With Labor Day approaching, I’d love to introduce you to some of our resources on the folklore and folklife of labor. This area of study has many names, from the more formal “occupational folk culture” to the more colloquial “laborlore.” It also has many sub-areas, from the study of occupational folk speech, including jargon, to …
This post presents two primary source documents, both in the public domain, which are difficult to find online. Both relate to my previous post on William John Thoms. They are the first two columns in Thoms’ series “Folk-Lore,” which ran in the journal The Athenæum from 1846 to 1849, and in Notes & Queries from …
August 22 is an important date to folklore fans. It is, in fact, the anniversary of the first appearance of the (originally hyphenated) word “Folk-Lore” in print. The medium was a letter to the editor of the Athenæum, a scholarly journal, and the author was William John Thoms, although he wrote the letter under his …
The following is a guest post by Charles Lockwood, the Operations & Development Director of Texas Folklife, Austin Texas. Mr. Lockwood has an MA in Ethnomusicology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The Quebe Sisters Band performed in AFC’s Homegrown Concert Series on August 20, 2014. See the concert in the player below: While …