Each and every region on the planet has its own traditions and customs; basically, in the other words – its own culture. There is no doubt that all of these aspects or elements of culture are based on the geographical area of the aboriginal people’s living. Nature plays the prominent role in the humanity’s life. Folklore is that specific type of literature, which people are passing from generation to generation through songs, visual art, tales, legends, ghost stories, etc. According to this, there are a number of scientists and researchers all over the world, who are highly interested in the folklore not only of their own land, but in the folklore of other communities all around the world, dedicating it their works. One of such great folklorists, who is considered as one of the most productive researcher - Marius Barbeau, Canadian folklorist.
However, before discussing this topic deeper, it is important to define, what the folklore is itself. According to the American Folklore Society, the folklore is:
“the traditional art, literature, knowledge, and practice that is disseminated largely through oral communication and behavioral example.”
Every group of people has its own identity and is sharing their heart of this identity: the folklore tradition, which consists of such categories that reflect to the people’s spheres of life, as: what people believe in – the family, the nature, etc.; do – dance, music, clothing; know – their knowledge of how to do some particular things in life; make – art, architecture, crafting; say – songs, stories about themselves, etc. All of these categories are the basis for the folklore, as they are finding their reflection in it.
Also, there is another approach to the understanding of what art is, based on the categorical structure, which relates to the number of different definitions of folklore. According to Barbro Klein, the folklore has four basic meanings. First of all, the folklore designates oral narration, rituals, crafts, and other forms of vernacular expressive culture. Second of all, the folklore or the “folkloristics” stands for the academic discipline dedicated to the study of this particular kind of the non-written literature. Third of all, under any approaches of understanding, folklore is that special element, which combines in it the colors of the folklore – its types - to the music, tourist and fashion industries. Fourth of all, as the myth, folklore can mean falsehood.
Basing on these and other approaches to the understanding of folklore, folklorists are holding their researching on the folklore. Day-to-day, they are exploring and discovering new elements of folklore, presenting them to the publicity. One of such folklorists was Marius Barbeau.
Marius Barbeau was born in Ste-Marie-de-Beauce, Quebec, Canada on the March 5, 1883. Why this personality is one of the most important personalities, in terms of the folklore studies? His name is related to the pioneering and founding of traditional Canadian folklore and music studies. He was one of the most productive researchers, as his bibliography includes over 1,000 publications and other works; however, there is no exact number of his real works. The area of his interests was broad: from the republished oral traditions of First Nations and French-Canadian people, to scholarly monographs, touristic picture books and a novel. There is no doubt that his bibliographical wealth has marked the beginning of the further researches on this particular topic.
Marius Barbeau came to this world in the family of musicians: mother – a professional piano player and his father was a singer. Generally speaking, he was born in an average middle class family. Before going to college, he was getting educated by his mother and school, sometime later he left the home in order to attend the classical college, after what to attend Laval University in Quebec City. On his early stages of the life, he wanted to become a priest or a lawyer, however, the life has made its own changes and Marius Barbeau found himself in the anthropology – a field of studies, which has just emerged during the late XIX century. This change of mind has been caused by his winning of the Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford. Being a highly intellectual person, Marius Barbeau has also been studying in the Sorbonne, where he was directed by one eminent French expert in the sociology Marcel Mauss. In the 1910 he has got a position on the Anthropology Division of the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC). He also worked in the National Museum till his retirement. During the conference in the Washington, Franz Boaz suggested Marius Barbeau to work on the folklore of the French Canadian community. That is how in the 1913 Marius Barbeau started to collect examples of the French folklore.
Barbeau knew that if the folklorist wanted to spread his knowledge among the publicity, the one must direct his or her publications on the average reader. That is why, Marius Barbeau’s works and publications were mostly directed onto the reaching the audience, which does not have a special education within this field of studies.
