Folklife center. The library hosted this event as part of its summer lecture series. I am going to start the program off. I want to leave time for q a for stephen afterwards. I have a boatload of questions and i imagine the audience is going to as well. As littlewho know about the American Folklife Center as i did, i will share notes i jotted down. Our speaker today is Stephen Winick, who is with the Folklife Center. I will tell you more about his job and a second. The center is located at the library of congress, that is our theme for this month lecture series. The center was created in 1976 to preserve and present american folk life. Rather Ambitious Mission that involves researching,ocumentation, archiving performance, exhibitions, publications, everything that any Cultural Organization likes to do, the Folklife Center tries to do it. Is made up of 2700 collections, that is according to their website. It could it includes 150,000 sound recordings, 3 million items. Youll be sharing some of the high points of those collections with us. Stephen winick has a phd in folklife and he is a folklorist. It is a neat word. Least oneyou at question about what is folklife, what is a folklorist, and if you do not mind, i want to highlight something that is unique to you. Musician, he is interested in music and music collections. He performs with a celtic rock band called ocean. If youre interested in more of what stephen is about, you might want to check them out online. In the meantime, welcome stephen. My name is Stephen Winick and i am the writer and editor and the American Folklife Center at the library of congress. Itrained as a folklorist, have a phd in folklore from the university of pennsylvania and well talk more about those words as we go on in the presentation. Which also slides have audio because our collections of a lot of that and they are fun. I will get started by rolling forward. Here we go. Did not think that was going to happen. We must have left it too long. It will take a second. Here we go. I will begin by giving you our website. That is the most important thing. You can go online and discover all about us, including thousands of Collection Items and resources to tell you how to interpret them. I will begin by talking about how the Folklife Center came to be. Created in 1976 by an act of Congress Called the american folklife reservation act. I will play a segment of it. Reading areedwards enabling legislation. Congress, january 2, 1976. The creation of the american act toe center, an provide for the establishment of an American Folklife Center in the library of congress other purposes. Enacted by the senate and house of representatives of the United States of america that this act may be cited as the american folklife preservation act. The Congress Finds and declares that the diversity inherent in american folklife has contributed greatly to the cultural ritualist of the nation and has fostered a sense of individuality and identity among the American People. Of the United States demonstrates that building a strong nation does not require the sacrifice of cultural differences. American folklife has a fundamental influence on the desires, beliefs, values and character of the American People. It is appropriate and necessary for the federal government to support research and scholarship and american folklife in order to contribute to an understanding of the complex problems of the desires, beliefs, and values of the American People in rural and urban areas. And supportgement of american folklife, while primarily a matter for private initiative, is a matter of concern to the federal government, and it is in the interest to the general welfare of the nation to preserve, support, and disseminate american folklife traditions and arts. Tois the purpose of this act establish and American Folklife Center to preserve and present american folklife. Stephen that is not bob edwards on the screen. That is a man named archie green who was a librarian and folklorist in chicago who came to washington for about seven years and the 1970s to lobby for the creation of the American Folklife Center. He was successful. That is the law that established us. As you can see, it talks about diversity and the cultural richness of the nation. That is the reason for preserving american folk traditions. We think it is an inspiring piece of legislation. We are happy to have been created by it during it can attains it contains a section of definitions that define what folklife is. Reason theyhe decided to place this new Government Agency at the library interestingwas an one. It was debated whether there should be at the national or thent for the arts smithsonian, those were two that were in the running for getting the Folklife Center. Placed at thewas library of congress was the library had a large archive of folk music, which was originally called the archive of american folk song and was founded in 1928 by Robert Winslow gordon. He collected a lot of recordings on wax cylinders, which was one of our first recording technologies. This is an example of one of the things he collected. [singing] the first recording of kum bae ah from 1977. Thing and the library of congress from long before 1976 are native american cylinder recordings. At a certain time in the 1970s, the government decided to collect all the cylinders of native american speech and a song that it been placed at various government agencies, including the bureau of Indian Affairs and the smithsonian and a put them in one place, and they decided as a live on the library is that place. Those go back to 1890s. They are the earliest sound recordings we have worried recordings we have. Gordon left winslow the library in 1933, he was succeeded by a man named john lomax. He was a student of cowboy songs. Yet had gotten a masters degree a great ballard scholar, and he was making the argument that cowboy songs were a part of that tradition. He got a job at the library of congress as a dollar a year man he did not have a salary, he got a dollar a year and a letter of introduction from the library of congress that said this person works for the library and he collects folk songs. To getlowed john lomax other funding, grants and publishing deals that allowed him to go out