Clik here to view.
Welcome to Folklife Today
Welcome to Folklife Today, a new blog produced by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Here at AFC, we have one of the largest archives in the world relating to traditional folk...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Putting Foods By for Winter
Vivian Jarrell holding a jar of wild ramps (onions) she has frozen. Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia. Photo by Lyntha Scott Eiler, April 11, 1996. This time of year...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Veterans History Project
Within the vast array of recordings housed at the American Folklife Center (everything from sea shanties to slave narratives to street cries), you can also find voices that are a little different from...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Michigan-I-O: Alan Lomax and the 1938 Library of Congress Folk-Song Expedition
The following is a guest post by Aimee Hess, Library of Congress Publishing Office, and Todd Harvey, American Folklife Center. Alan Lomax at typewriter, 1942. Alan Lomax Collection (AFC 2004/004:...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Voices of Civil Rights Project Collection
In addition to my work cataloging new oral histories for the Civil Rights History Project, I am also working on other collections related to the civil rights movement and African American history. One...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Bill Stepp, Aaron Copland, and “Bonaparte’s Retreat”
This print from the Library of Congress French Political Cartoon Collection shows Bonaparte’s Retreat. It compares Napoleon to Julius Caesar, and shows him saying, “I came, I saw, I fled.” Over the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Indigenous American Cylinder Recordings and the American Folklife Center
Francis La Flesche, the first professional American Indian ethnologist. Courtesy of the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Photograph No. 4504. As November is Native American...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Buttered Fresh Frozen Lima Beans: Commemorative Holiday Menus in the Veterans...
Front cover of Thanksgiving menu, Pusan, Korea, 1954. Eban Fisher Collection (AFC2001/001/43215), Veterans History Project. Chow, c-rations, MREs—no matter the form it takes or the name given to it,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Symposium sparks broad discussion of ethnographic archives
Elmira Köchümkulova of the University of Central Asia, Bishkek, Kyrgyz Republic (left) presented a poster on “Documenting Kyrgyz Cultural Heritage.” She also brought donations of many books about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Life and Times of Boll Weevil
Farm boy with sack full of boll weevils he has picked off the cotton plants. He is holding infected cotton “squares” (buds) and young bolls in his hand. Macon Georgia. Photo by Dorothea Lange, 1937....
View ArticleClik here to view.
Einstein’s Folklore
Albert Einstein, photographed by Orren Jack Turner in about 1947.Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Reproduction Number LC-USZ62-60242 (b&w film copy neg.) Albert Einstein, the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Songs of the Winter Season Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell
Sidney Robertson Cowell, copying California Folk Music Project recordings for the Library of Congress. Photo taken in the project office on Shattuck Ave., Berkeley, California in early 1939. AFC...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Mumming at the American Folklife Center
The 2013 American Folklife Center Mummers. Front Row, L-R: Nancy Groce, Eric Eldritch, Maggie Kruesi, Christy Chason Lavelle. Middle Row, L-R: Stephanie Hall, Hope O’Keeffe, Hannah Santino, Ann Hoog,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
St. George and the Data Dragon: A Digital Assets Mumming
St. George and the Data Dragon: A Digital Assets Mumming Performed by American Folklife Center Staff with Guests Script drawn from multiple plays in the James Madison Carpenter Collection. Compiled by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Auld Acquaintance for the New Year: Burns’s Auld Lang Syne
Portrait of Robert Burns, Ayr, ScotlandL. C. Prints and Photographs DivisionReproduction Number: LC-DIG-ppmsc-07528 As the Old Year turns to the New Year, thousands of people around the world will sing...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Battles of Leyte and Luzon, 1944-1945
When the New Year arrives, thoughts often turn to what the coming year might bring. During wartime, service members inevitably wonder if the next year will be the year: the long-anticipated time when...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The End of the Holidays….
The AFC Staff poses by the Christmas Tree in the Great Hall of the Library of Congress. Front Row: Betsy Peterson, Jennifer Cutting, Christy Chason Lavelle, Kate Stewart. Middle Row: Mary Bucknum,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Computing culture in the AFC Archive
Robert Winslow Gordon was hired by the Library of Congress in 1928 to create an archive of folksong using the new media of his time: wax cylinders. This week we’re hosting three digital humanities...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Soldier’s Joy: An American Classic
Josh and Henry Reed, ca. 1903 “Soldier’s Joy” is one of our favorite fiddle tunes, and one of the oldest and most widely distributed tunes in the English-speaking world. There are numerous renditions...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Play Ball!… Aboard Ship?
Though the recent polar vortex may have tempered my enthusiasm a bit, this January I’ve been pulling on my running shoes and hitting the pavement with renewed focus. The resolution to exercise more in...
View Article
