On behalf of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, I’m sad to pass along the news of the death of Pete Seeger, a longtime friend of the AFC Archive and a giant in the folk music world, one of the most significant American folk musicians ever. Many AFC staff members have personal …
This week we’re hosting three digital humanities scholars at the American Folklife Center to discuss potential research projects that would draw upon AFC collections. It got me thinking about digital humanities inquiry in developing and understanding the AFC Archives. Across our history, we have embraced new media, explored data- and metric-driven approaches to studying and computing …
Over the years since its founding in 1928 as the Archive of American Folk Song, the American Folklife Center archive has been explored by a wide range of artists seeking inspiration for their own works. Through their creations, AFC archival materials have often found their way into popular culture. From time to time on Folklife …
Most of us know the tradition: on February 2, our old friend the groundhog will emerge from hibernation, come out of his den, and predict whether winter will deliver more cold weather this year. If the groundhog sees his shadow, the story goes, cold weather will persist another few weeks. If not, warm weather is around the corner. If you like the folklore of holidays, you may be interested to know that Groundhog Day is related to two of the other holidays we have written about extensively on this blog: Halloween and Mayday. In this post, we'll look at the ancient origins of the Groundhog Day tradition in Celtic and Germanic culture. We'll also present two fun groundhog songs from AFC collections, and links to further reading and exploration of this seasonal observance.
The American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress is pleased to announce the 2020 recipients of its three competitive annual fellowships and awards programs: the Archie Green Fellowships, the Gerald E. and Corinne L. Parsons Fund Award, and Henry Reed Fund Award. This year, these three awards went to twelve projects throughout the …
Members of the Washington, D.C. Youth Slam Team of Split This Rock performed poems inspired by recordings, photographs and field notes from the American Folklife Center archives on June 08, 2019 in an event co-sponsord by the Library of Congress Poetry and Literature Center. The video of these remarkable young poets is now available. This …
This is a guest post from one of the 2019 Folklife Interns at the American Folklife Center, Tali Gelenian. This internship program was launched in the summer of 2018 through a generous gift from the late Peter Bartis, a long-time staff member at the AFC and a tireless proponent of folklife–as well as a fieldworker …
On behalf of the American Folklife Center, I am pleased to announce that our James Madison Carpenter collection is now online. The collection, which consists of manuscripts, audio, photographs, and drawings documenting British folk music, song, and drama in the first half of the 20th century, is available worldwide through the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library’s …
The following is a guest post from AFC Folklife Specialist Nancy Groce. A previous Folklife Today blog, “Botkin Lectures to Go!,” drew readers’ attention to an engaging and readily accessible AFC resource: the more than 100 AFC Botkin Lectures on a wide variety of folklore and folklife topics that are currently available free-of-charge through the …