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Posted by: Stephen Winick
In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) We’re continuing the series with the The Fairfield Four, an African-American gospel quartet that has existed for more than 95 years. Best known for its performance in the …
Posted in: African American History, Homegrown Plus
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Langston Hughes is mostly remembered selectively as a “folk” and jazz poet, or author of black vernacular blues and jazz poetry. While Hughes did dedicate himself to creating and reinterpreting these genres throughout his life and career, the core of his work is actually in collecting and experimenting with folklore across spaces and media. In Harlem and abroad, Hughes operated as what scholar Daphne Lamothe calls a “native ethnographer,” adapting his work during and beyond the Harlem Renaissance across genres to the discourses of anthropology, folklore, and sociology in a mode reminiscent of that of sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois, anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston, civil rights activist, songwriter, and author of the local history book Black Manhattan James Weldon Johnson, choreographer Katharine Dunham, and many others. Specifically, Hughes was an ethnographer of black vernacular culture, transcribing different kinds of linguistic and musical performance and reinterpreting those transcriptions in and as his own texts.
Posted in: African American History, Hidden Folklorists
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
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Way back when Folklife Today celebrated our 100th post, I highlighted one of Alan Lomax’s collecting triumphs, the disc numbered AFS 100. For this, our 500th post, I thought I’d do a similar story about AFS 500. This disc was also recorded by Alan Lomax, during a field trip to the Bahamas in 1935 which …
Posted in: African American History, Folk Music
Posted by: Stephen Winick
The American Folklife Center is sad to pass on the news that San Diego folk arts promoter Louis F. Curtiss has died. He passed away at home on July 8. Curtiss was a founder of the San Diego Folk Festival, the owner of Folk Arts Rare Records, and a longtime festival and concert promoter and …
Posted in: Uncategorized
Posted by: John Fenn
Peter Winne is an independent radio producer based in Connecticut. Earlier this year he released an audio documentary on PRX that explores the fascinating history of a well-known American gospel song called, “Children, Go Where I Send Thee.” Peter’s research for the program drew him into the orbit of the American Folklife Center at the …
Posted in: Radio
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
When I was a child, in about 1960, I remember two of my father’s cousins getting into an animated discussion about Marian Anderson and the time they resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR). Although I was not old enough to understand the event they were talking about, it made a strong impression. …
Posted in: African American History, African Americans, Women's History
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This blog post about the hidden spirituals sung by Becky Elzy and Alberta Bradford for E.A. McIlhenny is part of a series called “Hidden Folklorists,” which examines the folklore work of surprising people, including people better known for other pursuits. In preparing this post, I was greatly aided by Shane K. Bernard, the archivist at …
Posted in: African American History
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This blog post about the “Two Sweet Singers” Becky Elzy and Alberta Bradford is part of a series called “Hidden Folklorists,” which examines the folklore work of surprising people, including people better known for other pursuits. In preparing this post, I was greatly aided by Shane K. Bernard, the archivist at Avery Island in Louisiana, …
Posted in: African American History, Hidden Folklorists, Women's History