Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling: Intensification and the Rich Modern Lives of Traditional Arts (EPUB Single)

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Synopsis
What do exotic area rugs, handcrafted steel-string guitars, and fiddling have in common today? Many contemporary tradition bearers embrace complexity in form and content. They construct objects and performances that draw on the past and evoke nostalgia effectively but also reward close attention. In Rugs, Guitars, and Fiddling: Intensification and the Rich Modern Lives of Traditional Arts, author Chris Goertzen argues that this entails three types of change that can be grouped under an umbrella term: intensification. First, traditional creativity can be intensified through virtuosity, through doing hard things extra fluently. Second, performances can be intensified through addition, by packing increased amounts of traditional materials into the conventionally sized packages. Third, in intensification through selection, artistic impact can grow even if amount of information recedes by emphasizing compelling ideas—e.g., crafting a red and black viper poised to strike rather than a pretty duck decoy featuring more colors and contours.Rugs handwoven in southern Mexico, luthier-made guitars, and southern US fiddle styles experience parallel changes, all absorbing just enough of the complex flavors, dynamics, and rhythms of modern life to translate inherited folklore into traditions that can be widely celebrated today. New mosaics of details and skeins of nuances don’t transform craft into esoteric fine art, but rather enlist the twists and turns and endless variety of the contemporary world therapeutically, helping transform our daily chaos into parades of negotiable jigsaw puzzles. Intensification helps make crafts and traditional performances more accessible and understandable and thus more effective, bringing past and present closer together, helping folk arts continue to perform their magic today.
Copyright:
2022

Book Details

Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
Book Size:
200 Pages
ISBN-13:
9781496843753
Related ISBNs:
9781496843746, 9781496843739
Publisher:
University Press of Mississippi
Date of Addition:
Copyrighted By:
University Press of Mississippi
Adult content:
No
Language:
English
Has Image Descriptions:
No
Categories:
Nonfiction, Art and Architecture, Social Studies, Music
Submitted By:
Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:
This is a copyrighted book.

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