They’re so often used interchangeably that you’d be forgiven for thinking they were one and the same thing, but there are some important differences between ‘folk’ and ‘tradition’ that allow us to express distinct – and potentially awesome – things.
Here’s my opinionated take on folk vs tradition, and when you might want to use each one. This article was originally posted on Instagram; you can view and join in the discussion here.
Anyone who has known me for any time will know that my definition of ‘folk’ is ‘the stuff we make, do and think for ourselves and the radical potential of these things’. It gestures towards the who of a given practice (i.e. ‘the folk’) but mostly hunkers down on the how that practice is undertaken (i.e. as part of a ‘folk process’ or ethos).
Starting with the who, it’s literally anyone. No individual or community has more or less right to ownership of the word ‘folk’, and expressions of it can be found everywhere, not just in the spaces most readily associated with it.
folk of yore would likely be amazed to see their self-entertainments still being performed and gate-kept, when many of them were barely gate-kept themselves.
But it’s also about locating this stuff in the realm of the countercultural and the resistant. It’s worth remembering that ‘folk’ only really has meaning where culture has been institutionalised and removed from the people. Elsewhere it might just be ‘art’ or ‘custom’ or ‘entertainment’: it’s only in systems and spaces marked by disenfranchisement that we need to specify that we made this.
At the same time, this definition of folk does not say anything about how old or well-established something is. Things can be folk the very first time they are done, and need never be repeated, because ‘folk’ isn’t speaking to a specific aesthetic or body of materials, but rather to a context / process by which materials might be created. An ethics maybe.
By contrast, tradition speaks directly to the spatial and temporal aspects of a practice – to the act of carrying on, although it is the carrying on that matters more than what is carried. So ‘tradition’ can be applied to all kinds of actions, not only those we might describe as folkloric (regardless of your definition). And tradition requires something to be done more than once, with some kind of consciousness behind it, whether individual or collective, remembered or forgotten, weighty or fun.
How would you feel if future people were getting into fights about the proper performance of ‘Skibidi toilet’?!
Tradition suggests that we might do something at a given time of day or year or moment in the life path, but it should not insist on fidelity to an originary instance or blueprint. Honestly, the folk of yore would likely be amazed to see their self-entertainments still being performed and gate-kept, when many of them were barely gate-kept themselves. (How would you feel if future people were getting into fights about the proper performance of ‘Skibidi toilet’?!) (Editor: I had to look this up. I am very cool).
So traditions are always changing and adapting to the needs, values and preferences of the people who perform them (or they should be), and this is both necessary and beautiful. And folk and tradition can coincide, when we come up with new and inclusive ways to mark and make sense of the world around us and come together with our friends and communities – and we do this with some degree of regularity – but both terms also have an independent life from one another, allowing us to talk about different aspects of our creative and cultural lives.
In the past I’ve described them as useful ‘lenses’ for examining things, but I think from now on I might start calling them vibes…
Future Folk Archetypes is a newly commissioned trio of works by Lucy Wright on display at the Portico Library in Manchester. It imagines modern folk archetypes, embodied and present in the space, representing the diversity of folklore not currently included in the Portico’s collection.
The history of folklore has a representation issue. Folk collectors in the nineteenth and early-twentieth century often overlooked or disregarded traditions associated with women and other marginalized people and privileged rural areas over urban ones as the sites of ‘authentic’ folk practices. The industrial northwest, in particular, was neglected by scholars despite being home to a rich and unique folk culture, extending into the present day.
‘Future Folk Archetypes’ runs at Portico Library, Manchester until 2 November.
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