Chinese opera master artist Kuang-yu Fong, 1996. Photo by Stephen Latimer. Part of the "Middlesex County Cultural Heritage Commission's Folklife Program for New Jersey," one of New Jersey's Local Legacies projects.

New Jersey

The collections of the American Folklife Center contain rich material from New Jersey that documents the state's diverse folk traditions. Among its unique recordings are hundreds of ballads, Irish fiddle tunes, gospel songs, Yiddish, and Lithuanian folksongs. In 1983, the Center conducted the Pinelands Folklife Project, documenting the traditions of the region in and around the Pinelands State Forest, including vernacular fox hunting practices, family gatherings, and the traditional ways people in the area interact with their natural environment. In addition to the publication One Space, Many Places: Folklife and Land Use in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve [catalog record], the project also produced hundreds of hours of audio-tape interviews, thousands of photographic images and many pages of transcriptions.

Collections

Finding Aid: View a complete list of our New Jersey collections.

Local Legacies: This project provides a "snapshot" of local culture as it was expressed in the year 2000. View New Jersey 's Local Legacies projects.

Veterans History Project: Browse state collections from the Veterans History Project.

Online Presentation: Working in Paterson: Occupational Heritage in an Urban Setting: 470 excerpts from original sound recordings and 3,882 photographs that document the occupational culture of Paterson, New Jersey in 1994. Selected from the Working in Paterson Folklife Project conducted by the American Folklife Center, the collection explores how the industrial heritage of the city expresses itself in its work sites, work processes, and memories of workers.

Additional Resources

Folklife Resources: Find state folklife-related agencies, societies, archives, higher education programs, and more, in Folklife Sourcebook: A Directory of Folklife Resources in the United States.

Publications: One Space, Many Places: Folklife and Land Use in New Jersey's Pinelands National Reserve. [catalog record]

New Jersey Folklife Resources, compiled by Peter T. Bartis, David S. Cohen, and Gregory Dowd, 1985.

"The Origin of Pineys: Local Historians and the Legend," Folklife Annual 1985. [catalog record]

"Culture and Cultivation of Nature: The Pinelands National Reserve," Folklife Annual 1985. [catalog record]

"Soundscape and Story: Foxhunting in New Jersey's Pine Barrens," Folklife Annual 88-89. [catalog record]

Cranberries [PDF 3 MB/36 p]