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Posted by: Stephen Winick
The following is a guest post by Todd Harvey and Melanie Zeck of the American Folklife Center Muddy Waters – 29. (Head of the house) Farms 16 acres. Been knowing Son House since ’29. Learned how to play with bottle neck from him by watching him for about a year – followed after where he …
Posted in: Alan Lomax
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Episode Fourteen of the Folklife Today Podcast (or Season 2, Episode 2) is ready for listening! The episode presents a deep dive into a single song, known either as "The Candidate's a Dodger" or simply as "The Dodger." In the episode, Thea Austen, Jennifer Cutting, and I look at the classic folksong , discussing the song’s meanings in oral tradition, its use by Aaron Copland as an art song, and its involvement in political controversy in the 1930s, when Charles Seeger first published it. We examine the song’s history and lay out new evidence about its relationships to other folksongs and to a musical theater song from 1840s England. We also discuss the possibility that Charles Seeger, a founder of ethnomusicology and a pioneering federal folklorist, was himself a “dodger!” The episode includes performances by folksingers Pete Seeger, Mike Seeger, and Peggy Seeger, as well as baritone Thomas Hampson, and five field recordings from the Library of Congress.
Posted in: Dodger, Podcasts, Uncategorized
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This is a guest post from one of the 2019 Folklife Interns at the American Folklife Center, Tali Gelenian. This internship program was launched in the summer of 2018 through a generous gift from the late Peter Bartis, a long-time staff member at the AFC and a tireless proponent of folklife–as well as a fieldworker …
Posted in: Internship program, Podcasts
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Episode Eleven of the Folklife Today Podcast is ready for listening! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or on iTunes, or with your usual podcatcher. Get your podcast here! In this episode, John Fenn and I discuss two more hidden folklorists, writer Charles J. Finger and filmmaker Nicholas Ray. Charles J. Finger collected folklore …
Posted in: Cowboy and Western Music, Hidden Folklorists, Podcasts, Uncategorized
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This blog post about the Arkansas writer Charles J. Finger is part of a series called “Hidden Folklorists,” which examines the folklore work of surprising people, including people better known for other pursuits. A series of sepia-toned photographs held by the University of Arkansas Library’s Special Collections division shows an amiable-looking young man with luxuriant …
Posted in: Arkansas, Cowboy and Western Music, Hidden Folklorists, Uncategorized
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This guest blog post by Matthew Barton about the playwright Arthur Miller is part of a series called “Hidden Folklorists,” which examines the folklore work of surprising people, including people better known for other pursuits. It was written soon after Miller’s death in 2005 for the publication Folklife Center News. Matthew Barton worked at the …
Posted in: Hidden Folklorists, Radio
Posted by: Stephen Winick
In the Homegrown Plus series, and the Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lectures Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts and Botkin lectures that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole Homegrown Plus series here, and find the whole Botkin Folklife Lectures Plus series here.) For Jewish-American Heritage Month, …
Posted in: Botkin Folklife Lectures Plus, Homegrown Plus
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Concert and oral history with Jayme Stone's Folklife, which brings together the Juno-winning banjo player with distinctive and creative roots musicians to revive, recycle and reimagine traditional music.
Posted in: Homegrown Plus, Old Time Music
Posted by: Stephen Winick
May 3, 2019, would have been Pete Seeger’s 100th birthday. Summing up what Pete meant and still means to us is difficult, but I tried my best in the wake of Pete’s death with the tribute post at this link. Rather than summing up again for his hundredth birthday, I thought I’d highlight one …
Posted in: AFC Events, Obituaries, Pete Seeger