Folklore and Marginality Ethnologie et marginalité

It is a great honour to receive the Marius Barbeau Award and I’m particularly humbled to recognize the company of my distinguished predecessors. I offer you all my heartfelt thanks with special appreciations to my colleagues Diane Tye, Pauline Greenhill, Holly Everett, and Neil Rosenberg, as well as to all my ex-students who are participating on the thematic panels linked to my work. As a Hispanic Canadian immigrant of Mexican and Puerto Rican working-class parentage, I count myself extremely fortunate to have been able to pursue a career in folklore, ethnology and ethnomusicology at the Department of Folklore of Memorial University of Newfoundland, an inspiring place. For over thirty years, I have found the work of communicating and documenting the traditional expressive behaviours of working-class cultures to be immensely satisfying. The works of folklorists, ethnologists and ethnomusicologists have long recognized the social importance of the vernacular arts and I’ve enjoyed being a part of that project. As a student of occupational folklife, I also realize that work is transformative — everyone is affected by their job. What, therefore, have I taken from my work as a teacher of folklore (besides my penchant for lecturing on cue, an occupational hazard many of you are familiar with)? The answer is, my large repertoire of occupational stories. I think it appropriate, therefore, at this occupational rite of passage, to briefly account for my links to this remarkable profession through a few, short exemplary narratives. But first, the connection of my identity in Newfoundland as a folklorist, “blues godfather,” and “CFA” (come from away) or “NBC” (Newfoundlander by choice). During my long stay in the region, I have been asked a personal question more times than I would care to remember: “What kind of name is ‘Narváez’ anyway?” My responses to the surname query have achieved formulaic proportions. Fatigue attending the tedious, repetitive pronouncements of my initial explanation undoubtedly accounts for what has eventually become a bold venture into the realm of creative verbal prank. The first, usual account that I have offered for my surname is simply the truth, that “Narváez” is a name of Spanish origin from my mother’s side of my distant family in Puerto Rico. But as all raconteurs know, the truth can be rather limiting. Thus, I’ve developed a couple of alternative, or from a folkloristic perspective shall we say “variant,” etiological accounts. One involves a motif of place: the substitution of “Spaniard’s Bay” (in Conception Bay) for “Puerto Rico.” Another explanation expands the narrative further. When a knowledgeable person informed about the area asks, “but I’ve never heard of the name ‘Narváez’ in Conception Bay,” I retort — “You see, in common usage, the name is always heard in translation: ‘Narváez’ has become ‘Noseworthy’!” I also provide a final explanation for what a person with my name is doing here in Canada. I say, “I’m a member of one of the initial waves of the great Hispanic horde slowly migrating northward.” While I have always made this comment in jest, it saddens me that recent events in the United States bear witness to large sectors of North American society accepting this Latin “horde” stereotype. My surname accounts may be viewed as family folklore, but they are also evidence of my ethnic marginality. As a marginal, I have lots of company. Covering a broad spectrum of social circumstances, the folklore of marginality, often a folklore of confusion generated by cultural participation in more than one group, is one of the most common threads of expressive behaviour in contemporary life and it plays a prominent role in my occupational narratives. …