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Reviewed by:
  • The Florida Folklife Reader Ed. by Tina Bucuvalas
  • Blaine Q. Waide
The Florida Folklife Reader. Ed. Tina Bucuvalas. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012. Pp xx + 300, acknowledgments, introduction, 35 black-and-white photographs, selected bibliography, appendices, contributors, index.)

The Florida Folklife Program (FFP) was among the first public folklife programs established when these agencies began to proliferate in the mid- to late 1970s. Approximately a decade later, in 1986, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida (HMSF)—now known as HistoryMiami—founded the South Florida Folklife Center. These two public-sector programs have produced surveys, exhibits, video and radio documentaries, festivals, and other activities meant to increase public awareness and appreciation of Florida’s diverse and dynamic living traditions. Yet, as Tina Bucuvalas notes in the introduction to The Florida Folklife Reader, “[although] several publications detail the traditions of specific Florida regions or folk groups, to date no single work provides an overview of Florida folklife” (p. xii). Bucuvalas, who edited this 15-essay collection, has worked as a public folklorist in the state since 1986, when she laid the groundwork for the South Florida Folklife Center. She subsequently directed FFP for nearly 15 years, and then established the Center for Gulf Coast Folklife. With this breadth of experience, Bucuvalas is qualified to address this gap in the existing scholarship. She also summarizes the history of folklife research in the state.

Most of the book’s 15 contributors have worked, either on contract or in a staff position, with FFP or the South Florida Folklife Center. Bucuvalas contributed an essay examining Cuban patronal festivals in Miami along with the introduction, and she has organized the book geographically, starting with essays concerned with South Florida and moving north. The book concludes with an essay on statewide maritime folklife. In addition to Cuban and maritime folklife, other folk groups, regions, and traditions discussed include the Upper Keys and the Middle Keys; African American music and religious traditions in several South Florida communities and the Panhandle; Nicaraguans and Peruvians in Miami; various Caribbean communities, including Trinidadian steel pan music and an overview of West Indian folklife in south Florida; Seminole chickee buildings; Greek music and burial traditions in Tarpon Springs, home to a large Greek diaspora; Anglo-American old-time fiddling and Cracker culture; and a distinctive Anglo Sacred Harp tradition in North Florida. Bucuvalas’s introduction establishes the foundation for the forthcoming essays. In this introduction, she provides a brief overview of Florida history as it pertains to the state’s folk groups and traditional cultures. She also introduces a theme that will be prevalent throughout, especially with the essays devoted [End Page 349] to South Florida—namely, the number of folklife traditions that represent “unique cultural syntheses,” due to the state’s varied communities, many of which are comprised of foreign-born residents with ties to other regions worldwide (p. xiv).

The first half of the book’s essays explores folk groups and expressive traditions in South Florida. Several pieces are survey reports produced by fieldworkers working for the South Florida Folklife Center. These essays share not just a concern for the traditions of largely foreign-born residents; more specifically, they examine change and continuity with regard to how these traditions were practiced in Cuba, South America, and the Caribbean, and how they are practiced in South Florida. In addition to Bucuvalas’s piece on Cuban patronal festivals, other strong essays include an overview of master steel pan musician and builder Michael Kernahan by Stephen Stuempfle, and a report on Nicaraugan folklife by Katherine Borland. Also notable is a report on the folklife of the Florida Keys by Brent Cantrell, the result of the only inclusive folklife survey of this region by a public program. This section would have been well served by contextualizing footnotes or related comments at the front of each piece to situate the reader in relation to the time period of the field research and production of the report. Much of the data is dated. While the focus on change and continuity in immigrant groups will be instructive for future researchers, the lack of any temporal orientation leaves the reader wondering what traditions and tradition...

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