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Category: Acquisitions

A man plays a banjo on a porch swing

John Cohen’s Vega Whyte Laydie Banjo

Posted by: Stephen Winick

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!

Cover of a folk festival program pictures a musician, a dancer, and a man on horseback with the words: Frontier Folklife Festival 1982, a free festival highlighting the music and crafts of the American West

Missouri Friends of Folk Arts Collection Comes to AFC

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The American Folklife Center is delighted to announce the acquisition of the Missouri Friends of the Folk Arts collection from Julia Olin and Barry Bergey. The collection includes concert recordings of iconic blues and old time musicians like Henry Townsend and Robert Jr. Lockwood; festival performances from the Frontier Folk Festival; fiddling traditions from Ozark and Midwestern regions; and traditional arts documentation from around the state of Missouri. Communities documented include the French speaking towns around Old Mines, Native American communities, and several Spanish speaking communities. Bergey and Olin wrote this blog post to introduce the collection to researchers at the American Folklife Center.

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

New Acquisition: COVID-19 audio diaries from healthcare workers

Posted by: John Fenn

This guest post was authored by Jesse Hocking, an archivist at the American Folklife Center who was centrally involved with the acquisition of the collection he describes below. In March 2020, as the coronavirus pandemic began to spread widely in the United States, The Nocturnists, a podcast and medical storytelling community, posted the following message …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Bess Lomax Hawes Digital Collection Launches

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post by reference librarian Todd Harvey, who curates the Lomax family papers at the American Folklife Center. Today, the American Folklife Center announces the launch of the Bess Lomax Hawes (1921-2009) digital collection, now available at this link. A scholar, teacher, performer, writer, and filmmaker, Bess established and stewarded the Folk …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

AFC Is Acquiring the Archival Collections of the NAMES Project AIDS Memorial Quilt

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The NAMES Project Foundation (NPF) today announced that the National AIDS Memorial will become the new caretaker of the AIDS Memorial Quilt and NAMES Project programs.  As part of the transition, the NAMES Project and the National AIDS Memorial have agreed to jointly gift care and stewardship of The Quilt’s archival collections to the prestigious American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, making this collection available through the world’s largest public library.

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Brooklyn Rediscovered through 1980s Documentation

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest post by American Folklife Center archivist Maya Lerman. Imagine a time before hipsters started migrating to Brooklyn, and gentrification hadn’t taken hold. Though celebrations by immigrant communities throughout the calendar year are still quite evident in Brooklyn today, the early 1980s was an especially fruitful time to witness these traditions. The Brooklyn Rediscovery Folklife Study Project …

A man playing a guitar and singing to a close crowd of a dozen or so men and women

Collection of music and dance from New York immigrant groups now available for research

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

This is a guest blog post by 2018 summer project archivist Jesse Hocking, who is pursuing a master’s degree in library and information studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I grew up in West Virginia and Georgia and spent my undergraduate years in film and ethnic studies, so in many ways the American Folklife Center …