The National Folk Festival (review)

Reviewed by: The National Folk Festival Laurie Kay Sommers The National Folk Festival. Produced by the National Council for Traditional Arts in partnership with the Michigan State University Museum and the City of East Lansing. East Lansing, MI, August 10-12, 2001. Founded in 1934 by Sarah Gertrude Knott, the National Folk Festival (NFF) is now the nation's oldest folk festival. The NFF pioneered both the multiethnic folk festival and the presentational format now associated with many folklorist-produced festivals. It was the first festival to use fieldworkers in developing the program, the first to include material culture demonstrations, the first to use a workshop format in addition to formal stage performances, and the first to use scholars as presenters. During the late 1980s, the National Council for Traditional Arts(NCTA) "reinvented" the folk festival format into a purportedly more collaborative model. Through community partnership and traveling three-year residencies in various locales, NCTA sought to become the "Johnny Appleseed of festivals," hoping that the host community would continue to produce a festival that combined "local, regional, and national content" after the NCTA itself had moved to a new location(The National Folk Festival, August 10-12, 2001, East Lansing, Michigan, electronic document, http:// www.ncta.net/nff.html, accessed 2001). The NFF's tenure in East Lansing involved a local partner that had far more experience than the typical NFF collaborator: The Michigan State University Museum (MSUM) is a state folklife program staffed primarily by university-based folklore colleagues who had produced their own Festival of Michigan Folklife (FMF) from 1987 to 1998. The FMF grew out of the 1987 Michigan Program at the Smithsonian Festival of American Folklife. Although the NFF initiated the folklife festival format, the Smithsonian Folklife Festival adapted it to an outdoor museum venue with a stronger educational and interpretive emphasis. Like the Smithsonian, FMF incorporated interpretive signs, narrative sessions, contextualized foodways and material culture demonstrations, and a thematic approach to festival programs. Recent FMF programs, for example, focused on "Community Celebrations" and "Workers' Culture." MSUM folklorists viewed the NFF not as the Johnny Appleseed of festivals but, rather, as a bridge between the FMF and a planned Great Lakes Festival to begin in 2002. The Great Lakes Folk Festival would be more like the National Folk Festival model than the old FMF with multiple music and dance stages, a folk arts marketplace, traditional and ethnic foods, games, and children's activities. All of these components were part of the 2001 NFF in East Lansing. NCTA booked, scheduled, and produced the main performance stages; the local partners were responsible for food vendors, material culture sales, a children's area, and publishing the festival program. Of the local partners, the city of East Lansing was primarily interested in the entertainment aspect of the event, so it was up to the MSUMto maintain the standards of excellence and authenticity of importance to folklorists. The MSUMused the NFF and the free festival program book to showcase its ongoing programs such as Traditional Arts Apprenticeship participants in the Folk Arts Marketplace, the Michigan Heritage Awards ceremony, the Michigan Quilt Project with advice on quilt care and quilt documentation activities, and Our Daily Work/Our Daily Lives workers' culture program. The MSUM drew on its experience with the FMF in developing an interactive traditional games component, this year featuring cribbage and Minnesota "buck" euchre. The MSUM also programmed a narrative stage where, for example, master Odawa potter Frank Ettawageshick explained the history and technique of traditional Woodland Indian pottery as demonstrated by his son and apprentice, Joseph. The children's area included storytelling and youth traditional dance on the small stage, and children's games such as marbles, cootie catchers, hop scotch, and jump [End Page 478] rope. A particularly notable aspect of the festival was the carefully researched "Taste of Traditions" food concession area, which featured interpretive signage next to each vendor. Material culture booths, like the food vendors, were limited to those artists who produce in sufficient quantity and quality to sustain a viable sales operation. Amish furniture maker Roy Yoder, for example, gleaned at least six months worth of orders in the three days of the

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