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Posted by: Meg Nicholas
Though primarily an audio-visual archive, the American Folklife Center is also home to several examples of traditional and folk crafts, such as a handmade notebook of sewing examples, made by Elsie Reinhart sometime between 1890-1920 and donated to the Library in 1977.
Posted in: Textiles
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
In this post, Nicole Saylor, Director of the American Folklife Center (AFC), highlights the 2024 accomplishments of the AFC. The post demonstrates how 2024 was a busy and productive year for the American Folklife Center, as it continued to meet its mission to document and share the many expressions of human experience to inspire, revitalize, and perpetuate living cultural traditions.
Posted in: Acquisitions, AFC Awards, AFC Events, AFC History, AFC Publications, AFC Reading Room Visitors, AIDS Memorial Quilt, Archie Green, Archive Challenge, Artists in Resonance, Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture Series, Botkin Folklife Lectures Plus, Community Collections Grants, COVID-19 American History Project, Homegrown Concert Series, Internship program, LGBTQ, Louisiana, Occupational Folklife Project, Podcasts
Posted by: Douglas D. Peach
In 2024, Los Pleneros de la 21--a NYC-based organization whose members specialize in teaching and performing the Puerto Rican musical genres of bomba and plena--were awarded with a Community Collections Grant (CCG) by the American Folklife Center, to document musicians, teachers, and community members involved in bomba and plena music in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. This post is an excerpt of an interview with LeAna López, the primary interviewer for the project, about the group's CCG work. The full interview is accessible on the Library of Congress' Of the People blog.
Posted in: Community Collections Grants, Fieldwork, Folk Music, Folksong, New York, Oral History, Puerto Rican Americans
Posted by: Kerry Ward
As we stand at the threshold of a new year, it’s a fitting time to reflect on the remarkable stories of those who came before us, especially the courageous women of the 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, highlighted in Tyler Perry’s recent Netflix film, The Six Triple Eight. Just like the beginning of a new …
Posted in: African American History, Cultural Heritage, Diverse Experiences in Service, Narratives, New Year's Day, Occupations and Specialties in Service, Oral History, Storytelling, Veterans History Project, Women's History
Posted by: Stephen Winick
When William Main Doerflinger interviewed the retired sailor and shanty singer Patrick Tayluer in April, 1942, one of the topics he asked Tayluer about was shipwrecks. This is not surprising: ever since people took to the seas in ships, maritime folks have been fascinated and terrified by shipwrecks; shipwreck stories go back to the Middle Kingdom of Ancient Egypt. As it turned out, Tayluer had several stories about shipwrecks, which he told as first-person narratives, but which might not have happened exactly as he described. We’ll look at two of those stories in this post, exploring Tayluer's fascinating blend of fact and fiction.
Posted in: Narratives, Patrick Tayluer, Sea Shanties
Posted by: Meg Nicholas
In an attempt to inspire herself and others to finish handmade gifts for the holidays, Folklife Specialist Meg Nicholas takes readers on a quick tour of hand-crafted items documented in the Center’s field survey collections.
Posted in: Collection Highlight, Crafts, Folk Art, Material Culture, Quilts, Textile arts
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Happy Holidays from the American Folklife Center! As in years past, we enlivened Library life last week with performances of a traditional Mummers play, updated for modern times. The title of this year’s play is "Keeping Cool and Dry for the Holidays: A Film Preservation Mumming," and it’s all about Film Preservation and the National Film Registry. It takes place at the Northpole Audio Visual Preservation Pavilion (NAVPP). St. George Bailey (It’s a Wonderful Life) is confronted by Connor MacLeod (Highlander series), who has a dastardly plan to get his terrible movies on the registry by undermining the preservation of all other films. The play includes Film Preservation Board members like Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford, some of our usual characters, and some surprises, including a reenactment of the “Let’s all go to the Lobby” song—which is actually on the real registry. Mummers’ plays are short 15-minute plays, traditionally performed in Britain, Ireland, North America, and the West Indies at holiday time, as the Mummers went from house to house and pub to pub, collecting food, drink, and small change as a reward for their entertainment. The American Folklife Center’s archive boasts one of the largest collections of English Mummers’ Play texts in the world, in its James Madison Carpenter collection. In this blog post you'll find the text of the play and lots of fun photos--plus a wealth of links to explore!
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Most people know that Friday the 13th is considered an unlucky day. I had some fun researching the roots of this belief back in September, when the Library of Congress received a call from NPR requesting to interview me about Friday the 13th. Not surprisingly, I found facts and speculation, as well as intriguing new evidence. I also encountered what I often call metafolklore: folk stories about folk beliefs. In this post, we’ll look into what I found. From the Norse gods to the Knights Templar, from mathematics to religion, and from French plays to American horror movies, let's look at everyone's favorite day for bad luck.
Posted in: Beliefs, French American History
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
The digital records collection of the AIDS Memorial Quilt--the largest folk arts project in history commemorating those lost to HIV/AIDS--was published on the Library of Congress' website on December 1 (World AIDS Day 2024). This milestone marks over ten years of collaboration between the American Folklife Center, the National AIDS Memorial (NAM), and the NAMES Project Foundation to preserve and steward the AIDS Memorial Quilt Records Collection. In this post, Nicole Saylor, Director of the American Folklife Center, recounts the history of this collaboration and the years of work that led to the online publication.
Posted in: AFC Events, AFC History, AIDS Memorial Quilt, Civil Rights, Folk Art, LGBTQ, Quilts, U.S. Congress