The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress (AFC) turns 50 today, January 2, 2026. To mark the occasion, AFC will sponsor public programs, special events, and other activities throughout the coming year, celebrating the Center’s role in the preservation and promotion of traditional culture. Events will include special editions of our Homegrown Concert series and Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture series; special symposia, including one dedicated to our COVID-19 Oral History Project; and a major exhibition of treasures from the Center’s collections, to launch in mid-September. The American Folklife Center dates back to January 2, 1976, when President Gerald Ford signed Public Law 94-201, The American Folklife Preservation Act. The Act created the Center and placed it here at the Library of Congress with a mandate to “preserve, support, revitalize, and disseminate” American folklife.
The exciting old time duo The Creek Rocks, the recipients of the 2024 Artists in Resonance Fellowship from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, bring old songs back to the Library in shiny new arrangements! Accomplished singer and banjo player Cindy Woolf and veteran guitarist and singer Mark Bilyeu established the group in 2015. Much of their work has been interpreting the traditional music of the Ozarks region. The Artists in Resonance Fellowship provided Cindy and Mark the opportunity to immerse themselves in the field recordings of folklorist Sidney Robertson Cowell, who in December 1936 and January 1937 visited communities in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. The Cowell recordings in the American Folklife Center’s archive serve as the source material for this concert, as well as The Creek Rocks' current album-length recording project. This blog presents the concert along with an interview in which we talk with them about their fellowship, their music, and their use of archival sources.
Welcome to the latest post in the Homegrown Plus series, featuring bluegrass quartet The Henhouse Prowlers. After two decades of touring and performing, the Henhouse Prowlers proudly look to the future, expressing their passion for music and humanity. Banjoist Ben Wright and upright bassist Jon Goldfine have been the heart of the band since its inception, while guitarist Chris Dollar and mandolinist Jake Howard (who joined 7 and 5 years ago respectively) bring fresh energy to the band's sound. The Prowlers approach music with a reverence for tradition coupled with willingness to explore beyond the ordinary. In their concert, they apply their trademark four-part harmonies to classic country and bluegrass, as well as modern Americana. In the interview we talk about their music, their history, and their activities with the U.S. State Department and their own nonprofit, Bluegrass Ambassadors, through which they have been able to take American music around the globe.
The American Folklife Center is excited to announce the launch of its new, easy-to-use Botkin Lecture Resource Guide, which gives users direct access to hundreds of hours of world-class lectures on folklore, folk music and traditional culture. Over the years, hundreds of prominent folklorists, ethnomusicologists, traditional artists, and scholars have accepted AFC’s invitation to present lectures in the Center’s Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture series. To date, more than 130 of their presentations have been shot on video for the AFC collections. Although most are available on the Library’s website and YouTube channel, they can be difficult to find unless you know exactly what you’re looking for. The new Botkin Lecture Guide, which you can visit straight from this blog post, makes finding, accessing and enjoying these talks easy.
We're continuing the Homegrown Plus series with a classic from a few years ago with our good friend Dom Flemons, who performs and records as The American Songster. Back in 2020, Dom performed in the Homegrown at Home concert series, the pandemic-era version of Homegrown, in which artists submitted video concerts and we premiered them online. Dom Flemons, a Grammy award winner with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a four-time Grammy nominee, and a two-time Emmy nominee, was by no means a stranger to AFC. We first met him when he came in to do research in the Archive in 2007, which means that for almost 20 years he's been accessing and interpreting field recordings from our archive. Because of this, his repertoire includes many songs and tunes he learned from recordings of master musicians in the American Folklife Center archives. Appropriately, he was also the first artist featured in the Center's inaugural Archive Challenge in 2015. Dom approached the concert as an Archive Challenge opportunity, so all the songs have a connection to the AFC archive. As usual for this series, you’ll find a concert video, an interview video, and a set of links to explore.
The Creek Rocks, the first recipients of the American Folklife Center’s Artists in Resonance fellowship, will return to the Library of Congress on August 21 to perform in the Coolidge Auditorium. They’ll be playing their own arrangements of songs they gleaned from AFC’s deep Ozark Mountain collections as part of their fellowship research. In this post, we’ll introduce you to the band and link you to some fun resources, including music, interviews, and an Ozark mountain podcast. And, of course, we’ll provide the concert details!
Welcome to the latest post in the Homegrown Plus series, featuring Susana Behar, one of the leading voices in Sephardic Song, with a hand-picked ensemble of accompanists. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with Susana, and connections to Library of Congress collections. Susana Behar was born in Havana to a Cuban family with roots in the Sephardic community of Turkey. From an early age, she was immersed in the traditional music of her homeland as well as the evocative kantikas in Judeo-Spanish (Ladino) passed down by her grandparents. In 1965 she emigrated to Venezuela, where she started to explore and perform the music of her adoptive country as well as Latin American and Jewish folk music. She earned a degree in biology from the Universidad Central de Venezuela before moving to Miami, where she has lived and performed ever since. In the concert, she performs Sephardic, Cuban, and Venzuelan songs, joined by Michel Gonzalez on guitar, Adolfo Herrera on percussion, and Saul Vera on mandolin and bandola llana. In the interview, she tells us about her life in Cuba, the trauma of her family’s departure, and her life in Venezuela and the United States, with an emphasis on the intersection of her Latin American and Jewish heritage.
The latest post in the Homegrown Plus series features Ensemble Sangineto, one of the most popular groups on the Italian folk scene. 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. The ensemble Sangineto is comprised of three talented singers and instrumentalists. Adriano and Caterina Sangineto are twins -- Adriano plays Celtic harp and Caterina plays bowed psaltery. Jacopo Ventura rounds out the trio on guitar. The group sings in three-part harmony, with Caterina's clear voice taking the lead. The Sanginetos are children of a world-renowned luthier who has spent years crafting instruments for some of the leading folk and early music performers, so their childhood was spent meeting and listening to such musicians as Derek Bell of the Chieftains and Alan Stivell, a foundational artist of the Breton music revival. Ventura is a conservatory trained classical guitarist who has branched out to play many of the stringed instruments common in European and Asian folk music. Their concert takes you on a trip through Italy via a traditional song from each region, with medieval, Celtic, jazz, and contemporary stylings among others, thrown in for good measure.
In the interview, we learn about their lives and the world of Italian folk music.
The latest post in the Homegrown Plus series features Boots Lupenui and the Kohala Mountain Boys performing heritage songs of the Kohala region of the Big Island of Hawai’i. Led by Boots Lupenui, the Kohala Mountain Boys are committed to uncovering and preserving musical treasures that helped to define the moku of Kohala on Hawai'i Island. In Boots's words, "Old-time Kohala music is soulful, playful, poetic and fierce, the manifold voice of a vibrant and extraordinary people. We want to recover and share the heirloom songs currently known only to a few isolated and precious old voices, their words and tunes unsung for years. The ancient musical essence of our beloved and mystical Kohala may be lost in this generation. Reclaiming our heirloom songs strengthens our ancestral ties to our homeland. It is a source of pride that can be shared by all the families and all the people of Kohala, for generations to come." Lupenui and his team were the recipients of a Community Collections Grant to document songs written by Kohala residents which might otherwise be lost; the collection is online at the Library of Congress website. This concert provides another way to experience these songs. 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, as well as Boots's finished documentary film about documenting the heirloom songs of Kohala.
