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Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest post by AFC folklorist Ann Hoog, who has been the division coordinator for a mass digitization and access project to reformat and make accessible online a large body of American Folklife Center field projects from the mid-1970s through the mid-1990s. The American Folklife Center is pleased to announce a new online presentation of the South-Central …
Posted in: AFC History, Archival Practice
Posted by: Stephen Winick
If you’ve been following the American Folklife Center’s website or our Facebook page (you can “like” it here to receive daily folklife inspiration!), you may have noticed an updated version of our classic fieldwork manual, Folklife & Fieldwork. For decades, this handy small book has offered guidance to people interested in documenting folklife who don’t …
Posted in: AFC History, AFC Publications
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Note: this is the fifth, and probably the last, post on Folklife Today concerning Far Away Moses, a nineteenth century Jewish guide and merchant whose face was the model for one of the “keystone heads” sculpted in stone on the outside of the Library of Congress’s Thomas Jefferson building. For the other posts about Moses, …
Posted in: AFC History, Far-Away Moses, Jewish American History, Jewish Americans, Legends, Proverbs, Uncategorized
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Note: This is just a teaser for a fuller post over at the Library of Congress Blog. Read the full story there! This year the GRAMMY awards promise to be exciting for music fans everywhere, but especially fans of the American Folklife Center. At least four of the nominees have connections to the AFC archive: …
Posted in: AFC Awards, AFC History, Alan Lomax
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This recollection is in memory of the Center’s founding director, Alan Jabbour, who died on January 13, 2017, and whose career and contributions are described in this blog post. Today’s text and photographs are by Carl Fleischhauer, a retired American Folklife Center staff member and a colleague of Alan’s for 46 years. Alan Jabbour and …
Posted in: AFC History, Alan Jabbour, Appalachia, Folk Music, Folklorists, Folksong, Legends, Oral History
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Note: This is a guest post by John Fenn. John is the new head of the Research and Programs section of the American Folklife Center. My first weeks here at the American Folklife Center have been a whirlwind of meetings, trainings, and orientations to all aspects of the Library of Congress. As I’ve wandered through …
Posted in: AFC History, Alan Jabbour, ethnomusicologists, Fieldwork, Folklorists, Norwegian Americans, Thomas Jefferson Building
Posted by: Stephen Winick
In my first post about the fascinating character known as Far Away Moses, whose face adorns the outside of the Jefferson Building where the AFC is located, I covered the basics of his life and mentioned some of the ways in which his story became part of the folklore of the late 19th and early …
Posted in: AFC History, Far-Away Moses, Jewish American History, Jewish Americans, Tourism, Weddings
Posted by: Stephen Winick
On behalf of the American Folklife Center, I’m very sad to pass on the news of the death of our founding director, Alan Jabbour. Alan was a folklorist, fiddler, fieldworker, and friend of the highest caliber, and he will be missed at AFC and around the world. AFC’s current director, Betsy Peterson, expressed the feelings …
Posted in: AFC 40th Anniversary, AFC Events, AFC History, Alan Jabbour, Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture Series, Fieldwork, Folk Music, Folklorists, Obituaries
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Note: This is part of a series of posts about Far Away Moses, a fascinating celebrity of the 19th century, who served as the model for one of the keystone heads on the Thomas Jefferson Building. Moses, a Sephardic Jew from Constantinople, knew some of the most prominent Americans of his era, including Theodore Roosevelt …
Posted in: AFC History, Far-Away Moses, Jewish American History, Jewish Americans, Legends, Proverbs, Thomas Jefferson Building