American Folklife Center8,315 likes · 182 talking about this · 29 were here
8,315 likes · 182 talking about this · 29 were here
American Folklife Center shared a link.
On this day in 1787, New Jersey became the third state to ratify the U.S. Constitution. Let's celebrate New Jersey's statehood by exploring AFC's online collection "Working in Paterson: Occupational Heritage in an Urban Setting."
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/paterson/American Folklife Center shared a link.
Today is Wright Brothers Day, a United States federal observance. The day celebrates the Wright Brothers' first heavier-than-air powered flight, which took place on this date in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The American Folklife Ce...nter has a fascinating collection relating to the Wright Brothers in our Local Legacies project, celebrating the brothers' earlier career as printers, during which they published a daily and a weekly newspaper, as well as custom jobs including large books. More details are at the link!See More- RecommendationsSee All
Angelo Bendinihttp://oliverdanieldikasjournalist.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/bericht-der-news-chronik-journalistin-martina-prewein-wird-vom-oberlandesgericht-wien-medienrechtlich-abgestraft/last Thursday
Mike Zebeonly 7k friends?about 10 months ago
Will KrethStories upon stories within stories.about 10 months ago
American Folklife Center shared a link.
The American Folklife Center is pleased to announce a new book featuring photos and music from Alan Lomax's famous recording expedition to the American South in 1959 and 1960. Already the source of more than twenty-five LP and CD releases ...over the years, the "Southern Journey" has been part of American life since it was undertaken over fifty years ago. Its music has been adapted for pop records, feature films, and TV shows. This book presents Lomax's original photos, an introduction by folklorist William Ferris, and a long essay by music writer Tom Piazza.
The book is available from the Library of Congress sales shop, as well as various online retailers.See More- Likes
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- Congratulations to Oscar Brand! On this day in 1945, Brand began broadcasting his weekly radio show, "FOLKSONG FESTIVAL," which is still going strong and is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-running weekly entertai...nment show in history in any medium. In addition to his work as a radio host, Brand was one of the foremost singer-performers of the 20th-century North American folk revival. In 2009, he arranged for his collection to come to the American Folklife Center, and it has since been accessioned by the center. It will take some time to process the collection and find out what its many treasures are, but we know that it contains thousands of audio recordings of performances and interviews with leading folk music figures and thousands of manuscript items (e.g. clippings, flyers, and posters), as well as some photos and moving images on video and film.
This publicity photo shows Brand in 1945; it was sent to AFC by his current publicist.See More
- Happy 90th birthday to Jean Ritchie! Jean Ritchie was born ninety years ago today in Viper, Kentucky. Ritchie, a folksinger and dulcimer player from an important family of Kentucky tradition-bearers, has been recorded many times for the A...FC archive--our first recordings of her go back to 1946. In 2009, she and her late husband, the photographer and filmmaker George Pickow, arranged for their extensive archive of audio and video recordings, film, photographs, and manuscripts—the results of their seven decades of involvement in traditional performances and folklife documentation—to be preserved in the AFC archive. To read more about Ritchie, Pickow, and their remarkable collection, please download the issue of Folklife Center News at the link below.
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/news/pdf/FCN_Vol33no1-2.pdfSee More
American Folklife Center shared a link.
Many lives were changed on December 7, 1941, none were more affected than those service men and women living and working in Pearl Harbor. For them, December 7th is more than just a page in the history books—it was the start of their combat ...career, a day when they lost friends and comrades, and the instant when war became a reality. Use the link below to listen to their own words, these Pearl Harbor survivors present what they experienced on “a date which will live in infamy."See More- It’s Finnish Independence Day, on which Finns celebrate gaining their independence from Russia in 1917. Let’s celebrate with Finnish singer John Soininen, Who sang “Vaka vanha Vainamoinen (Steady old Vainamoinen)” for Sidney Robertson Cow...ell in 1939. The song comes from the Finnish national epic, The Kalevala, and is about Vainamoinen’s invention of the Kantele, a zither that is Finland’s most famous folk instrument. Hear the song at the link. Both the song and the photo are part of AFC's online collection California Gold.
http://memory.loc.gov/afc/afccc/audio/a427/a4275b1.mp3See More
American Folklife Center shared a link.
194 years ago yesterday, on December 3, 1818, Illinois became the 21st U.S. State. Celebrate Illinois by visiting AFC's National Sampler Project site for the state, featuring songs from David "Honeyboy" Edwards and Carl Sandburg, tradition...al Irish music recorded by Captain Francis O'Neill, American gospel and string band sounds, Greek and Mexican music, interviews, storytelling, and other great materials from our Illinois collections. Enjoy!See More- Happy December! On December 1, 1955, in Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa M. Parks refused give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Although she was not the first to resist bus segregation, Parks's o...rganization, the NAACP, believed that she would do particularly well in court. As a result of the bus boycott, Parks, Montgomery, and a young minister named Martin Luther King, Jr., all became prominent symbols of civil rights.
