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Archive for the AFC Events Category (54 posts)

Music educators: How might you imagine using our resources?

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Photograph of Ledward Kaapana playing ukulele during a 2017 appearance in Coolidge Auditorium for a Homegrown concert. Kaapana is a 2011 NEA Heritage Fellow from Hawaii. Photo by Steve Winick.

Ledward Kaapana, Hawaiian slack key guitar and ukulele master, performs in the Coolidge Auditorium for the 2017 Homegrown concert series. Kaapana was a 2011 NEA National Heritage Fellow. Photo by Steve Winick.

Back in December 2017, a colleague of ours here at the Library published a short piece in the Music Educator’s Journal highlighting the many video recordings of musical performances at the Library of Congress hosted on the Library’s YouTube channel. Focusing on videos documenting the American Folklife Center’s Homegrown concert series, Lee Ann Potter (Director, Educational Outreach) noted that these resources offer great value to teachers and students. What is that value, and how can we here at the AFC help realize it?

Following up on her invitation in that article, we are asking for input and suggestions. We’d love to hear from readers—especially music educators—about the ways you imagine using such video resources in classrooms or other education settings. Going one step further, we’d love to hear about ways that educators have actually used videos of Homegrown concerts!

One of our goals with AFC video resources hosted online is to ensure that they are accessible to educators. While these videos are available, either through the Library’s webcast page or on its YouTube channel, we want to enable discoverability for videos that support teaching and learning. We are experimenting with creating playlists on YouTube, but what are other approaches should we take? What would help you get a hold of materials efficiently? What entry points into our growing collection of concert videos can we build? How can we best guide students and teachers alike to dynamic audiovisual documentation of the rich musical and dance traditions we present in performance at the Library?

Please share thoughts, suggestions, or examples of actual use in comments on this post. AFC staff are excited to draw on your input in order to best serve your needs!

Botkin Lectures to Go!: African American Online Cultural Resources

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The following is a guest post from AFC Folklife Specialist Nancy Groce. A previous Folklife Today blog, “Botkin Lectures to Go!,” drew readers’ attention to an engaging and readily accessible AFC resource:  the more than 100 AFC Botkin Lectures on a wide variety of folklore and folklife topics that are currently available free-of-charge through the […]

Botkin Lectures to Go!

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The following is a guest post from AFC Folklife Specialist Nancy Groce. Botkin Lectures to Go! Learn More About Folklife, Ethnomusicology, and Oral History through the American Folklife Center’s Online Resources Have you always wanted to know more about folklore? Do you regret not taking that ethnomusicology course in college? Does finding out more about […]

James Mooney Recordings of American Indian Ghost Dance Songs, 1894

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In the summer of 1894 James Mooney, a scholar of American Indian culture and language, made recordings of songs of the Ghost Dance in several languages.  The James Money Recordings of American Indian Ghost Dance Songs have recently been updated and are part of the presentation, Emile Berliner and the Birth of the Recording Industry. […]

Reel Folk: Cultural Explorations on Film Screening and Discussion Event

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On September 29th and 30th, 2017, the Library of Congress is hosting “Reel Folk: Cultural Explorations on Film,” a series of free film screenings and discussions organized by the American Folklife Center. The films feature fascinating explorations of traditional culture in the U.S., focused particularly on cultural communities, traditional artists and their cultural practices in […]

Industrial Boom and Bust: the living heritage of the Sparrows Point Steel Mill (Baltimore, MD)

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The following is a guest post by AFC Folklife Specialist Michelle Stefano.   On Thursday May 11 at noon, the Library of Congress will host a screening of the documentary film, Mill Stories: Remembering Sparrows Point Steel Mill (36 min), in the Pickford Theatre of the Madison Building. Mill Stories shines an important light on […]

CSU-MB (and Fort Ord) Goes to Washington

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Although we often don’t like to admit it, much in life comes down to chance, luck and serendipitous encounters. In April 2014, I attended a panel presentation at the National Council on Public History Annual Meeting in Monterey, California, on the area’s military history. One of the presenters was Enid Baxter Ryce, an artist, filmmaker […]

Billy McComiskey Concert Online for St. Patrick’s Day!

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Last Summer I profiled Billy McComiskey, Irish-American button accordion player, National Heritage Fellow, and leader in the east coast Irish traditional music scene.  I promised to update our readers when the concert went online.  I cheated a little bit, since the concert has been up for a while…but I wanted to give Billy’s fans a […]