The American Folklife Center is delighted to announce that 40 more Archive Challenge videos have gone online. In the Archive Challenge, the American Folklife Center helps accomplished musicians and groups select a song from the archive, put their own spin on it, and play it in a special showcase. This set of one-song videos thus features a diverse array of musicians interpreting materials from the American Folklife Center archive. The newly published set includes videos from the Folk Alliance International conferences in 2024 and 2025, along with a wayward set of 2020 videos that were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. They include folk and blues performers from near and far—including the U.S., Canada, Scotland, France, Nigeria, Haiti, New Zealand, and Australia. In this post, we’ll present one from each year and a special bonus video. We plan to build posts around many of these videos here on the Folklife Today blog in the near future, but we first wanted to announce the good news that they’re online. Find four of the videos, along with the field recordings that inspired them, in the sections below!
Videos from 2020
The 2020 videos, of course, should have gone online long ago. However, as some of you may remember, something that occurred in 2020 interfered with a lot of well laid plans: just a few short weeks after the AFC team returned from Folk Alliance International 2020 in New Orleans, many of our institutions shut down temporarily as we adjusted to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, many programs and projects were canceled or delayed. Among those that suffered long delays were our 2020 Archive Challenge videos from New Orleans–now online for the first time! AFC thanks our colleagues throughout the Library who helped get these wayward videos back on track!
The 2020 videos feature a stunning variety of talent performing a wide range of songs including veteran performers and newcomers playing everything from blues and hollers to fiddle tunes, and from Haitian rasin to Cuban changüí. The selections include: Jay Ungar and Molly Mason’s take on “Midnight on the Water / Bonaparte’s Retreat;” Changüí Majadero’s interpretation of “El Sacrificio;” Lone Piñon’s arrangement of “Entrega de Novios;” SaulPaul’s version of “Amazing Grace;” Cary Morin’s take on “Sitting on Top of the World;” Muddy Gurdy’s arrangement of “Another Man Done Gone;” Crys Matthews’s rendition of “How I Long for Peace;” Windborne’s interpretation of “Hard Times;” Doug McLeod’s adaptation of “Catfish Blues;” Walter Parks’s rendition of “The Coming Home Holler;” Lakou Mizik’s setting of “Nou tout se moun (Pran Ka Mwen);” Joe Jencks’s performance of “Take This Hammer;” Hat Fitz and Cara’s take on “Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning;” The Snarky Sisterz’s adaptation of “Life is Like That (You’ve Got to Cry a Little);” and Tim Easton’s version of “Spike Driver/John Henry (Spike Driver’s Blues).” In addition, the 2020 set features an interview I recorded with Dom Flemons, which was intended to accompany his Homegrown concert that year, as well as two individual song videos by Dom. The full set of 2020 Archive Challenge videos, along with notes on the songs and the field recordings, can be found here.
The French trio Muddy Gurdy learned “Another Man Done Gone” from a 1948 field recording of Vera Ward Hall, which you can hear in the player below, or find at this link from the Association for Cultural Equity.
At the Folk Alliance conference, I was probably one of the few people who nerded out when I met Gilles Chabenat, the renowned hurdy-gurdy player from the group, who was in several groundbreaking French folk bands and has released some classic albums of traditional French music as well as many of his own compositions. Here, he and his bandmates Tina Gouttebel and Marc Glomeau bring some refined blues sensibilities to Vera Hall’s heartrending lament. Hear it in the player below.
