Documentary Arts

Sheila Kay Adams, as seen in Extraordinary Ordinary People, a First Run Features Release. Photograph by Alan Govenar, courtesy of Documentary Arts.

For more than four decades, Documentary Arts has introduced and employed innovative interdisciplinary methodologies to broaden public knowledge and appreciation of the arts of different cultures in all media, from photographs, films, and videos to studio and field recordings, interactive installations, and musical theatre productions. Much of the work of Documentary Arts draws its impetus from the ways that ordinary culture influences different modes of human expression, whether in oral storytelling, novels, films, video, radio, or on-stage performance.

The projects undertaken by Documentary Arts are multifaceted and have often focused on the art and ideas of people who have been marginalized and misunderstood because they do not fit neatly into established academic disciplines. For each project, Documentary Arts has engaged a wide range of advisors, involving artists, educators, historians, folklorists, and other cultural specialists from Asian, Native American, African American, Latino, and Anglo American communities.​

Building trust among people who are skeptical and poorly represented, if represented at all, is difficult. Collaboration and sustained interaction with artists, organizations, and other partners have been crucial.

Taking a holistic approach, Documentary Arts has delved into the deep fabric of culture and interrogated the inflection points where the ordinary becomes exceptional. Everyday practices and beliefs are revealing, shedding light on historical issues and illuminating their impact in the contemporary world. The “ordinary” is foundational in the multitude of ways culture is expressed and passed on from one person to another person, one generation to the next, whether in rituals and ceremonies, or in arts, crafts, music, dance, and spoken-word traditions.

“Culture is ordinary,” the Welsh Socialist writer, academic, novelist, and critic Raymond Williams maintained in a 1958 essay.

…[T]hat is the first fact. Every human society has its own shape, its own purposes, its own meanings. Every human society expresses these, in institutions, and in arts and learning. The making of a society is the finding of common meanings and directions, and its growth is an active debate and amendment under the pressures of experience, contact, and discovery, writing themselves into the land. The growing society is there, yet it is also made and remade in every individual mind.…The questions I ask about our culture are questions about our general and common purposes yet also questions about deep personal meanings. Culture is ordinary, in every society and in every mind. (2014)

Building on Williams’ thinking, David Trend, in his book Everyday Culture: Finding and Making Meaning in a Changing World, discusses how the meanings that inform and organize daily life often go undervalued and unexamined, because they are generally perceived as unimportant (2007). But for both Trent and Williams, it is ultimately the ordinariness of culture that makes it extraordinarily significant.

Ethical Concerns

Who has the right to tell the story of culture? Is it only people who are part of that culture? Born in that culture? Raised in that culture? Can a researcher or storyteller from outside a particular culture accurately document the people living and working inside that culture? Does one need special training to successfully accomplish this mission? What happens with this documentation? Who has the right to use this documentation and for what purposes?

There is no clear, simple answer, because the truth of culture is invariably subjective. There are more questions than answers, especially in the contemporary world. Inundated with misinformation or inaccurate information propagated by the internet, social media, and artificial intelligence, deciding who and what to believe can feel insurmountable.

Our understanding of art, culture, folklore, and history is increasingly being undermined by the politics of erasure. Among the most glaring examples are Holocaust deniers and 2020 election deniers in the U.S., but perhaps more insidious are the policies of school boards to ban books and to upend, for example, African American history, especially as it relates to the facts of “slavery” and the factors that precipitated the Civil War. In 2022, the Texas State Board of Education proposed that slavery should be disingenuously described as “involuntary dislocation” in Social Studies textbooks. In 2023, new standards adopted by the Florida State Board of Education (2023) included controversial language about how “slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

How can the injustices in the ways history is told and taught be foregrounded and rectified?

