Top of page

Category: Folk Music

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

Lomax Family Manuscripts Go Online

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest post from Todd Harvey, the curator of the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center archive, Library of Congress. The American Folklife Center today announces the online publication of the Lomax Family manuscripts. This phased project begins today, with access to 25,000 pages created primarily by Alan Lomax during …

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

Searching for Nina Tarasova

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

This week the Library of Congress historic newspaper resource, Chronicling America, will pass a milestone of making ten million digitized pages of American newspapers available free online. These papers were selected by institutions in thirty-eight states and territories, with more expected to be added. When I was working on an article, “Russian American Song,” for …

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

Corridos of the Texas Border Collected by John and Ruby Lomax

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

On September 15 and 16, 2015, AFC will be featuring a lecture and workshop with Juan Díes, and a and concert with Sones de México Ensemble, presenting the corrido, a type of narrative song native to the Texas-Mexico border region. In honor of these events, I thought I would introduce our readers to some of …

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

Rediscovering Lomax: Joshua Clegg Caffery and “I Wanna Sing Right”

Posted by: Stephen Winick

During the centennial year of the great folklorist Alan Lomax (1915-2002), we at AFC have been celebrating his legacy in all kinds of ways: digitizing collections, sponsoring performances, encouraging publications, creating web content, designing exhibits…even writing blog posts! One of the things we most loved about Alan was his concern that the field recordings he …

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

James P. Leary and Folksongs of Another America

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following post introduces James P. Leary, a researcher who has published extensively on Library of Congress collections in the American Folklife Center. Most of the quotations from Leary in this article come from an email interview we did in July 2015, but I also quote occasionally from a lecture he gave at the Library …

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

Songs and Music of Refugees of the First World War

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

War disrupts populations, and refugees fleeing the conflict may leave their country permanently to settle elsewhere. The first World War caused such disruptions throughout Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia. Crossing one border was no longer an escape for many of these people on the move. Refugees fled to countries distant from their …

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

Jean Ritchie, 1922-2015

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Note: The whole AFC staff was saddened by the death of Jean Ritchie earlier this month.  We paid tribute to her immediately in a Facebook post, which you can see here, and the Chairman of our Board of Trustees, C. Kurt Dewhurst, made a moving statement about Jean at the Board’s June meeting.  However, I …

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

East Asian American Traditions

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

The earliest East Asian immigrants often had a difficult journey making their way to the United States. Many carried little with them but the cultural traditions they knew, such as language, stories, religious customs, foodways, music, song, and dance. Chinese Americans Chinese immigrants, mainly Cantonese speakers from Guangdong, were among the first Asians to come …