In 2020, singer-songwriter Crys Matthews participated in the American Folklife Center’s Library of Congress/Folk Alliance International Archive Challenge in New Orleans. The song she selected was “How I Long for Peace,” a song written by Peggy Seeger and sung by Seeger during her concert at the Library of Congress in 2007. Matthews adapted the song for the Archive Challenge, taking inspiration not only from Seeger, but from the spirituals and freedom songs she had heard in church growing up. The song was a highlight of the Archive Challenge that year, so much so that Matthews continued singing it. A few years later, she suggested a collaborative recording of the song to Rhiannon Giddens, a groundbreaking performer and another friend of AFC, who has received a Grammy Award, a Pulitzer Prize, and a MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship, among other accolades. Matthews and Giddens, along with the Resistance Revival Chorus, released their version in 2024. Mostly by coincidence, Peggy Seeger, who had never released an official recording of the song, revisited it in 2021. In this blog, we’ll present the story of this special archive challenge, with Crys Matthews’s Archive Challenge video embedded, and links to the Peggy Seeger version from 2007, the version with Rhiannon Giddens and the Resistance Revival Chorus, and Peggy Seeger’s 2021 interpretation.
We continue to explore the tradition of Jack tales, this time looking at the way they emerge into literature. In this post, we look at fantasy novels and short stories inspired by Jack, created by such authors as Leo Tolstoy, William Morris, George MacDonald, J.R.R. Tolkien, Rachel Pollack, Charles de Lint, Stephen King, Peter Straub, Michael Buckley, Chris Colfer, Bill Nye the Science Guy and Gregory Mone, and Holly Black and Tony DiTerlizzi. We’ll also look at a few works of more realist fiction, including the Jack Aubrey novels by Patrick O’Brian and the Jack Reacher series created by Lee Child, uncovering the folktale underpinnings of a lot of classic and contemporary literature. We include links to orally told folktales, as well as author talks at the National Book Festival.
The artist known by the single name “Francilia,” whom we featured in a recent post, was one of the most prolific singers Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded on their 1936-37 trip to Haiti. In all, they recorded 96 songs sung by Francilia, who was known in the local community as a rèn chante (queen of song). Her repertoire ranged from religious songs to secular love songs, and she performed solo and with groups. Following the repatriation of Lomax’s collection to Haiti, Haitian musicians were able to hear Francilia, and in 2019 the group Lakou Mizik recorded one of her songs in an Archive Challenge showcase sponsored by AFC. In this post, we continue to present a few of Francilia’s best songs, with links to her entire opus in their online home, along with the Archive Challenge video of Lakou Mizik.
The disc labeled AFS 1250 features the great Haitian singer Francilia and the Sosyete Dereyal, a religious congregation of Vodou practitioners with whom she sang. Francilia was one of the most prolific singers Alan and Elizabeth Lomax recorded on their 1936-37 trip to Haiti. In all, they recorded 96 songs sung by Francilia, including solo songs and songs with the Sosyete. These ranged from religious songs to secular love songs. In this, our 1250th blog post at Folklife Today, we present a few of Francilia’s best songs, with links to her entire opus in their online home. It’s the first of two posts about Francilia; in the second we’ll cover her influence on Haitian music today.
AFC is happy to introduce Amanda Pascali, the 2025 Artist in Resonance. Pascali is an internationally acclaimed, bilingual singer/songwriter who blends folk/Americana influences with Mediterranean, Balkan, and Latin rhythms. Born in New York City and raised in Texas, she has performed internationally, and was named the 2021 Houston Chronicle "Musician of the Year." Earlier this year, she performed in our very own Archive Challenge Showcase at Folk Alliance International. Pascali is also a Fulbright Fellow who pioneered the first comprehensive project to translate and revitalize folk songs written in Sicilian— a UNESCO endangered language. She has amassed a viral following online, and has presented her work at conferences and universities in the US and abroad. For her Artists in Resonance project, she plans to draw on several AFC collections in Italian, Sicilian, and English, emphasizing the connections between American folk music and Italian traditional songs, as well as between historical struggles and contemporary issues. In this blog, we’ll introduce this unique artist and her project, embed her Archive Challenge video, and link you to more of her music.
The American Folklife Center is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2025 fellowships and awards. Archie Green Fellowships went to: Joel Chapman of Baltimore, Maryland, for “Cycling Lore: The Occupational Folklore of Bicycle Workers in America;” Georgia Ellie Dassler of Richmond, Virginia, for “Vets on the Trail: The Occupational Culture of American Sled Dog Veterinarians;” Amy Grossmann of the North Carolina Folklife Institute for “Professional Firefighters in Greensboro, North Carolina;” and Austin Richey of Hamtramck, Michigan, for “Backstage Detroit: Labor and Artistry at the Detroit Opera.” Their documentation will become part of AFC’s online Occupational Folklife Project. Gerald E. And Corinne L. Parsons Fund Awards went to: Lora Bottinelli of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, to conduct onsite research with Library collections related to waterfowling; and Olivia Phillips of Bloomington, Indiana, to research the influences of African American musicians and musical styles on the influential North Carolina musician Frank Proffitt. Blanton Owen Fund Awards went to: Allison Cate of Nashville, Tennessee, for oral history interviews with founders and key organizers of the East Nashville Tomato Art Festival; and Justin Hunter of Fayetteville, Arkansas, for “She Heard Arkansas: An Ethnographic Biography of Mary Parler.” The Artists in Resonance Fellowship went to Amanda Pascali for a project focused on immigrant collections, including Italian and Sicilian-language folksong collections, at AFC. In the blog you’ll find more information on the awardees and their projects.
The Creek Rocks, the first recipients of the American Folklife Center’s Artists in Resonance fellowship, will return to the Library of Congress on August 21 to perform in the Coolidge Auditorium. They’ll be playing their own arrangements of songs they gleaned from AFC’s deep Ozark Mountain collections as part of their fellowship research. In this post, we’ll introduce you to the band and link you to some fun resources, including music, interviews, and an Ozark mountain podcast. And, of course, we’ll provide the concert details!
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. Find a sampler of embedded videos, along with the field recordings that inspired them, in this blog post, along with links to each year's videos.
We continue our exploration of Jack tales with a look at printed collections of stories. The prominence of Richard Chase’s 1943 book “The Jack Tales” has tended to obscure other valuable collections, both before and after his publication. We’ll look at works from a wide variety of authors: collectors from oral tradition, including Isabel Gordon Carter, Vance Randolph, Leonard Roberts, and Herbert Halpert; storytellers, including Donald Davis, Jackie Torrence, and Duncan Williamson; and folklorists and anthologists such as Joseph Jacobs, Carl Lindahl, William Bernard McCarthy, and Anita Best. There's also embedded audio of Maud Long and Duncan Williamson, and links to other audio versions of Jack tales you can enjoy!
