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Archive: July 2014 (12 Posts)

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

Ring Around the Rosie: Metafolklore, Rhyme and Reason

Posted by: Stephen Winick

  A recent blog post at Londonist describes “Five London Nursery Rhymes Depicting Death and Ruin.” The rhymes in question have diverse origins and histories, but what seems incontrovertible from James FitzGerald’s work is that they describe dark and portentous matters from English history. Or do they? Looking closely at these rhymes, and at scholarship …

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

Celebrating Pi

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

March 14 (3/14) is Pi Day and July 22 (22/7 in the European date style) is Pi Approximation Day. In mathematics a common shortened figure for pi is 3.14 while the most well-known “approximate pi” is 22 divided by 7 (3.1428571428571428). These two celebrations of the most famous irrational number on dates related to that …

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

Dance Heritage Coalition Intern Helps Expand Access to Lomax Choreometrics Materials

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post from Lotus Norton-Wisla, an intern at the American Folklife Center working to improve access to materials in the Alan Lomax Collection related to choreometrics, which was Lomax’s methodology for studying dance performance style. These materials consist of more than 70 boxes of paper materials and more than 3,500 film elements. …

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

Researcher Spotlight: Jeannette Estruth

Posted by: Kate Stewart

The following is a Q & A with one of our long-term researchers, Jeannette Estruth. KS: Hi Jeannette! Tell us a little about your background and why you came to the Library of Congress and the American Folklife Center. JE: Hi Kate, thanks so much for inviting me to take part in the American Folklife …

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

The Lomaxes’ 1934 French Louisiana Recordings Go Online

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following is a guest post by Joshua Caffery, who was the John W. Kluge Center’s Alan Lomax Fellow until April 2014.  Caffery is a scholar of vernacular traditions in Louisiana, as well as an archivist and a musician. He is the author of Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana: The 1934 Lomax Recordings, and the …

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

Judith McCulloh 1935-2014

Posted by: Stephen Winick

On behalf of all my colleagues at the American Folklife Center, I’m very sad to say that Judith McCulloh, a pivotal figure in the fields of folklore and ethnomusicology, and a crucial friend of AFC and its staff, passed away in the early hours of Sunday morning, July 13. Judy was a truly remarkable folklorist …

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

Collaborative archiving Out West: aspirations, frustrations, celebrations

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post from John Vallier, Head, Distributed Media at the University of Washington Libraries. His post is based on a presentation he made at an American Folklife Center symposium held at the Library of Congress last fall. This past September I had the pleasure of participating in the American Folklife Center’s Cultural Heritage Archives …