It's a pleasure to finally talk to you, because I've been leafing through your online resources for months, and I've become really interested in your programming. Why don't you start by basically telling us more about the Oregon Folklife Network and its mission?
Emily Hartlerode: Sure! So the Oregon Folklife Network is the Oregon Arts Commission's designated partner to produce folk and traditional arts programming for the state of Oregon. We do that work statewide with a mission to know about and support the various cultural heritages and culture keepers who are in our state today, and then to create public programs or to support others, to create public programs in their communities that help us all to know about, appreciate and celebrate the wide variety of people and cultures who are here, our neighbors and our communities right around the corner, right next door, and it's best if we know about each other and can learn more about the world that's just right outside our doors.
That's right. You mentioned the variety. I get a sense that folklife in Oregon is probably more varied than a lot of people realize, right? We might expect things like old time fiddle music and saddle making and Coos storytelling, but we also have Chinese puppeteers…. Do you have other examples to show the breadth of this artistic folklife that our state is home to?
"In doing these cultural art forms, we see that people learn more deeply what our human values are about things we all share in common: how to work slowly and carefully with your work, how to have a generous heart and taking only what you need. These are values that we can all benefit from and just make us better citizens in the world."
Hartlerode: Yeah, we have Ukrainian weavers. We have traditional Native American wood carvers and basket weavers around us. We have Latino mariachi trumpet players. We have Asian Indian carnatic singing. We have Japanese taiko drumming. It's really everywhere and all around us. And sometimes even folks think about what you can really overtly see, sometimes. You even mentioned some of the rural Buckaroo traditions, but even Norwegian rosemaling folks who Finnish sauna. These are things that you may not be able to know or see about a person's heritage by how we might look the same or different in the world, but we all carry heritage from wherever our roots are around this great big globe.
On your website, it says that folklife includes forms as new as hip hop and as ancient as Native American basket weaving. How do you define folklife?
Hartlerode: That's a great question. And you know, for us, one of our primary funders is the National Endowment for the Arts, and they have quite a conservative definition of what a culture keeper can be for eligibility in traditional arts. Much of that has to do with carrying on what we have inherited, and some of that is ethnic. Some of it might be based on where our people come from, geographically. But then some of it can also be occupational - for example, connected to a particular place in the state of Oregon. We have ranching traditions, and that gets carried on generation after generation. You grow up with a ranching family, and you just know how to do that cowboy work, and also, if you are out on the coast, then you very well may be born into a fishing family. And so you learn from early on what your parents and their grandparents have done in terms of bringing in fish, making nets, mending nets, all the kinds of things that go along with those kinds of occupations. So we think of cultural heritage as being something that can be ethnic, but it can also be sacred in nature. It can be occupational, it can be connected to a place.
You mentioned the phrase “culture keepers.” How do you differentiate between so-called “folk-inspired art” and culture keepers.
Hartlerode: Thank you. You know, I will vacillate a little between talking about the folks we serve as being traditional artists, being culture keepers, or heritage bearers, and part of that is that many people who fall under our umbrella of eligibility for support don't really think of themselves as artists. And so “traditional artist” is a phrase that they may not really resonate with. So it's really in an attempt to help people feel more like they can understand what we're about, that I vary the words that I'm using, but we are very clear that we need to support folks who are passing on a tradition that's really part of their own cultural community, so that we don't end up, unfortunately, mistakenly supporting something that is appropriative of someone else's cultural heritage. Does that answer your question?
It certainly does. Emily, part of how you accomplish what you were just talking about is through the Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program, which is currently funded by the NEA. Tell us about that program.
Hartlerode: Our Traditional Arts Apprenticeship Program is an opportunity for awardees. It's an application process, and a mentor and an apprentice from the same cultural community apply together to learn and teach an art form that is from that shared cultural community. And we in the office will support those applicants to the best of our ability to put in as strong an application as possible, because we in the office do not judge those. We would pull together a review panel of various kinds of cultural experts and other tradition keepers, and we score those to be able to then award, usually about four awards a year. Those go to the highest ranking and also to a slate of artists who - we want to ensure that we are getting those dollars all around the state and to the various demographics of our state. In exchange for an award, a monetary stipend goes to the mentor. The apprentice gets to have free lessons for six to nine months, and then the team agrees to let us come in and interview them. A professional videographer comes in and produces a three- or five-minute video about what they do, why they do it, and why it's so important to all of us that these cultural traditions are sustained over time, and then they also produce a public program.