and make recordings. The deal was he got the right to publish them. In those days you would publish them by transcribing them in a book. No one published recordings. The library got to keep the recordings. That was the deal they made. That was how john lomax came to start collecting. Early in his field trips in 1933 and 1934, he began to bring along his son, alan. The first paid position in this folklife archive as assisted in charge. That was his title. Lomax made recordings with his father. One of the people he did this was the following figure we will see, Jelly Roll Morton. Alan brought Jelly Roll Morton into the library. At that time he was down on his luck, and yet been an important figure in the 1920s, people have forgotten about him. He was living in washington, d. C. Allen found him and brought them into the library. He recorded nine hours of song and speech. He sat at a piano and told the history of jazz. This is just an example. The composer was buddy bolden , the most powerful trumpet player i have ever heard. Stephen he was talking about buddy bolden, it is an amazing collection. It is probably the first extended oral history of an individual that was ever done on audio recording. It is the first one related to music. It is an interesting collection. Another great collection was a collaboration with Fisk University in 1941 in 1942. They recorded some great musicians in minutes in mississippi. These include the first recordings of Mckinley Morgan field, who was known as money water. Mistake inxs writing down his nickname that led to him being called muddy waters. He said muddy waters is just as good. This is muddy waters on guitar and singing. Stephen alan was accompanied by a Fisk University faculty member who was one of the most important African American of traditional music. They were working together to collect the traditions in mississippi. Another great recording star they found was honey boy edwards. Allen took silent film of ham as well as recording him. Weovered that that discovered that is who this was on a Reference Real of film that someone had mislabeled. They wrote that this persons name was Charles Edwards. His actual name was david edwards. We had this film of someone named Charles Edwards, so it sat there. Lomax the curators of the i were sitting around the reading room, and he said it has always bothered me that he filmed this guy named Charles Edwards but did not record his music. Why would you film someone a silent film but not record it . That is a good point. Nahh. Not think it is had not been photographed for 25 years after this, which is why every photo looks very different. I started to read that both of them wrote accounts of their meeting. Boy edwards road is on autobiography, and i started to read the descriptions of how honeyboy was dressed. All of that fit this footage. He had just died two years before we figure this out. I sent it to his manager and he boysit to honey stepdaughter and she took one look and said that as my daddy. That is how we found out that this was honey boy edwards. His is what he sounded like stephen another great figure from that era who we have on recordings is zora neale hurston. She was primarily known as a novelist and playwright, but she was a folklorist. She was very interested in africanamerican folk culture, which she collected in the American South and haiti. She wrote several books about traditional folklore. She was employed in the 1930s by the florida wpa the Works Projects Administration of florida. She was from florida. She knew that community well. It was a strange situation. She had lived in new york for a long time, she was a celebrated literary figure in new york. And 1939 she 1938 cannot go to the State Office Building where the headquarters of the collecting organization was. Issue was aion problem for her. Oft led to a number situations that we would consider unacceptable today. One side effect that is good for us is we have recordings of zora neales voice. She was not allowed to use the recording equipment. She would go out and find people and she would learn the songs from them, and then the white collectors were allowed to collect from her. She sang the songs for the white male collectors at the time. I should say that her boss at the time later went on to releasede the plan and their secret code words. She was working for people who were sympathetic to ending segregation. They were lowlevel Government Employees at the time in florida and could not do anything about it. Neilis a song that sora reported that zora neale reported, this is her voice. This is a social song. It is widely represented. It is known all over the south, no matter where you go. Mens a favorite song, the get to working every kind of work. Everybody puts in his verse when he gets ready. The woman that they think uncle bud in front of isa woman. Uncle bud, a man like this cannot get a woman, has to use his fists. Bud. Inphen there was a joke there and their interaction i will explain. He asks whether the song uncle bud would be song in front of respectable ladies. She says no, never. Juke song and would only be song in front of a juke woman, a low woman. The collector waits a moment and says, but you heard it from women, right . He was getting her out of the situation. You heard it from a woman, right . That was a joke in their interaction. Just to show you the diverse materials that were reported in the 1930s, here is an example of a hymn from new mexico. Stephen here is another recording from florida. That is Stetson Kennedy and the middle. [indiscernible] stephen essentially an arabic lullaby from lebanon. A few of the thousands of , collections have we have online you can find if you go to our website and include the kinds of things you see here on the screen. All of these ethnic groups are represented in our online collection. Have a series of public events. We have a Concert Series called the homegrown Concert Series and a lecture series. Recordrt almost we almost all of these events and less the performers object to being recorded which happen sometimes for copyright reasons, and we put those recordings online for people to watch. Those are all streaming on the website on the librarys website and our youtube page. These are some of