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In this photo of The Chosen Few, eight men sit in pews in a church.

Homegrown Plus Premiere: The Chosen Few’s a Cappella Gospel from Virginia

Posted by: Stephen Winick

We're continuing the Homegrown Plus Premiere series with The Chosen Few, a Virginia gospel group that stands firmly in the great tradition of unaccompanied religious singing by African American residents of the Tidewater region of the mid-Atlantic states. 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!

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Community Collection Grants: R&B Urban Line Dancing on “Of the People”

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Below is an excerpt from a post on the Library’s Of the People blog highlighting artist, documentarian, and AFC Community Collections Grant recipient Karen Abdul-Malik, also known professionally as Queen Nur. It is part of an “Of the People blog” series featuring the 2022 awardees of the American Folklife Center’s Community Collections Grants program. Abdul-Malik’s project focuses …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

John Jackson Tells a Ghost Story for Halloween

Posted by: Stephen Winick

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."

man seated in wheelchar singing next to a podium

From Conflict to Creativity: The Journeys of Matthew Gill and Teresa K. Howes

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

The following is a guest blog post co-authored by U.S. Navy veteran Matthew Gill and U.S. Army/Army National Guard veteran Teresa K. Howes. This is the second in a four-part guest series featuring military veteran artists who are members of Uniting US, a veteran-focused nonprofit arts organization. Go here to read part 1. In recognition …