Videos from 2024
While the videos from 2024 were in process, we overhauled, updated, and standardized the way we attach metadata to these videos online. That may sound technical, but it just means that we’ve come up with a standard for the video titles and descriptions, to work well with the way our website displays text and to make it easier for users to know what they’ll be getting when they click on an Archive Challenge video. This made the 2024 videos take a bit longer to process, so they came out along with the 2025 set. The 2024 videos were also performed by highly accomplished musicians and creative arrangers across a range of genres, from Electronica to Americana and from Celtic to Country. The artists and songs include: Elias Alexander with “Always Been a Rambler;” Calling Cadence singing “Faded Coat of Blue;” Alicia Blue’s version of “Song of the Deportees;” Eliza Doyle interpreting “Naomi Wise;” The Heart Collectors’ arrangement of “Shenandoah;” Tim Easton performing “I’m Troubled;” Ismay singing “Oh, Love is Teasing;” Alice Hasen, Josh Threlkeld, and Rachel Maxann’s take on “Poor Wayfaring Stranger;” Rakish playing “I Have a Little Sheep on a Tether / The Fairy’s Reel;” Alana Wilkinson and Kerryn Fields singing “Give Me Your Love and I’ll Give You Mine;” Rachel Maxann’s version of “Hard Time Killing Floor Blues;” The Weeping Willows performing “C.C. Rider;” and Jessica Rhaye, Bill Preeper, and Sandy Mackay’s rendition of “The Old Blackbird.” The full set of 2024 Archive Challenge videos, along with notes on the songs and the field recordings, can be found here.
Kymrie Henge of the Heart Collectors knew the melody of the sea chantey “Shenandoah” as a child, but she and the band learned it from the singing of retired sailor Richard Maitland, whose version you can hear in the player below.
Now let’s listen to the song as performed by The Heart Collectors, who came all the way from Australia to perform at Folk Alliance International and participate in the Archive Challenge. They’re in the player below!
Videos from 2025
Earlier this year, AFC staff members traveled once again to Folk Alliance International, this time in Montréal, Québec, Canada. As always, I and my colleagues Jennifer Cutting and Thea Austen owe a debt of gratitude to the staff and board of Folk Alliance International for helping this showcase thrive in so many ways, and to the fantastic Montréal folk music community. The 2025 videos include: Colleen Power performing “Cod Liver Oil;” Thea Hopkins performing her original new lyrics for “Red Wing;” Blessing Tangban singing “Horned Owl;” Amanda Pascali with Addison Freeman interpreting “Mamma Mia Dammi Cento Lire;” Elexa Dawson’s version of “The Riddle Song (I Gave My Love a Cherry);” Buggy Jive’s arrangement of “Good God Almighty;” Kate McCann singing “Rio Grande;” SaulPaul performing “Wade in the Water;” Iona Fyfe’s arrangement of “The Baron of Brackley;” Sweet Petunia (Madison Simpson and Mairead Guy) performing “Payday at Coal Creek;” Sarah Segal-Lazar and Gideon Yellin interpreting “This Old World’s in a Tangle;” Jonathan Bélanger playing “Alma Andalucia (Soul of Andalucia);” and The Barrel Boys (Tim O’Reilly, Nathan Smith, Rob McLaren, Kyle Kirkpatrick, and Ben Wright) with their version of “Old Chisholm Trail.” The full set of 2025 Archive Challenge videos, along with notes on the songs and the field recordings, can be found here.
Buggy Jive learned “Good God Almighty” from a field recording of “Lightning” Washington and a group of other convicts at the Darrington State Farm. You can hear that recording in the licensed YouTube video at this link. Buggy Jive’s version is at once old-fashioned and brand-new, not to mention starkly emotional. See it in the player below!
Bonus Dom Flemons Video
As I mentioned, along with the 2020 Folk Alliance International videos are three more videos from that year, including two songs and an interview with Dom Flemons, who was the very first formal Archive Challenge artist back in 2015. Dom has listened closely to Cecilia Conway’s archival recording of cousins Joe and Odell Thompson performing “Old Corn Liquor,” which you can hear at this link. [Find the collection in our catalog here.] Dom went the extra mile, going to North Carolina and learning the song directly from Joe Thompson (Odell had died by then). We’re proud to know that that’s the kind of commitment our archival recordings can inspire. Now that Joe has also passed away, we can only hear the Thompson family’s music through recordings like the ones we steward here in the Archive of Folk Culture. That’s what the Archive Challenge is all about–connecting with people, past and present, through the music preserved in archives. You can find all the Archive Challenge videos from all years at this link. Watch for upcoming posts highlighting more of the great videos we’ve captured using the Archive Challenge model. Meanwhile, Dom Flemons is a master of the process, and we’ll give him the last word in his video below!