NORTH CAROLINA FOLKLIFE

A church congregation sings hymns guided by a song leader with geometric shapenotes. Children swap handclapping chants in a city park. Beach vacationers dance the shag at a coastal nightspot. In the twilight of Easter dawn, a Moravian band picks up the tune of a brass anthem from another church orchestra down an Old Salem street. Cape Fear pilots tell stories of navigational mishaps, and mill workers play pranks. At a summer reunion, urban and rural branches of a family talk and share foodways. Descendants of German settlers welcome the New Year with musket shooting, while African-Americans cook a good luck recipe of black-eyed peas. As his wife carves baskets able to carry water, a Cherokee woodcarver shapes a native-wood block into an ancient tribal totem.

Through traditions, North Carolinians express their sense of family, community, and place. Handed down by informal talk and example, such activities and materials form the folklife of North Carolina's peoples. This rich cultural heritage teaches and expresses values, delights and entertains, links generations, and sometimes just passes time. But always it connects people and gives lives meaning beyond the present.

For a discussion of folklife in the United States, see Mary Hufford's "American Folklife: A Commonwealth of Cultures," accessible through the Website of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.

All contents copyright © 1996, North Carolina Folklore Society Site maintained by Joyce Joines Newman. Revised: May 25, 2002 URL: http://www.ecu.edu/ncfolk/