Folk Matters
PFS slates ‘ultimate song-a-long show’
The Portland FolkMusic Society is a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting folk music and arts in the greater Portland area. The mission of the organization is to preserve, present and promote folk music and arts.
Tony Saletan
This is the 14th season for the PFS concerts. This month, PFS presents the "ultimate sing-along show" with one of America's major folk music icons: Joe Hickerson along with Tony Saletan.
The show is on Friday, March 20 at 7:30 p.m. at Carvlin Hall, located at 1636 S.E. Hickory St., just north of S.E. Division at 16th, near the New Seasons Market.
Joe Hickerson returns to Portland for a night of whole-hearted hootenanny fun. He has spent his entire career involved in folk music. For over 50 years, Hickerson has performed at concerts, festivals, coffeehouses, folk club societies and radio programs (including A Prairie Home Companion in 1976.) He is referred to as the "folksinger's folksinger." Pete Seeger has called him "a great songleader." His wide-ranging repertoire of English-language songs and ballads includes occupational and labor songs, children's songs, humorous songs and parodies, Irish-American songs, sea songs, religious songs and chorus songs; which he sings with guitar and unaccompanied. Although not known as a songwriter, Hickerson is the author of the fourth and fifth verses of Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
Raised in New Haven, CT, in a family where folksong books and recordings were a part of everyday enjoyment, Hickerson's active interest in folk music began in earnest at Oberlin College (1953-57), where he helped found and was first president of the Oberlin Folk Song Club. His vocal group The Folksmiths was the first group to record the classic, Kum Ba Yah for Folkways Records in 1958. He then studied folklore and ethnomusicology at Indiana University, where he served as folklore archivist and first president of the Indiana University Folk Song Club, hosting folk music radio and television shows at Oberlin and IU and representing several folk music record companies.
In 1963, Hickerson was appointed librarian and, in 1974, head of the Archive of Folk Song (later called the Archive of Folk Culture) at the Library of Congress. While there, he directed over 350 interns and compiled and edited numerous reference and finding aids. He retired from the library in 1998 after 35 years of service. One of the founding members of the Folklore Society of Greater Washington (1964), Hickerson has been its president, program chair and book review editor. He has also served as bibliographer and secretary of the Society for Ethnomusicology, chair of the Committee on Archiving of the American Folklore Society and on the advisory boards of Sing Out!, where he is currently compiler of The Songfinder column. He was presented with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 1999 New Jersey Folk Festival, the Excellence in the Traditional Arts Award at the 2005 Common Ground on the Hill American Music & Arts Festival and an honorary membership in the Society for Ethnomusicology in 2005.
Hickerson frequently lectures on such topics as My 50+ Years with Folk Music, Treasures from the National Folk Archive, The History of Folksong Collecting and Archiving in the U.S., The Folksong Revival, Women Folksong Collectors, Folksongs of Washington, D.C., and African American Folk Music. Hickerson is also known for research projects, including song and copyright searches (recent jobs have included O Brother Where Art Thou, Cold Mountain and CDs by Ralph Stanley, Ollabelle, Peggy Seeger and Tony Saletan).
Tony Saletan is a folk singer, musician, dance caller and educator, living in Lexington, Mass. He was a pioneer in public television hosting eight programs and series on WGBH since 1955. He and Peggy Seeger taught Joe Hickerson the version of Kum Ba Yah, from a book of Angolan songs. Saletan was known as a television teacher for The Song Bag, holds an A. B. from Harvard College and an A. M. T. in music education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. He served as a music consultant to the Harvard Preschool and the Newton, Mass. Public Schools and as a music instructor at Eliot-Pearson School at Tufts University. Saletan created the popular Let's All Sing and is also well-known as a folk singer in concert and has recorded LP albums for Folk Legacy, Prestige International, National Geographic Society and Western Instructional Television.
Admission for the show is $10 for PFS members, $12 General Admission, $5 ages 12-18. Kids under 12 years of age are free. There are no advance sales, just tickets at the door. There is no smoking and no alcohol, but there are food and beverages available and it is a relaxed and enjoyable spot to bring the family or meet friends--or make new friends who love folk music!
Membership in the Portland FolkMusic Society offers a variety of experiences. Details can be found at the PFS website ( www.portlandfolkmusic.org), a fascinating site that will help amateur and professionals interested in Portland's diverse Folk scene see what is going on every week of the year.