Folklife Today Podcast

This episode looks back at the recent work of Joseph Z. Johnson and Deena Owens, interns who created research guides on African American Banjo Playing and on Sacred Harp singing for the American Folklife Center. The interns talked about their work and shared a few of their favorite field recordings from our collections.

This episode looks back and ahead at the 2023 Homegrown Concert series, which is currently in progress. Hosts Stephen Winick and Michelle Stefano interview the series producer Theadocia Austen and folklife specialist Doug Peach. The participants talk about the series as a whole, and each picks one or two songs for us to hear. The episode contains songs from Jake Blount, (African American folk music), Spaelimenninir (Scandinavian folk music), Christylez Bacon (Hip Hop and human beatbox), Ali Doğan Gönültaş (Kurdish music from Turkey), and Hudaki Village Band (Ukrainian music from the Carpathian mountains). It also features interview segments with Blount and Bacon.

In this episode for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month, John Fenn and Steve Winick invite guests to talk about Asian collections in the American Folklife Center. Allina Migoni talks about the earliest known recordings of Korean music, playing segments of a lecture by Robert Provine and a song sung by Ahn Jeong-Sik. Sara Ludewig discusses the Linda LaMacchia collection, including recordings made of Tibetan singers in India. Steve discusses Asian and Pacific Island collections in the Homegrown concert series, and plays a song, a story, and a flute composition by Grammy-nominated Tibetan musician Tenzin Choegyal. More information on the performers and the selections can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife

In this episode for Women’s History Month, Allina Migoni and Michelle Stefano take a look through the collections of the American Folklife Center to find insights into how women have shaped those around them and passed down their cultural traditions, and to listen to reflections about their identities and lives. The episode honors women in the American Folklife Center archive, including homemaker and cook Yoshiko Nagashima, craftsperson Iyo Nagashima, farmer Sarah Sohn, quilters Donna Choate and Zenna Todd, hooked rug artist Mary Sheppard Burton, and ethnographers Theadocia Austen, Geraldine Niva Johnson, Kay Turner, Miiko Toelken, and Christine Cartwright. More information on the performers and the selections can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife

In this episode, John Fenn, Michelle Stefano, and Stephen Winick discuss Groundhog Day traditions. Drawing on the research of Don Yoder, they discuss the history and folklore of the holiday, including groundhog traditions among the Pennsylvania Dutch, groundhog songs, weather proverbs, and even cooking and eating groundhogs! Songs include two versions of “Groundhog,” one of “Fod,” and one of “Prowling Groundhog.” More information on the performers and the selections can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

In this episode, hosts John Fenn and Stephen Winick introduce three scary stories for you to enjoy: a witch tale told by Appalachian singer and activist Aunt Molly Jackson, a ghost story told by blues musician and gravedigger John Jackson, and the story of Jack O Lantern told by folklorist Jack Santino. Steve and John also discuss a little of the history of Halloween, and introduce the Library of Congress’s updated Halloween research guide. More information on the performers and the selections can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

In this episode, hosts John Fenn and Stephen Winick talk with Jennifer Cutting about items that caught their eyes and ears. Cutting discusses commercial recordings of tunes collected by Cecil Sharp, and Winick tells stories of the recording sessions, which Sharp personally supervised and described in his diaries. Cutting discusses her friend, the late Tony Barrand, an important collector of morris dances. John Fenn discusses the Nagra IV portable tape deck, and Winick discusses a picture of the late Mick Moloney using the Nagra in 1977. Winick discusses Moloney, and they play music recorded by Moloney on the Nagra, including jigs played on fiddle and accordion by Liz Carroll and Tommy Maguire, and reels played on the flute by Michael Flatley. More information on the performers and the selections can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

In this episode, hosts John Fenn and Stephen Winick interview American Folklife Center interns Bryan Jenkins and Elisa Alfonso. Jenkins discusses AFC’s Web Cultures Web Archive, and interviews AFC reference librarian Allina Migoni about it. Alfonso discusses several versions of the Latin American children’s song “Señora Santana,” and speaks of its association with the 1960s Cuban children’s exodus that later became known as Operación Pedro Pan. The episode presents several versions of the song from Cuban, Mexican, and Spanish Americans in Florida, Texas, and California. More information on the performers and the selections can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

In this episode, hosts John Fenn and Michelle Stefano, with guest Thea Austen, explore Ukrainian materials in the American Folklife Center Archive. Interview segments include a discussion of Ukrainian embroidery and dance, between Geraldine Johnson and Taissa Decyk; and a discussion of a Ukrainian family bandura band who immigrated to the United States as refugees in the late 1940s, between Stephen Winick and Julian Kytasty. Musical selections include a song with bandura accompaniment by Kytasty and a set of instrumental tunes by Gerdan ensemble. More information on the performers and the selections can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

This episode shares some of our favorite songs of the Christmas season. It includes songs derived from English and Spanish medieval mystery plays, children's songs, cumulative carols, and other fun songs of the season. There's even a performance by the American Folklife Center mummers, who sing and perform a Christmas play every year at the Library of Congress.

