AFC Events Specialist Thea Austen and Folklife Specialist Meg Nicholas chat with Queen Nur and AJ Rivers about the CCG project, "On the Line: Urban Line Dancing," and their wildly popular public event held at the Library earlier this year. The post includes photographs from the projects, and a link to the full interview, in the fourth episode of a special subseries of the Folklife Today podcast.
AFC Folklife Specialist Meg Nicholas chats with Laura Grant, from the CCG project, "Returning to Our Roots: Traditional Nuwa Harvests." The post includes photographs from the project, interview excerpts, and a link to the full interview, in the third episode of a special subseries of the Folklife Today podcast.
Un Homenaje: CCG Collection Pays Tribute to Houston's Chicano Music Pioneers
The AFC has launched the website, Sonidos De Houston: Documenting the City’s Chicano Music Scene, a fieldwork collecting project conducted through a Community Collections Grant. The blog describes the collections content, which features interviews of Houston's Chicano music pioneers conducted by community members, several of whom are musicians themselves . The blog includes audio clips and photographs and reactions to the collections and the website’s launch from an interview conducted with the Principal Investigator, Isaac Rodriguez.
AFC Folklife Specialists Nancy Groce and Meg Nicholas chat with Neil Mellen and Modesta Yangmog, from the CCG project, "Warp and Weft of Yap's Outer Islands: Backstrap Weaving in Micronesia." The post includes photographs from the project, interview excerpts, and a link to the full interview, in the second episode of a special subseries of the Folklife Today podcast.
This post premieres the film, El Motor: Coffee and the Heart of Puerto Rico, by filmmaker Russell Oliver who received a 2022 Community Collections Grant from the American Folklife Center, as part of the Library of Congress Of the People: Widening the Path initiative. The film captures the challenges of farming alongside moments of triumph, revealing how Puerto Rico’s coffee farmers preserve tradition while adapting for the future. This year's American Folklife Center's Homegrown Foodways Film Series celebrates Community Collections Grant recipients.
This post premieres the film, Bayous, Buddha, and Padaek: Southern Louisiana's Lao Foodways, by filmmakers Phanat Xanamane, Sami "Sai" Haggood, and Ba Bader who received a 2022 Community Collections Grant from the Center. The film is a captivating two-part documentary that delves into the rich culinary traditions of the Lao Buddhist immigrant community in Louisiana. This year's American Folklife Center's Homegrown Foodways Film Series celebrates Community Collections Grant recipients.
In this post, AFC Folklife Specialists Michelle Stefano and Meg Nicholas chat with Tameshia Rudd-Ridge and Jourdan Brunson, from the Community Collections Grant project "If Tenth Street Could Talk." The post includes photographs from the project, interview excerpts, and a link to the full interview, in the first episode of a special subseries of the Folklife Today podcast.
Readers are encouraged to take a virtual road trip through AFC's digital collections in celebration of National Road Trip Day, observed on the Friday before the Memorial Day Weekend.
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.