In the Documentary Arts film Myth of a Colorblind France, the African American historian Tyler Stovall observed:

The whole question of who has the right to the history of African Americans and to their role in not just American culture, but global culture is a really complex one. And I think for many African Americans it is fueled by the issue that they feel often times our culture has been, in effect, appropriated by others. Others that were not necessarily acting in the best interest of that community, that were not necessarily willing to take up the fight against racism. So, I think that’s a challenge, but I think at the same time, any culture benefits from being analyzed and investigated by many different types of people who bring their own sort of experiences to an understanding of that culture. So, I think African Americans have also benefitted from the fact that our culture has been considered by so many different types of people. (2022)

Issues related to cultural appropriation, extraction, and exploitation are difficult to discuss and to reconcile. The repatriation of cultural artifacts to their countries of origin has been an important step forward. Since 2001, a growing number of private, municipal, and college museums have established research positions or whole departments to assess the provenance of their collections, including Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts, the Denver Art Museum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the North Carolina Museum of Art, the J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, the Worcester Art Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art, as well as the museums at Cornell, Princeton, and Yale universities.¹ In 2013, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for example, initiated the return of sculpture and other art objects to the Government of Nepal, the Government of India, and the Kingdom of Cambodia, in addition to restituting or reaching settlements “regarding 10 works it determined had been unlawfully appropriated during the Nazi era without subsequent restitution.”²

Since 1985, Documentary Arts has worked to address the issues of appropriation and exploitation by bringing forth the points of view and needs of the people being documented and by working from within, collaborating with artists, community leaders, and local people who are often not consulted or involved in mainstream cultural studies. As Bob Ray Sanders, one of Documentary Arts’ founding board members, points out,

Cultural appropriation implies taking something from someone in an exploitative, disrespectful, or stereotypical way, which is exactly the opposite of what Documentary Arts has done for the past four decades through its exhibitions, books, films, and Black photography archives. Indeed, this organization has highlighted individuals and cultures and brought many into prominence they had never known. Rather than “appropriation,” the organization has shown “appreciation.” Rather than exploitation, Documentary Arts has made it a point to provide “compensation” to those artists and participants who rarely received any remuneration. Instead of “stereotyping,” this group made sure to have advisors who wouldn’t dare allow such a thing.³

The ongoing collaboration Documentary Arts shared with the 2003 National Heritage Fellow, the renowned dancer Norma Miller, exemplifies not only this “appreciation” but also offers those who experience it a new set of texts for learning about Black culture that cannot be found in their textbooks.

Stompin at the Savoy, Delaware Theatre Company. Photo by Matt Urban, courtesy of Alan Govenar.

Stompin’ at the Savoy

Like many Documentary Arts projects, the world premiere of my new musical Stompin’ at the Savoy (Delaware Theatre Company, April 16-May 4, 2025) evolved slowly, beginning during conversations with Norma Miller in 2000. Like Raymond Williams suggests, we used questions and conversations to build common meaning, but also to discover extraordinary worlds through this deeply personal work. We were equal partners in the creation of the children’s book, Stompin’ at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller (2006), and together we conceived the musical about her teenaged years. She was also involved in developing two Documentary Arts musical theatrical productions, Blind Lemon: Prince of Country Blues (2001) and Blind Lemon Blues (2004).

Norma’s partnership shaped the work that will now carry forward her story for new audiences and learners. The first workshop of Stompin’ at the Savoy was held in 2020, about nine months after Norma passed away at age 99 on May 5, 2019. By then, I had written multiple script drafts, striving to articulate her vision. In 2022, the York Theatre Company helped to organize a Zoom reading, followed by a two-week workshop. A year later, Documentary Arts produced a 29-hour reading, and in the fall of 2023, I began collaborating with the writer and dramaturg Phaedra Michelle Scott, whose creativity and insights were essential in shaping the dramatization of Norma’s story.

