The title of The Souls of Black Folk and the content of the selected chapters that were discussed in section can be used to demonstrate an example of how folk is defined. Both the chapter “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” explicates the experience of an African American in a post-civil war United States and how that affected the psychological and cultural developments of their “folk.” The word folk as used in the title of the monograph is to extend the experience of individuals to the experience of the community. The “Sorrow Songs” chapter further explores this definition of “folk” through the handed down songs from slavery that have evolved since then and become a valuable aspect of black “folk.” This usage of folk is similar to Laban’s definition of German volk as it deals with the collective cultural expression deriving from individual experiences.
Extra
Volk is a German noun that translates to “people.” In Movement Choirs and the Nazi Olympics, Marie C. Percy uses Rudolf von Laban and the Nazi’s to develop two different understandings of volk as “people.” Laban believed volk should be “expressive of the inner workings of individuals in relationship to their cultural history, their land, and their community” (p.782). Laban’s perspective on volk was founded on individualism to strengthen the whole. By valuing and acknowledging every person, a collective identity can emerge “in a cultural context” (p.782). The Nazi’s on the other hand took the word volk and changed its meaning into one that “encompassed anti-Semitism, racial adoration, and a political unification of the German people” (p.782). The erasure of the individual is vital for their conception of volk that furthers “pure political power” (p.782) to be possible. Conformity is required of each person to remove any threats to the collective identity of German volk.
Works Cited
Du Bois, William Edward Burghardt. The Souls of Black Folk . A. C. McClurg et Co, 1903.
Percy, Marie C. “Movement Choirs and the Nazi Olympics.” The Oxford Handbook of Dance and Theater, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 2015, pp. 775–793.
