Recording folklore: limp and lifeless
“No matter how accurate they may be, the recorded versions of the tales cannot convey the effects that must have brought them to life in the eighteenth century: the dramatic pauses, the sly glances, the use of gestures to set scenes - a Snow White at a spinning wheel, a Cinderella delousing a stepsister - and the use of sounds to punctuate actions - a knock on the door (often done by rapping on a listener’s forehead) or a cudgeling or a fart. All of those devices shaped the meaning of the tales, and all of them elude the historian. He cannot be sure that the limp and lifeless text that he holds bnetween the covers of a book provides and accurate account of the performance that took place in the eighteenth century. He cannot even be certain that the text corresponds to the unrecorded versions that existed a century earlier.”
– Peter Darnton from Peasants Tell Tales from The Great Cat Massacre And Other Episodes in French Cultural History, 1984.
How did this transaction play out when hip-hop was finally welcomed into the industry of popular music? Has hip-hop been better able to preserve its folk practices? Why? Is it something formally about hip-hop’s musical expression or is situated earlier - in the African-American cultural practices upon which hip-hop is founded?
Tags
commodification, culture, folk, folklore, hiphop, todomundo, tradition
