In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

207 ‘’ ‘’ Nativism and Cracker Revival at the Florida Folk Festival Martha nelson the florida folk festival (fff) Bills itself as the longest rUnning state-supported folk festival in the United States. For the past fifty-nine years the festival has been the formally sanctioned institution for public display of Florida’s collective cultural traditions and multiple ethnic identities. Over time, music performances at the festival have come to be dominated by a group of revivalist musicians who are composers of “Florida Song.” Incorporating interlocking themes and stock images, Florida Song renders a nostalgic view of Florida’s frontier inhabited by Spanish explorers, Scots-Irish Crackers often working as cowboys, and the remnants of Creek Indians who evaded massacre or forced removal in the nineteenth century by migrating to a continental outpost. At its core Florida Song is defined by valorization of early settlers, paired with lamentation and protest over what has been lost. The purposes it serves extend beyond entertainment or the celebration of cultural heritage. What is remarkable about Florida Song’s domination of state-funded displays of cultural tradition is that its stereotypes of a romanticized wilderness frontier take place in a state that was ranked fourth in the nation for the number of foreign-born residents in 2005. The majority of Floridians are not Scots-Irish, Seminole, or direct immigrants from Spain. The question for folklorists is not “Is the music folk?” but “What is the meaning of the purposeful control of the state folk festival for the dissemination of Florida Song?” Celebrating Florida’s phenomenally rich cultural landscape with the annual repetition of songs focused on a small segment of the population during a limited historical period seems to be an odd pursuit for a state folk festival. 208 Martha nelson Understanding the folklore of Florida Song requires a reckoning with the history and public policies of Florida and the United States, mostly during the twentieth century but extending back to the 1700s. The use of folk song as a tool for agitation and promotion of a political agenda is one of the legacies of the popularization of folk music during its revival in the mid-1900s. Finally, to the extent that public folklore has functioned as advocate and intervention in traditional culture, the folk festival itself influenced the creation of Florida Song. The Florida Folk Festival’s formative years coincided with the earliest stages of the Cold War; but the force of creation for the event came from the National Federation of Music Clubs (NFMC). A philanthropic organization with state chapters, the NFMC was chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1898 and remains the only music organization with membership in the United Nations. It serves as a locus for the promulgation of American music, including advocacy through civic and political action. The group was instrumental in the Florida chapter’s lobby of the state legislature in 1935 to proclaim Stephen Foster’s “Old Folks At Home” the official state song. By that time the NFMC and the state chapter were already planning construction of a memorial to the antebellum composer along the Suwannee River in north Florida. The NFMC had declared Foster America’s first professional songwriter. Its members were actively promoting the Foster Memorial in White Springs as a venue for the performance of American music. When the first building was dedicated in the fall of 1951, the president of the NFMC surveyed the surrounding 250 acres of riverside land and suggested the site would be a perfect location to hold a folk festival. Folk festivals first developed in America in the 1920s. The nation’s experience in World War I and the first rumblings of ambition to become a world power stimulated an interest in roots heritage, accompanied by considerable posturing to strengthen national identity. Policy makers projected an image of America that was multiethnic. The United States adopted its first comprehensive immigration law in 1921, with visas favoring Anglo-Saxon immigrants to complement the existing cultural profile of the nation. Constructing a national identity still required negotiating the different origins of northern and western European immigrants. Staging a celebratory event where distinct heritage would be imbued with pride and value, yet cast in the frame of a national treasure, was deemed an appropriate tool. Folk festivals also had commercial appeal, generating the flow of capital for the purpose of nation building. In north Florida local and state residents appointed by the governor to the Stephen Foster Memorial Commission hired Sarah Gertrude...

Share