Catskills Folk on WIOX: Seasonal Celebrations

Tuesday at 7 p.m. my radio program, Catskills Folk, will feature two ways of celebrating the holidays in the Catskills. You can hear the program on WIOX, broadcast at 91.3 FM in the central Catskills or streaming live at wioxradio.org. One way of celebrating is an old craft of making holiday decorations and the other is a new twist on a traditional event, the holiday parade.

I've just encountered the tradition bearers for these expressions of holiday cheer and hope to be able to undertake a full study of Catskills holiday traditions and/or a study of Catskills parades in the future.  But I just couldn't wait to share my somewhat fuzzy photos of the parade and a picture of greens decorating one of the floats.

Here are the greens decorating the float.

This float maker also produces wreaths from greens such as these.

And here are links to some videos of the lighted floats in the Downsville Christmas parade which took place just this past Saturday, December 10.

This is Butch's Garage's Float "The Grinch That Went Overboard", 

winner of the Christmas Theme First Prize

 

This is the Gardner Family's Float that won First Prize for Christmas Spirit

This is the Downsville Ambulance, followed by a fire truck, all decked out for the parade.

Some floats featured music, such as this one from the Delaware County Fair, 

playing the Santa Claus Boogie.

After the parade the many prizes were given by Bill Reichert, parade chair, and Stacy Matteson, parade co-chair, assisted by Grand Marshals Sarah Hood and Kathryn Matteson.  Then amidst festive and colorful cookies and hot chocolate, Santa appeared to visit with the youngsters, some of whom who were sleepy from the cold.

Many community people and organizations contributed time, effort and prize money to the parade, including Amanda Reichert, who did all the printing, David Jay Doig and Kevin Doig, brothers who lined up the floats at each end of the parade, the community and student chorus who sang carols as the parade lined up, the Victoria Rose that provided sheltered space for the judges and announcer, and the Downsville Fire Department, who combined their annual visit by Santa with the culmination of the parade in its award ceremony.  This is such a strong community event, I'm sure I've neglected to mention other parade volunteers who make the Downsville parade possible. 

Don't miss this parade next year.  I'll be there with a better camera and hopefully will be planning a project for 2018 to document both of these Catskills traditions. Meanwhile, join me on Tuesday at 7 pm on WIOX to hear about these exciting folk expressions.  And don't forget the final square dance of the year, this Saturday (see below).  - Ginny Scheer, Folklorist

  

Festive Square Dance December 18

Presents a

Festive Holiday Square Dance

Featuring

John Jacobson & the Tremperskill Boys

  Sunday, December 18, 1-4 p.m.

Bovina Community Hall

1866 County Highway 6, Bovina NY 13740

Hilt & Stella Kelly's new CD “Tunes I Learned From My Dad”

for sale at dance $15. Proceeds will fund the next Hilt Kelly CD.

                    Catskills Folk Connection is sponsored by Roxbury Arts Group and is funded in part

                    by the New York State Council on the Arts, Gov. Cuomo, the NYS Legislature and

                    the O’Connor Foundation. Contact Catskills Folk Connection: vscheer@juno.com,

                    607-746-3521, catskillsfolkconnection.blogspot.com

Hilt Kelly's Long-Awaited CD Available December 3

This weekend at the Roxbury Arts Group's Holiday Arts Market, Catskills Folk Connection will offer for purchase the CD that Hilt Kelly and his wife Stella created before Hilt passed away in 2015. It includes ten tunes, reels, jigs and quadrilles that Hilt learned from his dad, Carson Kelly.  .Jim Kimball, music professor at SUNY Geneseo, identified tunes and provided many of the photos for the CD, which premiered at RAG's Fiddlers!23 in October.

