Events

MARITIME FOLKLIFE

The New Jersey Folk Festival is a large-scale, multi-faceted family and educational event that attracts approximately 15,000 to 18,000 people annually. Always held the last Saturday of April on the expansive grounds fronting the Eagleton Institute (Woodlawn), at the corner of George Street and Ryders Lane, the festival runs all day (10am to 6pm), rain or shine, and is open to the public free of charge. While about half a dozen folk festivals in the United States are implemented by students, our Festival is the only one managed entirely by undergraduates as well as is the result of an academic course for credits. Most others are run via Student Activities boards.

The 2015 edition of the NJFF will focus on maritime folklife. We plan to present the traditional cultural expressions of such groups as seafarers, fishermen, longshoremen, boatbuilders, and seafood processors. We will work with communities located near oceans, bays, or lakes, whose residents have a strong cultural relationship with the water. Maritime folklore encompasses a wide range of genres, including custom and ritual, legend, narrative, language, jargon, and song, as well as folklife forms such as technical skill, foodways, and material culture.

A special focus of this year’s festival will be revival performances of sea shanties. These were the work songs of the square-rigger days. Without them, many a fine, tall clipper ship would not have sailed serenely into port. “A shanty,” one old sailor said, “is another hand on the rope.” Hauling away on the ropes was was but one of the forms of backbreaking sea labor that these songs served to time and enliven. In addition to the sea shanties, we will feature traditional deep-water songs that were sung not for work, but for entertainment. Typically in the watch from 6:00 to 8:00 pm, the men would gather in clear weather around one of the hatches, where there would be singing and dancing of the jig and hornpipe. There were many kinds of songs that were popular at sea, including songs of famous vessels, ballads of sea fights and piracy, as well as songs of adventures ashore in Sailor Town.