the materials you will find in those. Cowboy songs,m oldtime music, blues, all of these traditions are represented. Some of the ethnic groups represented in those online concerts and lectures. Wese are some of the things have in the archive, just to give you a sense of what we have. Know, during the new deal. Period, athe new deal lot of agencies collected recordings of former slaves. Collected in manuscript forms, but if you were done on audio. The vastup with majority of those audio recordings of the voices of former slaves telling their stories. Letters, for of example from Woody Guthrie, letters and drawings he sent to allen lomax. We have a handmade birth announcement for arlo guthrie that Woody Guthrie made. We have tons of interviews about traditional culture, we have thousands and thousands of traditional folk stories, we get the collection of the natural the National Storytelling festival. We have the veterans history project, which gives us stories and diaries from wartime veterans, we have personal stories. We will see some of these collections as we go on, accounts of the civil rights movement. Quilts,documentation of rubs, and other folk arts. Usually we do not have the items itself. ,e do have about 10 folk rugs usually we have photos of those items. We do not collect items the way the smithsonian does. We have tons of historical photos and manuscripts. Those 3 million items we said were in the archives, probably a couple million are manuscript pages. That is a huge majority of what is in the archive. Transcriptions of songs to field notes from field workers out there doing collections. A lot of photos as well. Getting hundreds of thousands of our photos online this year and next year as part of putting our field projects from the 1970s on the websites. All of those photos are in the public domain. It is going to be a new set of photos that is somewhat equivalent to the new deal photos already on the library of congress website. The are primarily from 1970s and 1980s and they are color photographs. It is an interesting and large and useful collection. Those are some of the collections we have, many of which are online. Out scholarships and fellowships for supporting Traditional Research traditional Cultural Research and programming. If you are interested in folklore, if you have an Interesting Research project you want to do or you want to support a traditional musician or folk festival, all of these are things that can be funded ith small rants area encourage you to look at our website and find out when to apply for these. They can be helpful. Blog. Ntain a this is one of my primarily responsibilities at the center is to run our blog, which is called folklife today. Onpresent Research Articles all kinds of traditional culture, particularly materials in our own archives. We recently had a post by one of our archivists, she found on one of those native american inders the ethanol per for the ethanol per for the ethno was testing his recording machine by telling a joke. We believe it is the first recording of a joke. We are the kind of thing always finding and presenting on the blog. Our mostrobably popular blog post, the fact that ring around the rosie is not really related to the plague. That is one i wrote. We have a Facebook Page and would like it if you go and like our Facebook Page. While i have been speaking, one of my colleagues delivered some brochures and bookmarks. Takeu are leaving, you can our brochures. It will have this information. We have gotten involved in is repatriation efforts of some of these materials. Are from anrformers indian tribe in maine. From 1890t recordings are of their people. One of the things we tried to do is return copies of materials we and tribese groups that they come from so those people can have their own history and do the kinds of research they feel are important to be done rather than leaving it in washington where people primarily people who live here and travel here can do research. One of the best ways to do that is to return them to the communities that they come from. We do that not only with native american material and also with cajun artifacts and go back to louisiana. As well as other ethnic groups as well. We run a field schools and training, people can collect materials. The people of kenya, it is one of the few times we do it internationally did occasionally in canada. When we have the opportunity to do it in kenya, that is what you are seeing there on the screen. Work manual which is an exhibition i just got done editing the we are very happy to have this available. It is a free publication, you can get a copy at the library of congress and it is also online at our website. One of our signature collections that Everybody Knows about are those oral histories that are on the radio on npr. This is just one example of a interview that was conducted with them. I said youre going to want to go home. Said that word is love. Sick and too sore to do anything else. She said of course i will marry you. I said good. Ing i had to make sure she did not change her mind. 22 i call on april her if she would do it again. 25 times she says yes. That is one example of a interview. Thatve a history project is probably the largest oral history project in the world did it has collected over 100,000 stories from veterans. There are a lot of those on line. You can find those at loc. Gov. That is where the veterans aoject lives read that is very important collection of ours as well. We have been doing a very similar thing with civil rights. We have been collected personal narratives of people who were part of the civil rights movement. We have about 100 of those. Done on video. Those are on the website as well. We have several interviews that you can watch online on the website as well. Now i would just like to tell you about our worldfamous collection. Archivea folk song arts that is why so many of our exhibits or musical. I will be the ones that have been used in popular altar so that you may be aware of some of our recordings. This is a example. Tune which alan lomax recorded. That was done in 1937 in kentucky. A is done very typically as march. It is played at a steady pace. A few people in the immediate beatnity had doubled the and played it for a