Here's how you can obtain your own copy:

At the Holiday Arts Market, December 3, 11 am - 5 pm:

The Roxbury Arts Center
5025 Vega Mountain Road
Roxbury, NY  12474

Or by mail from Catskills Folk Connection:

Send $15 plus $2 postage to:
Catskills Folk Connection
761 County Highway 2
Delancey, NY  13752

Or  from the shop at:

The Delaware County Historical Association
46549 County Highway 10
Delhi, NY  13753

For more information, call or write Ginny Scheer, Folklorist at Catskills Folk Connection, 761 County Highway 2, Delancey, NY  13752, 607-746-3521, or vscheer@juno.com.

Tuesday, November 29 on WIOX

The next edition of Catskills Folk will feature a century old collection of folklore from Schoharie County at 7 pm on Tuesday, November 29, on WIOX, broadcast on 91.3 FM and streaming at www.wioxradio.org,  You've heard of this collection before if you tuned into Know Your Watershed on October 18 and November 1, just before Catskills Folk.  On their radio program, the father and son team of Harold and Alex Bartholomew presented ghost stories and ballads collected in the book Folklore From The Schoharie Hills New York,  published in 1937 by University of Michigan Press.and written by Emelyn E. Gardner, recognized scholar, author and professor at Wayne University in Detroit Michigan.

Schoharie Valley with the hill country in the background.
 Photo from SALT by C. Jacobus.

Gardner's collection includes examples of beliefs such as witchcraft, ghost stories, folk tales, songs and ballads, rhymes, riddles and superstitions gathered from 1912 to about 1917 in southern Schoharie County, in the hill country of Gilboa, Conesville, Jefferson, Summit, and surrounding towns.  I am among those who believe that this area is part of the Northern Catskills, not only because of its hilly topography but because part of it is included in the Catskills watershed.

Tuesday's radio program will be an introduction to this rich collection and may give some hints about where the cultural boundary of the Catskills ends on the north.  Does Gardner's collection contribute to our sense of a Catskills regional identity?  I don't promise that this introduction will settle the matter, but it will certainly raise some interesting questions.  --Ginny Scheer, Folklorist, Catskills Folk Connection and host of Catskills Folk, alternate Tuesdays at 7 p.m. on WIOX 91.3 FM or www.wioxradio.org/

Vernacular Architecture in Folk Art

Tonight at 7 p.m. on WIOX Catskills Folk will focus on vernacular or folk architecture as portrayed in folk art.  Catskills Folk Connection's recent exhibit "Growing Up To Brush" has just closed at the Roxbury Art Center.  It featured two artists, Nellie Bly Ballard and Don Strausser, whose works documented the change in the Catskills landscape in the second half of the 20th century.  Their paintings also document the vernacular architecture of the Catskills, shown in its natural context.

Here are two of the paintings I will discuss tonight, but for technical reasons the rest of them cannot be shown in time for Catskills Folk.  I will post them as soon as I resolve the issue.

1) Nellie Bly Ballard, The Denver Store [detail]

2) Don Strausser, [Stone House with Abandoned Pasture]

Ginny

Tonight on WIOX 91.3 FM and wioxradio.org

Tonight folklorist Ginny Scheer will join Howard and Alex Bartholomew on their 6 p.m. program, Know Your Watershed, then continue with her usual 7 p.m. offering, Catskills Folk.  

Know Your Watershed's topic is  "'Folk Tunes of the Northern Catskills and Their Origins." The Bartholomews will discuss the ethnic background of the original folk song source material based on Emelyn Gardner's book Folklore from the Schoharie Hills, while Ginny will present similar material for the Catskills from Camp Woodland's Folk Songs of the Catskills.   Ginny, Alex and Howard will consider many types of music including dance tunes as well as ballads. There will be demonstrations of some of the musical instruments used by region's residents: fiddle, fife, Jew's harp, bones, piano, and guitar, as well as recordings of some of the songs included in Gardner's book.

At 7 p.m. Catskills Folk will continue the theme, offering several more songs from Folk Songs of the Catskills and will take time to share some of the origins of these songs more than has been possible on Catskills Folk in the past.  

This is a first in collaborative programming between Know Your Watershed and Catskills Folk, but hopefully not the last.   Tune in at 6 p.m. and stay tuned in at 7 p.m. to hear both programs at 91.3 FM or streaming live at wioxradio.org. 

