The Folklore

Hi Dear Steemians

This time I will speak a little of the word folklore, first it is important to know that this is a term used worldwide, we begin with the origin, meaning of folklore in general and its classification, Ending with examples and a brief analysis. Folk-Lore is a word made up of origin anglo. Folk means= people and lore= know, conceptually it is the science that studies the knowledge of the people, disseminated among its members by means of an oral process.

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Invention of the term folklore:

In the Handbook of Folklore (1980) Isabel Aretz co-creator of the International Foundation of Ethnomusicology and Folklore (FINIDEF) (part of the OAS Cultural Conservation Project) mentions that:

On August 22, 1846, the magazine The Atheneum, of London, publishes a letter signed by Ambrosio Merton – pseudonym of the archaeologist and researcher of traditions William John Thoms – dated the 16th of the same month, in which appears for the first time printed the word Folk-lore , applied to what until then it was called in England popular antiques or popular literature. W.J. Thoms asks in that letter to be collected, destined for the new generations, the uses, customs, ceremonies, superstitions, ballads, proverbs, etc. Of the old time, of what is already considered much has been lost, but of what there is still much more that could be rescued "with an effort to time".

From this moment the word folklore begins to be used formally to designate the traditions of the peoples, basing their knowledge in the manual practice and in the mental exteriorisms (like the music, the poetry, the painting, the dance etc. ..). So there are several types of folklore.

Folklore classification

• Folklore material:
  Everything that corresponds to objects created manually, in this category enter handicrafts, housing, agriculture, gastronomy, instruments, etc.
• Folklore Social:
  All that concerns the Life and the relationship with people (customs)
• Spiritual-Mental Folklore:
  is the intangible product of the mind of man, within it are three aspects: the artistic manifestations (literature, music, dances, arts talks), of the psychic (beliefs and superstitions) and the knowledge Empirical.

A demonstration can be classified and belong to various types of folklore, for example: a song belongs to the classification spiritual-Mental folklore because it is musical but why it is sung and the function that it fulfils can also frame in the Social folklore. Another example would be in Venezuela the arepa that belongs to the folklore material for being a tangible object, but also belongs to the social folklore because it is part of the daily food of the Venezuelan and is emblem international of the gastronomy.

A representative of the musical-mental folklore is the milking song popularized by Simón Díaz, fulfils a social function as it is framed within the working edges and is used to appease the cows at the time of milking and give their best milk While the plainsman tells his stories and sorrows, before or at sunrise.

The work of the folklorist is to study its subject from all angles in an investigative way, then to raise and dignify the folklore of his country in the best way, to achieve that you are not lost customs because of the process of acculturation.

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You can also be folklorist, I love this topic since I study music, I realized that in my country there are many folkloric manifestations that we can appreciate daily, what is missing are the people who know, investigate and spread them.

And you who know the folklore of your country? Can you classify some element that seems to be part of the folklore? It is very entertaining if you try, also comment if you have any questions. I would like to know the folklore of the place where you live!

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