The Decemberists are an American indie rock band from Portland, Oregon , formed in 2000. The band consists of Colin Meloy (lead vocals, guitar), Chris Funk (guitar, multi-instrumentalist), Jenny Conlee (piano, keyboards, accordion, backing vocals), Nate Query (bass), and John Moen (drums).
130-409: As of 2024, the band has released nine studio albums with their lyrics often focusing on historical incidents and folklore . Audience participation is a part of their live performances, typically during encores. The band stages whimsical reenactments of sea battles and other centuries-old events, typically of regional interest, or acts out songs with members of the crowd. In 2011, the track " Down by
260-463: A street culture outside the purview of adults. This is also ideal where it needs to be collected; as Iona and Peter Opie demonstrated in their pioneering book Children's Games in Street and Playground . Here the social group of children is studied on its own terms, not as a derivative of adult social groups. It is shown that the culture of children is quite distinctive; it is generally unnoticed by
390-645: A European tour which included dates in Ireland, the UK, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. A North American tour began on March 21, 2015, in the band's hometown of Portland, Oregon. On October 9, 2015, The Decemberists released a five-track EP compiled from leftover tracks recorded during the What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World sessions entitled florasongs . A collaborative album titled The Queen of Hearts with UK folk artist Olivia Chaney
520-481: A Terrible World, What a Beautiful World , was released. To commemorate both the release of the new album and the Decemberists' success as a whole, January 20 was officially declared "Decemberists Day" in the group's hometown of Portland, Oregon , by mayor Charlie Hales . In support of the album, The Decemberists made late-night appearances on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and Conan , and on February 11, embarked on
650-432: A binary: one individual or group who actively transmits information in some form to another individual or group. Each of these is a defined role in the folklore process. The tradition-bearer is the individual who actively passes along the knowledge of an artifact; this can be either a mother singing a lullaby to her baby, or an Irish dance troupe performing at a local festival. They are named individuals, usually well known in
780-408: A child's birthday party, including verbal lore ( Happy Birthday song ), material lore (presents and a birthday cake), special games ( Musical chairs ) and individual customs (making a wish as you blow out the candles). Each of these is a folklore artifact in its own right, potentially worthy of investigation and cultural analysis. Together they combine to build the custom of a birthday party celebration,
910-489: A community. Many objects of material folklore are challenging to classify, difficult to archive, and unwieldy to store. The assigned task of museums is to preserve and make use of these bulky artifacts of material culture. To this end, the concept of the living museum has developed, beginning in Scandinavia at the end of the 19th century. These open-air museums not only display the artifacts, but also teach visitors how
1040-659: A compound of folk and lore , was coined in 1846 by the Englishman William Thoms , who contrived the term as a replacement for the contemporary terminology of "popular antiquities" or "popular literature". The second half of the word, lore , comes from Old English lār 'instruction'. It is the knowledge and traditions of a particular group frequently passed along by word of mouth. The concept of folk has varied over time. When Thoms first created this term, folk applied only to rural, frequently poor, and illiterate peasants. A more modern definition of folk
1170-480: A concert at the ballroom, allegedly for lack of skill. This alleged incident has been played up in marketing literature for the ballroom published by McMenamins . It is known that Little Richard did play the Crystal on that date, and that Hendrix was in his touring band for much of 1965. In addition, the two men did have a rocky relationship, with Hendrix leaving and rejoining the tour several times. However, there
1300-462: A large 20'x20' square opening was cut into the center/middle edge of the main ballroom floor to make additional fire exits in order to sell more tickets for live music events. This is potentially the only hole of its kind in a "floating" dance floor still in existence in the United States. During the early hours of April 14, 2014, the ballroom was evacuated during a show by Schoolboy Q due to
1430-600: A mock feud with the band, claiming his "green screen challenge" came first; the band countered that its 2005 on-stage lightsaber fight in San Francisco preceded Colbert's idea. The feud culminated in a December 20 guitar solo competition on Colbert's show, with lead guitarist Funk representing the band. After Colbert feigned a hand injury, Peter Frampton took over for Colbert and won an audience vote. Show guests got involved, with New York Governor-elect Eliot Spitzer and Dr. Henry Kissinger declaring, "Tonight, I think
SECTION 10
#17327721675371560-424: A new music video was debuted for the track entitled "Calamity Song". The video depicts a game, played on a tennis court by children, of simulated thermonuclear war as described in the "Eschaton" scene of David Foster Wallace 's novel Infinite Jest . Meloy announced during the "Popes of Pendarvia" tour that the group would take a multi-year hiatus once the touring cycle was over. To cap off this period of activity,
1690-672: A possible crack in a support beam. Oregon bands that have played at the Crystal Ballroom include Portland's Everclear in '01, Cherry Poppin Daddies in '02, Portland's The Decemberists in '14, Modest Mouse (originally from Seattle) in '04, The Shins (originally from New Mexico) in '05, and Portugal. The Man (originally from Alaska) in 2017. An urban legend in the Portland area purports that on April 5, 1965, Little Richard fired guitarist Jimi Hendrix onstage during
1820-516: A problem to be solved, but as a tremendous opportunity. In the diversity of American folklife, we find a marketplace teeming with the exchange of traditional forms and cultural ideas, a rich resource for Americans". This diversity is celebrated annually at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival and many other folklife fests around the country. There are numerous other definitions. According to William Bascom major article on
1950-700: A rally at the Tom McCall Waterfront Park in Portland, Oregon , on May 18, 2008. On October 14, 2008 the band began releasing a series of singles called Always the Bridesmaid ; a volume was released every month until the end of the year. The band also took up a limited tour in support of the singles, including an appearance on Late Night with Conan O'Brien . The Hazards of Love was released on March 24, 2009 on Capitol Records, under Red Light Management (Jason Colton and Ron Laffitte). It
2080-605: A scripted combination of multiple artifacts which have meaning within their social group. Folklorists divide customs into several different categories. A custom can be a seasonal celebration , such as Thanksgiving or New Year's . It can be a life cycle celebration for an individual, such as baptism, birthday or wedding. A custom can also mark a community festival or event; examples of this are Carnival in Cologne or Mardi Gras in New Orleans . This category also includes