Folklorist To Receive Award on November 6

The public is invited to the ceremony at Delaware County Historical Association at which Catskills Folk Connection's folklorist, Virginia Scheer will join three others to receive an Award of Merit from the Association.  The ceremony will take place at DCHA, 46549 Route 10, Delhi, NY  13753, on Sunday, November 6 following a pot luck lunch and including a program offered by Bill Birns.  The pot luck lunch begins at 1 p.m. (please bring a dish to pass), followed by the award ceremony and then Mr. Birns's talk.  All are welcome.

Folk Art and Folk Music Speakers

presented by

at the

Catskills Folk Lyceum

Saturday, October 22, 2 p.m.

 Roxbury Arts Center, 5025 Vega Mountain Road, Roxbury 12474



Jim Kimball, Ethnomusicologist SUNY Geneseo

Speaking on "Old-Time Tunes and Dances

in Rural New York



Varick Chittenden, Director Emeritus of

 Traditional Arts in Upstate New York

Speaking on "Folklore is in Our Nature"

Also on view, an exhibit of folk art landscapes

 "Growing Up To Brush"

Featuring artists Nellie Bly Ballard and Don Strausser

What gives Catskills folk art, music and dance their Catskills flavor?  Are they distinct or are they about the same as folk art, music and dance in other regions of New York State?

On October 22, at 2 p.m. at the Roxbury Arts Center, Catskills Folk Connection introduces the Catskills Folk Lyceum, a set of talks by renowned New York State specialists who will address folk expression in painting, sculpture, fiddling and square dancing in their regions and in the Catskills. 

Varick Chittenden’s talk,  “Folklore is in Our Nature,” will explore the relationship between folk art and the natural environment, with examples from the North Country/Adirondacks as well as the Catskills, showing “common ground shared by our regions, [and] continuities and changes over time in local folk life and folk art.”  Chittenden, a folklorist, is the founding director, now emeritus, of Traditional Arts in Upstate New York, and emeritus professor at SUNY Canton.

Jim Kimball’s talk “Old Time Tunes and Dances in Rural New York”  will offer “stories and comparisons about round, square and contra dancing from different regions of New York” including the Catskills.   Kimball is an ethnomusicologist who teaches at SUNY Geneseo and who specializes in old-time music, plays the fiddle, and calls square dances.

Kimball contributed important information and photographs to Catskills Folk Connection’s recent publication of the CD “Tunes I Learned From My Dad” featuring the late Hilt Kelly on the fiddle and his wife Stella Kelly on the piano.  The CD will be available for purchase at the Catskills Folk Lyceum on Saturday, October 22, 2 p.m., at the Roxbury Arts Center, 5025 Vega Mountain Road, Roxbury, NY  12474.

Catskills Folk Connection is sponsored by the Roxbury Arts Group and is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Council for the Humanities, Gov. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, and the O’Connor Foundation.  Contact: vscheer@juno.com 607-746-3521.  For more information: www.catskillsfolkconnection.blogspot.com

Catskills Folk Connection

presents 

A New CD from Hilt Kelly

Catskills Folk Connection is proud to present a new CD of fiddle tunes from the late Hilt Kelly, accompanied by his wife Stella on the piano.   In 2010 Hilt and Stella recorded these tunes at Dry Hill Studios in Oneonta, accompanied by CFC folklorist, Karyl Eaglefeathers.  The CD from that session will have its official release at Roxbury Arts Group's Fiddlers!23 next weekend, on Sunday, October 9.    Tonight's Catskills Folk radio program at 7 p.m. on WIOX 91.3 FM will preview the ten recordings on the album. which will be on sale for the first time at Fiddlers!

Jim Kimball, long-time emcee for past Fiddlers! concerts and an ethnomusicologist at SUNY Geneseo, reviewed the mostly nameless album tracks.  He was able to name a few more than were already known, and to explain why the rest had no names.  