breakdown. It sounds very different than the tune normally sounds, this is what sounds like you on the right this is a transcription who transcribe it for one of the groups. He explains that this is a bony part. It is whate because it is named after. Indeed when they published it they named it as bony part. He was making that show. Where may you have heard that . Rodeopart of the ballet by aaron copland. Known, rodeo has very different movements integrated or of those were gathered in what is a symphony. That is how most people here it did they go out and see it in the ballet but they hear up with the music of the ballet. Here is what it sounds like. We know this version is so distinctive. And also because copland worked with lomax quite a bit. We know that this is where he got the tune. Of course he is not the only person to have adapted this. There is one other version of that. One of the great things about the recording is that they tend to be monophonic. There is one melody. There are exceptions to this of course. There are harmony groups did a lot of these allow great work for arrangers because they are kind of barebones as they stand on the own. This is another great example. Was recorded in 1953 in spain. A pay castrate her. If you want a knife sharp and or they castrated you only need that every now and then. People who do that work would have to wander from farm to farm. Themse their work requires to find this. If you want people to know you are in the neighborhood to hire you how do you accomplish this . The way he figured out to do it was to carry a little Musical Instrument with him. Was what we call a half pipe. Normally they are from Eastern Europe or south america, they are made of individual pieces of reads because they are tied together. The way they make them in spain was different. They drilled holes into a block of wood. That had a advantage because it smooth edge. That allows you to slide it much more easily and give a smooth glide from no to know. This is what it sounded like when he walked around playing this. So alan lomax recorded this. It for a project with Columbia Records that was released in music from around the world. They released a spanish album of folk use it. It was heard by gail evans who was working with miles davis at the time. He said you have to hear this. The result of them was into this itemswere a number of sketching on spain. It is named after this original artist. That is just one example of the music. Importedular music has from our archive. They use it as inspiration for what they do. Another example is a song that was recorded by frank warner. That his him there on the screen. This is a ballad about a murder case that occurred just after the civil war in north carolina. Was aledge and murderer man named tom dooley . Spelleds actually differently. So in 1958 music was just getting kind of popular. This group called the kingston trio recorded a cover of that album. It shot to the number one position on the charts. Ofwas the most popular song the year and at one the first grammy award for best country performance this is what their version sounds like. So i am going to go faster a couple of these because i want to have time for lessons. Another example of a song that became popular in regular popular music is the house of the rising sun. That was based on one of our recordings as well. To the super popular version but then bob dylan recorded it did this one i will play for you. This is a traditional childrens song. No one knows what the title means, this is what it sounded like traditionally. The two young women that you see on the far right on the screen are the ones singing the song. It is a family who performed a series of traditional songs. I learned this when i was small. We sing the song when we were we just saying the song. It was not a accident at all. That is what it sounded like when the recorded at red this led to a fight. Readingally came to our room to research these traditional recordings. One of the things she listened to was this. She did not tell us she was going to do that. About one year later this emerged. It is one of the parts of our job that we enjoy. Helping people find the material so that they can do something creative with it. That is one of the many things we do. We also serve researchers who are writing books or working on historical questions. We have hours every day and hour reading room when people can go ahead and do research on these materials. I am going to leave it there and open it up for lessons. We are very happy to serve you. We hope that you come and visit us at some point. We are on the Jefferson Building and we would love to see you. You can take our bookmarks on your way out to remind you where we are located. Now i will answer any questions to the best of my ability. [applause] the buddy miles thing the song itself came from spain and then he reinterpreted it in his way. As you are concerned is it folk when he takes it or does that make it folk . Lifetimen spend a debating what the cutoff time is. One answer would be that this is folk and miles davis version is a application of folk life. That is splitting hairs if you know what i mean. We would not have a problem saying his version is a folk tune. It is a particular arrangement that is in jazz style. In terms of it being folklife i would say it is. It is a question that people have grappled with. It is not a obvious question that it is something were you have to make a judgment call. It is that only a good question. Youo you have areas where are going out and created recordings of stuff today. I answer that for someone before this. Thatnd of do in the sense when there are particular of events on the ground that we think they are important to make a collection of that historical circumstance then we will go ahead and do that. Two big examples of what we did was september 11. As well as the inauguration of barack obama because of him being the first africanamerican resident. We thought that was particularly significant. Those are the kinds of things we will do collections based upon. One of the things we found over the years is that we generally get a better standard of collection by acquiring collections that already exist rather than going out and making our