2210-509: A shift in purpose and meaning. There are many reasons for continuing to handmake objects for use, for example these skills may be needed to repair manufactured items, or a unique design might be required which is not (or cannot be) found in the stores. Many crafts are considered as simple home maintenance, such as cooking, sewing and carpentry. For many people, handicrafts have also become an enjoyable and satisfying hobby. Handmade objects are often regarded as prestigious, where extra time and thought
2340-665: A show on January 25, 2011 at Beacon Theatre in New York City. The tour, which included engagements throughout the U.S., Canada, and Europe, ended on August 26 at the McMenamins Edgefield in Troutdale, Oregon. During the tour, on May 3, it was announced on The Decemberists' official site that Jenny Conlee had been diagnosed with breast cancer and would miss most of the band's remaining tour dates while receiving treatment and recovering. In support of their bandmate,
2470-426: A small sampling of objects and skills that are included in studies of material culture. Customary culture is remembered enactment, i.e. re-enactment. It is the patterns of expected behavior within a group, the "traditional and expected way of doing things" A custom can be a single gesture , such as thumbs down or a handshake . It can also be a complex interaction of multiple folk customs and artifacts as seen in
2600-450: A social event during the winter months, or the gifting of a quilt to signify the importance of the event. Each of these—the traditional pattern chosen, the social event, and the gifting—occur within the broader context of the community. Even so, when considering context, the structure and characteristics of performance can be recognized, including an audience, a framing event, and the use of decorative figures and symbols, all of which go beyond
2730-432: A solo tour in 2013, Meloy announced that The Decemberists would end their hiatus and begin working on a new album within the next year. The hiatus officially concluded on March 5, 2014, with the announcement of two headlining shows at Portland's Crystal Ballroom, the band's first shows in three years, where they played their debut album, Castaways and Cutouts , in its entirety. On April 24, further establishing their return,
SECTION 20
#17327721675372860-400: A swell in popular interest in folk traditions, these community celebrations are becoming more numerous throughout the western world. While ostensibly parading the diversity of their community, economic groups have discovered that these folk parades and festivals are good for business. All shades of people are out on the streets, eating, drinking and spending. This attracts support not only from
2990-577: A tattoo dedicated, and has made "a sort of pilgrimage" to the site of the cover photograph for The Waterboys ' Fisherman's Blues , an album he “wore out from obsessively repeated listens." The band has also cited their liking for Siouxsie and the Banshees , and the pop tunes of R.E.M. and XTC . The band also draws inspiration from British and Irish folk music. Current members Current touring musicians Former members Former touring musicians Timeline Folklore Folklore
3120-572: A whole, even as it continues to be a point of discussion within the field itself. The term folkloristics , along with the alternative name folklore studies , became widely used in the 1950s to distinguish the academic study of traditional culture from the folklore artifacts themselves. When the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201) was passed by the U.S. Congress in January 1976, to coincide with
3250-492: Is "not idle speculation… Decades of fieldwork have demonstrated conclusively that these groups do have their own folklore." In this modern understanding, folklore is a function of shared identity within any social group. This folklore can include jokes, sayings, and expected behavior in multiple variants, always transmitted in an informal manner. For the most part, it will be learned by observation, imitation, repetition, or correction by other group members. This informal knowledge
3380-457: Is a distinct branch of folklore that deals with activities passed on by children to other children, away from the influence or supervision of an adult. Children's folklore contains artifacts from all the standard folklore genres of verbal, material, and customary lore; it is however the child-to-child conduit that distinguishes these artifacts. For childhood is a social group where children teach, learn and share their own traditions, flourishing in
3510-591: Is a historic building on Burnside Street in Portland, Oregon , United States. Cotillion Hall was built in 1914 as a ballroom, and dance revivals were held there through the Great Depression . Starting in the 1960s, the hall has also been host to many popular pop, rock, folk, blues and jazz artists, as well as beat poetry and other entertainment. What is now known as the Crystal Ballroom was constructed in 1913–1914 and opened in early 1914, as Ringler's Cotillion Hall . Originally owned by Montrose Ringler,
3640-678: Is a social group that includes two or more people with common traits who express their shared identity through distinctive traditions. "Folk is a flexible concept which can refer to a nation as in American folklore or to a single family. " This expanded social definition of folk supports a broader view of the material, i.e., the lore, considered to be folklore artifacts . These now include all "things people make with words (verbal lore), things they make with their hands (material lore), and things they make with their actions (customary lore)". Folklore are no longer considered to be limited to that which
3770-400: Is also transmitted within a group, remains a practical hygiene and health issue and does not rise to the level of a group-defining tradition. Tradition is initially remembered behavior; once it loses its practical purpose, there is no reason for further transmission unless it has been imbued with meaning beyond the initial practicality of the action. This meaning is at the core of folkloristics,
3900-485: Is as close as folklorists can come to observing the transmission and social function of this folk knowledge before the spread of literacy during the 19th century. As we have seen with the other genres, the original collections of children's lore and games in the 19th century was driven by a fear that the culture of childhood would die out. Early folklorists, among them Alice Gomme in Britain and William Wells Newell in
4030-404: Is enmeshed in a multitude of differing identities and their concomitant social groups. The first group that each of us is born into is the family, and each family has its own unique family folklore . As a child grows into an individual, its identities also increase to include age, language, ethnicity, occupation, etc. Each of these cohorts has its own folklore, and as one folklorist points out, this
The Decemberists - Misplaced Pages Continue