"Quadrilles, a common older term for square dances, were published in great numbers especially in the mid to late 19th century, usually in sets of three to five tunes, the whole set haviang one title.  The first and second tune were most often in 6/8 time and had two or three sections which changed keys (e.g., the A part in D, the B part in A, sometimes a C part in G or D).  The last tune in a set was generally in 2/4 and in the style of a reel or quick hornpipe.  In folk practice musicians would replace the published last tune with some familiar reel or breakdown-like tune.  The first and second figures were someitmes termed first or second "change" and the last figure was often called a "jig" - as in a lively dance, but not usually a 6/8 tune.  Since individual tunes within the published quadrille sets had no specific titles, they have often survived as namel;ess tunes."

Toward the end of a square dance Hilt would say, "Here's a tune I learned from my Dad, Carson Kelly.  I don't know the name of it and I don't think he did either."  Sometimes there was an unnamed dance that went with the tune; together they harked back to the house dances here in the Catskill Mountains where people gathered to entertain themselves with family, friends and neighbors.

Here are the tunes on the CD.  You will hear them tonight on WIOX at 7 p.m. 

1. Quadrille in D & A (No.1)

2. The Girl I Left Behind Me

3. Off She Goes

4. Quadrille in D & A (No. 2)

5. Quadrille in D & B Minor

6. Chassez By Your Partner (also Delaware County Reel)

7. Quadrille in G & D

8. Apple Brewer's Reel

9. Reel in D

10. Fred Wilson's Clog (also Harvest Home)

The publication of "Tunes I Learned From My Dad" is the first in a new initiative by Catskills Folk Connection.  With support from the Manhattan Country School, Roxbury Arts Group and the New York State Council on the Arts, CFC will publish or re-publish recordings and/or texts of Catskills traditional music and dance.  Sales from the first CDs will create a rolling fund to support the next publication project.  These projects may include  HIlt Kelly and the Sidekick's square dance cassette, a recording of Hilt Kelly playing samples of tunes at the New York Old Tyme Fiddlers Association in Osceola, a 1980s recording plus booket of Hilt Kelly and other 20th century square dance callers called "The Hardwood Floor" from Peter Blue and Tom Buckner, and possibly Dances from Woodland: Music and Calls by Norman Cazden, a compendium of tunes and calls collected by campers and staff at Camp Woodland in the mid-20th century.

Catskills Folk Connection is sponsored by Roxbury Arts Group and is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Council for the Humanities, Governor Cuomo and the NYS Legislature, and the A. Lindsay and Olive B. O'Connor Foundation.

Folk Art Exhibit at Roxbury Arts Group

Nellie Bly Ballard and Don Strausser are featured in an exhibit presented by Catskills Folk Connection called "Growing Up To Brush: The Catskills Landscape in Folk Art."  The exhibit opens this Saturday, October 1, with a public reception from 4 to 6 p.m. at the Roxbury Arts Center, 5025 Vega Mountian Road, Roxbury, NY  12474.  

“Growing Up To Brush” is a phrase often heard among farmers to refer to the succession of weeds and shrubs taking over pastures that are no longer grazed, fields that no longer grow corn and meadows that are no longer mowed for hay. It's not a compliment, but rather the reflection of the changing agricultural landscape in the Catskills that has been going on since the turn of the 19^th to the 20^th century. Farmers once cleared their holdings all the way to the mountain top to feed their livestock, leaving only a few woodlots to provide fuel for their houses. As farms have been consolidated into ever larger operations located mostly in valleys, the sidehills, saddles and mountain tops have grown up to brush on their way to becoming the forested slopes we see today.

Those who farmed from the late-19th to the late-20^th century made a conscious effort to maintain the working appearance of the agricultural landscape in the Catskills. “We used to have to cut brush all the time” recalls a grandson of Nellie Bly Ballard. “I remember my father would to come up to the farm where I used to work. I'd be side raking some hay and he'd say 'You're coming down [to our farm] and you've got to cut brush.' … It was so important.” Trimming out walls and around boulders too big to remove from a field and trimming along the road were constant tasks that served a common aesthetic about how the landscape should look.

