profit organization located in Whitesburg, Kentucky, was founded in 1969 as part of the federal War On Poverty program. Its mission was the training of Appalachian young people in the film and television industries. Over the years, Appalshop has developed a variety of programs and products, including numerous documentary films, many of them focusing on folklife, ethnography and traditional arts, as well as on political issues. In addition, Appalshop's June Appal recording label has produced many records and CDs of Appalachian music, and Appalshop has sponsored or organized a variety of educational and theater projects centered around the culture of Appalachia. Their goals are, in some respects, similar to the settlement schools: to provide education and job training while at the same time documenting and celebrating local culture.
1970 saw the beginning of the Appalachian Oral History Project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and based out of Alice Lloyd College and Lees Junior College in Kentucky, as well as Emory and Henry College in Virginia and Appalachian State University in North Carolina. It began as a research program to collect tape recorded interviews of the history and folklore of the Central Appalachian region and grew to become an important educational initiative. Interviews were conducted by students. The project was strong in the 1970s but faded in the 1980s. The 1970s also saw the beginning of an infrastructure of state and local public folklore programs in the United States, largely organized by the National Endowment for the Arts through State Arts Councils, and funded by NEA grants. In Kentucky, the first "state folklorist" in the modern sense was Dick Van Kleek, who was hired by the Center for the Arts in Louisville during 1984 and 1985, on an NEA grant. The projects organized by Van Kleek did not extend into the Appalachians; they dealt primarily with folklife along the Ohio River between Louisville and Covington.
The Kentucky Folklife Program, as it exists in 2005, was started by a consortium of groups including the Kentucky Oral History Commission, the Kentucky Humanities Council, the Tennessee Valley Authority and Berea College. Bob Gates was hired as state folklorist, a position that was housed at Berea College under the supervision of Loyal Jones. This is a statewide program, but Appalachian Kentucky has been important in many activities. The Program's first big project was a survey of folklife along the Kentucky River, from Beattyville to Carrolton. The results of the survey were the beginning of the Program's Folklife Archive, and a traveling exhibit that opened at every county library in the survey area. At each opening, local folk artists were presented. This became the model for continuing surveys of Kentucky folklife. The next big project was along the Ohio River, resulting in a series of mini-festivals in the survey area during 1991. Other surveys have included the Highway 23 corridor in eastern Kentucky and the highway 31W corridor in central Kentucky, as well as several small scale surveys done in collaboration with local cultural organizations such as the Covington Community Center (much of the latter has focused on Covington's urban Appalachian community).
Since 1992 the Kentucky Folklife Program has been located in Frankfort as an interagency program of the Kentucky Historical Society and the Kentucky Arts Council. It administers folklife grants, including project grants and apprenticeship grants, with funds from the Kentucky Arts Council. Other projects of the Kentucky Folklife Program have included a statewide Kentucky Folklife Festival, starting in 1997, held annually through 2001 and then biannually. The Festival has showcased many Appalachian traditions, including music, crafts, dance, storytelling and occupational traditions such as coal mining. A major emphasis of the festival is K-12 education; schools throughout the state send classes to the festival, and use classroom material produced by the Kentucky Folklife Program throughout the year. In addition, many community organizations throughout the state, including Appalachia, send representatives to the festival to learn how to produce their own community festivals.
Another major emphasis has been the Community Scholars Program. Beginning in Estill County in 2000, largely under the direction of Judy Sizemore but working closely with the Kentucky Folklife Program, the Community Scholars Program is geared to the training and certification of community scholars in the basic theory and techniques of folklorists. The program has spread through much of Appalachian Kentucky and into urban areas such as Covington.
Academic folklorists have held positions in a number of Kentucky universities. Since the 1960s, the most notable of these has been Western Kentucky University. Presided over for a number of years by the well known Kentucky folklorist William Lynwood Montell, the Folk Studies Program provides a general background in the academic discipline of folklore while at the same time emphasizing training in public folklore and historic preservation. A great many of the public folklorists in Kentucky (and elsewhere) from the 1970s on have been graduates of WKU. Since 2004, WKU Folk Studies has been part of the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology, under Department Head Michael Ann Williams. The Folk Studies Program continues to work closely with the Kentucky Folklife Program and other programs or agencies doing public folklore work in Kentucky. For example, folklorist Erika Brady works extensively with hospitals and medical schools to offer training to doctors and medical students on folk medicine and traditional attitudes toward health and the body. In addition, the Folk Studies Program is working on an online training programs for community scholars.
In November 2003, a Kentucky Folklife conference was held at Western Kentucky University, jointly sponsored by the Folk Studies Program at the University and by the Kentucky Folklife Program. The conference brought together public folklorists, academic folklorists and community scholars. A major topic was the creation of a Kentucky Folklife Association and the holding of more conferences. The public folklore community in Kentucky is currently very active, and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. Appalachian Kentucky is, and will remain, a vital part of this.
Timothy H. Evans
Western Kentucky University
Bibliography
Simon, F. Kevin. The WPA Guide To Kentucky. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996 (original 1939).
Whisnant, David E. All That Is Native And Fine: The Politics of Culture in an American Region. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983.