Such direction of his work was born after he has given his first public interview in the United States, dates from the 1916. Exactly this event has led to the fact that he became increasingly involved with, and interested in reaching, a wide range of the public audience. In order to find and reach his audience, apart from the range of the professional anthropologists, Marius Barbeau was cooperating with a number of different artists, writers, musicians, and cultural industries, in order to diffuse the work of professional anthropology into the modern Canadian culture.
So, in the 1916 he began to work on the traditional folklore of Native people, the Huron Indians in specific. While being on these journeys, Marius Barbeau was taking photos, in order to have a confirmation to what he was going to speak about in his publications. By the 1946, he has recorded a staggering 8,000 traditional songs. This fact has turned him into one of the first Canadian ethnographers, who collected that amount of traditional folk songs throughout Quebec.
Working in the sphere of the folklore, he has travelled all over Canada. As he was holding this research, he was mapped the traditions, legends, art, and social organization of the Native cultures in the Western and Prairie regions. Marius Barbeau stated that if we want to create a great music, first of all, we need to have some basic material, which we may use as a fundament for the further production process. In the Canadian folk music those are Indian or French-Canadian or Scottish or Irish. Under his understanding, these kinds of the folk music must be taken to the consideration and used by these composers. On his mind, if the creators of the music don’t do that, they miss the boat. He also brings us an example from the history of music, stating that all the dignified composers were using the music they knew in their own churches, in plain chants, in Gregorian chants. Marius Barbeau names Vivaldi as the one, who started this so-called “musical movement”. All composers after Vivaldi based their compositions on their own native music and the knowledge they had, concerning it.
Being a high connoisseur of the music of indigenous people, sooner he has gained his recognition among the number of people. As a glorified leading expert in the field of the traditional folklore and folk music, Barbeau’s work won the recognition on the international level. Three times he was a winner of Quebec’s prestigious Prix David. Also, Barbeau was the recipient of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Montreal and Oxford, and that is not the end of the list. Finally, he has become a Companion of the Order of Canada and was awarded with the Order of Canada.
As it was mentioned before, Marius Barbeau’s aim was to direct his works onto the non- -specialist audience. Consequently, it is important to mention that Barbeau’s primary interest was in the usage of the oral traditions of the northern British Columbia as the basis for an “epic” narrative that represented aboriginal cultural dynamics to a bigger number of people. This kind of interest was also present in the publishing of series of the traditional French-Canadian music. Both of his projects, mentioned above, eventually, came to be published. However, a new project has appeared as a consequence of Barbeau’s cooperation with the general editor Hugh Eayrs. The essence of the project was in the following: Marius Barbeau wanted to link the anthropology and the folklore to the newly emerging tourist economy of twentieth-century Canada through his new publications. Despite the fact that Hugh Eayrs liked Barbeau’s idea, he had some doubts about their lucrativeness. Nevertheless, after some time of not significant difficulties, the Canadian Pacific Railways (CPR) and the Canadian Steamship Lines (CSL) supported Macmillan’s publication of Barbeau’s work. The question appears: why did they agree? The reason is in the following: company executives were looking for popular publications, as they wanted to increase tourists’ interest in resort hotels. In this case, works of Marius Barbeau turned out to be helpful as never.
As a consequence of this logical chain of events, two books have seen the world: “The Kingdom of Saguenay”, which was supported by the Canadian Steamship Lines and “Indian Days in the Canadian Rockies”, which was supported by the Canadian Pacific Railways. This result of the business collaboration has influenced the way Barbeau was writing. Moreover, it has changed it noticeably. The book “Indian Days in the Canadian Rockies” had to be revised by its author, because its text has to reflect more the character of the local geography. As the scholar critics stated, such controversies were suitable for publications directed on the audience that is more proficient in this field of studies, but the main idea of his publication, on their mind, was to awake higher interest in the Indians. The more significant changes were made, concerning the book “The Kingdom of Saguenay”. First of all, the initial title was different,: it was named “In the Heart of the Laurentians”. Second of all, fundamental changes were made in terms of the author’s tone and his intentions. Instead of publishing the scholarly monograph or the compilation of the original texts, Marius Barbeau constructed his works that would prove to be attractive to the average travelers, and maybe even convince them to travel to Banff or have their vacations at the Manoir Richelieu in Quebec. In order to add more exotic sense to his publications, to make them magical and unusual, Marius Barbeau has transmitted scholarly pursuits to the wider reading range of the publicity. Generally speaking, Barbeau rose to public prominence in the 1920s, which made him to be the most recognized anthropologist in Canada until after World War II.