Both of the folk artists featured in this exhibit come from the mountain culture that values well-trimmed and cleared fields. They paint in different styles, with different materials, but they each represent a way of seeing the Catskills cultural landscape that they felt compelled to express in their paintings.

Nellie Bly Ballard (1894-1971) recorded her native Roxbury and nearby farms and hamlets in Delaware County in her paintings on canvas board. She earned her nick-name, “The Grandma Moses of the Catskills” by skillfully portraying recognizable buildings and structures and by including in some of her paintings ordinary farming activities such as harvesting ice. The working landscape she paints is comfortable for those who grew up on farms in the region and who took pains not to let their farms grow up to brush. But look closely and you will see signs of change, with mountains wooded to the top, and in one painting a mid-20^th century vacation home development on a farm that had begun to revert to shrubs and trees.

Don Strausser (b. 1934) lived in Westkill in Greene County where he painted farms, houses and churches in a Catskills setting. While some are portraits of actual places, others come from his imagination and from photos and illustrations. Like Nellie Bly Ballard he shows the agricultural landscape, but he also portrays the wooded Catskills as a backdrop for his favorite wildlife, the bald eagle. Viewers could interpret that in his wilderness paintings Strausser is reminding us of the portrayal of the “sublime” forces of nature favored by fine artists in the Hudson River School. But in fact forested mountain sides are the working landscape for this artist who is a woodsman, a hunter, a fisherman and a harvester of ginseng. Strausser is most noted for his technique of painting on found objects such as slate, tools, and household objects plus shelf fungus from the woods around his home.   

To see more paintings by Don Strausser and Nellie Bly Ballard, see our Gallery, in the upper right.,

Please join us for the opening reception, Saturday, October 1, 4-6 p.m. at the Roxbury Arts Center.  For more information about this exhibit call 607-746-3521 or contact vscheer@  juno.com.  For information about the gallery at the Roxbury Arts Center call 607-326-7908 or contact info@roxburyartsgroup.org 

This exhibit is a project of Catskills Folk Connection which is sponsored by the Roxbury Arts Group, and is funded in part by the New York State Council on the Arts, the New York Council for the Humanities, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, the NYS Legislature, and the O'Connor Foundation.

Reflection: Catskills Folk Connection

Tonight, September 6, on Catskills Folk at 7 pm on WIOX 91.3 FM, and streaming live at wioxradio.org, Ginny Scheer will pause to review the activities of our regional folklife organization, Catskills Folk Connection - activities that include a schedule of square dances and WIOX radio programs, and that are growing to include an exhibit of folk painting, lectures about folk art and about traditional music and dance in the Catskills, and eventually programs about Catskills foodways and vernacular architecture.  Planning folklife presentations takes a lot of time from grant writing through performance - as much as two years -  and involves more than just the folklorist and her interviewees. Radio programs, on the other hand, can be more spontaneous, giving the folklorist a chance to share new and exciting discoveries of Catskills tradition bearers, such as a folk artist who makes models of local churches, or mountain residents who gather wild foods and medicinal plants, or a member of a traditional square dance band who turns out to be a folk painter too.  Join me tonight to reflect on these and other topics and music that have been featured on WIOX's Catskills Folk and in the public presentations of Catskills Folk Connection.    

Tonight on WIOX, Catskills Food Ways

For Catskills Folk's  third weekly show in a row, tonight August 23 at 7 pm, Ginny Scheer will present a program about traditional foods in the Catskills on WIOX 91.3 FM and wioxradio.org.  The focus this time will be on a series of recipes Ginny collected in the 1970s when she first moved to the Catskills, including pickles fermented in a crock and meat brined in a crock before smoking.  There will also be family and community recipes for more pickles, plum ketchup, suet pudding, and chokecherry jelly.   Future Catskills Folk programs on the food ways theme will include woodland plants used for food, traditional dishes derived from dairying and recipes centered on the production of cole crops, especially cauliflower. Please join Ginny for these radio programs and call or write with traitional family recipes you would like to share: vscheer@juno.com or 607-746-3521.

