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IN HONOUR OF PETER NARVÁEZ 30-2, 2008
Pauline GREENHILL, Diane TYE, Holly EVERETT Peter NARVÁEZ Richard MACKINNON Michael MACDONALD James MOREIRA Jodi MCDAVID Ronald LABELLE Ian BRODIE Joy FRASER Pat BYRNE Kelly BEST Martin LABA |
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IN HONOUR OF COUNTERHEGEMONY MAN
I also remember that Peter epitomized the very best of the kind of scholar we were taught to emulate: someone who was intellectually immersed in the discipline, but who also profoundly respected those he worked with, and indeed, was a participant as well as observer of traditional culture. I wouldn’t have realised it at the time, but Peter’s background as a member of an ethnically marginalized group in the United States probably served as a crucial touchstone for his profound understanding of the political economy of Newfoundland and Canadian culture. He was the first of those who were professors at Memorial when I was a student to recognise that I had become a colleague. It’s a pleasure and a privilege to be part of the gang offering this modest gift. Diane: As a graduate student I was also inspired by Peter’s passion for folklore. His impressive command of the discipline’s theoretical underpinnings helped to strengthen the foundation of my own work. He was an exacting, yet generous, teacher and while it was his high standards that drove me as a student, it was his kindness that I remember most as a colleague. When I joined the Folklore Department as a faculty member in 1995, I was immediately struck by Peter’s generous spirit. Invariably it was Peter who first spoke up in defense of a student who needed a little extra support, and his compassion changed the course of many a faculty discussion. He was also a very generous colleague. I remember clearly his response to an incoming department head worried about their ability to meet the demands of the next three years. Peter’s reassurance was instant if not completely predictable for such a strong union supporter as he spoke for his fellow faculty members: “You’ll be fine. We’ll be here to help you.” I saw early on how his everyday kindnesses made differences in people’s lives — some of whom were unaware they had benefited from his help — and how it was important mentoring. Holly: At the beginning of each academic year at Memorial, the Head of the Department of Folklore and the Graduate Advisor meet with the incoming graduate students. The year that I started the MA programme, Peter was acting Graduate Advisor. Our meeting began with a pep talk, which Peter delivered to about a dozen nervous, but eager individuals. Can we do this, we all wondered. At least, that’s what I was wondering. Then Peter said, “Graduate school isn’t for everyone.” Was he reading our minds? “If you decide that it isn’t for you,” he continued, “please come and talk to me about it. If you don’t want to talk about grad school or folklore beyond that, we can talk about something else — like baseball!” Anyone standing outside the door at that moment might have heard a collective sigh of relief. We had all just been given a “get out of jail free” card, and a reminder that there were many possible futures, something I try to remember when working with harried students whose priorities may be very different from my own. Soon afterwards a graduate student a year ahead of me drew my attention to a flyer posted downtown. Peter would be performing at the Ship Pub that night. “We should definitely go,” he said enthusiastically. “Peter is a fantastic musician.” I had never seen a professor perform in a bar, at least to my knowledge. I thought of my undergraduate professors and simply could not imagine it. Soon I would realize that many folklorists/ethnologists were also performers, a circumstance that would further endear the discipline and its ethos to me. Peter’s detailed knowledge about — and profound affection for — Newfoundland and Labrador also impressed me. The little I knew about the province before I arrived was significantly augmented in Peter’s classes. His lectures about Newfoundland folklore and culture enriched both my research and my life beyond the university campus. All: This special issue honours the many contributions of Peter Narváez to Canadian folklore/ethnology. In his acceptance of the Marius Barbeau Award(1) in 2006 (printed here), Peter describes his over thirty year career in folklore/ethnology as “the work of communicating and documenting the traditional expressive behaviours of working-class cultures.” But, as the articles in this special issue show, this modest characterization seriously understates his impact both on interdisciplinary theory making, and on the understanding of specific folklore/ethnology genres, from music and occupational folklife to custom and belief. For over three decades, from 1974 to 2005 when he retired, Peter Narváez was an integral part of the Department of Folklore at Memorial University. His enthusiasm attracted countless students to the discipline. His high academic standards, combined with remarkable support as a teacher and mentor, pushed students to achieve levels of excellence and made him a