Top of page
Posted by: Pat Padua
Last December I began this blog with the announcement that Sir Paul McCartney would be the recipient of the Gershwin Prize for Popular Music. I chatted with four Library of Congress staff members who experienced Beatlemania in person. From the stands at the Beatles’ rehearsal for the Ed Sullivan show, to the screams that could be …
Posted in: Composers, Concerts and Events, Musicians
Posted by: Pat Padua
“People talk about song-writing techniques. I have a technique. I sit around scratching myself and waiting for something to crop up. That’s why they call it a gift! Sit there and open up your mind and let yourself be a conduit.” That’s song-writer and raconteur Bill Withers, who so memorably closed a great evening of …
Posted in: Composers, Concerts and Events, Musicians
Posted by: Pat Padua
The music world mourns the loss of singer, dancer, activist Lena Horne, who passed away in New York yesterday at the age of 92. The Music Division has a variety of items related to Horne in its collections, from portraits in the William P. Gottlieb Collection to materials in the collections of swing band leader …
Posted in: African American History, Digital Collections, Musicians, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
If you missed the news over on the Library of Congress Blog, the Library announced that they will digitally archive the public record of the latest iteration of the tin-can and wire: Twitter. While we in the Music Division are still holding on to our telephone machines and pedalling to work on our velocipedes, this …
Posted in: Composers, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
The Music Division’s bonnie collections offer a variety of ways to celebrate this St. Patrick’s Day. Play an Irish bagpipe from the Dayton C. Miller Flute Collection. Follow along to the reels described in Rinnce na h-Éireann : a simplified work on the performance of the dances of Ireland, from An American Ballroom Companion: Dance Instruction Manuals. Develop …
Posted in: Dance, Musical Instruments, Sheet Music, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
Katherine Dunham was an American dancer-choreographer who was best known for incorporating African American, Caribbean, African, and South American movement styles and themes into her ballets. The Katherine Dunham Collection at the Library of Congress consists of moving image materials that document the extraordinary journey of a woman who changed the face of American modern …
Posted in: Dance, Special Collections, Women in Dance
Posted by: Pat Padua
“He was our benefactor and inspiration. Even more, he was the Martin Luther King of Music.” Pianist Eubie Blake said this of composer/bandleader James Reese Europe, who was born in Mobile, Alabama on February 22, 1881. Europe’s accomplishments run from the grand “Concert of Negro Music” that he conducted for a 125-man orchestra at Carnegie Hall in …
Posted in: African American History, Birthdays, Composers, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
If music be the food of love, then the Music Division has enough in the refrigerator to play on for a lifetime and then some. Among the more romantic pieces in the collection is a self-published work by Dayton C. Miller, whose collection of flutes and other instruments is one of the treasures of the Library. …
Posted in: Holidays, Sheet Music, Special Collections
Posted by: Pat Padua
We all can’t be Marilyn Monroe cooing a personal birthday greeting to the Commander-in-Chief. But this President’s Day weekend gives all Americans a chance to remember our iconic leaders and take advantage of holiday sales — and gives the Mid-Atlantic States more time to dig out from the record-breaking snowfall that brought the region to …
Posted in: Birthdays, Digital Collections, Sheet Music, Special Collections