On WIOX Tonight, 2 Hours of Catskills Folk

In a special two hour Catskills Folk starting at 6 pm August 16, Ginny Scheer will host a two-part program, first about a folk artist from an upcoming exhibit and second the final part of a previous program on tourism in the Catskills.

Last week Ginny discussed the work of Nellie Bly Ballard, a folk artist from the mid-20th century who painted landscapes from around Roxbury, NY (see blog article below).  Ballard will join this
week's featured artist, Don Strausser, in an exhibit created by Catskills Folk Connection called "Growing Up to Bush."  It will be on display from October 1 through November 5 in the Walt Meade Gallery at the Roxbury Arts Group, Roxbury, NY.  

Hilt Kelly and the Sidekicks at the Halcott Grange, with guest fiddler Henry Hermann.
  Don Strausser is on the far left.

You may recognize Don Strausser's name from his career in music as lead guitar in Hilt Kelly's square dance band, the Sidekicks.  Many do no know, however, that Don's talented fingers on the guitar could also wield a paint brush.  Until a few years ago when his eyesight began to weaken, Don painted favorite original scenes from his area of Greene County, near Lexington, and favorite views from magazines and other publicaitons.  What makes all these paintings unique is that they are painted on a variety of materials: slate, household objects like an ironing board, tools such as saws, as well as canvas board.  Perhaps the rarest of 'canvasses' for his art are the huge shelf fungi Don found on his travels in the woods.  On these he painted scenes or carved line drawings on the velvet side of ther fungus.       .

This blog's Gallery contains a good selection of Don's work, as well as a photo of Don at a music workshop.

Join Ginny tonight at 6 pm  on the air at WIOX 91.3 FM or streaing live at wioxradio.org to learn more about Don's painting in his own words, and to hear about Ginny's research about farm boarding houses and other forms of tourism in the 20th century Catskills.

Hubbell Farm Boarding House, Bragg Hollow

Hewitt's Crystal Spring Farm, Denver, NY

August 28 Is Next Catskills Folk Connection Square Dance

Catskills Folk Connection's monthly square dance will take place Sunday, August 28 from 1-4 pm at the Bovina Community Hall, 1866 County Route 6, Bovina, NY.

The Tremperskill Boys will provide old-fashioned Catskills dance tunes for their regular caller, fiddler John Jacobson, and for guest caller Wes St. Onge, well-known musician in the western Catskills.  Both callers are familiar with the dance repertoire of Hilt Kelly, the late, legendary fiddler and square dance caller from the Catskills.

Join us for an afternoon of family fun.  Beginners are welcome and all dances will be taught.  Suggested donation for adults is $7 and children under 13 are free.   For more information, call Ginny Scheer 607-7446-3521 or e-mail at vscheer@juno.com.

Folk Painter Nellie Bly Ballard featured on WIOX

Last Tuesday,  August 9, 2016, I featured the late artist Nellie Bly Ballard on Catskills Folk, my bi-weekly radio program on WIOX, 91.3 FM community radio for the Catskills.  Nellie was active in the mid-twentieth century in Roxbury painting landscapes of her native area.  Some of her paintings were farm portraits, some were views of familiar valleys or villages, and others whose locaitons we have not been able to identify may have been fictional.  Though she only painted for the last two decades of her life, Nellie was very prolific and a number of her paitnings have survived in collections around the Northeast.  Catskills Folk Connection, along with the Roxbury Arts Group, will be presenting her work along with paintings by another local artist, Don Strausser, at an exhibit called "Growing Up To Brush" in October at RAG's Walt Meade Gallery in Roxbury.

Here is a photograph of Nellie Bly Ballard in her studio with a number of her paintings, followed by examples of paintings that may be in the October exibit:

Nellie Bly Ballard in her studio at her home on Bridge Street, Roxbuy, NY

John Ballard Century Farm

Farmer Getting Ice

Roxbury Run Development, Denver, NY