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Category: Folk Music

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

Singing the Archive in the Schoolroom: A Collaboration between the Library of Congress and the Global Scholars Academy

Posted by: John Fenn

This guest post is by Sarah Elizabeth Tomlinson, a Ph.D. candidate in Musicology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. At their school’s annual Christmas performance, forty kindergarten and first-grade students in Durham, North Carolina bounced and sang along with the Library of Congress. Specifically, they performed for an audience of family and …

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

Collections documenting cultures in Brazil, the Sudan region, New Mexico and California are now richly described online

Posted by: Nicole Saylor

A handful of recently published online finding aids describing American Folklife Center collections provide detailed windows into collections documenting a range of traditions, from New Mexican Midwinter Masquerades to traditional music from the Sudan region. The following round-up draws heavily on descriptions created by the archivists who processed these amazing collections. Roxane Connick Carlisle Collection, …

A man sits in a chair with a small banjo

Brooklyn Folk Festival Turns 10: Q&A with Eli Smith

Posted by: John Fenn

A little over a decade ago, Brooklyn-based musician and promoter, Eli Smith, merged his passion for folk music with the inspiration he got from the community of artists calling New York City home and created the Brooklyn Folk Festival. Along the ten-year journey of the Festival, Eli has engaged the American Folklife Center in numerous …