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Category: Alan Lomax

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

American Folklife Center Reissues Four Historic LPs

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following guest post by Jennifer Cutting is part of a series of blog posts about the 40th Anniversary Year of the American Folklife Center. Visit this link to see them all! The American Folklife Center (AFC) is pleased to announce the availability online of four titles from our historic series of record albums, Folk …

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

Lomax Challenge Videos Part 3

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Note: This post is part of series of blog posts celebrating the centennial of Alan Lomax’s birth, and also part of another series celebrating the 40th anniversary of AFC! In a previous blog post, Jennifer Cutting and I explained the background to our Lomax Challenge showcase at last year’s Folk Alliance meeting. (We also presented the …

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

Lomax Challenge Videos Part 1

Posted by: Stephen Winick

Note: This post was co-written with AFC Folklife Specialist Jennifer Cutting. It is part of series of blog posts celebrating the centennial of Alan Lomax’s birth, and also part of another series celebrating the 40th anniversary of AFC!    Part Two of this series of posts is now available, featuring videos of contemporary artists performing French …

A group of people including Rosanne Cash look at a disc sleeve

Arthur McBride, Carrie Grover, Paul Brady, and Rosanne Cash: More About a Classic Song

Posted by: Stephen Winick

In a previous post, I discussed one of AFC’s most influential field recordings, Carrie Grover’s “Arthur McBride,” and the popular tracks it inspired: versions by Paul Brady and by Bob Dylan. I was inspired to write about the song again by Rosanne Cash, a fan of both Dylan and Brady, who enthused about “Arthur McBride” …

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

Songs for Christmas and the New Year Collected by Alan Lomax

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

As we approach the end of the centennial year of the birth of Alan Lomax, it seems appropriate to look at recordings of songs and music he collected celebrating Christmas, the new year, and Epiphany.  The recordings presented here are all part of the collections of the American Folklife Center, but many have been put …

A woman plays a fiddle sitting on porch steps.

Paul Brady, Carrie Grover, Bob Dylan, and “Arthur McBride”

Posted by: Stephen Winick

A few years ago, I wrote an article in Folklife Center News about popular recordings inspired by AFC collection items. One of the ones I chose was Paul Brady’s version of an Irish ballad he called “Arthur McBride and the Sergeant” (see the lyrics at this link). In the article I revealed that Brady had …

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

Rhetoric and the Lomax Archive

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The following post was written by Jonathan Stone, Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at the University of Utah. I write on occasion of a recent publication that may be of interest to readers of Folklife Today. We are still in the middle of the Lomax Centennial year and the article “Listening to the Sonic …

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

Treasures of the AFC Archive Banner #4

Posted by: Stephen Winick

This is the fourth in a series of six posts presenting AFC’s new traveling exhibit Treasures of the American Folklife Center Archive. The exhibit takes the form of lightweight, colorful vinyl banners containing information about AFC, the Library of Congress, and (as the title suggests) some of the treasures found in our archive. Originally conceived …