Camp Woodland was part
of the explosion of interest in the 1930s and 1940s in New York State
and the country concerning our democratic heritage and ideals and the search
for an American identity.
A summer camp that sought to help children understand the democratic
roots of their country by exposing them to the traditions and tradition
bearers of the Catskills, the camp grew out of New Deal programs that
provided work for artists. Under the direction of Norman Studer, with
the help of Herbert Haufrecht and Norman Cazden, youngsters collected
folk songs and stories, learned traditional crafts, and documented the
disappearing traditions of the region’s people. The camp’s integrated
population and celebration of local tradition bearers seemed subversive
to some, however, and with its director under pressure, it closed in
1962. But its legacy lives on in the former campers who were inspired
to make their life’s work in folklore. (New York Folklore Society)
The below text are excerpts from "Camp
Woodland: Progressive Education and Folklore in the Catskill Mountains
of New York" published in Voices, Vol. 28, Spring-Summer, 2002. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. http://www.nyfolklore.org
...Besides the usual summer camp activities, such
as sports, swimming, hiking, arts and crafts, and singing around the
campfire, Norman Studer also instituted a hands-on folklore approach.
Field trips to meet tradition bearers throughout the region was an
important component of the camp experience, and in later years, after
relationships had been formed, local residents would come to the camp
and demonstrate traditional skills in logging, bark stripping,
blacksmithing, hoop-shaving, shingle splitting, square dance calling,
and others. They would recount to Studer and the children the stories
of their lives, the tall tales and songs from the region.
Musician and square dancer caller George Van Kleeck at the Catskill Folk Festival, c. 1941. |
... As music director, Herbert Haufrecht helped
initiate serious folk song collecting at the camp in 1941, and this
work was taken up a few yars later by his successor, Norman Cazden, who
maintained a long friendship and collaboration with Haufrecht ... The
result was a collection of 178 songs, which later became the monumental
two-volume Folk Songs of the Catskills.
...Camp Woodland’s musical traditions included a weekly square dance
called by Catskill resident George Van Kleek, who was always
accompanied by his wife Clara, and sometimes the youngsters themselves.
Singing and performances of plays based on folk themes were regular
events. Both Haufrecht and Cazden were known for composing musical
works based on folk themes and local history, and these were performed
by campers for local audiences.
|
... By far the most important event at the camp was the
annual Catskill Folk Festival. Held in August, it brought square dance
callers, storytellers, dancers, artisans, and musicians from the region
together with campers and visitors to celebrate the heritage of the
Catskills . . . As the introduction to Folk Songs of the Catskills
states: "These annual festivals became very important events to their
local participants. Through their contributions, they gained dignity
through renewing and reconstructing their own neglected and almost
forgotten past. . . . Thus the festivals reaffirmed and reasserted the
creative potential of do-it-yourself culture, and they helped
re-establish that creativity as a viable mode within young people."
(Cazden et al. 1982: 5).
NORMAN STUDER
Norman Studer (1902-1978),
educator, folk enthusiast, poet, and humanist, was the founder and, for all of
its twenty-four years, educational director of Camp Woodland.
Inspired by the ideals of progressive education, the camp was unique for
introducing young people to local Catskill culture through folklore and for its
integration of African-American youngsters. Born on a farm in Ohio, Studer came east as a young man
spurred by his desire for knowledge and curiosity about varied cultures. At Columbia University, he studied with educational
philosopher John Dewey. In 1933, he became a teacher at the "Little Red
Schoolhouse" in Manhattan and went on to
become director of the Downtown
Community School.
Norman Studer’s philosophy of education and humanitarian values made an
indelible imprint on countless educators, students, and campers.
Studer was the author of many articles on the tradition bearers of the Catskills,
which he researched with Herbert Haufrecht, Norman Cazden, and scores of
counselors and young campers from 1939 to 1962. Some of Studer’s articles
appeared in the New York Folklore Quarterly, and some later reappeared
in the book I Walk the Road Again: Great Stories from the Catskill Region,
edited by Janis Benincasa and published by Purple Mountain Press. He was a
coauthor of Folk Songs of the Catskills. He also wrote A Catskill
Woodsman: Mike Todd’s Story, and a narrative poem about Mike Todd called All
My Homespun Days, which was released by Smithsonian Folkways Records.
 |
NORMAN CAZDEN
Norman Cazden was born
September 23, 1914, to Russian immigrants. He went to Julliard and City College
in New York City
before arriving at Harvard in 1944. During his Julliard years, Cazden was
active in the intellectual life of the city—playing for Blitzstein shows,
composing for modern dance companies, and writing serious compositions,
including a symphony. After studying musicology with Charles Seeger and
becoming friends with Herbert Haufrecht and Aaron Copland, he came eventually
to the study of folk song. Along with Haufrecht and Copeland, Cazden composed
significant works based on folk themes.
