In the week or two before Christmas, staff members of the American Folklife Center engage in a dramatic, comedic, and musical performance that tours the halls of the Library of Congress. The performance is based on traditional mummers’ plays, and allows us to put our research skills into play alongside our more playful impulses. This year, we realized we couldn't perform our mummers’ play live, because of the COVID-19 pandemic. We didn't want to let the pandemic defeat us, though, so we decided to do our play anyway--just in a different way. We've been recording our podcast, Folklife Today, remotely throughout the pandemic, we reasoned. So why not do the mummers' play as a podcast episode, sort of like an old-time radio play? The audio, play script, and photos are all here in this blog!
Happy Thanksgiving! In this post, we’ll take a look at a set of interesting photos from the Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs Division. They depict a custom most people nowadays don’t know much about: Thanksgiving masking. Thanksgiving maskers, like trick-or-treaters on contemporary Halloween, used to go door to door, begging for handouts. They also …
In his book The Folk Songs of North America, in an introduction to one of the American Folklife Center's finest songs about the Devil, Alan Lomax wrote:
Early America saw the Devil as a real and living personage. Rocks in New England were scarred by his hoofprints, as he carried off maidens, screaming and howling, over the hills, or came after the men who had sold their souls to him in return for money or success. […] A mountain woman tells of the last moments of her mean old husband…’I knowed he war goin’, because all the dogs from fur and nigh come around and howled. Hit wur a dark night. But plain as day, comin’ down yon side the mountain, through the bresh so thickety a butcher knife couldn’t cut hit, I seen the Devil a-comin’. He war ridin’ a coal-black cart, drivin’ a coal-black oxen. The cart come down to the door and stopped. When it come, it come empty. But when it went away, hit had a big black ball in it that war Arzy’s soul. […] Lomax's passage serves as a fine and atmospheric introduction to our own Halloween exploration of the Devil in folksongs from the American Folklife Center archive!
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!) I’m very happy to continue the series with The Murphy Beds, which is the duo of Eamon O’Leary and Jefferson Hamer. The Murphy Beds present traditional and original folk songs with close …
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 Cora Harvey Armstrong, a gospel singer, piano player, songwriter, choir director, and bandleader born and raised in King and Queen County, Virginia. The Richmond-born …
Normally, the Homegrown Plus series is a way to bring together the videos of Homegrown concerts with other information about the artists, including oral history interviews. This time, however, we have a more solemn duty: to celebrate the life and legacy of Nakotah LaRance, an outstanding Native American hoop dancer from Ohkay Owingeh Pueblo, New …
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 Lakota John Locklear and kin, a blues family band of Native American heritage. Lakota John, born in 1997, blends traditional styles of the …
The American Folklife Center is very pleased to announce our Homegrown Concert Series for 2020, which we've nicknamed "Homegrown at Home." These concert videos, recorded at home by the artists, will be presented online each Wednesday at noon, initially on the AFC Facebook page and then permanently on the Library of Congress YouTube channel and website. The series kicks off on June 24 with a concert by the Riley Family Band, featuring GRAMMY-winning accordionist, fiddler, and singer Steve Riley of the leading Cajun band Steve Riley and the Mamou Playboys. For this special concert Steve is joined by his talented sons, Burke and Dolsy Riley. The series will then continue every Wednesday at noon through September, with concerts including music from far and wide: from the Navajo Nation in northern Arizona to the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia, from the Catskills in upstate New York to the Louisiana bayous, and from Scotland to Sweden.
Episode eighteen of the Folklife Today Podcast (or Season 2, Episode 6) is ready for listening! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or on Stitcher, iTunes, or your usual podcatcher. It's the first episode of the podcast that we've created from our homes, while unable to return to our offices or studio in the Library of Congress due to the social distancing measures imposed by Covid-19. In the episode, John Fenn and I talk to three AFC staff members, Allina Migoni, Michelle Stefano, and Maya Lerman, about folklife collections and items that have been inspiring to them in this strange and difficult time. We also talk about some of the materials that have been inspiring us. As usual, there are lots of audio excerpts from tunes, songs, and interviews in AFC collections.