Not a conventional musical, Stompin’ at the Savoy evokes the effervescence of Harlem at a time when racism was rampant. Stompin’ at the Savoy meshes what Norma called “the beat of the street” with the sounds of the Lindy Hop, with new arrangements of Big Band classics, from King Oliver, Chick Webb, Benny Goodman, and Ella Fitzgerald to period songs by lesser-known Black composers George Walker, Bert Williams, John Leubrie Hill, and Shelton Brooks. Throughout, Stompin’ at the Savoy is infused with the incessant energy of jump rope rhymes and hand clapping games, many of which were collected by Ralph Ellison in the 1930s just a few blocks away from the tenement where Norma grew up, an easy walk from the Savoy Ballroom, the ubiquitous Home of Happy Feet, one of the first dance halls in the U.S. where Blacks, Whites, Jews, Cubans, Puerto Ricans, West Indians, and anyone else who wanted to swing out were welcome.

To broaden the outreach of the stage production of Stompin’ at the Savoy, Documentary Arts developed a website with a guide written by Paddy Bowman to engage students and teachers alike in this story of dreams and fulfillment.

Moving forward, Documentary Arts is committed to expanding its collaborations and to nurturing the pursuit of the fundamental principles of cultural and gender equity. In today’s world, the urgency of advocating the core values of diversity and inclusion has never been greater. To achieve these goals, Documentary Arts has begun exploring succession plans and identifying and gifting its vast collections to institutions and organizations that share its mission.

Among the many projects Documentary Arts conceived, developed, and produced, more than 35 years of work focused on recipients of the National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowship, 1982-2016.

 

Books

• Making Culture by Hand, A series of five young reader books on Konstantinos Pilarinos, Irvin Trujillo, Bettye Kimbrell, Sonia Domsch, and Mozell Benson, Documentary Arts, 2025
• The Retablos of Jeronimo Lozano. Schiffer Publishing, 2022
• Everyday Music, Texas A&M University Press, 2012
• Extraordinary Ordinary People: Five American Masters of Traditional Arts, Candlewick Press, 2006
• Masters of Traditional Arts Education Guide by Paddy Bowman, Betty Carter, and Alan Govenar, ABC-CLIO, 2002
• Masters of Traditional Arts: A Biographical Dictionary, Two Volumes, ABC-CLIO, 2001

Radio

• “Masters of Traditional Arts,” 2000-2001, 52-part radio series on the diversity of music, spoken word, and art/craft traditions in the U.S., for national broadcast by WGBH Radio, Boston.
• “Masters of Traditional Music,” 1992, 52-part radio series on the diverse musical traditions in the U.S., focusing on National Heritage Fellows, broadcast on 150 stations, 1993 Golden Reel Award, Best National Music/ Entertainment Series, National Federation of Community Broadcasters.

Films

• Extraordinary Ordinary People, 2017, 84-minutes, documentary on recipients of the National Heritage Fellowship, a breathtaking array of musicians, dancers, quilters, woodcarvers, and more demonstrate the importance of the folk and traditional arts in shaping the fabric of America. From Bill Monroe and B.B. King to Passamaquoddy basket weavers and Peking Opera singers, from Appalachia to inner city neighborhoods in New York, the mountains of New Mexico, the suburbs of Dallas, and the isolated Indian reservations of Northern California—each of the artists share exceptional talent, ingenuity, and perseverance.
• You Don’t Need Feet to Dance, 2013, 81 minutes, documentary on African immigrant Sidiki Conde, having lost the use of his legs to polio at 14, balances his career as a performing artist with the almost insurmount-able obstacles of life in New York City.
• Master Qi and the Monkey King, 2012, 81 minutes, documentary chronicles the life and work of Qi Shu Fang, one of the preeminent masters of Chinese Opera living in the U.S., and highlights the intricacies of Peking Opera, an art form hardly known in the West.
• Masters of Traditional Music, 1991, 58 minutes, documentary of the 1991 Dallas Folk Festival opening, featuring Bua Xou Mua, Joe Cormier, John D. Holeman, Valerio Longoria, and Kevin Locke.
• Black on White/White and Black, 1990, 26 minutes, 16mm documentary (with Bruce Lane) on the life and career of Alex Moore, a native of Dallas and the first Black Texan to receive a National Heritage Fellowship.
• Texas Style, 1986, 28 minutes, 16mm, documentary (with Bruce Lane) on rural life and traditional fiddling.

