Intensified But Traditional

This chapter is one of synthesis, exploring the ardent “testimony” of Oaxacan rugs, luthier-made steel string guitars, and southern folk fiddle performances. Changes in these three folk arts traced congruent paths in the operation of the processes grouped under the umbrella term intensification. But the results remain idiosyncratic, because such changes suit and express central values of the different cultures in which these traditional expressions are embedded, and also responding to the essential natures of specific genres of cultural expression. The parallels in content that remain illustrate parallel input of nostalgia-fueled romanticism plus parallels in rationing content and shaping the objects and performances. This combination of factors continues to help traditional expressive culture to flourish in the early decades of the twentieth-first century.