4160-541: Is found in an issue of the Journal of American Folklore , published in 1975, which is dedicated exclusively to articles on women's folklore, with approaches that had not come from a man's perspective. Other groups that were highlighted as part of this broadened understanding of the folk group were non-traditional families , occupational groups, and families that pursued the production of folk items over multiple generations. Folklorist Richard Dorson explained in 1976 that
4290-451: Is found in hex signs on Pennsylvania Dutch barns, tin man sculptures made by metalworkers, front yard Christmas displays, decorated school lockers, carved gun stocks, and tattoos. "Words such as naive, self-taught, and individualistic are used to describe these objects, and the exceptional rather than the representative creation is featured." This is in contrast to the understanding of folklore artifacts that are nurtured and passed along within
4420-559: Is intended to organize and categorize the folklore artifacts; they provide common vocabulary and consistent labeling for folklorists to communicate with each other. That said, each artifact is unique; in fact, one of the characteristics of all folklore artifacts is their variation within genres and types. This is in direct contrast to manufactured goods, where the goal in production is to create identical products, and any variations are considered mistakes. It is, however, just this required variation that makes identification and classification of
4550-404: Is no documented evidence that Hendrix played with Little Richard on that particular date, or that Little Richard fired any musicians onstage that day (Hendrix or otherwise). In addition, Hendrix would appear with Little Richard at shows in other cities later that same month, and he had a well-established reputation as a guitarist by that point in his career. The Crystal Ballroom—the third floor of
4680-525: Is not just any conversation, but words and phrases conforming to a traditional configuration recognized by both the speaker and the audience. For narrative types , by definition, they have a consistent structure and follow an existing model in their narrative form. As just one simple example, in English, the phrase "An elephant walks into a bar…" instantaneously flags the following text as a joke . It might be one you have already heard, but it might be one that
4810-416: Is not something one can typically gain from a formal school curriculum or study in the fine arts . Instead, these traditions are passed along informally from one individual to another, either through verbal instruction or demonstration. The academic study of folklore is called folklore studies or folkloristics, and it can be explored at the undergraduate, graduate, and Ph.D. levels. The word folklore ,
4940-411: Is old or obsolete. These folk artifacts continue to be passed along informally, as a rule anonymously, and always in multiple variants. The folk group is not individualistic; it is community-based and nurtures its lore in community. "As new groups emerge, new folklore is created… surfers, motorcyclists, computer programmers ". In direct contrast to high culture , where any single work of a named artist
5070-434: Is protected by copyright law , folklore is a function of shared identity within a common social group. Having identified folk artifacts, the professional folklorist strives to understand the significance of these beliefs, customs, and objects for the group, since these cultural units would not be passed along unless they had some continued relevance within the group. That meaning can, however, shift and morph; for example,
5200-578: Is spent in their creation and their uniqueness is valued. For the folklorist, these hand-crafted objects embody multifaceted relationships in the lives of the craftspeople and the users, a concept that has been lost with mass-produced items that have no connection to an individual craftsperson. Many traditional crafts, such as ironworking and glass-making, have been elevated to the fine or applied arts and taught in art schools; or they have been repurposed as folk art , characterized as objects whose decorative form supersedes their utilitarian needs. Folk art
5330-403: Is still transmitted orally and, indeed, continues to be generated in new forms and variants at an alarming rate. Below is listed a small sampling of types and examples of verbal lore. The genre of material culture includes all artifacts that can be touched, held, lived in, or eaten. They are tangible objects with a physical or mental presence, either intended for permanent use or to be used at
The Decemberists - Misplaced Pages Continue
5460-406: Is the body of expressive culture shared by a particular group of people , culture or subculture . This includes oral traditions such as tales , myths , legends , proverbs , poems , jokes , and other oral traditions. This also includes material culture , such as traditional building styles common to the group. Folklore also encompasses customary lore, taking actions for folk beliefs, and
5590-669: Is the complex balance of continuity over change in both their design and their decoration. In Europe, prior to the Industrial Revolution , everything was made by hand. While some folklorists of the 19th century wanted to secure the oral traditions of the rural folk before the populace became literate, other folklorists sought to identify hand-crafted objects before their production processes were lost to industrial manufacturing. Just as verbal lore continues to be actively created and transmitted in today's culture, so these handicrafts can still be found all around us, with possibly
5720-540: Is used in discussions of material lore. Both formulations offer different perspectives on the same folkloric understanding, specifically that folklore artifacts need to remain embedded in their cultural environment if we are to gain insight into their meaning for the community. The concept of cultural (folklore) performance is shared with ethnography and anthropology among other social sciences. The cultural anthropologist Victor Turner identified four universal characteristics of cultural performance: playfulness, framing ,
5850-428: Is used to confirm and reinforce the identity of the group. It can be used both internally within the group to express their common identity, for example in an initiation ceremony for new members. It can also be used externally to differentiate the group from outsiders, like a folk dance demonstration at a community festival. Significant to folklorists here is that there are two opposing but equally valid ways to use this in
5980-616: The 54th Grammy Awards . The King Is Dead debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in the United States upon its release, the first time a Decemberists album would achieve this. As compared to the band's previous work, which was influenced by the music of the British folk revival , The King Is Dead was more influenced by traditionally American genres including country , blues , and Americana . The Decemberists' "Popes of Pendarvia World Tour" in support of The King Is Dead began with
6110-779: The Bicentennial Celebration , folkloristics in the United States came of age. "…[Folklife] means the traditional expressive culture shared within the various groups in the United States: familial, ethnic, occupational, religious, regional; expressive culture includes a wide range of creative and symbolic forms such as custom, belief, technical skill, language, literature, art, architecture, music, play, dance, drama, ritual, pageantry, handicraft; these expressions are mainly learned orally, by imitation, or in performance, and are generally maintained without benefit of formal instruction or institutional direction." Added to