In this episode, hosts Stephen Winick and John Fenn, with guests Betsy Peterson, Jennifer Cutting, and Melanie Zeck, explore songs and music from Irish American women in the American Folklife Center archive. Performances include Maggie Hammons Parker singing “Ireland’s Green Shore,” Hattie Scott Gould playing “The Irish Washerwoman” on the fiddle, May Mulcahy playing “Nori from Gibberland” and “Put Your Little Foot Right There” on the concertina, Carrie Grover singing “Arthur McBride,” Eileen Gannon playing “O’Carolan’s Receipt” and “Niall Gannon’s Favorite” on the Celtic harp, and Liz Carroll and Tommy Maguire playing a set of reels on the fiddle and the accordion. More information on the performers and the selections can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

In this episode, hosts Stephen Winick and John Fenn, with guest Theadocia Austen, talk about songs of springtime, from agricultural and pastoral songs about farms and flowers to love ballads…and one dance tune. They also play the songs, including Pearl Nye’s version of “Early in the Spring,” the Copper Family’s rendition of “When Spring Comes On,” Baptiste Pierre’s version of the Haitian song “Fleurs, Certaines Jolies Fleurs” Rubén Cobos’s version of the alabanza hymn “El Alba,” Warde Ford’s version of “Nightingales of Spring,” and the Chicago Zither Club’s “Spring Polka.” More information on the songs can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

This episode examines the story of La Llorona, the Weeping Woman of Mexican and Latin American ghostlore. Hosts Stephen Winick and John Fenn discuss Winick’s research into the legend for the Folklife Today blog, and interview three guests. Camille Acosta, who wrote a thesis about the Llorona legend, talks about her research and the meanings the story has for kids and adults. Allina Migoni, the Latinx subject specialist for the American Folklife Center, talks about the importance of the La Llorona story for Mexican and Mexican American identity, as well as the connections between La Llorona and La Malinche, the enslaved Indigenous woman whose work as a translator helped Hernán Cortés conquer Mexico. Juan Dies speaks about La Llorona songs, as well as the figure of La Llorona in Mexican pop culture. More information on the songs as well as photos of some the singers and links to all the archival sources, can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

This episode looks back at the 2021 Homegrown at Home Concert series. Hosts John Fenn and Stephen Winick interview the series producer Theadocia Austen and folklife interns Kennedi Johnson and Camille Acosta. The participants talk about the series as a whole, and each picks one or two songs for us to hear. The episode contains songs from Neli Andreeva (Bulgarian traditional song), Brother Arnold Hadd and Radiance Choir (Shaker hymn), Martin Carthy (English ballad with guitar), harbanger (turntable septet hip-hop composition), Samite (Ugandan song with African lyre or litungu), Hubby Jenkins (Blues with guitar), and Mamselle Ruiz (traditional Mexican song with small ensemble). More information on the songs as well as photos of some the singers and links to all the archival sources, can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

This episode continues our look at songs about summer, from the amorous adventures of young lovers to the backbreaking work done by convicts in the sun. Hosts John Fenn and Stephen Winick, along with guest Jennifer Cutting, present their favorite summer songs. Songs include the English “Sweet Primroses;” the Trinidadian “One Fine Summer’s Morning” and “June Come, You No Marry;” the Tuvan “In Summer Pastures;” the African American work song “Worked All Summer Long;” and the Basque “When the Sun Shines Everywhere, How Good the Shade is!” More information on the songs as well as photos of some the singers and links to all the archival sources, can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

This episode looks at songs about summer, from the amorous adventures of young lovers to the backbreaking work done by convicts in the sun. Hosts John Fenn and Stephen Winick, along with guests Nicki Saylor and Jennifer Cutting, present their favorite summer songs. Songs include the Finnish “Kesa Ilta,” the Tuvan “Let The Sun Shine On My Verdant Summer,” the African American work song “Long Hot Summer Day,” the Appalachian nonsense song “On a Bright and Summer’s Morning,” the Anglo-Canadian lament “As I Walked Out One Fine Summer’s Evening,” and the Irish love song “Wild Mountain Thyme.” More information on the songs as well as videos of some of the performances, photos of some the singers, and links to all the archival sources, can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

