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

August Online Symposium Will Feature Folklore Podcasters and Social Media Leaders

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The American Folklife Center is pleased to announce Traditional Folklore in a Digital World, a two-part symposium on August 17 and 24 examining some of the ways folklore is spread, discussed, and transformed in the digital environment. The symposium will bring together leading podcasters and influential figures in social media who are helping define what folklore is in the 21st century. It will consist of two Zoom-based panels, one on podcasts and the other on social media. Each panel brings together four compelling leaders in online folklore, who will present a brief rundown of what they do, and then take questions from the audience. AFC staff, including me, will be there to moderate and direct the questions. The podcast panel features the hosts of Lore, Crimelore, The Folklore Podcast, and Jack Dappa Blues and the African American Folklorist. The Social Media panel features folks from Folklore Thursday, Folk Horror Revival, and the Carterhaugh School of Folklore and the Fantastic. We hope you'll join us for a fascinating discussion. Both panels are free and open to the public, but registration is required.  (Don't worry, the links to register are in this post!) 

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

New Collection Online: World War II Rumor Project

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

The World War II Rumor Project collection contains manuscript materials compiled by the Office of War Information (OWI). The OWI was established by an Executive order on June 13, 1942, for the purpose of achieving a coordinated governmental war information program. The information program was designed to promote an informed and intelligent understanding of the …

A man holds a fiddle and a woman holds a cello

Homegrown Plus: Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas

Posted by: Stephen Winick

We continue the Homegrown Plus series with the duo of Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, who perform their own unusual arrangements of traditional and original Scottish and American folk music on fiddle and cello. Alasdair Fraser has a concert and recording career spanning over 30 years, with a long list of awards, accolades, radio and television credits, and feature performances on top movie soundtracks, including Last of the Mohicans and Titanic. In 2011, he was inducted into the Scottish Traditional Music Hall of Fame. Natalie Haas, a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music, is one of the most sought after cellists in traditional music today, and has performed and recorded with Mark O'Connor, Natalie MacMaster, Irish supergroups Solas and Altan, Liz Carroll, Dirk Powell, Brittany Haas, Darol Anger, Laura Cortese, and many more. Together, the duo of Fraser & Haas has helped reconstruct and revive a longstanding Scottish tradition of playing dance music on violin and cello. For their socially distanced concert, they performed some music solo and some using studio technology to join up separate performances, but most of it is never-before-released concert footage from their archive of pre-pandemic performances. In the interview, we discuss their separate musical histories as well as their 20-year career as a duo.

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

African American Art Dolls and Puppets for Identity and Healing

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

On February 18, 2020, the Library of Congress hosted an unusual event, a celebration of African American dolls and puppets sponsored by the American Folklife Center’s Benjamin Botkin Lecture Series. Folklorist Camila Bryce-Laporte and fellow artist, Dr. Deborah Grayson,  presented several artists from Maryland and the District of Columbia. The event also included a wonderful …

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

Festivus and Family Lore

Posted by: Stephanie Hall

This time of year many people celebrate Festivus, an alternative holiday that is based on a single episode of the television show Seinfeld, “The Strike,” which aired on December 18, 1997. It is most commonly celebrated on December 23 or another date in December, but it can be celebrated at other times of the year. …

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

Flashbulb Memories: Where Were You When…?

Posted by: Lisa Taylor

Flashbulb memories are those vivid, autobiographical memories that form when we learn of a particularly surprising, traumatic or impactful event. These kinds of memories burrow themselves deep into our memory banks, and often remain dormant until triggered to resurface. An image. A sound. A scent. Anything, really, can be the catalyst that sets the wheels …

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

News Coverage of Folklife Research for African American History Month

Posted by: Stephen Winick

The American Folklife Center has recently received some coverage for our efforts to research and recognize African American history which we'd like to tell you about. Last weekend the Atlanta Journal Constitution published this article about the spiritual "Kumbaya." In the article, Shelia M. Poole interviews AFC staff members John Fenn and Stephen Winick (hey, that's me) and even call me "the folklorist version of Sherlock Holmes" for locating what we believe to be the first sound recording of "Kumbaya" some years ago. She also interviews Griffin Lotson, who did research here and in Georgia, and who helped get the song declared the first State Historical Song of Georgia. We wrote about that research here on the blog. We also did a podcast about it, at this link. And we've previously  been covered and interviewed by the New York Times, which you can find here.

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

The Terrain of Freedom: Mapping Stories about People and Places in the African American Struggle for Justice, Rights, & Equality

Posted by: Guha Shankar

I wish I knew how It would feel to be free I wish I could break All the chains holding me I wish I could say All the things that I should say Say ’em loud, say ’em clear For the whole round world to hear Nina Simone, I Wish I Knew How It Would …