Montana Civil Rights News

What are Folklife and Folklore

Everybody's got folklife!
All people have folklife, because folklife (or folklore, as some people say) is the shared customs and traditions that groups of people pass down from one generation to another that give them a sense of group identity. All people have traditions, customs, beliefs, stories, and sometimes work skills, crafts, or types of art that are handed down from generation to generation to new members of the family or group. Folklife is not learned from books. People don't study folklife like they memorize spelling lists. You learned your folklife -- how to be a member of your community, group, or family -- by living it.

How do you learn folklife?

Do you know any hand clapping games like "Miss Mary Mack," or jump-rope games like "Cinderella Dressed in Yellow" or "Teddy Bear, Teddy Bear"? Do you know how to play jacks or marbles? Who taught you those games and rhymes? Probably other children, either playing at home or at school. You see, children form a very large social group, which has its own games, stories, and sometimes rules of conduct. Older children teach younger children the words to the rhymes or younger children learn by watching the older children. Sometimes children invent new rhymes and then pass those down to other children.

Teenagers are their own cultural group. In fact, teenagers who attend the same high school can sometimes be thought of as members of a cultural group, who share traditions, legends, and customs. For example, at one high school every year the sophomore and juniors would tell the incoming freshmen that to pass ninth-grade PE, they would have to run a four-minute mile. The same joke is pulled on new freshmen year after year as students learn the joke from their classmates and friends. In academic circles, this is called an oral tradition.

It takes all kinds

Students also belong to other groups, like your family, your community, your church, an ethnic group, a regional group. In addition to those types of groups, adults can belong to occupational groups (people who share the same type of work) and civic groups. There are lots of other types of folk groups, but the idea is that in these groups people share some traditions, customs, and beliefs that are passed down. Folklife also includes arts, crafts, music, and even building houses -- all the traditions people learn in their families or communities. Below is a listing of some of the kinds of folklife you can find in Mississippi, especially in the southern part of the state. To give you a better idea of what these kinds of folklife area, here are some more detailed examples of customs, crafts, and stories and how those get passed on to others:

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