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Richard Jernigan -> RE: Examples of good folk music (Oct. 5 2012 20:29:28)
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Bill, I agree with your account of the course of entertainment and socializing in the USA, in general. There were/are exceptions, however.
My father and mother were from large families. The men went off to WW II. None of the women worked in factories. But after the war the extended families still cohered.
I was as close to my cousins as I was to my brother--pretty close. On my mother's side, gatherings of adults, a dozen or more, often involved games of dominoes or cards. These weren't serious contests, rather they were occasions for conversation.
On my father's side, large family gatherings often centered around the preparation and consumption of meals, or in the summertime, making ice cream outdoors. There were regularly two dozen or more people at my grandmother's dinner table for holiday meals. The women and girls spent hours together in the kitchen preparing and conversing. Often my grandfather had raised and fattened a turkey for the occasion, or the main course resulted from hunting or fishing expeditions by the men and boys. After dinner the men sat and smoked, conversed and told stories. The boys were all ears.
Bird shooting and fishing were social occasions for the men and boys. There was good humored competition to see who was the best wing shot or fisherman. There was lots of conversation. Often there was story telling around a campfire at night, a gathering of the whole expedition, even after the more solitary sport of taking larger game.
My generation learned the art of narration from our elders, but the next generation seems not to have picked it up. Still, at family gatherings nowadays the point is to socialize, not to watch TV or to click on cell phones.
There are games of Trivia, charades, dominoes and cards, all occasions for socializing. Half a dozen people will work together on a large jigsaw puzzle. Kids will play their musical instruments for a sizable audience. Fortunately, the ones who play are good at it.
My 13-year old great-niece won both the costume and presentation contest at a local Renaissance fair. At a family gathering she donned her costume as Catherine of Aragon and reprised her speech to Thomas Cromwell when he told her of the annulment of her marriage to Henry VIII. This brought on a general discussion of our family's involvement in English Renaissance history that lasted for a good hour. The two younger generations asked questions, or mentioned things they knew, we old timers answered questions and provided citations, occasionally falling into narrative mode.
My specialities are tales of arrogance, treachery and political miscalculation among our distinguished forebears.
The art of narration survives in the south and southwest. At barbecues, fish fries and clan reunions people sit up until after midnight, maybe sipping a little whiskey or having a beer. People speak for five minutes at a time, narrating interesting or humorous experiences. Then it's somebody else's turn.
But I agree: the habit of socializing seems to be in serious decline. The local classical guitar society sponsors pre-concert dinners at local restaurants. Dinner and a concert aren't cheap. People make polite small talk at dinner, but the relaxed old-time habits of my generation are pretty well gone.
RNJ
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