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Archive: September 2018 (9 Posts)

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

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 …

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

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 …

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

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, …

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

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, …

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

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 …

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

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 …