6240-619: The Halloween celebration of the 21st century is not the All Hallows' Eve of the Middle Ages and even gives rise to its own set of urban legends independent of the historical celebration; the cleansing rituals of Orthodox Judaism were originally good public health in a land with little water, but now these customs signify for some people identification as an Orthodox Jew. By comparison, a common action such as tooth brushing , which
6370-616: The Historic–Geographic Method , a methodology that dominated folkloristics in the first half of the 20th century. When William Thoms first published his appeal to document the verbal lore of the rural populations, it was believed these folk artifacts would die out as the population became literate. Over the past two centuries, this belief has proven to be wrong; folklorists continue to collect verbal lore in both written and spoken form from all social groups. Some variants might have been captured in published collections, but much of it
6500-735: The Millennium Park with the Grant Park Symphony Orchestra. On October 6, 2007, the band announced the cancellation of the remainder of their European tour, citing the ill health of a band member. On November 1, 2007, the band further canceled the remaining 28 shows of their "Long and Short of It" tour. The members of The Decemberists appeared, individually billed (as " Colin Meloy , Chris Funk , Jenny Conlee , Nate Query , and John Moen "), to perform in support of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama at
6630-566: The Smithsonian Folklife Festival celebrated each summer on the Mall in Washington, DC. A fourth category includes customs related to folk beliefs . Walking under a ladder is just one of many symbols considered unlucky . Occupational groups tend to have a rich history of customs related to their life and work, so the traditions of sailors or lumberjacks . The area of ecclesiastical folklore , which includes modes of worship not sanctioned by
SECTION 50
#17327721675376760-484: The 1970s through the mid-1990s, the ballroom was not used for any public events. It became a residence for squatters, artists and bohemians, who used it as studio space, and occasionally private invite-only parties were given. In 1979, the building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Cotillion Hall. In 1997, the ballroom was re-opened by McMenamins , featuring Ringlers bar/restaurant on
6890-500: The American Folklore Society brought the behavioral approach into open debate among folklorists. In 1972 Richard Dorson called out the "young Turks" for their movement toward a behavioral approach to folklore. This approach "shifted the conceptualization of folklore as an extractable item or 'text' to an emphasis on folklore as a kind of human behavior and communication. Conceptualizing folklore as behavior redefined
7020-520: The American people won." The prize for winning the challenge was revealed to be a copy of The Crane Wife . According to Meloy, the Colbert challenge was not scripted, though the band was told that Frampton would step in for Colbert. In July 2007, the band embarked on a five-date tour with a full orchestral accompaniment. On July 7, the tour put the band on the stage of the historic Hollywood Bowl for
7150-645: The Decemberists played in Pittsburgh at the Benedum Center . During the show, the band members performed a skit where they ran up and down the aisles participating in a fictitious battle at Fort Pitt . On September 19, 2009, The Decemberists played a "lottery show", originally billed as a "by request" show, at Terminal 5 in New York City . The setlist was composed of songs drawn from a large bingo turner kept on stage. The master of ceremonies for
7280-561: The History and Folklore Section of the American Folklore Society and concerned with the connections of folklore with history, as well as the history of folklore studies. Lacking context, folklore artifacts would be uninspiring objects without any life of their own. It is only through performance that the artifacts come alive as an active and meaningful component of a social group; the intergroup communication arises in
7410-632: The Hudson". In 2009, The Decemberists also contributed the song "Sleepless" to the AIDS benefit album Dark Was the Night , which was produced by the Red Hot Organization . During their European tour in the winter of 2010, the band performed " The Mariner's Revenge Song " at the conclusion of each date. The audience was encouraged to scream as if they were being consumed by a whale mentioned in
7540-537: The Second World War, folklorists began to articulate a more holistic approach toward their subject matter. In tandem with the growing sophistication in the social sciences , attention was no longer limited to the isolated artifact, but extended to include the artifact embedded in an active cultural environment. One early proponent was Alan Dundes with his essay "Texture, Text and Context", first published 1964. A public presentation in 1967 by Dan Ben-Amos at
7670-766: The Shins , The Dandy Warhols , and other musicians. C.F. Martin & Company offered 6- and 12-string guitars on permanent loan. In early April, police discovered the trailer and a portion of the band's merchandise in Clackamas, Oregon , but the instruments and equipment were not recovered. On December 12, 2005, Meloy revealed to Pitchfork Media that the band had signed to Capitol Records , and planned to begin recording their major label debut with producers Tucker Martine and Chris Walla (of Death Cab for Cutie ) in April 2006. The band's first album on Capitol, The Crane Wife ,
7800-603: The United States, felt a need to capture the unstructured and unsupervised street life and activities of children before it was lost. This fear proved to be unfounded. In a comparison of any modern school playground during recess and the painting of "Children's Games" by Pieter Breugel the Elder we can see that the activity level is similar, and many of the games from the 1560 painting are recognizable and comparable to modern variations still played today. These same artifacts of childlore, in innumerable variations, also continue to serve
7930-558: The Water " from their album The King Is Dead was nominated for Best Rock Song at the 54th Grammy Awards . The Decemberists formed in 2000 when Colin Meloy left his band Tarkio in Montana and moved to Portland, Oregon. There he met Nate Query, who introduced Meloy to Jenny Conlee (they had played together in the band Calobo) and the three scored a silent film together. Playing a solo show prior to meeting Query, Meloy met Chris Funk. Funk
SECTION 60
#17327721675378060-459: The album. The original plan was for The Hazards of Love to be a staged musical. However, it seems that the story was "unstageable" in such a format. Instead the band played the entire album start to finish at each concert on the spring tour. A press release read: "The album began when Meloy – long fascinated by the British folk revival of the 1960s – found a copy of revered vocalist Anne Briggs 's 1966 EP, titled The Hazards of Love . Since there
8190-413: The artifacts and turn them into something else; so Old McDonald's farm is transformed from animal noises to the scatological version of animal poop. This childlore is characterized by "its lack of dependence on literary and fixed form. Children…operate among themselves in a world of informal and oral communication, unimpeded by the necessity of maintaining and transmitting information by written means". This
