When one thinks of Florida, Miami Beach, Cape Canaveral, Gators football, and Orlando theme parks most likely come to mind, but probably not folklore. As attested to by this book, however, the richness and variety of Florida’s folk traditions rival those of any state and will come as a surprise to some.
The book’s editor, Tina Bucuvalas, is currently Curator of Art and Historical Resources with the city of Tarpon Springs and was State Folklorist and Director of the Florida Folklife Program where some of the book’s other essayists also were employed. HistoryMiami (formerly the Historical Museum of Southern Florida) served as a further research base that yielded a few of the essays. Some of the research thus harks back to as early as the 1980s and can be considered snapshots in time, as the documented lore is of course constantly evolving. The book is organized in geographic sequence from south to north, with most essays focusing on a genre or cultural group. It is not a sampler of folklore collectanea (although some are certainly included as illustrations) but presents discussions of various facets of oral, musical, customary, and material traditions that portray the folk-cultural diversity of the state.
Without setting out to do so, the book poses an important question for students of American folklore: have the people of Florida, or indeed any state, created a unique body of folklore they can call their own, or does the state participate in a broader regional complex of traditions that do not respect the political boundaries that define it? To put it another way, while one can travel no farther south in the United States than Florida, does it follow that its culture is a predominantly southern one?
This question can be answered by listing the fifteen essays in two groupings. The first group consists of discussions of traditions more widespread in the American South: “African American and West Indian Folklife in South Florida” (the first population of the title, at least, practicing traditions not specific to Florida), “The Rest Is Up to You and Me” (an African American burial league), “Sacred Steel” (steel guitar in African American religious services), “Richard Seaman’s Presence within Florida’s Soundscape” (an Anglo-Southern fiddler), “Legacy and Meaning in the Changing Sacred Harp Tradition of the Okefenokee Region” (an Anglo-Southern religious singing tradition having local features shared with adjacent south Georgia), and “Nativism and Cracker Revival at the Florida Folk Festival” (a review of the festival’s history with a critical look at its recent promotion in song of the “Cracker” culture also shared with south Georgia).
The second group consists of essays addressing folk-cultural features specific to Florida or immigrant groups contributing significantly to the character of the state: “Key Largo to Marathon” (the largely fishing-related “Conch” culture of the Keys), “Maritime Folklife” (a multi-genre survey of coastal and inland waterways traditions by six contributors), “The Seminole Family Camp” (an all-too-brief look at Everglades Native American architecture, perhaps the only living tradition of thatched-roof dwellings—chickees—in the United States), “The Patronal Festival of Vueltas in Cuban Miami,” “Folklife of Miami’s Nicaraguan Communities,” “Exploring Peruvian Music in Miami,” “A Life in Pan” (a Trinidadian steel-drum maker-musician in Miami), “Musical Practice and Memory on the Edge of Two Worlds” (Greek-American folk music in Tarpon Springs), and “Eternal Be Their Memory!” (funeral customs in that same community).
Thus, some of the traditions covered in the book are specifically Floridian, while others say more about the larger region to which the state belongs (some readers may not be aware that Florida was a member of the Confederate States, seceding from the Union even before Georgia). More pointedly, what remains of southern culture is concentrated in northern and (non-Disneyfied) central Florida, while traditions along the coast speak more to a distinct state identity resulting from water-rich geography and recent immigration history.
Contributions notable for their fullness of detail include that by Anna Lomax Wood (Alan Lomax’s daughter) on a Greek-American family’s bagpiping and singing traditions, including typology and translations of the song texts; Laurie K. Sommers’ thoughtful analysis of Okefenokee-area Sacred Harp singing and its recent swing away from the localized version of the tradition; and the collaborative final essay on maritime folklife, which includes recipes in the foodways section and an exploration of boat types, boatbuilding, and fishing gear.
No survey of this type can be definitive; I would have liked to see, for example, inclusion of the craft of constructing diving helmets for sponge fishermen, the folk religions of Voodoo and Santería practiced by Haitian and Cuban refugees in the Miami area and the botánica shops that serve them, and foodways of the Jewish population in the same area. Combining this book with others such as Just Above the Water: Florida Folk Arts (2006) and South Florida Folklife (1994), both coauthored by Tina Bucuvalas, and J. Russell Reaver’s Florida Folktales (1987, a genre barely represented in the book under review), should provide a more complete portrait of the range and depth of the state’s folk culture. In this single volume, however, the editor has succeeded in assembling essays that present Florida as it truly is: a state whose traditions reflect a highly diverse population, some of which are identifiably Floridian and others that confirm its place within the larger region.
--------
[Review length: 881 words • Review posted on April 3, 2013]