The latest post in the Homegrown Plus series features Boots Lupenui and the Kohala Mountain Boys performing heritage songs of the Kohala region of the Big Island of Hawai’i. Led by Boots Lupenui, the Kohala Mountain Boys are committed to uncovering and preserving musical treasures that helped to define the moku of Kohala on Hawai'i Island. In Boots's words, "Old-time Kohala music is soulful, playful, poetic and fierce, the manifold voice of a vibrant and extraordinary people. We want to recover and share the heirloom songs currently known only to a few isolated and precious old voices, their words and tunes unsung for years. The ancient musical essence of our beloved and mystical Kohala may be lost in this generation. Reclaiming our heirloom songs strengthens our ancestral ties to our homeland. It is a source of pride that can be shared by all the families and all the people of Kohala, for generations to come." Lupenui and his team were the recipients of a Community Collections Grant to document songs written by Kohala residents which might otherwise be lost; the collection is online at the Library of Congress website. This concert provides another way to experience these songs. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections, as well as Boots's finished documentary film about documenting the heirloom songs of Kohala.
Welcome to our latest post in the Homegrown Plus series, featuring Louis Michot and Leyla McCalla, an outstanding duo performing traditional French-language music from Louisiana. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections. Louis Michot is a fiddle player and lead singer for the Grammy-award-winning Lost Bayou Ramblers. In addition to fiddle and vocals, Louis plays guitar, bass, ti-fer (triangle), and accordion--all the instruments of a typical Cajun band. Leyla McCalla was born in New York City to Haitian emigrants and activists. McCalla is a master of the cello, tenor banjo, and guitar, as well as a multilingual singer and songwriter. She is a founding member of Our Native Daughters and has appeared at the Library of Congress as a member of the Grammy-award-winning Black string band The Carolina Chocolate Drops. This event spotlights the New Orleans-based Nous Foundation and their Community Collections Grant project, "La Musique Nous Réunit: Documenting Louisiana French Music."
A few weeks ago we published two blog posts introducing the American Folklife Center's rich folktale collections. We focused on "Jack Tales," those stories telling the adventures of a tricky, resourceful young man named Jack. We included audio of many Jack tales within those posts, but length limitations prevented us from embedding the texts of the stories as well. So, to make the stories more accessible to a wider audience, we'll be posting a few blogs with transcriptions of some of the stories we presented in those blogs. We'll begin with "Jack and the Northwest Wind," as told by Maud Long.
The American Folklife Center is excited to announce the online availability of an excellent fieldwork collection of interviews and videos of cultural events created through its Community Collection Grants (CCG)! “Lao Buddhist New Year Festival in Southern Louisiana,” documents the Louisiana Lao New Year Festival presented in 2022 by Wat Thammarattanaram, a Buddhist temple and monastery in Broussard (Iberia Parish), Louisiana. A community-based research team conducted interviews and captured video of events, ceremonies, and celebrations. Find links to the collection in this blog post.
