Folklife Archive Challenge

Did you know that the Library of Congress has an amazing online archive of folk music and folklife which you can explore right from home? If not, now’s your chance! The American Folklife Center has announced a quarantine challenge: learn a song, tune, poem, or story from the archive, make a recording or video of yourself performing it, and post it online. Share your video on social media using the hashtags:

#FolklifeArchiveChallenge and #MinistryofFolk

For inspiration, follow this link to the full set of Archive Challenge videos.

Below you’ll find more details on the Archive challenge, written by Stephen Winick, which I’ve edited for length.

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How to Find Material in the American Folklife Center’s Online Archive

Searching through a digital archive to find great material can be like panning for gold… but with some patient sifting, you’ll be rewarded with a gold nugget!

The AFC Archive has an unparalleled collection of sound recordings, manuscripts, and photographs of traditional culture from all over the world. Music in the AFC Archive includes everything from the first wax cylinder recordings of Native American song from the 1890s, to John and Alan Lomax’s pioneering disc recordings of the 1930s and 1940s, to recent born-digital documentation of folk concerts of all kinds. Best known musical performers in the Archive include Muddy Waters, Pete Seeger, Honeyboy Edwards, Woody Guthrie, Aunt Molly Jackson, Lead Belly, Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, and Jean Ritchie…but there are millions of great songs, tunes, and stories from thousands of performers you’ve never even heard of! From songs of Dust-Bowl-era migrant workers to Ohio canal songs, African-American gospel, Spanish-language hymns from New Mexico, work songs from the railroad gangs and turpentine camps of late 1930s Florida, and Virginia fiddle tunes… there’s sure to be something in our collections of sound recordings that floats your boat.

If you’re a storyteller or spoken-word artist, you can find stories in our collections too. If you’re a visual artist, there are photos going back to the 1920s associated with our collections, and a very large number of photos from the period 1976-2000, stemming from our field projects, showing ethnic and regional folkways, including food traditions, crafts, dress, and celebrations of all kinds. And if the written word interests you, many of our collections include manuscripts containing fascinating notes, rich descriptions, personal letters, and other documents that reveal more about the writers, the cultures being documented, and the ethnographic process.

Explore Folklife Collections at the Library of Congress Website

• For a linked list of all of AFC’s online collections and presentations, visit this link.

• Watch webcasts of AFC’s concerts and lectures, available at this link.

• Read our blog “Folklife Today,” which tells stories about our collections, at this link.

• Listen to our podcast “Folklife Today,” with more compelling stories, at this link.

• Find our Story Maps and explore collections geographically, at this link.

• Find our collection guides on interesting topics at this link.

• Find our finding aids to individual collections at this link.

• For all AFC collection items online at the Library’s website, visit this link.

Find AFC Collections at Other Websites

• The Association for Cultural Equity: Alan Lomax’s fieldwork from 1943 until his retirement.

• John and Alan Lomax’s Louisiana recordings from 1934.

• John and Alan Lomax’s Kentucky recordings of the 1930s and 1940s.

• Alan Lomax and Fisk University’s 1941-1942 recordings at Delta State University.

• Wisconsin Folksong Collection (Recordings made in the 1930s and 1940s by Sidney Robertson Cowell, Helene Stratman Thomas, and others)

• Minnesota Folksong Collection (Recordings made in the 1920s by Robert Winslow Gordon).

• The James Madison Carpenter Collection (Manuscripts, photos, and cylinder recordings made in the 1920s and 1930s by James Madison Carpenter in both the U.S. and the U.K.).

• The Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection (Recordings made in the 1930s and 1940s by Flanders and Marguerite Olney in New England, especially Vermont).  Note: this collection contains notebooks, cylinder recordings, and printed materials not shared with AFC, but AFC has copies of most of the disc sound recordings listed as “Archival Cassette Dubs” at this link.

• MacEdward Leach and the Songs of Atlantic Canada (Recordings made in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia by Leach from 1949 to 1951).

To find out more about the Folklife Archive Challenge, check out the guidance from Steve Winick here. If you have specific interests and you can’t find what you need in the online collections, shoot an email to folklife@loc.gov.

Happy Archiving!