American Folklife Center - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

in Washington, DC was created by Congress

United States Congress

The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife" (Public Law 94-201 http://www.loc.gov/folklife/public_law.html). The center includes the Archive of Folk Culture

Archive of Folk Culture

The Archive of Folk Culture was founded at the U.S. Library of Congress in 1928 as a repository for American folk music. The Archive of Folk Culture became part of the American Folklife Center in 1978...

, established at the Library in 1928 as a repository for American folk music

American folk music

American folk music is a musical term that encompasses numerous genres, many of which are known as traditional music or roots music. Roots music is a broad category of music including bluegrass, country music, gospel, old time music, jug bands, Appalachian folk, blues, Cajun and Native American...

. The center and its collections have grown to encompass all aspects of folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

and folklife worldwide.

The 20th century has been called the age of documentation. Folklorists and other ethnographers have taken advantage of each succeeding technology, from Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb. In addition, he created the world’s first industrial...

's wax-cylinder

Phonograph cylinder

Phonograph cylinders were the earliest commercial medium for recording and reproducing sound. Commonly known simply as "records" in their era of greatest popularity , these cylinder shaped objects had an audio recording engraved on the outside surface which could be reproduced when the cylinder was...

recording machine (invented in 1877) to the latest CD or digital audio

Digital audio

Digital audio is sound reproduction using pulse-code modulation and digital signals. Digital audio systems include analog-to-digital conversion , digital-to-analog conversion , digital storage, processing and transmission components...

equipment, to record the voices and music of many regional, ethnic, and cultural groups in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

and around the world. Much of this documentation has been assembled and preserved in the center's Archive of Folk Culture, which founding head Robert Winslow Gordon

Robert Winslow Gordon

Robert Winslow Gordon was born September 2, 1888 in Bangor, Maine. Educated at Harvard, he joined the English faculty at the University of California at Berkley in 1918. He was the founding head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in 1928, later the Archive of Folk...

called "a national project with many workers." Today the center is working on digital preservation, Web access and archival management.

The center's collections include Native American

Native Americans in the United States

Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...

song and dance; ancient English ballads; the tales of "Bruh Rabbit," told in the Gullah

Gullah

The Gullah are African Americans who live in the Lowcountry region of South Carolina and Georgia, which includes both the coastal plain and the Sea Islands....

dialect of the Georgia Sea Islands; the stories of ex-slaves, told while still vivid in their minds; an Appalachian fiddle tune heard on concert stages around the world; a Cambodian

Culture of Cambodia

The culture of Cambodia has had a rich and varied history dating back many centuries, and has been heavily influenced by India. Throughout Cambodia's long history, a major source of inspiration was from religion...

wedding in Lowell, Massachusetts

Lowell, Massachusetts

Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...

; a Saint Joseph's Day Table tradition in Pueblo, Colorado

Pueblo, Colorado

Pueblo is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous city of Pueblo County, Colorado, United States. The population was 106,595 in 2010 census, making it the 246th most populous city in the United States....

; Balinese

Bali

Bali is an Indonesian island located in the westernmost end of the Lesser Sunda Islands, lying between Java to the west and Lombok to the east...

Gamelan

A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....

music recorded shortly before the Second World War; documentation from the lives of cowboys, farmers, fishermen, coal miners, shop keepers, factory workers, quilt makers, professional and amateur musicians, and housewives from throughout the U.S., first-hand accounts of community events from every state; and international collections.

The images, sounds, written accounts and more items of cultural documentation are available to researchers at the center's Archive of Folk Culture. There, more than 4,000 collections, assembled over the years from "many workers," embody American traditional life and the cultural life of communities from many regions of the world. Collections in the archive include material from all 50 states, United States trusts, territories and the District of Columbia. Most of these areas have been served by the center's cultural surveys, equipment loan program, publications and other projects. The current director is Peggy A. Bulger.

See also