Creating Folklore in the 21st Century: Oral Histories and the Kutztown Folk Festival

Date of publishing:

15.12.2024

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.21104/CL.2024.4.04

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Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International.

Abstract:

This study examines how Pennsylvania Dutch people maintain their heritage and express their identity through oral histories at the Kutztown Folk Festival, an annual celebration of the traditions and contemporary practices of the Pennsylvania Dutch. This folklife festival is the oldest continuously operated festival of its kind in the United States. The festival emphasizes current cultural practices while honoring its cultural heritage through entertainment and education. Many of the educational events occur at the Seminar Stage, the site for the collection of oral histories of Growing Up Dutch. Festival participants provide remembrances of the early years of the festival and their Pennsylvania Dutch childhoods. These individual remembrances become meta-folklore and contribute to a community resource for understanding Pennsylvania Dutch identity and belonging in the twenty-first century, more than three hundred years after the origin of this distinctly American ethnic group.

Keywords

Pennsylvania Dutch; reminiscences; folk festival; meta-folklore; folklife; enactments

Article Text

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