Top of page

Archive: July 2023 (8 Posts)

24 people pose for a photo

Ukrainian Musicians Visit American Folklife Center

Posted by: Stephen Winick

On Wednesday, July 5, and Friday, July 7, 2023, the American Folklife Center (AFC) welcomed a delegation of Ukrainian and Ukrainian-American musicians to the Library of Congress. The musicians—Shchuka-Ryba, Bozhychi, Mariya Kvitka, Yaroslav Dzhus, Katya Chilly, and Ukrainian Village Voices—traveled to Washington, D.C. to perform at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. Joining the groups were representatives from the Maidan Museum in Kyiv, Ukraine, the Smithsonian Cultural Rescue Initiative, and Dr. James Deutsch—a curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Find out about their visit, and about many of AFC's Ukrainian collections and programs, in this blog post!

A screen capture of the new AFC homepage

A New Look for the AFC Web Pages

Posted by: Stephen Winick

If you've visited the American Folklife Center's main page on the Library of Congress website in the last few days, you may have noticed a change. The pages have been converted to the Library of Congress's new standard format for Research Centers across the Library's divisions. Our legacy URL of loc.gov/folklife will now redirect you to the new landing page. We're excited to share the new site with you, so this blog will guide you to some of its features and provide the link for you to explore.

Modesta Yangmog of Asor Island, Ulithi Atoll interviewing master lavalava weaver Conchita Leyangrow of Lamotrek Atoll in Talguw on Yap Island

Save the Date: Community-driven Archives Online Discussion Event

Posted by: Michelle Stefano

This post is a save-the-date announcement for the online discussion event, the Community-driven Archives: Local Needs/Global Practices in Safeguarding Living Cultural Heritage, bringing together panelists to discuss examples of community-guided documentation and archival preservation work from international perspectives. The event is hosted by the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, in collaboration with the American Folklore Society and the International Society for Ethnology and Folklore.

A man sits by a window holding papers

AFC Fellowship and Award Recipients 2023

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the 2023 recipients of its three competitive annual fellowships and awards programs: the Archie Green Fellowships, the Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons Fund Award, and the Blanton Owen Fund Award. This year, these three awards went to six projects throughout the United States, whose proposals were reviewed and selected by internal and external panels at the American Folklife Center. Read on for information about the awardees.

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

AFC welcomes new Presidential appointees to its Board of Trustees

Posted by: Guha Shankar

The American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress welcomes three new Presidential appointees to the Center’s Board of Trustees: Sara C. Bronin, Chair of the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (ACHP), Admiral Rachel Leland Levine, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Charles Sams III, Director of the National Park Service. Each appointee …

Homegrown Plus Premiere: Ali Doğan Gönültas Quartet

Posted by: Stephen Winick

We're continuing the Homegrown Plus Premiere series with Ali Doğan Gönültas and Friends. This is one of our prerecorded video concerts, shot on video in Istanbul and presented here for the first time! 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! Ali Doğan Gönültas is a Kurdish musician born in Turkey. Ali's oral history and field research, which he began in 2007, led him to record and release the 2022 album “Kiğı," and to record this concert. Kiğı is a personal look at the 150-year musical process of the village of Kiğı, Ali's birthplace. It consists of works in the regional languages of Kurmancî, Kırdaskî, Armenian and Turkish, as well as Zazakî, Ali's mother tongue. Themes and styles such as govend (traditional Kurdish dance), laments, work songs, and prayer forms are conveyed with the modal characteristics of the region.

A man plays a banjo and sings

Homegrown Plus: Jake Blount’s African American Folk Music Live at the Library

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Back in February, we were delighted to host the first Homegrown concert of 2023 here at the Library of Congress. The concert was a solo performance by the banjo player, fiddler, and singer Jake Blount, an award-winning musician and a scholar of African American musical traditions. We presented Jake as part of Live! at the Library, the series featuring extended visiting hours and special programming every Thursday night. It was also part of the Black History Month celebrations at the Library of Congress and was presented in cooperation with the Folklore Society of Greater Washington. Like other blogs in the Homegrown Plus series, this one includes a concert video and a video interview with the featured performer (in this case Jake Blount), plus links and connections to Library of Congress collections.