Folklore is associated with the cultural manifestations and customs of a people.
Folklore is an English word that is also used in our language, although, according to the dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE) , it is written folclore . Sometimes, it can appear written as folcklore , folclor or folklor .
The term refers to the set of beliefs, practices and customs that are traditional to a people or culture . Folklore is also known as the discipline that studies these subjects.
Characteristics of folklore
Folklore includes dances , music , legends , stories , crafts and superstitions of local culture, among other factors . These are traditions shared by the population and are usually transmitted over time from generation to generation.
Scholars distinguish between four stages of folklore: nascent folklore includes cultural traits of recent creation; living folklore is that which is still practiced in everyday life; dying folklore preserves certain traditional elements, especially in the elders of the group; dead folklore , on the other hand, belongs to an extinct culture.
Symbol of identity
Folklore is distinctive and unique to each people. In times of globalization, culture tends to become homogenized and dominant countries impose their creations. That is why folklore represents an area of resistance for identity .
There are clubs , cultural centres and organisations that are responsible for defending folklore and transmitting it to the youngest people with the intention of perpetuating it. In this way, folklore guarantees its intergenerational survival and does not depend only on the older group of people.
It is important to note that there are certain activities found within the folklore of a people that go against life and in favor of abuse, especially of animals, and that there are many groups of activists who fight to change that part of the culture to adapt it to a more just reality for all .
The typical music of a community is part of its folklore.
Folklore and culture as tools for xenophobia
The value that roots have for a people can be a determining factor in their openness to other cultures. While it is true that appreciating one's own culture is important and that it is necessary to understand where we come from in order to know where we want to go, the closed-mindedness so typical of peoples with deep-rooted folklore is the cause in many places of important conflicts of discrimination against those who come from other countries or regions.
In many places, however, with the advance of globalization, customs are fading away and losing importance or merging with currents that come from other countries. For lovers of pure culture, these are worrying issues and the way they deal with them is by belittling what comes from other countries or trying to instill in their descendants a love for their country and contempt for everything that comes from outside.
The danger of overvaluing one's own
Xenophobia is a problem that no country is exempt from and is the consequence of the overvaluation of ideas and customs to the detriment of humanity. In many countries there are even government plans that collaborate with discrimination and with the further aggravation of this problem .
The folklore of a people is extremely important to understand the way in which they live, their history, how the social structure that we know today came about, however it is important to point out that it should not contemplate mistreatment of any kind. Therefore, just as horse riding in certain Latin American countries and bullfights in Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries should be suppressed, so should all those attitudes of people in defense of their traditions if these were against solidarity and social integration.