USU FOLKLORE PROGRAM & ARCHIVES SERVES UP ICE CREAM, OLD-TIME UTAH DANCE MUSIC AND CELEBRATIONS
LOGAN — This year, Utah State University’s Folklore Program and Archives celebrates 25 years of the Fife Folklore Conference with a conference on folk celebrations. Conference director Randy Williams invites the community to celebrate with them at the two evening events of the nationally recognized conference. Events are free and everyone is welcome.
On Tuesday, June 5, Barbara Lloyd, former Cache Valley folklorist, will deliver the honor lecture, “Lessons of Summer: A Celebratory Retrospective of the Fife Conference.” The event is held in the Eccles Conference Center Auditorium on the Utah State campus and begins at 7 p.m.
Lloyd is associate director of the Center for Folklore Studies at Ohio State University. Previously, she was development officer at CITYFOLK in Dayton, Ohio, and is former director of the Fife Folklore Archives and associate director of the Folklore Program at Utah State University, where she also co-directed the annual Fife Folklore Conference for many years. In 1995, she edited “Out of the Ordinary, Folklore and the Supernatural.” She serves on the advisory committee of the Ohio Folk Arts Network and as a folklore archiving consultant. She has served as an archival liaison for the American Folklore Society, on both the folk arts and multi-discipline panels of the Utah Arts Council, and on the Board of Trustees and as secretary- treasurer of the Folklore Society of Utah.
On Thursday, June 7, Williams invites the community to celebrate at an old-fashioned ice cream social with old-time Utah dance music performed by Pattie Richards and the Buckle Busters. There will be dance instruction by Craig Miller. Mrs. Richards is a life-long resident of Utah and a long-time pianist and accordionist, having played for more than 50 years at church functions, weddings, funerals and especially community dances, Williams said.
“She was at the crest of the wave of old-time Utah dance music and now is a conservator of this important Utah tradition that still delights a crowd of all ages,” said Craig Miller, folklorist for the Utah Arts Council’s Folk Arts Program. Over the years she has mentored many musicians, sharing her repertoire of old-time Utah dance songs. In fact, many members of the Buckle Busters were mentored by Mrs. Richards.
For those who love to “cut a rug,” Miller will be on hand to teach anyone interested in the dance steps to some good old Utah community dances.
The celebration begins at 7 p.m. in USU’s Taggart Student Center Ballroom.
“Come for great music — the kind you haven’t heard since you were a kid — yummy Aggie ice cream and fun social dancing,” Williams said. “Families, grandparents and children are very welcome.”
These evening events are part of the Fife Folklore Conference on Celebrations, held June 4-8. The Fife Conference is offered for three graduate or undergraduate semester credits. For a brochure or conference information call Williams at (435) 797-3493. Educators are especially encouraged to participate in the “Local Learning” segment, she said. For conference registration call 797-0423 or 1-800-538-2663.
The Fife Conference honors a lifetime commitment to the study of vernacular culture by Austin and Alta Fife, Utahns who helped shape the modern field of folklore.
The conference is funded by Utah State’s Folklore Program, College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, Continuing Education Conference Services, the National Endowment for the Humanities, City Lore’s Local Learning Projects, the American Folklore Society’s Task Force on Folk Arts and Education and the Utah Arts Council’s Arts in Education Program.