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Archive: 2015 (97 Posts)

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

Honoring Vernacular Sounds: AFC Recordings on the National Recording Registry

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Last week, the Library announced this year’s inductees to the National Recording Registry.  There, along with classics by The Doors, Radiohead, Steve Martin, and Joan Baez, was a fascinating AFC collection: The Benjamin Ives Gilman Collection Recorded at the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition at Chicago. This collection of 101 wax cylinder recordings was created by …

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

Marching In Montgomery, 1965, Reconsidered

Posted by: Guha Shankar

Montgomery in March, 1965, Reconsidered: The Perspective from the Other Side of the Lens This week’s blog is a companion piece to my previous post on the fiftieth anniversary of the Voting Rights Campaign in Alabama. Both blogs have provided a great opportunity for the AFC to share examples of Glen Pearcy’s singular photo documentation from the front …

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

Ethnography, 21st century-style

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

Today we celebrate the official release of StoryCorps.me, a global platform where anyone in the world can record and upload an oral history interview. This effort is a wish come true for StoryCorps founder Dave Isay, the 2015 recipient of the TED Prize. The prize comes with $1 million to invest in a powerful idea. Dave’s was to create …

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

Two Veterans, Two Wars, Two Remarkable Women

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

The month of March is designated as Women’s History Month–a time set aside to pay tribute to the contributions women have made to society from years past to contemporary times. Each year, the Library of Congress and many other national agencies offer special programming and exhibits, as well as feature collections and resources that are …

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

“Please Write Often”: Wartime Correspondence

Posted by: Megan Harris

In the diary that he kept while serving in France during World War I, Private First Class James Rudolph Sorenson made short entries describing each day’s most notable events. On August 11, 1918, he wrote, “Fired [gun barrages]. Valley was shelled heavily twice by the enemy. Our battery lost some horses and had one man …

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

Moving Day and a Major Anniversary

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post by American Folklife Center’s Judith Gray, an ethnomusicologist who curates the largest body of early recordings of indigenous American songs and stories recorded in the United States. After all the identifying, rehousing, cataloging, labeling, barcoding, and databasing activity on the part of AFC staff over the past year, the actual …

People marching, mostly young and African American

Marching in Montgomery, 1965

Posted by: Guha Shankar

Montgomery in March, 1965: Images from the front lines of the freedom struggle Selma has been much in public consciousness in recent months, owing to the release of the movie of the same name, the city’s historical place and symbolic importance in the (renewed) contention over voting rights in the nation and, of course, this …

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

Voices of African American Women

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

One reason I became interested in the study of folklife was to learn through the voices of peoples who are often under-represented in history. As this is the end of February, African American History Month, and March is Women’s History Month, it seems a good time to take a look at what African American women …