highly sought-after teacher, supervisor, and thesis examiner. A few of the many former students whose lives he touched contributed to this volume: Kelly Best, Ian Brodie, Pat Byrne, Martin Laba, Ronald Labelle, Richard MacKinnon, James Moreira, and Jodi McDavid, as well as the editors of this issue. Others, like Joy Fraser and Michael MacDonald, represent a second generation in an academic genealogy, taught by Peter’s students and/or influenced by his writing. In his classes, Peter presented scholarship as an ongoing dialogue. His students recall his enthusiasm for the subject, his critical perspective, and his self-effacing wit. An example of this humour, which Holly first heard during a guest lecture on field recording in a research methods course, is included in his Marius Barbeau award acceptance speech. No one who has learned about Peter’s night with Ralph forgets to call ahead to arrange accommodation during fieldwork. Peter’s own lively contributions to interdisciplinary conversations have not been restricted by genres or disciplinary boundaries. Broadly speaking, his work reflects what would now be seen as cultural studies, not only in terms of its subjects but also because of his progressive, critical account of traditional and popular culture as resistant to hegemony. His interests are wide ranging; he developed and/or taught approximately twenty different courses during his years at Memorial. But he also located himself in terms of some of the central genres and areas of the discipline; he was regarded as the departmental expert in folkloristic theory, popular culture, and occupational folklife, as well as in his specialties of folksong and folk music, especially blues. His edited collections reflect this eclecticism, from Media Sense: The Folklore-Popular Culture Continuum (with Martin Laba, 1986) to The Good People: New Fairylore Essays (1991) to Of Corpse: Death and Humor in Folklore and Popular Culture (2003). His long list of conference papers, invited lectures, and articles cover an even wider gamut. Many pieces reflect his central interest in folk music and blues, while others explore aspects of Newfoundland culture, cutting across folk music and folksong, custom and belief, narrative, popular culture, and occupational folklife. Following Peter’s sterling example, the explorations in this special issue offer challenges to disciplinary boundaries and definitions, as well as to understandings of a range of vernacular cultural expressions, including protest song, broadside, festival, mummering, legend, witchcraft belief, stand-up comedy and parody. In their analyses, the authors take up many of the issues and dynamics that underline Peter’s own scholarship, and that he has helped to illuminate. We see this special issue as a contribution to scholarly dialogue about crucial subjects around which Peter has influenced thinking, among them tradition, belonging, and power. With authors positioned in fields including anthropology and community studies, Acadian studies, archives, communication studies, English, ethnomusicology, and heritage and culture as well as folklore/ethnology, this special issue’s eclecticism parallels Peter’s own work. Throughout his career, he has continually offered the perspectives of folklore to scholars in cultural studies and ethnomusicology, as well as drawing on their viewpoints. He has been an active member of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music. At Memorial, he was instrumental in the creation of a Canada Research Chair in Traditional Music/Ethnomusicology, then a graduate program in Ethnomusicology. That said, folklore/ethnology is Peter’s intellectual home, and unlike folklorists for whom folklore is an “f” word, Peter uses it proudly. He has been a tireless advocate for Canadian folklore/ethnology scholarship and his efforts helped found and then direct the discipline in English Canada. Recognising this work, then editor Jack Santino invited him to edit a special issue of the Journal of American Folklore devoted to folklore/ethnology in Canada. Because Peter has always been sensitive to identity politics, while being appropriately critical of its precepts, he felt it apt as an American-born Canadianist scholar to ask a Canadian-born Canadianist scholar to join him; thus the result was Pauline’s coeditorial work on this project (2002). Peter is a long-time member of the Folklore Studies Association of Canada/Association canadienne d’ethnologie et de folklore, serving as its President in 1991-1992. Given his deep commitment to Canadian as well as international folkloristics, this thirtieth anniversary volume of Ethnologies is a particularly fitting venue for a tribute to Peter Narváez’s work. Reflecting Peter’s own interests, three of the articles in this special issue (MacDonald, MacKinnon, and Moreira) examine dimensions of folksong. Despite his wide ranging pursuits, it is to folksong that Peter has returned most often, having published over thirty articles in the field, and it is the genre he has explored most deeply in recent years. In “Protest Song and Verse in Cape Breton Island,” Richard MacKinnon describes Peter as a pioneer in the study of labour and