Folk arts

It is these cultural artifacts, both tangible and intangible, that become the purview of the folklorist and cultural historian. They seek to understand the significance of these cultural forms within the community by studying their creation, transmission and performance, through which the values and structure of the community are expressed. It then becomes important to document these traditional acts and their meaning. Both community members and outsiders need to be educated as to the importance of these traditional objects and actions within the life of the community. And finally, the celebration of these arts needs to become an active demonstration and statement for the members of this community.

Performance folk arts

In addition to tangible folk art objects, there is a second broad category of performance folk art which includes intangible arts forms such as folk music and folk song, folk dance and various kinds of narrative structures. This category is part of the performing arts. These intangible folk art forms only became grouped as such in the second half of the 20th century, when the two terms "folklore performance" and "text and context" dominated discussions among folklorists. Performance is frequently tied to verbal and customary lore, whereas context 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. These are playfulness, framing, using symbolic language and employing the subjunctive mood. In performance the audience leaves the daily reality to move into a mode of make-believe, "what if". That this fits well with all types of verbal lore, music, and movement, where reality finds little footing among the symbols, fantasies, and nonsense of traditional tales, proverbs, and jokes is self-evident. Customs and the lore of children and games also fit easily into the language of a folklore performance.

• Children's folklore
• Game studies
• Folk dance
• Folk music
• Folk song
• Game studies