Homegrown Plus: BeauSoleil Quartet!
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Concert and oral history interview with Cajun powerhouse the Beausoleil Quartet.
Posted in: Folk Music, Homegrown Plus
Archive: September 2018 (9 Posts)
Caught My Ear: “Sentenced to Death” by Andrew Gallagher
Posted by: Stephen Winick
The following was written by Hannah Rose Baker, a musician from Boston, MA, who recently completed an internship at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. In 1938, in Beaver Island, Michigan, Andrew Gallagher, known locally as “Andy Mary Ellen,” sang a song called “Sentenced to Death” for Alan Lomax, who was collecting folk music …
Posted in: Caught My Eye, Folksong
The Legacy of Fallen Service Members and the Kinsugi Gold Stars They Leave Behind
Posted by: Kerry Ward
The legacy of a fallen service member is the memory of a grateful nation. We set aside Memorial Day to honor all those who have made the ultimate sacrifice, but what comes next? After that knock on the door, after TAPS is played and the folded flag is delivered, how can we pay tribute to …
Posted in: Afghanistan War, Iraq War, Oral History, Veterans History Project
Collection of music and dance from New York immigrant groups now available for research
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest blog post by 2018 summer project archivist Jesse Hocking, who is pursuing a master’s degree in library and information studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I grew up in West Virginia and Georgia and spent my undergraduate years in film and ethnic studies, so in many ways the American Folklife Center …
Posted in: Acquisitions, Archival Practice
Songs from Cuban Americans in Florida, 1939-1940
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
A team of folklorists made recordings of Cuban folk and dance hall music as part of projects to document Florida arts for the WPA (Works Progress Administration). Found online in the presentation Florida Folklife from the WPA Collections, 1938-1942, these recordings occurred at a time when old songs from rural Cuba could still be found, …
Posted in: Folksong, Hispanic American History
Pics of the Week: John McCutcheon!
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This week, we had a very special guest at AFC: folksinger, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist John McCutcheon. John brought us a masterful performance of traditional music, much of it gleaned from fieldwork he donated years ago to the AFC archive. He also graciously sat for an oral history interview. Both were recorded and will become webcasts, …
Posted in: Homegrown Concert Series
VHP’s Newest Experiencing War: “Cold War Dispatches: Service Stories from 1947-1991”
Posted by: Megan Harris
A shy but determined young teletype operator. An Air Force engineer with dreams of going into space. A spy with a talent for driving fast cars and getting thrown out of East Germany. The commander of a squadron of the elite Special Forces unit known as Delta Force. What’s the common thread tying together this …
Posted in: African Americans, Hispanic American History, Oral History, Serving: Our Voices, Veterans History Project, Women's History
Singing the Archive in the Schoolroom: A Collaboration between the Library of Congress and the Global Scholars Academy
Posted by: John Fenn
This guest post is by Sarah Elizabeth Tomlinson, a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At their school’s annual Christmas performance, forty kindergarten and first-grade students in Durham, North Carolina bounced and sang along with the Library of Congress. Specifically, they performed for an audience of family and …
Posted in: Folk Music
“Mustache on a Cabbage Head”: Three Centuries’ Experience with “Our Goodman”
Posted by: Stephen Winick
In my last post at Folklife Today, I wrote about a folksong that connected my appearances on some important radio shows. Since then, some of my Library of Congress colleagues (some current and some retired) have expressed interest in the song, stemming from their own experiences as radio listeners. Given their interest, I thought I’d …
Posted in: Folksong