It is worth noticing that Marius Barbeau was trying to reach the audience not only through his publications. In the 1920’s, together with the members of the Group of Seven - the Algonquin School of Canadian painters – he organized the Canadian Folk Song and Handicraft Festivals. He also organized one of the most significant exhibitions in Canadian art history - Canadian West Coast Art: Native and Modern in the 1927.
Of course, such activity of the scholar could have met some critique and it, eventually, did. As Marius Barbeau later remarked, indeed, his wide-ranging public activities caused some degree of friction between himself and colleagues. They were holding such position that Barbeau’s fascination with public culture and his close connection with the arts detracted from his status as a scientist.
Nevertheless, Barbeau continued working as an ethnologist and anthropologist at the National Museum of Man until his retirement in the 1948. However, he did not give up on researching. Till his death in 1964, Marius Barbeau continued to explore traditional customs and folklore. As it was mentioned before, in the total his writings are in the number of more than 1,000 books and articles. He left after himself 40 linear feet of manuscripts and more than 100 linear feet of research notes. Nowadays, we may also be grateful to Marius Barbeau for his research collection of photographs, detailed geographical data, documentation of legends and mythologies, sketches, musical transcriptions and linguistic data researches.
Apart from his fundamental works, it is important to mention that he strongly disliked the modern culture. Marius Barbeau was associating it with the destruction of traditions and assimilation, claiming that French Canadians are rapidly drifting away from their past and this process of assimilation is swift. The arts from the past centuries, crafts, folk tales are al1 vanishing almost too fast for the folklorists to record and keep them. As he also stated, the French Canadians of his time all preferred Coca-Cola the juke box and ornamental but style-less architecture.
How do we honor the memory of such great and unmistakably majestic personality? In the 1983 was the opening of the Salon Marius Barbeau at the Canadian Museum of Civilization as a permanent commemoration of Marius Barbeau. Nowadays, the researcher is known as “Canada’s best known folklorist and anthropologist”. He is the best figure, who has exemplified the development of modern anthropology for many Canadians.
Talking about his most famous works, it is important to mention the following ones: “The Kingdom of Saguenay”, “Indian Days in the Canadian Rockies” and the “Totem Poles”, published in the 1950. Exactly this work - the “Totem Poles” – is now considered as the best-selling text ever published by the National Museum.
As a conclusion, it is important to mention that the figure of the great Canadian ethnographer and folklorist Marius Barbeau indeed is unmistakably magnificent. He is the most productive researcher, who left a remarkable and fundamental intellectual heritage for the future researchers, who would show their interest in the field of the Canadian folklore. His significant feature is that he wanted to establish connection with the public and he reached his aim. He is the one, who has brought Canadian ethnology and anthropology to the brand new, international level.
Works cited:
"Marius Barbeau - Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame." Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame. Accessed April 04, 2016. http://www.cshf.ca/songwriter/marius-barbeau.
Klein, Barbro. "Folklore." International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences 8 (2015): 5711-715.
Nurse, Andrew. "Marius Barbeau and the History of Anthropological and Folklore Publishing." Historical Perspectives on Canadian Publishing. Accessed April 04, 2016. http://hpcanpub.mcmaster.ca/case-study/marius-barbeau-and-history-anthropological-and-folklore-publishing.
Nurse, Andrew. Tradition and Modernity the Cultural Work of Marius Barbeau. Ottawa: National Library of Canada = Bibliothèque Nationale Du Canada, 1998
"What Is Folklore?" What Is Folklore? Accessed April 04, 2016. http://www.afsnet.org/?WhatIsFolklore.
