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Archive: 2016 (93 Posts)

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

St. George and the Arrearage Monster: A Mumming in Process

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Note: Every year, in the week of the Library’s holiday party, staff members of the American Folklife Center put our research and performance skills into play, bringing collections to life in a dramatic performance that tours the halls of the Library of Congress.  Dressed in costumes that range from striking to silly, we sing, act, …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Jon B. Lovelace Fellowship for the Study of the Alan Lomax Collection

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress invites qualified scholars to apply for a post-doctoral fellowship for advanced research based on the Alan Lomax Collection. The Lovelace Fellowship, established in 2015 for the study of the Alan Lomax Collection, pays tribute to the 60-year friendship between philanthropist Jon B. Lovelace and James …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Finding aid to Eleanor Dickinson fieldwork collection now online

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

The following is a guest post from AFC processing archivist Marcia Segal. The remarkable audio and video recordings in the Eleanor Dickinson collection (AFC 1970/001), recorded circa 1969-1980, capture a moment in time in the years before the Internet and other technological developments changed the way people communicate. The immediacy of religious services, (uninterrupted by …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Kentucky Bourbon, Millennial Tastes, and the Language of Folklore

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest blog post by Sarah Lerner, who is currently an intern at AFC. For the past forty years the American Folklife Center has devoted countless hours to the documentation and preservation of our nation’s traditional arts, cultural expressions, and oral histories. Our work is supported and presented though a vocabulary defined …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

AFC on The Thistle & Shamrock!

Posted by: Stephen Winick

For the last two weekends of November, 2016, AFC was honored to be featured on The Thistle & Shamrock, the long-running and popular Celtic music show produced and hosted by Fiona Ritchie and distributed by NPR. If you want to hear the shows, follow the links to part 1 here and part 2 here. The …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

The Library of Congress Mannequin Challenge and Emerging Traditions

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

The Library of Congress has created its own Mannequin Challenge video featuring many staff members and Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden. The American Folklife Center’s Jennifer Cutting, Valda Morris, and Kelly Revak were among the participants. Here it is (it can also be found on Library of Congress YouTube at the link). The Mannequin Challenge …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

“Trench Blues”: An African American Song of World War I

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

This post is also featured on the Library of Congress Blog  as “World War I: ‘Trench Blues’ — An African American Song of the War.” Head over there to find more WWI stories from the Library’s collections honoring the centennial (2017-2018).   There is  another Folklife Today post about an African American World War I song …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Agnes Vanderburg’s Outdoor School for Traditional Indian Ways

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

“A lot of things come out of my chest,” Agnes Vanderburg explained in 1979 when folklorist Kay Young asked about her reasons for starting a school to pass on her knowledge of Salish Indian traditions (recording at the link, go to 1:50 minutes). She had felt frustrated at carrying knowledge that was disappearing as Indians …