8320-464: The ballroom fell victim to heavy persecution of jazz and dance and Ringler lost the ballroom in the early 1920s. The ballroom was bought by Dad Watson in the mid-1920s, and largely held square dances during that period. After Watson's death in the 1930s, Ralph Farrier bought the ballroom and renamed it the Crystal Ballroom. He continued in Watson's footsteps, holding square dances through the 1950s. In
8450-558: The band announced the new album I'll Be Your Girl , released on March 16. The album is produced by John Congleton and was accompanied by a tour. On August 14, the band's concert at Prospect Park Bandshell (part of the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn Festival) was broadcast live on WFUV . Along with newer material, the band performed The Crane Wife in its entirety. On December 14 of that year, they released an EP, Traveling On . Pitchfork highlighted that
8580-463: The band announced the release of new song "Burial Ground" and a forthcoming North American tour. On March 19, they released the song "Joan in the Garden" and announced their album would be called As It Ever Was, So It Will Be Again . The group's songs range from upbeat pop to instrumentally lush ballads, and often employ instruments like the accordion , keyboards , and upright bass . In its lyrics,
8710-500: The band designed a 'Team Jenny' charity t-shirt for the Yellow Bird Project to raise money for Planned Parenthood . Conlee would later make a full recovery after her cancer went into remission. Meanwhile, on April 7, 2011, the band released a music video for their song "This Is Why We Fight". Directed by Aaron Stewart-Ahn, the video depicts a band of teenagers living in a bleak, post-apocalyptic society. Disgusted with
8840-499: The band distributed a music video via BitTorrent , the self-produced " 16 Military Wives " (from Picaresque ). In the same month, the band's equipment trailer was stolen; fans contributed to a replacement fund, and another fundraiser was organized via an eBay auction, with buyers bidding for copies of Colin Meloy Sings Morrissey and original artwork by Carson Ellis . The band also received help from Lee Kruger,
8970-518: The band eschews the introspection common to modern rock, instead favoring a storytelling approach, as evidenced in songs such as "My Mother Was a Chinese Trapeze Artist" from the 5 Songs EP and " The Mariner's Revenge Song " on Picaresque . The band's songs convey tales ranging from whimsical ("The Sporting Life", "Apology Song") to epic (" The Tain ") to dark ("Odalisque", "The Rake's Song") to political ("16 Military Wives", " Valerie Plame "), and often invoke historical events and themes from around
9100-453: The band had planned a 2020 tour for their twentieth anniversary; however, it "was bumped to 2021 before being canceled outright". The group celebrated their twentieth anniversary with a series of streamed concerts in April 2021. Their North American tour in August 2022 was titled Arise From The Bunkers . In September 2023, the band began work on their ninth studio album. On February 6, 2024,
9230-504: The band performed on the Season 6 finale of the NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation . Additionally, The Decemberists were the mystery band for the 2014 Boston Calling Music Festival , where they played on Saturday, May 24. On November 3, 2014, "Make You Better", The Decemberists' first single off the new album, was released, and on January 20, 2015, the band's seventh studio album, What
9360-508: The band released the follow-up outtake EP Long Live the King on November 1, 2011, as well as a live album from their tour for The King is Dead titled We All Raise Our Voices to the Air (Live Songs 04.11–08.11) on March 13, 2012. In addition, the band recorded a song for The Hunger Games soundtrack, called "One Engine". The soundtrack, The Hunger Games: Songs from District 12 and Beyond ,
9490-423: The business community, but also from federal and state organizations for these local street parties. Paradoxically, in parading diversity within the community, these events have come to authenticate true community, where business interests ally with the varied (folk) social groups to promote the interests of the community as a whole. This is just a small sampling of types and examples of customary lore. Childlore
9620-565: The community as knowledgeable in their traditional lore. They are not the anonymous "folk", the nameless mass without of history or individuality. The audience of this performance is the other half in the transmission process; they listen, watch, and remember. Few of them will become active tradition-bearers; many more will be passive tradition-bearers who maintain a memory of this specific traditional artifact, in both its presentation and its content. Crystal Ballroom (Portland, Oregon) Crystal Ballroom , originally built as Cotillion Hall ,
9750-457: The complexity of the interpretation, the birthday party for a seven-year-old will not be identical to the birthday party for that same child as a six-year-old, even though they follow the same model. For each artifact embodies a single variant of a performance in a given time and space. The task of the folklorist becomes to identify within this surfeit of variables the constants and the expressed meaning that shimmer through all variations: honoring of
9880-472: The continent is a single example of an ethnic group parading their separateness (differential behavior ), and encouraging Americans of all stripes to show alliance to this colorful ethnic group. These festivals and parades, with a target audience of people who do not belong to the social group, intersect with the interests and mission of public folklorists , who are engaged in the documentation, preservation, and presentation of traditional forms of folklife. With
10010-609: The custom, either as performer or audience, signifies acknowledgment of that social group. Some customary behavior is intended to be performed and understood only within the group itself, so the handkerchief code sometimes used in the gay community or the initiation rituals of the Freemasons. Other customs are designed specifically to represent a social group to outsiders, those who do not belong to this group. The St. Patrick's Day Parade in New York and in other communities across
10140-456: The defining features a challenge. While this classification is essential for the subject area of folkloristics, it remains just labeling and adds little to an understanding of the traditional development and meaning of the artifacts themselves. Necessary as they are, genre classifications are misleading in their oversimplification of the subject area. Folklore artifacts are never self-contained, they do not stand in isolation but are particulars in
10270-527: The developmental function of this childlore, the artifacts themselves have been in play for centuries. Below is listed just a small sampling of types and examples of childlore and games. A case has been made for considering folk history as a distinct sub-category of folklore, an idea that has received attention from such folklorists as Richard Dorson. This field of study is represented in The Folklore Historian , an annual journal sponsored by
