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Posted by: Stephen Winick
The Following is a guest post by Judith Gray, ethnomusicologist and coordinator of reference in the American Folklife Center. In the last decades of the 19th century, Thomas Edison and his contemporaries in Europe created various devices for capturing sound [1]. These inventions, in turn, led to the creation of audiovisual archives. The first two …
Posted in: Uncategorized
Posted by: Stephen Winick
August 22 is an important date to folklore fans. It is, in fact, the anniversary of the first appearance of the (originally hyphenated) word “Folk-Lore” in print. The medium was a letter to the editor of the Athenæum, a scholarly journal, and the author was William John Thoms, although he wrote the letter under his …
Posted in: England, Folklorists, Uncategorized
Posted by: Stephen Winick
The following is a guest post by Nancy Groce, Senior Folklife Specialist at the American Folklife Center. It originated as opening remarks for the forum Coffeehouses: Folk Music, Culture, and Counterculture, which was held last week in the Library’s Montpelier Room. Webcasts of the event will eventually be added to the Library’s website and accessible …
Posted in: Uncategorized
Posted by: Stephen Winick
In my last post, I discussed the more serious side of songs about Noah’s ark. As I mentioned, though, there are other songs too, often with more celebratory messages–or even silly ones. We’ll look at some of those Noah songs in this post. Celebratory songs tend to focus on the joy felt by Noah when …
Posted in: African Americans, Alan Lomax, Animals, Folk Music, Folksong, Languages and Dialects, Uncategorized