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TITLE: Celebrating the Acquisition of the NCTA Collection
SPEAKER: Dudley Connell, Scott Lilly, Jon Lohman, Mick Moloney, Julia Olin, Barry Lee Pearson, Nick Spitzer, Andy Wallace, Joseph Wilson
EVENT DATE: 09/11/2009
RUNNING TIME: 100 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
Barry Bergey with the National Endowment for the Arts moderates a group of panelists who discuss the significance and highlights of the NCTA Collection.
Speaker Biography: Dudley Connell is an audio archivist for the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA).
Speaker Biography: Scott Lilly is Senior Fellow with the Center for American Progress.
Speaker Biography: Jon Lohman is the Director of the Virginia Folklife Program and the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities. As the state folklorist, he works to document, present, and support Virginia's rich cultural folkways, through a variety of media including audio and video documentation, exhibit design, public programming, and project development. He has produced numerous bluegrass, old-time, and gospel releases for Virginia Folklife Recordings. He has presented at numerous festivals, including the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, the National Folklife Festival, Merlefest, the Blue Ridge Folklife Festival, the American Folk Festival, and others. Jon has published scholarly and popular writings on such topics as Mardi Gras, murals and memorial walls, duck decoy carving, and southern folklore.
Speaker Biography: Mick Moloney is an internationally renowned performer and scholar in the field of Irish traditional music. He has recorded and produced over forty albums of traditional music, and acted as advisor for scores of festivals and concerts all over America. Mick also served as the artistic director for several major arts tours including The Green Fields of America, an NCTA-sponsored ensemble of Irish musicians, singers and dancers which toured across the United States. Mick has a doctorate in folklore and folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught ethnomusicology, folklore and Irish studies courses at the University of Pennsylvania, Georgetown, and Villanova Universities, and currently teaches at New York University in the Irish Studies program.
Speaker Biography: Julia Olin is Executive Director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA). She has been involved with the research, documentation and public presentation of traditional music and culture for 36 years. Since joining the National Council for the Traditional Arts in 1990, Olin has organized, directed or produced twenty-seven national tours, been involved in the planning, artistic direction and production of forty-seven national festivals, twenty-three recordings of traditional music, and twenty-two programs for public radio and television. She has worked with national parks across the nation to develop cultural programs. Prior to her association with the NCTA, Olin conducted extensive fieldwork in Missouri and Arkansas that resulted in a major collection of traditional music, ballads and stories. Olin was also involved in the programming and production of numerous regional traditional arts events and programs, and enjoyed a successful career as a vocalist and musician.
Speaker Biography: Barry Lee Pearson is a blues scholar and Professor of English at the University of Maryland.
Speaker Biography: Nick Spitzer is host and creator of American Routes, a weekly two-hour radio program devoted to vernacular music, musicians and culture. He is also professor of American studies and communication at Tulane University, and an adjunct research professor of anthropology and urban studies at the University of New Orleans. Nick has been a commentator and producer for ABC's Nightline, NPR's All Things Considered and Fresh Air and PBS's Great Performances. He directed the ethnographic film Zydeco: Creole Music and Culture in Rural Louisiana, and has produced numerous annotated field recordings. Spitzer served as founding director of the Louisiana Folklife program, editing "Louisiana Folklife: A Guide to the State, and Mississippi Delta Ethnographic Overview" for the National Park Service. He served as senior folklife specialist at the Smithsonian, as artistic director of the Folk Masters series at Carnegie Hall, and of the American Roots Independence Day concerts, broadcast from the National Mall (1992-2001). In 2002, Nick led a research and exhibition team for "Raised to the Trade": Creole Building Arts of New Orleans at the New Orleans Museum of Art. A former scholar at the School of American Research in Santa Fe and a Fellow of the American Folklore Society, he received the Benjamin Botkin Award in Public Folklore, an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for American Routes, and was named Louisiana Humanist of the Year for cultural recovery efforts after the 2005 catastrophe in New Orleans. In 2007, Nick was awarded a Guggenheim fellowship for work on traditional creativity in Louisiana Creole communities.
Speaker Biography: Andy Wallace has been involved with traditional music and culture for the past forty years. He spent fifteen years directing the NCTA's National Folk Festival and five years with the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and has organized numerous other festivals and tours. Wallace was a founding member of the Folklore Society of Greater Washington. An active performer on the folk music scene during the 1960s and '70s, Wallace worked with Jonathan Eberhart and Mike Rivers in the Ringshouters, and with Pete Seeger as a member of the original crew of the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater. He was also a solo artist. He has recorded with Jonathan Eberhart, Helen Schneyer, Louis Killen and Pete Seeger, among others, and has appeared on NPR and public television. Wallace's repertoire reflects his broad musical tastes and includes ballads, sea chanteys, Southern and New England dance tunes, cowboy songs, and Cajun and Quebecois songs and tunes.
Speaker Biography: Joseph Wilson grew up in the Blue Ridge Mountain area of Tennessee, where he was profoundly influenced by the traditional music of that region. He is a folklorist, and served as the Executive Director of the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) from 1976 to 2004. He now serves as Chairman of NCTA, and also manages NCTA's Blue Ridge Music Center. In his career, he has produced forty-two large-scale music festivals in eleven states, twenty-one national tours by musicians and dancers, nine international tours that visited thirty-three nations, and 131 LP and CD audio recordings of various forms of folk music. With Lee Udall, he co-wrote the book "Folk Festivals: A Handbook for Organization and Management." He has also been involved in the production of twelve films. In 2001, the National Endowment for the Arts awarded a National Heritage Fellowship to Wilson. This is the highest honor the nation accords artists and workers in the traditional arts. As part of the Library's tribute to Wilson, the Librarian of Congress presented him with the Living Legend award on September 10, 2009.