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Posted by: Stephanie Hall
Yiddish was the common language of Jews who immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe. It is a German-based language thought to have developed in the 9th century. While all aspects of Yiddish culture, including literature, theater, film, recording, and journalism, existed in robust and diverse forms wherever Ashkenazi Jews lived, it was in …
Posted in: Jewish American History, Radio
Posted by: Stephen Winick
We continue the Homegrown Plus series with the duo of Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, who perform their own unusual arrangements of traditional and original Scottish and American folk music on fiddle and cello. Alasdair Fraser has a concert and recording career spanning over 30 years, with a long list of awards, accolades, radio and television credits, and feature performances on top movie soundtracks, including Last of the Mohicans and Titanic. In 2011, he was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame. Natalie Haas, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, is one of the most sought after cellists in traditional music today, and has performed and recorded with Mark O'Connor, Natalie MacMaster, Irish supergroups Solas and Altan, Liz Carroll, Dirk Powell, Brittany Haas, Darol Anger, Laura Cortese, and many more. Together, the duo of Fraser & Haas has helped reconstruct and revive a longstanding Scottish tradition of playing dance music on violin and cello. For their socially distanced concert, they performed some music solo and some using studio technology to join up separate performances, but most of it is never-before-released concert footage from their archive of pre-pandemic performances. In the interview, we discuss their separate musical histories as well as their 20-year career as a duo.
Posted in: Homegrown Plus, Scotland
Posted by: Stephanie Hall
The January 1941 launch of the Radio Research Project marked the initial foray of the Library of Congress into broadcast media. Funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and supported by Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish, the project created numerous and diverse radio programs primarily relating to American history and folklore, and utilized groundbreaking recording and production …
Posted in: Folksong, Radio, World War II
Posted by: Kerry Ward
The following is a guest blog post by Rue Mayweather, Army veteran, author and mother. She is one of the participants on the Veterans History Project (VHP) virtual discussion panel, “Motherhood and the Military.” I still recall every detail from the day my bundle of joy arrived. In a moment, everything had changed. I had …
Posted in: Iraq War, Mother's Day, Narratives, Persian Gulf War, Storytelling, Veterans History Project, Women's History
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Season 3, Episode 5 the Folklife Today Podcast is ready for listening! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or on Stitcher, iTunes, or your usual podcatcher. In this episode, which we release at the close of National Poetry Month, John Fenn and I, along with several guests, look at some of the …
Posted in: Native American History, Podcasts
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Eva Salina and Peter Stan have played not one but two Homegrown concerts in the last few years...so this blog presents three videos: both concerts and an oral history interview. California-grown, Brooklyn-based Eva Salina is a groundbreaking interpreter of Balkan Romani songs. Raised in the US Balkan Diaspora, Eva's mentors are some of the greatest living Balkan musicians. Eva's duo partner, Peter "Perica" Stan, is a Serbian/Romanian Roma accordionist known for his playful innovation and soulful, intuitive improvisations. Together, they played exciting Serbian and Roma music, and told fascinating stories about their lives and musical experiences. Find it all in the blog!
Posted in: AFC Events, Homegrown Concert Series, Homegrown Plus, Serbian Americans
Posted by: Kerry Ward
The following is a post about the upcoming Veterans History Project (VHP) virtual discussion panel, “Motherhood and the Military.” Watch the Folklife Today blog for an upcoming post from Motherhood and the Military panelist Rue Mayweather on May 4th. This second Sunday in May has been set aside for our nation to remember and celebrate …
Posted in: Afghanistan War, Iraq War, Mother's Day, Narratives, Oral History, Storytelling, Veterans History Project, Women's History, World War I
Posted by: John Fenn
This guest post is the second in a series about collaborative programming the American Folklife Center supported last year that involved the Library’s Citizen DJ platform. The post comes to us from the staff at Class Act Detroit, a nonprofit organization based in Detroit, MI focused on providing equitable out-of-school programming that serves the metro …
Posted in: AFC Events
Posted by: John Fenn
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress continues to bring voices of workers throughout the country to listeners with the second season of our “America Works” podcast.
Posted in: Narratives, Occupational Folklife Project, Oral History