10400-540: The early 1960s, due to flagging revenues, new acts were brought in, such as gypsy brass bands and R&B performers, such as James Brown , Marvin Gaye , and Ike & Tina Turner . In 1967, largely psychedelic acts such as the Grateful Dead , Blue Cheer , and The Electric Prunes performed in the ballroom. This was cut short in 1968, due to concerns about what such music was doing to the youth of Portland. From
10530-410: The established church tends to be so large and complex that it is usually treated as a specialized area of folk customs; it requires considerable expertise in standard church ritual in order to adequately interpret folk customs and beliefs that originated in official church practice. Customary folklore is always a performance, be it a single gesture or a complex of scripted customs, and participating in
10660-562: The evening was singer/songwriter John Wesley Harding and the opening act was Laura Veirs and the Hall of Flames. The randomized setlist included "July, July!", "Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)", "The Tain I-V", "Annan Water", "The Crane Wife 3" and "The Island/Come and See/The Landlord's Daughter/You'll Not Feel the Drowning", and an original song, as a bingo ball suggested, called "Miracle on
10790-434: The extensive array of other legislation designed to protect the natural and cultural heritage of the United States, this law also marks a shift in national awareness. It gives voice to a growing understanding that cultural diversity is a national strength and a resource worthy of protection. Paradoxically, it is a unifying feature, not something that separates the citizens of a country. "We no longer view cultural difference as
10920-496: The first classification system for folktales in 1910. This was later expanded into the Aarne–Thompson classification system by Stith Thompson and remains the standard classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. As the number of classified oral artifacts grew, similarities were noted in items that had been collected from very different geographic regions, ethnic groups, and epochs, giving rise to
11050-458: The first floor, the little sister of the historic Crystal Ballroom, Lola's Room , is located on the second floor, and the restored Crystal Ballroom on the third floor. The main ballroom features a mechanical "floating" dance floor , thought at the time of its building to be the only one on the West Coast , and is potentially the only one still in existence in the United States. Following
11180-741: The first leg of the "A Short Fazed Hovel" Tour 2009 starting on May 19 in Los Angeles at the Hollywood Palladium. The newsletter included a complete list of dates for the first leg of the tour ending on June 14 at the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee . On Monday April 27, the band performed a shortened version of "The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid" on The Colbert Report . On August 14, 2009,
11310-918: The first time, pairing them with the Los Angeles Philharmonic . On July 15, the band performed with The Mann Festival Orchestra at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , where they debuted a new song. On July 23 with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra at the legendary Chastain Park Amphitheater in Atlanta, Georgia. The band then played a free concert in Chicago at
11440-402: The forms and rituals of celebrations such as Christmas , weddings, folk dances , and initiation rites . Each one of these, either singly or in combination, is considered a folklore artifact or traditional cultural expression . Just as essential as the form, folklore also encompasses the transmission of these artifacts from one region to another or from one generation to the next. Folklore
11570-411: The generations and subject to the same forces of conservative tradition and individual variation" that are found in all folk artifacts. Folklorists are interested in the physical form, the method of manufacture or construction, the pattern of use, as well as the procurement of the raw materials. The meaning to those who both make and use these objects is important. Of primary significance in these studies
11700-594: The group moved onto the Kill Rock Stars recording label. After the re-release of Castaways , Her Majesty the Decemberists was released in 2003. In 2004, the band released " The Tain ", an eighteen-and-a-half minute single track based on the Irish mythological epic Táin Bó Cúailnge . The band's final album with Kill Rock Stars was Picaresque , which was recorded in a former church. In March 2005,
11830-404: The individual within the circle of family and friends, gifting to express their value and worth to the group, and of course, the festival food and drink as signifiers of the event. The formal definition of verbal lore is words, both written and oral, that are "spoken, sung, voiced forms of traditional utterance that show repetitive patterns." Crucial here are the repetitive patterns. Verbal lore
11960-417: The items were used, with actors reenacting the everyday lives of people from all segments of society, relying heavily on the material artifacts of a pre-industrial society. Many locations even duplicate the processing of the objects, thus creating new objects of an earlier historic time period. Living museums are now found throughout the world as part of a thriving heritage industry . This list represents just
12090-431: The job of folklorists..." Folklore became a verb, an action, something that people do, not just something that they have. It is in the performance and the active context that folklore artifacts get transmitted in informal, direct communication, either verbally or in demonstration. Performance includes all the different modes and manners in which this transmission occurs. Transmission is a communicative process requiring
12220-408: The language of a folklore performance. Material culture requires some moulding to turn it into a performance. Should we consider the performance of the creation of the artifact, as in a quilting party, or the performance of the recipients who use the quilt to cover their marriage bed? Here the language of context works better to describe the quilting of patterns copied from the grandmother, quilting as
12350-451: The lead vocals for the female characters, while My Morning Jacket 's Jim James, Robyn Hitchcock and The Spinanes ' Rebecca Gates appear in supporting roles. The range of sounds reflects the characters' arcs, from the accordion's singsong lilt in "Isn't it a Lovely Night?" to the heavy metal thunder of 'The Queen's Rebuke/The Crossing. ' " On February 9, 2009, the Decemberists announced in a newsletter to fans that they would be embarking on
12480-478: The most part self-explanatory, these categories include physical objects ( material folklore ), common sayings, expressions, stories and songs ( verbal folklore ), and beliefs and ways of doing things ( customary folklore ). There is also a fourth major subgenre defined for children's folklore and games ( childlore ), as the collection and interpretation of this fertile topic is particular to school yards and neighborhood streets. Each of these genres and their subtypes
12610-519: The name is also meant to invoke the "drama and melancholy" of the month of December. 5 Songs , the band's debut extended play , was self-released in 2001. The members at that time played for several hours in a McMenamins hotel the night before to raise the money needed to record in the studio the next day. This originally served as a demo tape and the five songs on it (minus "Apology Song") were recorded in under two hours. After releasing its first full record, Castaways and Cutouts , on Hush Records ,