The American Folklife Center is engaged in an important effort to document and preserve stories of the American Civil Rights Movement. Find out more at the link:
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/civilrights/
The photo showing Parks and King is from our colleagues at the National Archive; it is a work of the United States Government and therefore in the Public Domain.See More
American Folklife Center shared a link.
The American Folklife Center celebrates St. Andrew's Day, the official national holiday of Scotland.
Explore Scottish American folk tunes in our California Gold Collection using this link: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afccchtml/cowhome.html
Listen to Charlotte MacInnes sing "Flow Gently Sweet Afton" clicking on the link below.- On this day in 1877, Thomas Edison first demonstrated the operation of his new invention, the phonograph. Phonographs originally recorded sound onto tinfoil, and later used cylinders made of wax and other materials. Many of AFC's earliest ...recordings of folk songs are on cylinders, beginning with the very first ethnographic field recordings, made by Jesse Walter Fewkes with Passamaquoddy singers in Maine. Later that year in Boston, Fewkes recorded the following clip, "Mr. Phonograph," to demonstrate the use of his machine to a visiting Passamaquoddy man.
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/guide/audio/5-MrPhonograph.mp3
The photo is cropped from a digital scan of a picture in the Library of Congress's Brady-Handy collection. It shows Edison and his second phonograph machine in 1878. LC P&P Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-cwpbh-04044See More
American Folklife Center shared a link.
Our colleagues in the Recorded Sound Reference Center just placed some of the interviews from their Joe Smith Collection online. The collection is a veritable who's who of the music industry, featuring artists in all popular genres. They ...plan to continue adding to the online offerings as time goes by. AFC especially recommends the interview with Mickey Hart, who was on our Board of Trustees for years, and who has released some of our archival recordings in his Mickey Hart Collection.
http://www.loc.gov/rr/record/joesmith/index.htmlSee More- AFC is pleased to announce the appointment of Nicole Saylor as the new Head of the AFC Archive. More details can be found at the press release in the link:
http://www.loc.gov/today/pr/2012/12-218.html
- Happy "First Thanksgiving!" Although many people consider the harvest feast celebrated by Massachusetts settlers in 1610 to be the "first Thanksgiving," it was in fact neither the first instance of an annual celebration, nor a "Thanksgivin...g" as that term was understood by the Separatist and Anglican settlers.
Two better candidates for the "First American Thanksgiving" both occurred on November 26. On this day in 1789, George Washington declared the first national day of Thanksgiving following the Revolutionary War and the establishment of our national government. Although it failed to become an annual holiday, Abraham Lincoln chose the same date to establish Thanksgiving in 1863, with the additional announcement that Thanksgiving would occur annually on the final Thursday of November. The holiday has been observed annually since Lincoln's proclamation, but in 1941 we changed the date to the fourth Thursday in November.
At the link below, hear a New Mexico hymn of thanks from the AFC's Juan Rael collection:
http://memory.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.afc.afcrael.3913b1/default.html
This engraving shows head-and-shoulders portraits of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln beneath an eagle and a star.
LC Prints and Photographs Division, Reproduction Number: LC-USZ62-90641 (b&w film copy neg.)See More
- On this day in 1926, blues performer R.L. Burnside (1926-2005) was born. Burnside, who spent most of his life and career in and around Holly Springs, Mississippi, was recorded early in his career by George Mitchell and others. His first p...erformances on film were recorded by Alan Lomax, Worth Long, and John Bishop in August 1978. These films are part of the Alan Lomax Collection, acquired by AFC in 2004. Burnside continued to perform and record into the 1990s, and became well-known for several recordings with Jon Spencer, which brought him to the attention of celebrity musicians such as Bono of U2 and Iggy Pop, both of whom were influenced by Burnside's music.
At the first link, read more about the Lomax collection. At the second link, see one of the performances from the collection.
http://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meC4pmw5u84
This photo is by Phil Wight of Eskbank, Dalkeith, Scotland, and is used under a creative commons license.See More
- The American Folklife Center wishes you a happy Thanksgiving with a thought about folk traditions: everyone knows about Trick-Or-Treating at Halloween, but did you know that kids used to do a very similar thing at Thanksgiving? Here is a ...picture of "Thanksgiving Maskers" from the Library's Prints and Photographs Division. Thanksgiving Maskers, like Trick-Or-Treaters, used to go door to door, begging for handouts, but they also had other ritual begging activities, including a "scramble for pennies" in the streets. While we're being thankful for what we have, let's also give a thought to those less fortunate--no one should have to scramble for a penny!
You can see more LC photos at the following link:
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=Thanksgiving+Maskers
You can read an account of Thanksgiving Masquerading in a New York Times article from 1899, here:
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=940DE1D7133DE633A25752C0A9649D94689ED7CF
We will be closed on Thursday, but the Folklife Reading Room reopens on Friday at 8:30 a.m.See More
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