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 th