12740-411: The necessary beat to complex physical rhythms and movements, be it hand-clapping, jump roping, or ball bouncing. Furthermore, many physical games are used to develop strength, coordination and endurance of the players. For some team games, negotiations about the rules can run on longer than the game itself as social skills are rehearsed. Even as we are just now uncovering the neuroscience that undergirds
12870-460: The next meal. Most of these folklore artifacts are single objects that have been created by hand for a specific purpose; however, folk artifacts can also be mass-produced, such as dreidels or Christmas decorations. These items continue to be considered folklore because of their long (pre-industrial) history and their customary use. All of these material objects "existed prior to and continue alongside mechanized industry. … [They are] transmitted across
13000-547: The past that continued to exist within the lower strata of society. The " Kinder- und Hausmärchen " of the Brothers Grimm (first published 1812) is the best known but by no means only collection of verbal folklore of the European peasantry of that time. This interest in stories, sayings, and songs continued throughout the 19th century and aligned the fledgling discipline of folkloristics with literature and mythology. By
13130-531: The performance and this is where transmission of these cultural elements takes place. American folklorist Roger D. Abrahams has described it thus: "Folklore is folklore only when performed. As organized entities of performance, items of folklore have a sense of control inherent in them, a power that can be capitalized upon and enhanced through effective performance." Without transmission, these items are not folklore, they are just individual quirky tales and objects. This understanding in folkloristics only occurred in
13260-559: The period of romantic nationalism in Europe. A particular figure in this development was Johann Gottfried von Herder , whose writings in the 1770s presented oral traditions as organic processes grounded in the locale. After the German states were invaded by Napoleonic France , Herder's approach was adopted by many of his fellow Germans, who systematized the recorded folk traditions and used them in their process of nation building . This process
13390-533: The reopening of the Crystal Ballroom in 1997, McMenamins expanded the nearby Crystal Hotel to reflect the historical significance of the Ballroom's memorable performances. The fifty-one guest rooms at the Crystal Hotel are named after songs or performances from the Crystal Ballroom's last one hundred years. The hotel also offers pre- and post-show concerts in conjunction with the Ballroom. In 2000 or 2001
13520-408: The rural poor as folk. The common feature in this expanded definition of folk was their identification as the underclass of society. Moving forward into the 20th century, in tandem with new thinking in the social sciences , folklorists also revised and expanded their concept of the folk group. By the 1960s, it was understood that social groups , i.e., folk groups, were all around us; each individual
13650-420: The same function of learning and practicing skills needed for growth. So bouncing and swinging rhythms and rhymes encourage development of balance and coordination in infants and children. Verbal rhymes like Peter Piper picked... serve to increase both the oral and aural acuity of children. Songs and chants, accessing a different part of the brain, are used to memorize series ( Alphabet song ). They also provide
13780-410: The second half of the 20th century, when the two terms " folklore performance " and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. These terms are not contradictory or even mutually exclusive. As borrowings from other fields of study, one or the other linguistic formulation is more appropriate to any given discussion. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context
13910-521: The self-representation of a community. Different genres are frequently combined with each other to mark an event. So a birthday celebration might include a song or formulaic way of greeting the birthday child (verbal), presentation of a cake and wrapped presents (material), as well as customs to honor the individual, such as sitting at the head of the table and blowing out the candles with a wish. There might also be special games played at birthday parties, which are not generally played at other times. Adding to
14040-444: The sophisticated world of adults, and quite as little affected by it. Of particular interest to folklorists here is the mode of transmission of these artifacts; this lore circulates exclusively within an informal pre-literate children's network or folk group. It does not include artifacts taught to children by adults. However children can take the taught and teach it further to other children, turning it into childlore. Or they can take
14170-403: The speaker has just thought up within the current context. Another example is the child's song Old MacDonald Had a Farm , where each performance is distinctive in the animals named, their order, and their sounds. Songs such as this are used to express cultural values (farms are important, farmers are old and weather-beaten) and teach children about different domesticated animals. Verbal folklore
14300-412: The study of a group: you can start with an identified group in order to explore its folklore, or you can identify folklore items and use them to identify the social group. Beginning in the 1960s, a further expansion of the concept of folk began to unfold through the study of folklore. Individual researchers identified folk groups that had previously been overlooked and ignored. One notable example of this
14430-405: The study of folklore is "concerned with the study of traditional culture, or the unofficial culture" that is the folk culture, "as opposed to the elite culture, not for the sake of proving a thesis but to learn about the mass of [humanity] overlooked by the conventional disciplines." Individual folklore artifacts are commonly classified as one of three types: material, verbal or customary lore. For
14560-470: The study of folklore. With the increasing theoretical sophistication of the social sciences , it has become evident that folklore is a naturally occurring and necessary component of any social group; it is indeed all around us. Folklore does not have to be old or antiquated; it continues to be created and transmitted, and in any group, it is used to differentiate between "us" and "them." Folklore began to distinguish itself as an autonomous discipline during
14690-420: The topic, there are "four functions to folklore": The folk of the 19th century, the social group identified in the original term "folklore" , was characterized by being rural, illiterate, and poor. They were the peasants living in the countryside, in contrast to the urban populace of the cities. Only toward the end of the century did the urban proletariat (on the coattails of Marxist theory) become included with
