"These should rank with the best shanty and sea-song recordings ever made." So said the sea shanty expert William Main Doerflinger in May, 1942, describing the recordings he had recently made of the retired sailor Patrick Tayluer. Circumstances have conspired to keep those recordings under wraps, until this blog series. In this second post, we’ll hear another of his shanties (“Paddy Lay Back” or “Mainsail Haul”) and one of his sea stories. Then, we’ll use available evidence to create a new biography of Patrick Tayluer (1856-1948), a multifaceted sailor, soldier, singer, storyteller, model-builder, long-distance walker, and, of course, shantyman.
Earlier this year, I had the chance to delve through the fieldnotes from the Pinelands Folklife Project for a post celebrating American Wetlands Month. I used a number of quotes from these accounts, but there were many more that I wanted to highlight and didn’t have space for. The prose – some humorous, some profound, …
In this post, the American Folklife Center (AFC) highlights a May 2024 concert performance and oral history interview with the Somapa Thai Dance Company and Orchestra--an ensemble performing traditional music from Thailand, whose members now predominately live in the Washington, DC metropolitan region. The AFC organized Somapa's performance in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and as part of the 2024 Homegrown Concert Series.
This is the first in series of blog posts looking at the sea shanties, songs, and stories sung and told by retired sailor Patrick Tayluer for collector William Main Doerflinger in 1942. Many lovers of sea shanties have heard of Patrick Tayluer; in 1942, the old salt recorded 66 songs and stories on disc and a further 13 on cylinders for Doerflinger. Doerflinger transcribed and published many of these items in his 1951 book "Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman," and through those transcriptions Tayluer has become a well-known source for nautical singers around the world. But Doerflinger was only able to provide a single paragraph of biography and no photos or other images of Tayluer, and since his book was about songs, Doerflinger didn’t include any of Tayluer’s stories. More importantly, until now, very few singers or researchers have been lucky enough to hear Patrick Tayluer’s voice. This series of blogs aims to remedy that, presenting a biography of Tayluer, several photos, and (most importantly) a selection of his songs and stories. This post introduces Tayluer and presents a photo and two of his best shanties.
On June 5, 2024, the American Folklife Center welcomed Istiwanāt Live!--an Arabic musical ensemble, or takht, formed by four ethnomusicologists with expertise in Middle Eastern music--to perform as part of the Homegrown Concert Series. Many of the group's songs were reinterpreted from archival collections at the American Folklife Center. In this post, find a video of group's performance and oral history interview, along with notes on their performance from ethnomusicologist (and current AFC intern) Hanna Salmon.
Recently, the American Folklife Center received a generous donation from the estate of Peter Bartis, a former AFC staff member, to support our internship program. In this post, we express our appreciation to the Bartis family and detail the excellent work of our former interns, who were supported by previous financial contributions.
