This post in the Homegrown Plus series features the Windborne Trio, a vocal group from New England. Windborne is usually a quartet, but Jeremy Carter Gordon was prevented from performing at this show. Luckily, before Jeremy joined the group, Windborne toured as a trio, so they had the repertoire, arrangements, and experience to put together a stunning show without him. Consequently, for this concert Windborne was Lynn Mahoney Rowan, Will Thomas Rowan, and Lauren Breunig. In their concert they performed a mix of old and new favorites, including American, English, Georgian, Corsican, and Basque songs. 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.
AFC Folklife Specialist Meg Nicholas wheels out some gouda pictures and cheesy stories from the American Folklife Center’s collections to celebrate National Cheese Curd Day.
This is the third in a 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 through Doerflinger's 1951 book "Shantymen and Shantyboys: Songs of the Sailor and Lumberman." Until now, however, very few singers or researchers have been lucky enough to hear Patrick Tayluer’s voice. This series of blogs aims to remedy that. This post focuses on Tayluer's commentary on sea shanties, including his beliefs about the origin of the genre among West African work crews. Of course, we get to hear some shanties as well!
The American Folklife Center announces the launch of the Chicago 1977: People, Places, and Cultures transcription campaign, as part of the Library of Congress By the People volunteer transcription initiative, and based on the Center's Chicago Ethnic Arts Project Collection from 1977.
With gratitude and best wishes, the American Folklife Center notes that on September 30, 2024, after more than 40 years on the air, our longtime friend and colleague Fiona Ritchie ended her successful and influential weekly public radio program “The Thistle & Shamrock,” an institution in the Celtic music world. Fiona Ritchie has had close ties over the years with AFC staff members; she has been a guest in our “Open Mic” series of interviews, and two members of the AFC staff were featured on a 2-part “Thistle and Samrock” episode about the AFC’s history for our 40th anniversary in 2016. In this blog post, we pay tribute to Fiona and provide links to those programs.
We're back with another episode of the Folklife Today podcast in which John Fenn and Stephen Winick talk to Hanna Salmon about storytelling and folktale collections in the archive. Of course, we present excerpts and full performances of some great stories too, from storytellers such as Ray Hicks, Connie Regan-Blake, Barbara Freeman, Carmen Agra Deedy, and Tim Tingle. Hanna has created a new cross-collection research guide for the Center, titled "Folktales and Oral Storytelling: Resources in the American Folklife Center Collections." In this blog post, we provide links to the new podcast episode, to Hanna’s guide, to the full performances we excerpted for the podcast, and to web resources on the storytellers we featured.
On the day after National Coffee Day, AFC Folklife Specialist Meg Nicholas chases down references to the popular caffeinated drink in the Center’s archival collections.
In a recent lecture in our Benjamin A. Botkin Lecture Series, Conspiracy Theories, Folklore and Belief: Birds Aren't Real, Loch Ness Monsters and Microchips, folklorist Andrea Kitta discussed some definitions of conspiracy theories and how they fit into other belief traditions and narratives with a focus on understanding why people believe in conspiracy theories and how they function. This blog post includes the lecture video, an interview video with Dr. Kitta, and a set of links to related collections and programming.
The American Folklife Center marks National Lobster Day by sharing collections of lobstermen oral histories, photographs of the Aquidneck Lobster Company, and lobster recipes found in its archive.