And if my memory is serving me, one example of this that I saw on your website was a trumpeter in the mariachi tradition, right?
Hartlerode: That's true, that's a great example.
I love that. It's so empowering for these artists. Another part of what the Oregon Folklife Network does is create opportunities for folk artists to present their works to the public. What are some recent past examples of those events?
Hartlerode: Yeah, one that is still available for folks who are convenient to the Eugene area is our Oregon Culture Nights. We do a summer series. It's about a month long, and it is an opportunity for artists who have either won that apprenticeship award or were finalists to come out and present their cultural art form. This year we have had an Irish singer. We've had Asian Indian Bharatanatyam, a form of dance, and then also Asian Indian Carnatic singing. And next week, we have a Palestinian embroiderer, Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim.
And I see that she was a National Heritage Fellow in 2018, so people can see her in Eugene on July 31st. Where is that actually presented?
Hartlerode: Usually it's at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History out in our courtyard. But in the case of Feryal, she will be inside the museum. And these special programs that highlight culture keepers are included in admission to the museum. This last one will be happening in one of our exhibit spaces, and she'll have examples of her work there. She will have the apprentice she's been working with. She'll have a slide show so she can really show us the details of the history of this art form, and also what it looks like on dresses and garments and scarves and the stories that are behind these embroidered symbols, the messages that women have carried and sent to each other through embroidery before women were allowed to read and write, or taught to read and write. This is a way that women previously would talk to each other, would communicate. And so this is something that she teaches us through what she's learned from her grandmother and what her grandmother learned from her grandmother. And so it's really important that we learn about the deep histories that we've inherited and how we pass them on today.
Agreed. You've been with this organization since almost the beginning - the first year, anyway. Have you had a chance to see multiple generations of artists come through? In other words, does one year's apprentice then become a presenting artist, or even a master artist with her or his own apprentice?
Hartlerode: That certainly does happen over time, and and just to clarify: there has been a folklife program for the state of Oregon even prior to my stewarding it starting in 2010. Prior to that, it was at the Oregon Historical Society for a decade or so, and before that, it was at Lewis and Clark College. Many of us who hold state positions across the nation as the state folklorists have also seen this over time, where apprenticeships help a cultural art form to continue on generation after generation. We see apprentices come into their own as mentors, and that's part of the idea behind supporting this work - that apprentices are promising to become that next leader and culture keeper for a community.
So then they continue to be a part of the fabric of our culture here in Oregon.
Hartlerode: Absolutely, and even if they don't choose to become a leader within their community and carry that on for their lifetime, what we find is that passing on these cultural traditions really has value beyond the ability to dance the steps or make the musical sounds or produce the garments. Really, underneath all of that teaching is how to be with one another, when to do this work, how to do this work. In doing these cultural art forms, we see that people learn more deeply what our human values are about things we all share in common: how to work slowly and carefully with your work, how to have a generous heart and taking only what you need. These are values that we can all benefit from and just make us better citizens in the world.
And that's part of what we expect from humanities programs. Your activities are sort of at the intersection of arts and education. Just in the last minute or so we have left: What organizations collaborate with you at either the government or the community grassroots level?
Hartlerode: Well, we work very closely with the Oregon Arts Commission, and they are a funder for us, as well as a partner. So within the Oregon Arts Commission, we would have the arts ed and Percent for Arts organizations or program officers in there that we can collaborate with. Then also we are recipients of Oregon Cultural Trust dollars, so that means we have that network of the humanities: Oregon humanities, Oregon Historical Society, Oregon Heritage Commission, and the State Library. So these are the folks who are also interested in getting connections with people who are cultural leaders throughout the state. And then there's a great number of grassroots organizations who come to us as well for support.
On Thursday, July 31, Oregon Culture Nights will feature Palestinian embroiderer Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim at the Museum of Natural and Cultural History in Eugene.
You can watch more videos on the Oregon Folklife Network YouTube channel and learn more about their entire program and calendar of events at natural-history.uoregon.edu.
