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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
This summer, the American Folklife Center is hosting a series of informal jams to celebrate our living folk traditions, and to bring to life the collections from our vast ethnographic archive. The idea grew out of the jam we held to honor our founding director, Alan Jabbour (see a video here), and the series started …
Posted in: AFC Events
Posted by: Michelle Stefano
In the last post, the Folklife at the International Level series took a turn into the world of “intangible cultural heritage” (ICH), a category of heritage on the global stage that developed decades ago, thanks to the joint efforts of WIPO and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). As noted, since the …
Posted in: Intangible Cultural Heritage, WIPO
Posted by: Lisa Taylor
The following is a guest blog post by Mary Claire Phillips, a recent graduate of University of Texas at Austin. Phillips utilized Veterans History Project (VHP) collections in her journal article and honors thesis examining the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) servicewomen during World War II. Happy Pride! This month marks the …
Posted in: LGBT Pride Month, LGBTQ, Narratives, Oral History, Storytelling, Veterans History Project, World War II
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This article about the broadcaster, journalist, and writer Alistair Cooke is part of a series called "Hidden Folklorists," which examines the folklore work of surprising people, including people better known for other pursuits. It mainly details his work on the 12-part 1938 BBC radio series "I Hear America Singing," which was the first time Library of Congress field recordings were used on the radio. It also discusses Cooke's involvement in the Library's recordings of Jelly Roll Morton, and presents the first recordings of his voice, made for the purposes of a dialect study in 1934.
Posted in: Hidden Folklorists, Radio
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
A handful of recently published online finding aids describing American Folklife Center collections provide detailed windows into collections documenting a range of traditions, from New Mexican Midwinter Masquerades to traditional music from the Sudan region. The following round-up draws heavily on descriptions created by the archivists who processed these amazing collections. Roxane Connick Carlisle Collection, …
Posted in: Acquisitions, Archival Practice, ethnomusicologists, Fieldwork, Folk Music
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
This is part three of a three-part series presenting the lesson suggestions on the Explore Your Community Poster (PDF), designed for middle school and high school classrooms. Read Part One. Read Part Two. Mapping Your World All communities—whether urban, suburban, or rural—have their own cultural heritage. Did you ever explain your neighborhood to someone visiting …
Posted in: AFC Publications
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
This is part one of a three-part series presenting the lesson suggestions on the Explore Your Community Poster (PDF), designed for middle school and high school classrooms. Read Part Two. Read Part Three. The American Folklife Center and the the Rural School and Community Trust collaborated on an educational poster designed for middle and high school …
Posted in: AFC Publications
Posted by: Michelle Stefano
Exploring how legal measures, particularly intellectual property (IP) protections, can be used to safeguard living cultural traditions, practices, and expressions has been a longstanding aim of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), as discussed so far in this series. Yet, there exists another international organization that has for several decades taken on similar questions of …
Posted in: Intangible Cultural Heritage, WIPO