We're continuing the Homegrown Plus Premiere series with Tlacuatzin Son Huasteco, a trio playing one of the traditional music styles of eastern Mexico, known as son huasteco or huapango music; As is usual for the series, this blog post includes an embedded concert video, an interview video, and a set of related links to explore!
Son huasteco music is built around two variants of the guitar, the jarana and the quinta huapanguera, as well as the violin and the voice. Son huasteco singing employs a distinctive falsetto style. Improvisation plays a strong role in this music, with each group adding their own lyrics and arrangements to a standard repertoire of songs. The result is acoustic string-band music that is both traditional and contemporary, with direct emotional appeal.
We're back with another episode of the Folklife Today podcast! In this episode, John Fenn and I talk about some of our favorite items in the archive, including a Nagra IV-S portable tape recorder, and invite Jennifer Cutting along to talk about commercial recordings of traditional folk dance tunes collected by the English folklorist Cecil Sharp. We used the opportunity to honor folklorists Tony Barrand, who built upon Cecil Sharp's dance scholarship, and Mick Moloney, who made some great recordings on our Nagras. Barrand and Moloney both passed away in the last year. As usual, I'll present more complete recordings of the music and other related collections in this blog post, along with links to download the podcast itself.
We're continuing the Homegrown Plus Premiere series with The Armagh Rhymers, one of the most celebrated traditional music and theatre ensembles on the island of Ireland. As is usual for the series, this blog post includes an embedded concert video, an interview video, and a set of related links to explore!
We’re back with another episode of the Folklife Today podcast! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or on Stitcher, iTunes, or your usual podcatcher. In this episode, John Fenn and and I interview the American Folklife Center’s recent interns, Bryan Jenkins and Elisa Alfonso, about the items and collections that caught their …
We're continuing the Homegrown Plus Premiere series with Vigüela, a a traditional folk quintet with a commitment to the rural musical traditions of central Spain. As is usual for the series, this blog post includes an embedded concert video, an interview video, and a set of related links to explore!
Vigüela was established in the mid-1980s, after the Franco regime, by young people who looked to folk culture for a way to channel their creative desires while staying rooted in their local communities. Grounded in this history, the band members value their tradition and perform it with accuracy and energy, as a living music, full of joy. They play traditional Spanish music, including jotas, seguidillas, fandangos, and sones, using the centuries-old singing styles, dialects, and instruments of their region. That region is Castilla-La Mancha, the southern part of the Iberian plateau, sometimes called “the heart of Spain,” or “Don Quixote country.”
We're continuing the Homegrown Plus series with Windborne, a vocal quartet from New England. BBC Traveling Folk called them "the most exciting vocal group in a generation," and they have certainly done great things with AFC archival materials. Just like other blogs in the Homegrown Plus series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections.
