TITLE: Archie Green Memorial: Remembering Archie
SPEAKER: Dr. James H. Billington, Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, Judy McCulloh, Eddie Bond, Josh Ellis, Mike Munos, Paula Johnson, Joseph T. Wilson, Keith Kennedy, Northern Neck Chantey Singers, Derek Green, William R. Ferris
EVENT DATE: 09/10/2009
RUNNING TIME: 179 minutes
DESCRIPTION:
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress hosted a two-day event including a tribute, a symposium, and a concert, honoring folklorists Archie Green and Joe Wilson, and celebrating the acquisition of the National Council for the Traditional Arts (NCTA) Collection by the Center's archive. The multifaceted event featured spoken tributes, musical performances, panel discussions, and rare glimpses at archival treasures, and was crowned by a magnificent evening concert in the Library's Coolidge Auditorium. The concert showcased outstanding folk musicians who have been part of the NCTA by participating in the National Folk Festival and NCTA touring programs.
Speaker Biography: Dr. James H. Billington is the Librarian of the Library of Congress.
Speaker Biography: Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi is representative to California's 8th District and is Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.
Speaker Biography: Judith McCulloh completed her Ph.D in folklore at Indiana University and spent over thirty-five years at the University of Illinois Press where her most recent positions included Executive Editor, Assistant Director, and Director of Development. She also edited the renowned Music in American Life series, making her an important force in expanding and transforming ethnomusicology scholarship. She is co-editor of "The Stars of Country Music" (1975). McCulloh is also a former president of the American Folklore Society and has served for many years on the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. She is currently an emerita member of the Board of Trustees.
Speaker Biography: Eddie Bond is a fiddler with the New Ballards Branch Bogtrotters.
Speaker Biography: Josh Ellis is a banjo player with the New Ballards Branch Bogtrotters.
Speaker Biography: Mike Munoz is a journeyman Pile Driver and a thirty-three year member of Pile Drivers Local 34 in Oakland, California. He has been a union organizer since 1981 and is currently Director of Organizing for the Northern California Carpenters Regional Council. In 1986 he wrote and published "Pile Butt - a Collection of Stories on Pile Driving," and in 2001 assisted filmmaker Maria Brooks in the production of her film, "Pile Butts - Working Under the Hammer." He sits on the boards of the Fund for Labor Culture and History and the San Francisco State Labor Archives, and is a member of the Bay Area Labor History Workshop. In 1974, Munoz's leg was crushed while working in the field, and in 1977 he was injured by a collapsing dock. While recuperating from the second accident, he was appointed historian of Pile Drivers Local 34 by the president, Gary Bakke. While organizing the union's archive, he found a small booklet called "Stewards on the Job," written by business agent Jack Wagner during WWII. In the booklet were eleven linoleum cuts by Giacomo Patri - these illustrations changed his life. It has been his passion to document the history of the Pile Drivers Union and the Regional Council of Carpenters and to use what he has learned to bring workers into the Union and understand what union membership truly means to working people.
Speaker Biography: Paula Johnson is Curator, Division of Work and Industry at the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of American History. She has a master's in anthropology and folklore from the University of Texas, Austin, and a bachelor's in English from Gustavus Adolphus College, Minnesota. Her research specialties are American maritime history and traditions, fisheries history, maritime occupations and communities, maritime material culture, boats and boatbuilding, American food and wine history, oral history and folklife documentation, and public history. She is currently Project Director and Curator for the permanent exhibition, "On the Water: Stories from Maritime America," among other exhibitions.
Speaker Biography: Joseph T. 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 Joe 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 a Living Legend award on September 10, 2009.
Speaker Biography: Keith Kennedy is Managing Director of the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm Baker Donelson. He joined the firm in September 2006 after some twenty-eight years of service in the United States Senate. For eighteen years he was the majority or minority staff director of the Senate Committee on Appropriations, the largest committee in the Senate, which has jurisdiction over more than a trillion dollars of annual federal spending. The appropriations bills written by the Committee each year influence every activity the federal government undertakes, and constitute the only legislation that the Congress must pass every year. Prior to his service on the Appropriations Committee, Mr. Kennedy served as the Deputy Sergeant at Arms of the Senate from April 2003 to January 2005. In that position, he was the chief operating officer of the Senate's largest organization. In addition to providing security for Senators, their staffs, and the million annual visitors to the Capitol, the Sergeant at Arms procures and provides all information technology and telecommunications equipment and service for the Senate, both in Washington and in the state offices of Senators.
Speaker Biography: The Northern Neck Chantey Singers are a chantey singing group of former watermen who perform around the country.
Speaker Biography: Derek Green, born in 1947, was raised in San Francisco and moved to Illinois with his family in 1959. He graduated from Urbana High School in 1965, and joined the U.S. Navy. After shore duty in Viet Nam and sea duty in the Pacific, he returned to San Francisco in 1968. He began his career in the Electrical Industry at the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, and entered the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers' Inside Wireman's Apprenticeship Program in 1970, completing the apprenticeship in 1974. As a Journeyman Inside Wireman and member of IBEW Local Union 6, San Francisco, California, he worked for various private and public electrical industry employers in Northern California and Alaska until 1999. During these years he served the Local 6 membership on various committees and was elected to the Executive Board. Appointed as a Business Representative in 1999, he is currently serving as Assistant Business Manager. In 2006, he began assisting Archie Green at the Fund for Labor Culture & History, and is currently the Fund's Treasurer. He lives in Montara, California with his wife Alison. Their three grown children, Shelby, Cecily, and Nathan, live in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Speaker Biography: William R. Ferris is Joel Williamson Eminent Professor of History, Senior Associate Director of the Center for the Study of the American South, and Adjunct Professor in the Curriculum in Folklore at The University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He is widely recognized as a leader in Southern studies, African-American music and folklore. He is the former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Prior to his role at NEH, Ferris served as the founding director of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, where he was a faculty member for eighteen years. Ferris has written and edited ten books and created fifteen documentary films, most of which deal with African-American music and other folklore representing the Mississippi Delta. He co-edited the Pulitzer Prize nominee Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, which contains entries on every aspect of Southern culture and is widely recognized as a major reference work linking popular, folk, and academic cultures.