14820-478: The totality of their customs and beliefs as folklore. This distinction aligned American folkloristics with cultural anthropology and ethnology , using the same techniques of data collection in their field research. This divided alliance of folkloristics between the humanities in Europe and the social sciences in America offers a wealth of theoretical vantage points and research tools to the field of folkloristics as
14950-547: The track's narrative while the band pretended to die on stage. The Decemberists remained off tour as they embarked on a new studio album. On September 4, 2010, the band opened for Neko Case and the headliner, Bob Dylan , the first day of the Bumbershoot Arts and Music Festival in Seattle, WA. There, they announced that they were wrapping up recording of a new album and debuted three of its tracks. The King Is Dead
15080-408: The turn of the 20th century, the number and sophistication of folklore studies and folklorists had grown both in Europe and North America. Whereas European folklorists remained focused on the oral folklore of the homogenous peasant populations in their regions, the American folklorists, led by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict , chose to consider Native American cultures in their research, and included
15210-490: The tyrannical rule of their "king", one boy and one girl lead a splinter group away from the camp. Outraged, the king and his forces attack, but the video cuts to black before any resolution can be seen. In August, an eight-song set was released on iTunes featuring six previously released tracks and two new covers: Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye" and the Fruit Bats' "When U Love Somebody". Later that month,
15340-432: The use of symbolic language, and employing the subjunctive mood . In viewing the performance, the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, or "what if?" It is self-evident that this fits well with all types of verbal lore, where reality has no place among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into
15470-688: The utility of the object. Before the Second World War , folk artifacts had been understood and collected as cultural shards of an earlier time. They were considered individual vestigial artifacts, with little or no function in the contemporary culture. Given this understanding, the goal of the folklorist was to capture and document them before they disappeared. They were collected with no supporting data, bound in books, archived and classified more or less successfully. The Historic–Geographic Method worked to isolate and track these collected artifacts, mostly verbal lore, across space and time. Following
15600-442: The world ("Yankee Bayonet", "Shankill Butchers"). Their musical style has been described as indie rock , baroque pop , indie pop , indie folk , alternative rock , folk rock , and orchestral pop . The band's 2009 release, The Hazards of Love , supplemented their usual folk and alternative style with progressive rock and metal . Meloy confessed a "slavish love" for Morrissey , one of his principal influences, to whom he has
15730-549: Was a fan of Tarkio and played pedal steel on the first two Decemberists releases, not "officially" becoming a member until the third effort. The band's first drummer, Ezra Holbrook, was replaced by Rachel Blumberg after Castaways and Cutouts , who in turn was replaced by John Moen after Picaresque . The band's name refers to the Decembrist revolt , an 1825 insurrection in Imperial Russia . Meloy has stated that
15860-437: Was enthusiastically embraced by smaller nations, like Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, which were seeking political independence from their dominant neighbors. Folklore, as a field of study, further developed among 19th-century European scholars, who were contrasting tradition with the newly developing modernity . Its focus was the oral folklore of the rural peasant populations, which were considered as residues and survivals of
15990-427: Was made available for download on iTunes one week earlier, on March 17, 2009. The track "The Rake's Song" was put up for download on The Decemberists website in advance of the album's release. During Meloy's 2008 U.S. tour, he played several new songs that were included on the album. The album was produced by Tucker Martine. In a post on Rolling Stone ' s "Rock 'n' Roll Daily" blog, the band revealed more details about
16120-471: Was no actual song with the album's title, he set out to write one, but was soon immersed in something much larger. The Hazards of Love tells the tale of a woman named Margaret; her shape-shifting lover, William; his fey forest queen mother; and a cold-blooded, lascivious rake , who recounts with spine-chilling ease how he came "to be living so easy and free" in "The Rake's Song". Lavender Diamond 's Becky Stark and My Brightest Diamond 's Shara Nova deliver
16250-466: Was released on January 14, 2011, with Peter Buck of R.E.M. contributing instrumentation to three of its songs. Colin Meloy later affirmed that R.E.M. had been an inspiration during the writing and recording of some of the album's material. "Down by the Water", a track from the new album, was released via the band's official site on November 2, and was immediately available on iTunes as a free download. The song would later be nominated for Best Rock Song at
16380-435: Was released on March 20, 2012. While on hiatus, the group's only activity as The Decemberists was a cameo appearance on the 7th episode in the 24th season of The Simpsons , in which the band was rendered in the show's traditional style of animation and presented as the hip, new music teachers of Springfield Elementary. As well, the episode's theme music was performed with the signature folk flair of The Decemberists. During
16510-492: Was released on October 3, 2006. The release was accompanied by an appearance the same day on Late Night with Conan O'Brien , during which the band performed "O Valencia!". The supporting tour (called "The Rout of the Patagons Tour") began on October 17, 2006, at Portland, Oregon's Crystal Ballroom . The opening act was Lavender Diamond . Later in the tour, Alasdair Roberts opened for the band. In 2006, The Crane Wife
16640-410: Was released under the name Offa Rex on Nonesuch Records on July 14, 2017. The album is composed mainly of versions of traditional and British folk revival songs from the 1970s. U.S. tour dates were announced for July and August 2017. In late 2017, the band contributed "Ben Franklin's Song", with lyrics by Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda , to Miranda's monthly "Hamildrops". On January 17, 2018,
16770-513: Was the original folklore , the artifacts defined by William Thoms as older, oral cultural traditions of the rural populace. In his 1846 published call for help in documenting antiquities, Thoms was echoing scholars from across the European continent to collect artifacts of verbal lore. By the beginning of the 20th century, these collections had grown to include artifacts from around the world and across several centuries. A system to organize and categorize them became necessary. Antti Aarne published
16900-468: Was voted NPR listeners' favorite album of the year, as announced on the December 5 episode of All Songs Considered , and it remains one of the Decemberists' most critically acclaimed records. In November 2006, the band encouraged fans to create a music video for the single " O Valencia! " using footage of the band in front of a green screen. On his Comedy Central program , Stephen Colbert started
#536463