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.