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.
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.
In this post, the American Folklife Center highlights a July 2024 concert performance and oral history interview with the Swanky Kitchen Band--an ensemble performing fiddle-based kitchen band music from the Cayman Islands.
The American Folklife Center took part in the Library's Halloween-themed Family Day in October. In addition to showcasing a few items from the archive, AFC staff led visitors in an activity (making paper fortune-tellers) and encouraged participation in an engagement question around cryptids, ghost stories and urban legends.
The latest post in the Homegrown Plus series features the Skye Consort and Emma Björling, an eclectic group performing British, Irish, Canadian, and Scandinavian music and songs in a variety of traditional and modern styles. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections.
This post in the Homegrown Plus series features the Windborne Trio, a vocal group from New England. Windborne is usually a quartet, but Jeremy Carter Gordon was prevented from performing at this show. Luckily, before Jeremy joined the group, Windborne toured as a trio, so they had the repertoire, arrangements, and experience to put together a stunning show without him. Consequently, for this concert Windborne was Lynn Mahoney Rowan, Will Thomas Rowan, and Lauren Breunig. In their concert they performed a mix of old and new favorites, including American, English, Georgian, Corsican, and Basque songs. Just like other blogs in the Homegrown Plus series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with the musicians, and connections to Library of Congress collections.
In a recent lecture in our Benjamin A. Botkin Lecture Series, Conspiracy Theories, Folklore and Belief: Birds Aren't Real, Loch Ness Monsters and Microchips, folklorist Andrea Kitta discussed some definitions of conspiracy theories and how they fit into other belief traditions and narratives with a focus on understanding why people believe in conspiracy theories and how they function. This blog post includes the lecture video, an interview video with Dr. Kitta, and a set of links to related collections and programming.
In this post, the American Folklife Center (AFC) highlights a May 2024 concert performance and oral history interview with the Somapa Thai Dance Company and Orchestra--an ensemble performing traditional music from Thailand, whose members now predominately live in the Washington, DC metropolitan region. The AFC organized Somapa's performance in celebration of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month and as part of the 2024 Homegrown Concert Series.
Rachel Sumner and Traveling Light, a trio from the Boston area playing bluegrass and old time music, are the latest entry in our Homegrown Plus series, in which we include a concert video, an interview video, and a set of links to explore. You'll find it all in this post...along with a bonus song video! Singer, multi-instrumentalist, and Lennon Award-winning songwriter Rachel Sumner is a fixture of the Boston roots and Americana scene. She fronts the trio Traveling Light on vocals, guitar and banjo, with Kat Wallace on fiddle and Mike Siegel on upright bass. Together they specialize in applying their deeply rooted bluegrass know-how to new interpretations of traditional folk songs and tightly crafted original songs written by Sumner. The band has previously participated in our Archive Challenge at Folk Alliance International and contributed a song to our special Labor Day presentation in 2003. In this concert they made a special effort to play some songs that are part of the American Folklife Center archive, making this another entry in the Archive Challenge as well.
