FOLKLORE - WHAT IS IT? CONTENTS

FOLKLORE - WHAT IS IT We all create and harbour folklore through our word usage, custom, habits, superstition, religion and belief. In most instances it is an unconscious expression gathered from family and friends. The science of folklore is often misunderstood and usually seen as something from the past with little relevance to today’s world. This is far from the truth as folklore can be one of the key indicators to contemporary society and especially important in identifying cultural expressions of communities. As we inevitably move closer to a global culture it has become vital we identify and protect individual culture and folklore can help us in this direction. Our society has been conditioned to accept the shock of the new and, in many ways, ignore the lessons of the past. We need rites of passage and we need to learn from the past and, once again, folklore can provide these keys. Australia has no university course for folklorists and all the work of collecting, researching and writing has been performed by a handful of self-financed individuals. The majority of these people have been mainly concerned with musical traditions. Although I have done considerable work in music my main interest over the past fifteen years has been in collecting and researching the folklore of contemporary society. As a performer I am in a unique position to re-introduce folklore back to the community through recordings, books, radio programming and concert performance. I feel some sort of hidden obligation to make Australians feel more Australian and believe folklore can help in this direction. The Folklore of Sydney project is an innovative work that commenced in February 2004 and is surveying the folklore of the city from its earliest days to the present times. Spanning transportation ballads to the ditties composed by the workers on the cross-city tunnel it will show human creativity in the one survey. It is also be an oral history of Sydney in the first decade of the twenty-first century with video and sound interviews of everyday Australians as they discuss what their city means to their lives. The survey has a wide sweep including music, print lore, superstitions, customs, indigenous urban lore, migrant-influenced lore, children’s playground lore through to folklore created in factories, shopping centres and commercial offices.