Interactive Media

• Masters of Traditional Arts website, 2006, with 500 short videos, 4,000 photographs, 29 hours of field recordings, biographic entries on all National Heritage Fellows, 1982-2016, and an Education Guide
• Masters of Traditional Arts Interactive DVD video kiosks, 2014-2016, Old Post Office Building, Washington, DC
• Masters of Traditional Arts DVD-ROM, 2011, 3rd edition
• Masters of Traditional Arts DVD-ROM, 2007, 2nd edition
• Masters of Traditional Arts DVD-ROM, 2002, produced by Documentary Arts, published by ABC-CLIO, Inc.

Exhibitions

• Extraordinary Ordinary People: American Masters of Traditional Arts, national touring exhibition curated by Alan Govenar and Marsha MacDowell. Folk art and photographs from Documentary Arts collections, Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing, September 3, 2013- December 20, 2013; Castellani Art Museum, Niagara, New York, January 20-June 20, 2014; Western Folklife Center, Elko, Nevada, September 19-December 20, 2014; Wenatchee Valley Museum and Jack Straw Cultural Center, Seattle, Washington, April 23, 2015 -August 11, 2015.

• Dual Lives: Chinese Opera in New York City, 2011, photographs by Alan Govenar, Wright Museum of Art, Beloit College, Beloit, Wisconsin; University of Wisconsin Stevens Point. Exhibition Catalogue (Beloit College and Documentary Arts, 2011).

Alan Govenar is a writer, folklorist, photographer, and filmmaker. He is a Guggenheim Fellow and president of Documentary Arts, a nonprofit organization he founded in 1985 to present new perspectives on historical issues and diverse cultures. He has a BA in American Folklore from the Ohio State University, an MA in Folklore and Anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin, and a PhD in Arts and Humanities from the University of Texas at Dallas. He is author of 40 books and has produced and directed numerous films in association with NOVA, La Sept/ARTE, and PBS for broadcast and educational distribution. His artist books and photographs are in collections in the U.S. and abroad, including The Museum of Modern Art, Victoria and Albert Museum, Centre Georges Pompidou, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, National Portrait Gallery, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

Works Cited

Alvarez, Brenda. 2023. Florida’s New History Standard: “A Blow to Our Students and Nation.” neaToday, August 3.

Govenar, Alan. 2001. Masters of Traditional Arts: A Biographical Dictionary. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO.

Govenar, Alan, dir. 2022. Myth of a Colorblind France. 110 min. Stream at https://www.mythofacolorblindfrance.com.

Govenar, Alan. 2006. Stompin’ at the Savoy: The Story of Norma Miller. Martin French, Illustrator. Somerset, MA: Candlewick Press.

Trend, David. 2007. Everyday Culture Finding and Making Meaning in a Changing World. New York: Routledge.

Williams, Raymond. 2014. Culture Is Ordinary [1958]. In Raymond Williams on Culture and Society. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

URLs

Documentary Arts https://www.docarts.com

Truth in Photography https://www.truthinphotography.org

NEA National Heritage Fellows https://www.arts.gov/honors/heritage

Myth of a Colorblind France https://www.mythofacolorblindfrance.com

Masters of Traditional Arts http://www.mastersoftraditionalarts.org

Stompin’ at the Savoy https://www.stompinatthesavoy.com

Endnotes

1 See https://observer.com/2024/07/museum-repatriation-news-in-2024.

2 For more information on the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s repatriation efforts, see https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collecting-practices/repatriated-objects.

3 Bob Ray Sanders, email correspondence, December 12, 2024.