John Jackson (1924-2002) was a fantastic singer and guitarist; he was one of the most significant Black Appalachian musicians to begin his professional career in the 1960s. Less well known than his musical prowess was John Jackson's talent as a storyteller. Although he occasionally worked tales into his concert performances, he particularly loved stories about the supernatural, which he mostly told privately. Luckily, some of these ghost stories were recorded and the tapes are in the AFC archive. In this blog, you'll hear (and read) his version of a story about two preachers who attempt to spend the night in a haunted house. He called it "The Preachers and the Spooks."
It's October, so it's time for a new season of the Folklife Today podcast, and a new Halloween episode! In this Season 5 opener, John Fenn and Stephen Winick talk about the new updated Halloween and Dia de Muertos Research Guide. Then we introduce some of our favorite spooky stories: a witch story told by singer and activist Aunt Molly Jackson from Kentucky, a ghost story told by songster and blues musician John Jackson from Virginia, and the story of Jack O Lantern told by folklorist and International Man of Mystery Jack Santino. And of course we included the stories! Sound good? Very well then...Get your podcast here!
The following is a guest post by folklorist Sally Van de Water, Folklife Programs Manager, Division of Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Arts Institute of Middlesex County, New Jersey. The post introduces AFC’s Homegrown Foodways in Central New Jersey film series, a collaboration with Van de Water and colleagues at the Division of Folklife and Cultural Heritage at the Arts Institute of Middlesex County.
Get ready for two upcoming holidays with the expanded and updated research guide on Halloween and Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead) from the Library of Congress! "Halloween & Dia de Muertos Resources" highlights collections from across the Library, including the American Folklife Center, Prints and Photographs, the Hispanic section, Rare Books, Manuscripts, and the National Audio Visual Conservation Center (NAVCC). Items we've added for this year's Halloween season include a player where you can listen to Jack Santino's classic Halloween lecture discussing the deep history of the holiday as well as folktales and other Halloween lore. We've also added: links to notable books to get you started in your Halloween reading; a player to watch the first film version of Frankenstein from 1910; a gallery of classic Dia de Los Muertos posters from the Mission Grafica/La Raza Graphics collection; and links to lots of new content like the witch tales from Aunt Molly Jackson that I blogged about just last week. Find it all at the link in this blog post!
This is the 10th Halloween we have celebrated at Folklife Today with stories and songs about ghosts, witches, spirits, death, and the Devil. As usual, this year we'll feature several Halloween posts leading up to the big day. We're starting with this one, presenting some fascinating belief stories about witches from early 20th century Kentucky. The speaker is Mary Magdalen Garland Stewart Jackson Stamos, known by the professional name Aunt Molly Jackson. In the post, you'll find embedded audio of Jackson telling the stories, along with complete transcriptions of the texts. Happy Halloween!
The American Folklife Center was delighted to relaunch our in-person Botkin Lectures on September 15 with a major event in the Coolidge Auditorium here at the Library of Congress. The evening presentation, which was part of the Live! At the Library series, featured the renowned documentarians The Kitchen Sisters (Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva) in conversation with their friend and collaborator, the Academy-Award-winning actor Frances McDormand. Fortunately, if you were unable to attend -- or you want to hear it again – the entire event was recorded on video, and you can watch it right in this blog post!
The research guides from the American Folklife Center help researchers navigate the AFC collections by geographic region or by topic. One of our most recent guides, Latinx and Latin American Collections: Resources in the American Folklife Center, provides quick access to our Latinx and Latin American resources during National Hispanic Heritage Month.
This guest post was authored by Marcia K. Segal, an archivist at the American Folklife Center who processed and authored the finding aid to the collection she describes below. Melville Herskovits, Alan Lomax, and Laura Boulton – three notable collectors, whose recordings of religious expression in Haiti are among the collections at the American Folklife …
