This post details, in English and Spanish, the American Folklife Center's latest Homegrown (at Home) Concert with Argentine artist, Nadia Larcher. In the concert, Larcher reinterprets songs from the AFC collections of Isabel Aretz--a pioneering female ethnomusicologist born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1909--and performs two of her original songs.
Esta publicación detalla, tanto en inglés como en español, el concierto más reciente de la serie *Homegrown (at Home)* del American Folklife Center, con la artista argentina Nadia Larcher. En el concierto, Larcher reinterpreta canciones provenientes de las colecciones del AFC pertenecientes a Isabel Aretz —una etnomusicóloga pionera nacida en Buenos Aires, Argentina, en 1909— y presenta dos de sus propias composiciones originales.
In February of 1983 two fieldworkers from the American Folklife Center's Pinelands Folklife Project headed to Port Norris, New Jersey in order to meet up with former menhaden fishermen and do some recording of shanties the group knew. The fieldworkers were Mary Hufford and Rita Zorn Moonsammy, and as Mary notes in her tape logs the visit and recordings were made "partly on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution's Office of Folklife Programs in an effort to audition the shanty singing of four men" for possible inclusion in the 1983 Festival of American Folklife. This post presents audio and photos from the interview, including medleys of sea shanties.
This COVID Recollections entry details an upcoming American Folklife Center symposium and concert, both focused on COVID-19 and cultural heritage, which will take place at the Library of Congress on March 12 and 13, 2026. These events are free and open to the public, but the concert requires pre-registration. The American Folklife Center is organizing these events as part of the COVID-19 American History Project.
In 2023, the American Folklife Center awarded folklorist Selina Morales with an Archie Green Fellowship to interview traditional healers living and working in Puerto Rico. Morales, in collaboration with filmmaker Alexis Garcia, used the fellowship to create a new Occupational Folklife Project collection, titled “Healing Work in Puerto Rico.” In this post, Morales and Garcia discuss their collection with Dr. Nancy Groce (Senior Folklife Specialist, American Folklife Center).
On March 12 and 13, 2026, the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress will host a symposium titled, “From Lived Experience to Public Memory: Commemorating, Documenting, and Archiving Experiences of the COVID-19 Pandemic." The American Folklife Center is now accepting proposals for the symposium from scholars, artists, documentarians, archivists, and community-based practitioners working at the intersection of COVID-19 and cultural heritage. In this post, find more information about the symposium and how to submit a proposal.
The state of Minnesota is home to many traditions, communities, and forms of expressive culture. In this post, we highlight collection materials from the American Folklife Center pertaining to the folklife and cultural heritage of the North Star State.
On March 11, 2025, the American Folklife Center held a panel discussion with four cultural documentarians of the COVID-19 pandemic, as part of the COVID-19 American History Project. In this post, we feature the webcast of the panel discussion, alongside photos from the event.
In this post, the American Folklife Center announces the online publication of a new interview collection from the COVID-19 American History Project—It Takes a Village: Rural Central Appalachian Childcare Providers’ COVID-19 Experiences. The collection features 25 interviews with rural childcare workers in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee, detailing their experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic.
In 2024, Los Pleneros de la 21--a NYC-based organization whose members specialize in teaching and performing the Puerto Rican musical genres of bomba and plena--were awarded with a Community Collections Grant (CCG) by the American Folklife Center, to document musicians, teachers, and community members involved in bomba and plena music in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. This post is an excerpt of an interview with LeAna López, the primary interviewer for the project, about the group's CCG work. The full interview is accessible on the Library of Congress' Of the People blog.
