Abstract
What if you wanted to introduce your students to Cajun music from Louisiana, or Texas fiddle and swing music, or traditional Hawaiian music?
Perhaps you’d like your students to experience a Gullah-Geechee ring shout from Georgia or listen to music that might have been heard in Abraham Lincoln’s White House.
Maybe your students would benefit from witnessing performances of folk music from the mountains of Slovakia, or enjoy seeing photos of instruments used in Romani and Macedonian music, or have an interest in traditional music from Kenya?
Programs and concerts featuring all these genres as well as lectures on various music topics and more have been presented or hosted by the American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., for many years. Now, more than 300 recordings are available through the “Music and Concerts” playlist on the Library’s YouTube Channel at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL8613B74E164140F8.
Many of these featured programs were produced as part of the American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Concert Series and present the very best of traditional music and dance from a variety of folk cultures thriving in the United States and around the world. In addition, many of the programs have been highlighted in the Library’s Folklife Today blog at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife/about/.
Performers at the July 2017 Beausoleil Quartet concert at the Coolidge Auditorium (part of the Homegrown series). Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress and the American Folklife Center staff.
The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the United States Congress to “preserve and present American folklife” through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibitions, publications, and training. Designated by the U.S. Congress as the national center for folklife documentation and research, the American Folklife Center continues to collect and document living traditional culture while preserving for the future its unparalleled collections in the state-of-the-art preservation facilities.
The American Folklife Center Archive, established in the Library of Congress Music Division in 1928, is now one of the largest archives of ethnographic materials from the United States and around the world, encompassing millions of items recorded from the nineteenth century to the present. These collections, which include extensive audiovisual documentation of traditional arts, cultural expressions, and oral histories, offer researchers, educators, and interested readers access to the songs, stories, and other creative expressions of people from diverse communities.
As these materials—including the concert recordings—become more widely available and accessible, the AFC’s interest in their potential value to teachers and students is growing. The Library’s staff members invite you to explore the YouTube Playlist, and during the week of January 8, 2018, the AFC will post a special blog that will invite you to share your ideas about how these recordings have been or might be used in your classroom.