The following is a guest post by Rachel Telford, Program Specialist at the Veterans History Project. When Veterans History Project staff members are called upon to identify particularly interesting, poignant, or visually appealing collections in our archive, one name that comes up again and again is Kenje Ogata. A Japanese-American who fought for more than […]
The tradition of a national celebration of Mother’s Day in the United States grew out of reactions to the aftermath of the Civil War. Poet, suffragist, and author of the lyrics of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Julia Ward Howe attempted to unite women in the cause of peace, beginning with her “Appeal to […]
[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 […]
May Eve, April 30th, and May Day, May first, have long been part of the celebration of spring in Europe. The flowering of fruit trees and sowing season were important to agriculturalists in the hope of a good harvest. Lambing, kidding, and calving season had passed, so animals could be allowed out to more remote […]
Yesterday, I posted the recording and a lot of background information on “Colorado Morton’s Last Ride,” a cowboy poem recited by Fred Soule at the Visalia FSA Camp in 1941. The recitation is based on a poem published by Leonard Bacon in a 1927 book, and before that, in the Saturday Review of Literature, […]
For National Poetry Month, I thought I’d tell a little story about a poem. This piece of verse was recited by a man named Fred Soule at the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camp in Visalia, California on September 2, 1941. The camp was one of several such migrant worker camps in California, established by the […]
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 […]
Jewish vocal music culture in the United States reflects the variety of the many different parts of the diaspora from which the Jewish immigrants originally came, as well as different song traditions among Jewish denominations. This essay will examine some of the Jewish folksongs curated by the Recorded Sound section, the Music Division, and the […]
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 […]
In a letter dated November 16, 1918, an Army Private First Class stationed near Verdun, France, wrote to his mother, Dear Mother: By firelight on the fought-over ground of this stricken country I pause to rush word to you of my safety + well being. The last three weeks were terrible + of them I […]