As our readers may remember, we've been working with No Depression, The Journal of Roots Music, which is published by the nonprofit Freshgrass Foundation. They're publishing a column called Roots in the Archive, featuring content from the American Folklife Center and Folklife Today. The latest Roots in the Archive column is about the Arlo Guthrie birth announcement, a fantastic manuscript item from the Alan Lomax Collection. The Arlo Guthrie birth announcement is a handwritten, illustrated letter created by Woody Guthrie to announce the birth of his son Arlo. It was sent by Woody to his friend Alan Lomax in 1947. Typed and embellished with finger-painted lettering, the announcement is in the form of a handmade greeting card, a single sheet folded in half to form a front and back cover and a center spread. The front consists of stylized line art representing a mother and baby, a greeting to the Lomax family, and the name "Arlo Guthrie," painted in several different styles and colors. The back consists of the words "Here I Am" in large painted letters. Both sides bear the date, and the name "Arlo Guthrie" written in Woody’s handwriting. Read more about it at the link!
The column also features the whimsical text of the birth announcement, which is written in the voice of baby Arlo, and my own thoughts on this one-of-a-kind manuscript. Of course, the American Folklife Center also has many more resources related to Woody Guthrie, and you can find out more about those in the column too.
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!
This is a guest post by American Folklife Center archivist Charles Hosale. A little more than one year ago, the American Folklife Center announced the acquisition of the AIDS Memorial Quilt records . My colleagues and I continue work to preserve the records and make them accessible. This year, living under the weight of another …
Time is getting short before Halloween, so we’re combining two announcements in this one blog post! First of all, as our readers may remember, we’ve been working with No Depression, The Journal of Roots Music, which is published by the nonprofit Freshgrass Foundation. They’re publishing a column called Roots in the Archive, featuring content from the …
It’s late October, and here at Folklife Today that means we’re getting ready for Halloween! This post is a haunted hayride of traditional songs featuring ghosts, goblins, faeries, and elves.
Attention college and university teachers and students! The American Folklife Center is planning to enhance and expand its outreach to higher education, making our resources more accessible than ever before to the college and university community. This is especially important as higher education adapts to increased demand for remote and online teaching brought about by …
Every day this week at noon Eastern time, you can listen to, and sing along with, a respected musician performing a song from the American Folklife Center archive at the Library of Congress. That’s because this week, the American Folklife Center is working with the Daily Antidote of Song, a daily online concert and singalong …
This guest post by Jennifer Cutting is part of a series of blog posts highlighting performances by contemporary artists at special “Archive Challenge” showcase stages, both at the Folk Alliance International conference, and at the Library of Congress as part of the Homegrown concert series. (Find all entries in the series here!) In both of …
Take the Archive Challenge–From Home! The following post was co-authored with Jennifer Cutting At the American Folklife Center, we know it’s been hard for those of you who are cooped up at home in order to contain the spread of the COVID-19 virus. Most of the staff live in areas under stay-at-home orders, and have …
