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Category: African American History

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

News Coverage of Folklife Research for African American History Month

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The American Folklife Center has recently received some coverage for our efforts to research and recognize African American history which we'd like to tell you about. Last weekend the Atlanta Journal Constitution published this article about the spiritual "Kumbaya." In the article, Shelia M. Poole interviews AFC staff members John Fenn and Stephen Winick (hey, that's me) and even call me "the folklorist version of Sherlock Holmes" for locating what we believe to be the first sound recording of "Kumbaya" some years ago. She also interviews Griffin Lotson, who did research here and in Georgia, and who helped get the song declared the first State Historical Song of Georgia. We wrote about that research here on the blog. We also did a podcast about it, at this link. And we've previously  been covered and interviewed by the New York Times, which you can find here.