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Category: American Folklife Center

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Cajun Music from Louisiana

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

The BeauSoleil Quartet performed the lively and soulful music of Louisiana Cajuns on June 28 in the Coolidge Auditorium as part of the Library’s Homegrown Concert Series. For four decades now, the quartet has been taking traditional ingredients—waltzes, two-steps, Cajun French lyrics, hot fiddle licks and irresistible accordion—and spicing them up with eclectic percussion, acoustic …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Remix, Slang and Memes: A New Collection Documents Web Culture

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

This is a guest post by Nicole Saylor, head of archives at the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. The Library of Congress just announced the release of the Web Cultures Web Archive Collection, a representative sampling of websites documenting the creation and sharing of emergent cultural traditions on the web. Why is …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Pic of the Week: Dance Battle!

Posted by: Wendi Maloney

A performer competes in a “dance battle” in the Coolidge Auditorium on February 22 during a Homegrown Concert Series event of the American Folklife Center. Dance battles are an urban dance tradition that celebrate individual talent while helping to keep diverse forms of urban musical and dance expressions alive. In the Coolidge, pairs of dancers …

Image of an ornate clock showing 2:05 with sculpted male figures sitting on each side of the clock face

Beyoncé, Paul Bowles and More: Current GRAMMY Nominees with Library Connections

Posted by: Erin Allen

(The following is a guest post by Stephen Winick, writer-editor in the American Folklife Center.)  This year the GRAMMY awards promise to be exciting for music fans everywhere, but especially fans of the Library of Congress. At least four of the nominees have connections to the Library’s American Folklife Center (AFC). They present archival recordings, …