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Posted by: Stephen Winick
FolklifeHalloween2014 is underway! This is the first day we’ve asked people to share their Halloween and Day of the Dead photos on Flickr with the tag #FolklifeHalloween2014. Of course, a few early birds had already begun to use the tag last week, like Daniel Baker, whose photo from 2009 is above. Others shared photos of …
Posted in: Halloween, Holidays, Photographs
Posted by: Stephen Winick
Last week Trevor Owens and I posted to this blog, asking people to share their Halloween photos with us this year in an experimental online collecting project. That post is important, and if you want to participate you should read it at this link. But in case that much detail leaves you feeling bummed like …
Posted in: Halloween, Photographs
Posted by: Stephen Winick
The following is a post I wrote jointly with Trevor Owens of the Library’s Office of Strategic Initiatives, with input from many colleagues throughout the Library of Congress. Share your photos of Halloween, Día de los Muertos, and related holidays with AFC and the World! #FolklifeHalloween2014 Halloween, All Souls Day, All Saints Day, Día de …
Posted in: Alan Lomax, Día de Muertos, Halloween, Hispanic American History, Holidays, John Lomax, Photographs, Sidney Robertson Cowell
Posted by: Stephen Winick
With Labor Day approaching, I’d love to introduce you to some of our resources on the folklore and folklife of labor. This area of study has many names, from the more formal “occupational folk culture” to the more colloquial “laborlore.” It also has many sub-areas, from the study of occupational folk speech, including jargon, to …
Posted in: Cowboy and Western Music, Folksong, Holidays
Posted by: Stephen Winick
[This post is part of a series of blog posts about the song “Hal An Tow.” You can find the whole series at this link.] As you can read in Stephanie Hall’s Post “May Day: A Festival of Flowers,” on May Day, or May 1, people in Europe traditionally celebrated the coming of summer …
Posted in: Celtic Music, Dance, England, Folk Drama, Folk Music, Folksong, Hal An Tow, Holidays, May Day
Posted by: Stephen Winick
As the holiday season comes to a close, the staff of the American Folklife Center wishes you all the best for the coming year. In this picture, we pose by the Christmas Tree in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress, with some of us still in the costumes we wore in the AFC …
Posted in: AFC Events, Folk Drama, Holidays
Posted by: Stephen Winick
As the Old Year turns to the New Year, thousands of people around the world will sing along to “Auld Lang Syne,” a Scottish song that has come to be firmly associated with New Year’s celebrations. The song has a fascinating history, and we’re lucky at the Library of Congress to have several unique items …
Posted in: AFC Events, Folk Music, Folksong, Holidays
Posted by: Stephen Winick
St. George and the Data Dragon: A Digital Assets Mumming Performed by American Folklife Center Staff with Guests Script drawn from multiple plays in the James Madison Carpenter Collection. Compiled by Stephen Winick, with additional material by Stephen Winick, Jennifer Cutting, Theadocia Austen, Hope O’Keeffe, and the company. Digital assets jargon courtesy of Bertram Lyons. …
Posted in: AFC Events, Folk Drama, Folk Music, Folksong, Holidays, Mumming
Posted by: Stephen Winick
This post gives general background to our mumming tradition. For more posts with play texts, videos, audio, and scholarship on the background, please visit this link. Every year, in the week before Christmas, staff members of the American Folklife Center put our research and performance skills into play, bringing collections to life in a dramatic …
Posted in: AFC Events, Folk Drama, Folk Music, Folksong, Holidays, Mumming