He was introduced to Camp
Woodland around 1941 by
its musical director, Herbert Haufrecht, whom Cazden succeeded in that position
in 1945. He remained as musical director until 1960, and with camp director
Norman Studer and Herbert Haufrecht collected the material for Folk Songs of
the Catskills.
While at Harvard, he studied composition and wrote his Ph.D. dissertation on
whether musical preferences are innate and universal or culturally based. He
taught at Vassar, Peabody Conservatory, and the University
of Michigan before taking a position
at the University
of Illinois in 1950. In
1953 he was denied a chance at tenure because of FBI investigations for the
House Un-American Activities Committee, and he was fired from his job at the
university. He testified in Washington,
was blacklisted, and was denied academic positions for the next sixteen years.
He taught piano privately during these years and worked on folk song analysis.
The Cazden family’s last summer at Camp
Woodland was in 1960, and in 1961 they
moved to Lexington, Massachusetts,
while Norman’s
wife Courtney went back to school and subsequently took a teaching position. In
1969, Norman and Courtney parted ways, and he took a position at the University of Maine. Besides Folk Songs of the
Catskills, his works include Dances from Woodland, The Abelard Folksong Book, Three
Catskill Ballads for Orchestra, A Book of Nonsense Songs, American Folk Songs
for Children, and A Catskill Songbook.
HERBERT HAUFRECHT
Herbert Haufrecht was born in New York City on November
3, 1909. He began his musical studies with his mother Dora in 1916 and
continued at the Institute of Music in Cleveland.
In 1930 he received a fellowship in composition at the Julliard Graduate
School. While working as
field representative of the Resettlement Administration for the Department of
Agriculture in West Virginia,
he was exposed to traditional music and began a lifetime of folk song
collecting. He published Folk Songs in Settings by Master Composers and
coauthored the two-volume Folk Songs of the Catskills, published in
1982. Through his lifetime, Haufrecht was a staff composer for the Federal Theater
Project of the Works Progress Admin-istration and wrote the scores for many
musical plays, including We’ve Come from the City, Boney Quillin, and The
Story of Ferdinand the Bull. He worked as a musician with Burl Ives, The
Weavers, Pete Seeger, and Judy Collins, for whom he wrote the Judy Collins
Songbook in 1969. From 1941 to 1945, he was music director at Camp Woodland,
where he began his long collaboration with Camp Director Norman Studer and
musicologist Norman Cazden.
After World War II, Haufrecht was an editor and arranger for Mills Music,
Associated Music Publishers, Ricordi Publishers, and others. He was the
National Music Director of Young Audiences, Inc., which brought innovative
music programming into the schools of New
York City. He also composed many significant pieces of
music, including Symphony for Brass and Tympani, Suite for String Orchestra,
Blues and Fugue for Viola and Piano, Etudes in Blues for Piano, a one-act
opera A Pot of Broth, and numerous songs. His final composition, A
War Prayer, was performed in Kingston,
New York, in 1995. His wife of
fifty-seven years, Betty Haufrecht, described him as "a man of enormous
creative gifts, who was loved and respected by all who knew him."
. . . Long before the Foxfire project and other programs that
introduced young people to folklore collecting, Norman Studer, Norman
Cazden, and Herbert Haufrecht with other New Yorkers helped us as a
nation to come to know ourselves, and the legacy of Camp Woodland is
reflected in the creative spirit and vibrant personalities of its many
former counselors and campers.
(New York Folklore Society)
The above text are excerpts from "Camp
Woodland: Progressive Education and Folklore in the Catskill Mountains
of New York" published in Voices, Vol. 28, Spring-Summer, 2002. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. http://www.nyfolklore.org
Pete Seeger