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 …
Did you ever wonder why U.S. government institutions like the Library of Congress use the word “folklife” rather than the more common “folklore?” Largely, we can thank the influence of Don Yoder, the eminent Pennsylvania folklorist, who passed away Tuesday at the age of 93. Long before the founding of the Library of Congress’s American …
The American Folklife Center is very grateful to April Rodriguez, one of this year’s 36 Library of Congress Junior Fellow Summer Interns. April has been working with Alan Lomax’s choreometrics materials, a lesser-known but crucial aspect of his research. Her work has revealed aspects of the collection our own staff didn’t know about, and will …