own collection. There is always a element of random chance and collecting. If you have all of the collections that have been done choose from and you is pick the best one you will get better than average if you are going to go out yourself to we have shifted our resources from sending people out to do collection to acquiring collections and most of our collections come from acquisitions. We are still open to collecting when something significant happens. One thing i went out to collect documentation of a Family Reunion that had been going on in the same africanamerican family for the past 100 years. It was started by a former slave. Watt, the family of mel he said someone. That is why i ended up going for that. There are times that happens. We will then make your own collection. There are certain projects like the veterans history project which are all about making our own collection as well as the Civil Rights Group project. Or is still a collection going on. A large art is done by acquiring. What exactly constitutes this . I imagine a lot of things we think about our taking place online like youtube read it is not just you guys. Be thinkingmust about what constitutes this. Our older traditional definitions meet facetoface communication in small groups. Of a culture that community ish any also a important definition. That is part of the definition the government gives. With a trip, ethnic groups, regional groups, with the cultures that they maintain are considered to be this. Web we found is that culture is its own thing. Are those macros that pictures with words on them like cats and those kind of things. I my jokes about current events, all of these things are circulated and maintain in ways that older folklore was maintained. We consider them to be part of this umbrella. We just inaugurated a archive at the library of congress. That archiving websites manifests with this kind of culture. They are now being archived by the library of congress for their folk context. Is there a section that is devoted to labor . Yes there is. The man who helped found this was a labor historian. There is a large component of collection that is all about labor. Saidf those grants that i is specifically for studying the culture of different labor groups did primarily given out to researchers who are going to put together a team to go ahead and do this kind of research. It is a fairly large scale grant. They are responsible for collecting everything from workedrkers to folks who at horseracing rings. That is another big part of what we do. And having ang symposium on waiver culture as well. We do consider that a big part of what we do area what is your relationship with the jukebox era . We have a close relationship with the alan Lomax Foundation and back in the early 2000s we actually purchased from them is later collection. He was only there from 1938 until 1942 and then he left. He then served in the army, he never came back. He was a victim of the red scare. He went to live in england for 10 years. Then he came back and did more collecting after that. With all of the collections he made after he returned they became part of his recollection to this all is part of the collection for a Global Equity when he established that foundation in the early 2000s we looked at those collections bringing all of it into the library with that under one roof. The foundation continue to do their own work as they maintained this. They do a lot of the repatriation work that goes on. They are very involved in managing the rights for those collections so that people do make popular recordings. Who are beinge recorded the family get the royalties. Another thing that they are work of continuing his the idea of putting together a across cultures with different kind of music you a organization for equity. Most of it comes from our collection. There are some of those collections which are not part of his collection. He borrowed them from other people i am not a expert on that. I am measure of all of the recordings and it are part of our collection. A large number of them are. Essentially where the archive houses the collection there in the global jukebox that we do not run that. That is run by his family. Father wrote his memoirs about his career. How do i get that into the veterans history project. The best thing to do is to visit our website. You can get their Contact Information and there will be instructions for how to submit materials. It is probably best to call to make sure that what you have is what they would like to see. There is a veterans history project going on. Fairly soon they will be putting a new one in the Jefferson Building. That will be at the ground floor , when ever you want to go and visit you can look up the hours at the Welcome Center and drop right. They are right there on capitol hill. If you work on the hill that may be just as easy as calling. Do you know if they are interested in this or will they just want the chap. They would probably just what the part that are about the war. If the memoir is all about experiences in the service that is something they may be interested in. If it is only about service that is all they would like to see. They may be more interested in the original diaries that he drew on to write the memoirs, that would be ideal to part of it is growing up in the dust bowl and being a farm boy. Is that kind of thing being collected . If it is a published memoir probably not read that stuff would possibly be appropriate for us. That wouldfind out be to send us a email. From there you can get it under way out. Any other questions . I think you very much. [applause] these do visit us at library of congress anytime. We would love to see you. Thank you. Questione a facebook for peter. Are there any Historical Resources on those who died and detroit . There is one in particular. The Detroit Free Press you can be featured in our next program by joining the conversation on facebook did as well as joining the conversation on twitter. Next on the civil war, different aspects. About the background of some of the color guard monuments and the soldiers after the fighting. This talk was posted by the gettysburg heritage center. Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to the gettysburg center