We couldn't help notice that sea shanties have been getting a lot of attention lately. The American Folklife Center has one of the greatest collections of sea shanty field recordings in the world. This blog post provides an introduction to sea shanties, including links to audio, video, and texts of many songs in the American Folklife Center's collections. It's lavishly illustrated with photos and artwork depicting ships, sailors, and singing. It covers the history of shantying and the different kinds of shanties for different tasks, and emphasizes the African American and Afro-Caribbean contributions to shanties. It also provides a link to our new podcast on sea shanties. There are even guest appearances by Bruce Springsteen and Thomas Hampson. Don't miss it!
The following is a repost from the blog Of the People. The author is Kate Zwaard, Director of Digital Strategy. You may have seen the news about the Library’s exciting new program Of the People, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which will allow us to do more to connect our collections, staff, and services to …
This blog post was taken down for review after concerns were raised that the author used content in several posts from other sources without providing appropriate citations. Headlines and Heroes apologizes both to any authors whose important work we did not appropriately recognize, and to its readers.
Suggestions for student researchers interested in exploring Chronicling America, an online collection of historic newspapers. Chronicling America is a product of the National Digital Newspaper Program and jointly sponsored by the Library and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Let’s face it. This past year has been tough in many ways. For the music community, this has been especially true. There is one bright spot. On January 1, 2021, big updates were made to the way songwriters can get paid when their music is played online via interactive streaming and download services. Specifically, the …
Walk the streets of any U.S. city today, and you might come across historic markers or masonry etchings indicating what the buildings used to be. It is always fascinating to learn what our neighborhoods, cities, and towns used to be —factories turned residences, street names changed, the places and spaces our predecessors lived, ate, and …
As we transition to a new year, one of the ways we mark the change is acquiring a new calendar. Even though many of us have moved the tracking of our meetings, tasks, birthdays and other important events to a digital format, I still enjoy a physical calendar, and I especially enjoyed a recent look …
