We're continuing the Homegrown Plus Premiere series with Tlacuatzin Son Huasteco, a trio playing one of the traditional music styles of eastern Mexico, known as son huasteco or huapango music; As is usual for the series, this blog post includes an embedded concert video, an interview video, and a set of related links to explore! Son huasteco music is built around two variants of the guitar, the jarana and the quinta huapanguera, as well as the violin and the voice. Son huasteco singing employs a distinctive falsetto style. Improvisation plays a strong role in this music, with each group adding their own lyrics and arrangements to a standard repertoire of songs. The result is acoustic string-band music that is both traditional and contemporary, with direct emotional appeal.

Giselle M. Aviles, reference librarian in the Hispanic Reading Room presents some of the resources available to help spur learning about the Andean countries and its diaspora in the United States.

La versión en Español de este artículo puede leerla aquí. This is a guest post by Monica Soto, 2022 Junior Fellow, who has a bachelor’s degree in history from the College of William and Mary and is pursuing a master’s degree in library and information science at the University of Denver. This interview was previously published […]

We’re back with another episode of the Folklife Today podcast! Find it at this page on the Library’s website, or on Stitcher, iTunes, or your usual podcatcher. In this episode, John Fenn and and I interview the American Folklife Center’s recent interns, Bryan Jenkins and Elisa Alfonso, about the items and collections that caught their […]

The United States has been commemorating Hispanic Heritage Month since 1968. The celebration honors the civic and cultural contributions and achievements made by our fellow Americans of Hispanic heritage, and also Mexico’s independence day (September 16) and the anniversaries of independence for Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua. To honor these people and celebrations, […]

We're continuing the Homegrown Plus Premiere series with Vigüela, a a traditional folk quintet with a commitment to the rural musical traditions of central Spain. As is usual for the series, this blog post includes an embedded concert video, an interview video, and a set of related links to explore! Vigüela was established in the mid-1980s, after the Franco regime, by young people who looked to folk culture for a way to channel their creative desires while staying rooted in their local communities. Grounded in this history, the band members value their tradition and perform it with accuracy and energy, as a living music, full of joy. They play traditional Spanish music, including jotas, seguidillas, fandangos, and sones, using the centuries-old singing styles, dialects, and instruments of their region. That region is Castilla-La Mancha, the southern part of the Iberian plateau, sometimes called “the heart of Spain,” or “Don Quixote country.”

The following is a post by Henry Granville Widener, Portuguese Language Reference Librarian in the Hispanic Reading Room of the Latin American, Caribbean, and European Division. September 7, 2022 marks 200 years since Pedro I declared Brazil’s independence from Portugal on the banks of the Ipiranga River. Similarly to its sister nations of the former Spanish, French […]

Celebrate National Hispanic Heritage Month 2022 with NLS and learn about Argentinian Tango. Listen to a recording from 1912 and find out about accessible NLS resources available for you to check out.

This is a two-part blog post by Pamela Padilla, 2022 Summer participant in the Library of Congress Internship (LOCI) program with the Hispanic Reading Room, and a Library Science and History graduate student at Queens College, City University of New York.  Click here for the first part of Pamela’s research project. At one point one […]

This is a two-part blog post by Pamela Padilla, 2022 Summer participant in the Library of Congress Internship (LOCI) program with the Hispanic Reading Room, and a Library Science and History graduate student at Queens College, City University of New York. Please check back at the end of the week for the second part of […]