The American Folklife Center has recently acquired a five-string Fairbanks Vega banjo donated by musician, photographer, and filmmaker John Cohen before his death in 2019. The John Cohen banjo is extraordinary for three reasons: it is in itself a classic instrument, a beautiful example of a Fairbanks Vega banjo with a Whyte Laydie tone ring and an unusual tone projector; it belonged to John Cohen, one of the most significant figures in the revival of the five-string banjo; and it was often played by Roscoe Holcomb, a singular artist and crucial figure in American traditional music. Read more about the banjo's history, see pictures, and follow links to some video of the banjo being played, all in this blog post!
This is a guest post by archivist Maya Lerman, who completed processing on the John Cohen collection. Maya has written for the blog about her work on this collection previously, and another of our staff, Todd Harvey, offered a recollection of Cohen’s rich body of documentation upon his passing last year. Musician, visual artist, writer, …
This guest post by AFC archivist Maya Lerman is part of a series of posts called Staff Finds During Difficult Times, in which staff members discuss collections and items that have been inspiring them while they are working at home during the covid-19 pandemic or in other difficult circumstances. Maya discusses her work on the John Cohen collection and the Blue Ridge Parkway Folklife Project Collection. The blog includes embedded old-time music and interviews with John Cohen and Tommy Jarrell.
This is a guest post by Todd Harvey, reference specialist and acquisitions coordinator at the American Folklife Center. Todd worked closely with John Cohen in recent years, and was able to conduct an oral history interview with him in 2012. The American Folklife Center sadly notes the passing of collection donor and longtime friend, John …
In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. Find the whole series here! We’re continuing the series with John Cohen and the Down Hill Strugglers performing Treasures From the Archive Roadshow. John Cohen is a founding member of the New …
The following is a guest post from Todd Harvey, a curator and reference specialist at the American Folklife Center archives, Library of Congress. It is a banner day when John Cohen visits the American Folklife Center. We greet him as an old friend, though in truth John has a longer association with the Center and …
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.
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!
Join us as we continue to explore Jack tales! Jack tales are adventure stories in which Jack is faced with various forms of adversity, and uses his wits and luck to win the day. Some of these stories feature magical elements such as silver swords and flying ships, but in others Jack uses only his brains, his hands, and his meager possessions. From the earliest Jack tale, a slightly bawdy medieval story, to the famous "Jack and the Beanstalk," and beyond to other tales, we'll look at old world and new world elements of the stories. Audio of three stories is embedded, with links to many more audio and text versions of traditional Jack tales.