This episode looks at a “Hidden Folklorist” renowned as a poet and playwright: Langston Hughes. It includes interviews with folklorist Langston Collin Wilkins and Hughes scholar Sophie Abramowitz. Wilkins and Abramowitz show us how Langston Hughes’s folklore work was grounded in song collecting and vernacular expression, and committed to the visionary futurity of Black folkloric creativity. We also explore Hughes’s connections to the American Folklife Center archive, especially correspondence between Hughes and Alan Lomax that preserves perhaps the only known copies of some of Hughes’s collected songs, right here in the Library of Congress.

This episode looks at three “Hidden Folklorists” from Louisiana with special guest Joshua Clegg Caffery from the Center for Louisiana Studies at the University of Louisiana Lafayette. The Hidden Folklorists are Becky Elzy and Alberta Bradford, two spiritual singers who had been born in slavery, but who years later sang over a hundred spirituals for collectors; and E.A. McIlhenny, the head of the Tabasco Sauce company, who first collected their spirituals into a book. We recount details of how a microfilm of unique, unpublished manuscript spirituals by Bradford and Elzy came to be part of the American Folklife Center archive, and how Bradford and Elzy came to be recorded on audio discs for the Library of Congress by Alan Lomax in 1934, with the resulting recordings also coming to the AFC Archive. It’s an amusing story in which the 19-year-old Alan Lomax is forced to leave his father, the seasoned collector John A. Lomax “by the side of the road” and drive 40 miles with the 73 year old Bradford to try to find the 82 year old Elzy so they can sing together for the Library’s recording machine. The episode also presents several of their spirituals, and ends with the very moving recording of two women who had been born in slavery singing “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, got free at last!”

This episode Presents the poem “Colorado Morton’s Ride,” also known as “Colorado Morton’s Last Ride.” It’s a ten-minute narrative poem recited by Fred Soule at the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camp in Visalia, California on September 2, 1941. The poem was recorded on an instantaneous disc by Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin, two fieldworkers collecting folksongs for the Library of Congress. It was written by Pulitzer-Prize-winning poet Leonard Bacon and Montana Cowboy Rivers Browne. It’s a great, colorful example of cowboy poetry, and we hope you enjoy it.

This episode looks at folk poetry, with discussions of four poetry-themed collections in the American Folklife Center. Guest Anne Holmes of the Library of Congress Literary Initiatives Division discusses “Living Nations, Living Words,” the signature project of the Poet Laureate Joy Harjo. Harjo, the first Native American Poet Laureate, has curated a collection of poetry by Native American poets, which includes recordings of the poets reading their work. The recordings are part of the American Folklife Center archive. The Literary Initiatives division has also created a Story Map to place the poets and poems in a geographic context. The poet M.L. Smoker reads her work “The Book of the Missing, Murdered, and Indigenous—Chapter 1.” Guest Michelle Stefano of the American Folklife Center discusses “Rhyming the Archive,” an event in which members of the poetry slam team Split This Rock wrote poems inspired by materials in the archive and performed them at an event at the Library of Congress. The poet Marjan Naderi reads her work “The Lessons My Mother Taught Me While Preparing Dinner.” Guest Kerry Ward of the Veterans History Project introduces VHP and discusses VHP’s November, 2019, Occupational Poetry Panel, which brought together four Veteran poets to perform their work. Meezie Hermansen performs her work “Tools of the Trade.” Stephen Winick and John Fenn discuss a poem in the American Folklife Center’s archive called “Colorado Morton’s Last Ride.” It’s a ten-minute narrative poem recited by a man named Fred Soule at the Farm Security Administration (FSA) camp in Visalia, California on September 2, 1941. The poem was recorded on an instantaneous disc by Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin, two fieldworkers collecting folksongs for the Library of Congress. Winick discusses the research that led him to discover that the poem, whose original title was “Colorado Morton’s Ride,” was written by Pulitzer-Prize-winner Leonard Bacon and Montana cowboy Rivers Browne. He also reveals the identity of Soule, a public information officer for the FSA. We hear Soule read an excerpt of the poem, and Winick and Fenn promise to release the full poem as a bonus episode.