protest song. Peter’s PhD dissertation on the protest songs of a labour union on strike in Buchans, Newfoundland was the basis of several articles and sparked later examinations, including an analysis of vernacular song response to Newfoundland’s cod moratorium. Both Richard MacKinnon and Michael MacDonald probe intersections of song and social change. MacKinnon analyzes the role of protest song and verse in Cape Breton Island’s labour struggles of the 1920s; while in “The Best Laid Plans of Marx and Men,” Michael MacDonald examines the merging of major Canadian folk music revival figure Mitch Podolak’s Trotskyist politics with his love for folk music in the creation of the Winnipeg Folk Festival. James Moreira’s “Fictional Landscapes and Social Relations in Nineteenth-Century Broadside Ballads,” based in the context of rural workers’ lives, takes up issues of song in connection to technological change and modernity, an extension of some of Peter’s work on Newfoundland premier Joseph R. Smallwood’s use of folklore on his radio program, “The Barrelman.” Five articles share Peter’s interest in narrative. In “The Fiddle Burning Priest of Mabou,” Jodi McDavid presents versions of a legend of a priest who burned fiddles as a form not just for the negotiation of power between Catholics and clergy, but also of tensions between vernacular and official culture. Ronald Labelle’s essay, “Native Witchcraft Beliefs in Acadian, Maritime, and Newfoundland Folklore,” examines Acadian legends and beliefs concerning witchcraft as an indicator of intergroup attitudes and exchange with the Mi’kmaq. Ian Brodie’s paper, “Stand-up Comedy as a Genre of Intimacy,” pushes conventional definitions of legend to include stand-up comedy, which he argues is a collaborative expression, interpreted, developed and shaped by audience response. Joy Fraser and Pat Byrne explore recontextualized narratives — albeit of very different types — as they examine novel meanings taken on by vernacular expressions in new settings. Fraser deconstructs a comedic performance that formed part of a Robert Burns supper in “Performing Tradition and Ethnicity at the Newfoundland St Andrew’s Society Burns Supper,” while Byrne’s consideration of “The Ambivalence of Tradition in the Short Stories of Alistair MacLeod” analyses traditional culture in the fiction of one of Canada’s finest writers. An additional two articles attend to Peter’s politicised theoretical concerns. Kelly Best’s “‘Making Cool Things Hot Again’: Blackface and Newfoundland Mummering” adopts the kind of cultural analysis Peter applied to death customs and fairy belief as she reveals the racialized power underlying mummering when popular culture and vernacular tradition intersect in blackface. In “Parsing the Popular,” Martin Laba extends earlier collaborative work with Peter in Media Sense, in an exploration of the communicative action dimensions of folkloric expression as a means of creating and sustaining shared social spaces. In highlighting the fluidity of folklore and popular culture, Laba also problematises tradition, as do Best, Fraser, and Byrne. Also like Laba, Best, Brodie, Fraser, MacKinnon, Moreira, and MacDonald encourage folklorists/ethnologists and their colleagues in other disciplines to reflect on dynamics of change and the capacity of vernacular expression not only to accommodate change but also to introduce it. Not surprisingly, most of the pieces in this collection focus on the margins rather than the centre, for it has always been those locations, and the marginal rather than the powerful, that have captivated Peter’s scholarly interest. Positioned on the edges of disciplinary spaces (Laba and Brodie), rural spaces (Moreira, Byrne, and McDavid), workers’ culture (MacKinnon), politics (MacDonald) or race and ethnicity (Labelle, Best, and Fraser), the emphasis echoes a central theme in Peter’s own work. In opening up spaces of resistance, the articles highlight folklore/ethnology’s power as a counterhegemonic expression or, as Martin Laba writes, its “considerable capacity to oppose.” In fact it is Laba’s hope for the discipline of folklore/ethnology as a whole to be a catalyst of change when he writes of its potential “to contribute substantially to critical analyses of media, popular culture, and communication.” In exploring tensions between tradition and social change, and tradition as social change, the articles in this volume reveal the power of vernacular song, story, drama and custom, as well as humor, to make a difference. In his acceptance of the Barbeau Medal, Peter speaks of the transformative nature of work. This issue of Ethnologies is a testament to the transformative nature of his own work and to some of the many ways Peter Narváez’s scholarship and teaching have inspired others and helped shape Canadian folkloristics.
1. Since 1978, the Folklore Studies Association of Canada (FSAC) has given an award to recognise remarkable contributions to folklore/ethnology. In 1985, this accolade was renamed the Marius Barbeau Medal in honour of one of the most distinguished Canadians to contribute to the field internationally. [pp. 5-12] |
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