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Posted by: Stephen Winick
Way back when Folklife Today celebrated our 100th post, I highlighted one of Alan Lomax’s collecting triumphs, the disc numbered AFS 100. For this, our 500th post, I thought I’d do a similar story about AFS 500. This disc was also recorded by Alan Lomax, during a field trip to the Bahamas in 1935 which …
Posted in: African American History, Folk Music
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, …
Posted in: Acquisitions, Archival Practice, ethnomusicologists, Fieldwork, Folk Music
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 …
Posted in: Folk Music, John Cohen, Old Time Music
Posted by: Nicole Saylor
This is a guest blog post from AFC archivist Maya Lerman. We would like to announce the release of the Izzy Young collection finding aid. As you may have read in our series about the collection, the Izzy Young collection documents the late-1950s and 1960s folk revival through the eyes of Israel Goodman Young, founder …
Posted in: Acquisitions, Archival Practice, Folk Music, Old Time Music
Posted by: John Fenn
This is a guest post by American Folklife Center archivist Kelly Revak. As I covered in a previous blog post, I have been exploring the “experimental recordings’ of Jesse Walter Fewkes and discovering a number of items of folkloric interest therein. One of these Fewkes recordings is at least somewhat well-known and that is this …
Posted in: Folk Music
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Introduction The great American songster Lead Belly, first recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress in 1933, is a towering figure in global popular music. In some cases, his influence can be clouded, or hard to understand, because of his own enigmatic personality and because of the fragmentary nature of …
Posted in: AFC History, African American History, African Americans, Folk Music, Folksong
Posted by: John Fenn
Ascensión Mazuela-Anguita is the current scholar in the Jon B. Lovelace Fellowship for the Study of the Alan Lomax Collection, and has been using her time at the Library of Congress to explore materials held at the AFC related to Lomax’s 1952–53 field recording trip to Spain. In this recent guest post on the Kluge …
Posted in: Alan Lomax, Folk Music
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This blog post about the singer-songwriter Billy Bragg is part of a series called “Hidden Folklorists,” which examines the folklore work of surprising people, including people better known for other pursuits. Billy Bragg will be here for a book talk, July 21 at 7:00 pm in the Mumford Room of the James Madison Memorial Building. …
Posted in: AFC History, AFC Publications, African American History, African Americans, Alan Lomax, Benjamin A. Botkin, Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture Series, England, Folk Music, Folksong, Hidden Folklorists, Jazz, Lead Belly (Huddie Ledbetter), Popular Culture
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Note: This is the second in a series of posts about the murder ballad “Batson.” This one discusses the performance recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax from a trio of musicians including Wilson Jones, a.k.a. Stavin’ Chain, in 1934. A little while back, I presented for the first time anywhere a version of the …
Posted in: AFC History, African American History, African Americans, Alan Lomax, Blues, Folk Music, Folksong, Louisiana, Photographs