Note: Every year, in the week of the Library’s holiday party, staff members of the American Folklife Center put our research and performance skills into play, bringing collections to life in a dramatic performance that tours the halls of the Library of Congress. Dressed in costumes that range from striking to silly, we sing, act, …
In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) We’re continuing the series with From the Mountains to the Sea: The Folksong Collecting Work of Anne and Frank Warner, an unusual presentation in our series. From the Mountains …
Note: The following is a guest post by Tanya Finchum and Juliana Nykolaiszyn, creators of the Occupational Folklife Project collection The “Big Top” Show Goes On: An Oral History of Occupations Inside and Outside the Canvas Circus Tent. All photos in this post are part of collection, and can be found, often at higher resoultions, by visiting …
In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) We’re continuing the series with Gabriel Muñoz and Melodias Borinqueñas, an ensemble from New Jersey performing Puerto Rican folk music. The group is led by Gabriel Muñoz, a …
This series of blog posts has turned to looking more closely at the roots of the ‘intangible cultural heritage’ (ICH) concept, laying a foundation for examining the global policy – and thereby framework – from which it draws its strength: the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the United Nations …
The Folklife Today Halloween Podcast is Live As we hope you’ve come to expect, we have something very special in store this Halloween. As I mentioned in our last post, we’re launching the Folklife Today Podcast on October 29, and hey…that’s today! The first episode is called “Haunting Tunes for Halloween.” It’s hosted by John …
With 31 digitized AFC collections now online at loc.gov, AFC staff has long been thinking of ways to promote and enhance meaningful uses of them. In the past couple of years, these discussions have focused on the digitized, ethnographic survey collections, such as the Montana Folklife Survey, South Central Georgia Folklife Project, Rhode Island Folklife …
In the Homegrown Plus series, we present Homegrown concerts that also had accompanying oral history interviews, placing both together in an easy-to-find blog post. (Find the whole series here!) We’re continuing the series with the The Fairfield Four, an African-American gospel quartet that has existed for more than 95 years. Best known for its performance in the …
This past weekend, AFC held the last of its planned Summer Jams, with a Blues Jam led by the great Phil Wiggins and co-sponsored by the Archie Edwards Blues Heritage Foundation. We plan to hold more of the jams in the near future, repeating some of the genres we’ve already featured (old-time, Irish, ballads, and …