Folklife Today

Library of Congress

Tells stories about the cultural traditions and folklore of diverse communities, combining brand-new interviews and narration with songs, stories, music, and oral history from the collections of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center.

  1. 12/16/2025

    Mumming and the American Folklife Center

    Rheagan Martin of the Library of Congress National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled interviews Folklife Specialists Stephen Winick and Jennifer Cutting about the connections of the mumming tradition to the American Folklife Center. Mumming is a folk drama tradition in which groups of performers go house to house singing and performing a play. Jennifer describes the James Madison Carpenter Collection, which contains play scripts, recordings, photos, and drawings related to mumming. Stephen explains how the mumming tradition was brought the Library of Congress. Both talk about the connections of mumming to the solstice and to other wintertime traditions.

  2. 09/29/2025

    CCG Year of Engagement: Community on the Line

    In the fourth episode of the Folklife Today subseries focusing on Community Collections Grantees, AFC Events Coordinator Thea Austen and Folklife Specialist Meg Nicholas chat with Queen Nur and AJ Rivers, about Queen’s CCG project “Community on the Line: The Culture of Urban Soul Line Dancing in the Philadelphia, New Jersey and Delaware Tri-State Area,” and the public program the team held at the Library in February 2025. The project was designed to “develop a better understanding of the R&B/Soul Line Dance community from the perspective of its culture keepers and initiate a new and original digitized cultural heritage collection at the American Folklife Center. Queen and AJ discuss the deep community connections documented during the project, potential for continuing the work, and reflect on the transformative joy that people felt during the public event at the Library.

  3. 09/10/2025

    Exploring 1950s Gullah Geechee Sonic Life with Dr. Eric Crawford

    This episode of Folklife Today explores an important collection of Gullah Geechee sound recordings in the archives of the American Folklife Center. The collection features over four hours of Gullah Geechee people singing sacred music, preaching to congregations, and giving testimonies in 1955 and 1956. Courtney Siceloff, then-director of Penn Community Services, recorded this collection at community centers and churches across St. Helena Island, South Carolina. Dr. Eric Crawford, Interim Chair of the Music Department at Claflin University and the author of Gullah Spirituals: The Sound of Freedom and Protest in the South Carolina Sea Islands (University of South Carolina Press), joins this episode to contextualize these recordings and to inform listeners about the people who made them.

  4. 08/08/2025

    CCG Year of Engagement: Returning to Our Roots

    In the third episode of the Folklife Today subseries focusing on Community Collections Grantees, AFC Folklife Specialist Meg Nicholas interviews Laura Grant, the project leader for the CCG project “Returning to Our Roots: Documenting Traditional Nuwä Harvests.” Bringing together members of the diasporic Kawaiisu community in California, the project documented traditional gathering practices alongside the community’s efforts to develop language revitalization resources centered around plants used for food and traditional medicines.

  5. 07/14/2025

    Community Collections Grant Year of Engagement: Warp and Weft—Backstrap Weaving in Micronesia

    In the second episode of the Folklife Today subseries focusing on Community Collections Grantees, AFC Folklife Specialists Nancy Groce and Meg Nicholas interview Neil Mellon, the Executive Director of the Habele Outer Island Education Fund and CCG project team leader Modesta Yangmog about their CCG project, “Warp and Weft of Yap’s Outer Islands: Backstrap Weaving in Micronesia.” The project documents the unique weaving traditions of 20 master lavalava weavers, and the cloth’s essential role in the region’s cultural traditions and community relations.

  6. 06/04/2025

    Community Collections Grant Year of Engagement: Remembering Black Dallas

    The first episode in a new subseries of Folklife Today, interviewing project teams about their Community Collections Grants projects. In this episode, AFC Folklife Specialists Michelle Stefano and Meg Nicholas chat with Tameshia Rudd-Ridge and Jourdan Brunson, from their CCG project “If Tenth Street Could Talk.” The project follows descendants and residents as they work to preserve the historic freedom colony’s history. Rudd-Ridge and Brunson share how they met, how their own family histories led them to begin work on the project, and give other aspiring community documentarians advice on getting started.

  7. 11/26/2024

    Reclaiming “Red Wing” with Wampanoag Singer-Songwriter Thea Hopkins

    This episode features singer-songwriter Thea Hopkins, a member of the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe of Martha’s Vineyard, in discussion with staff members of the American Folklife Center. Hopkins adapted songs from the American Folklife Center archive several times. On the first occasion she sang a lullaby recorded by ethnomusicologist Willard Rhodes from a young girl named Margaret at the Haskell Residential School in 1943; the song is known as “Margaret’s Song” or “Creek Lullaby,” and according to Creek elders it was created during the Trail of Tears. For her second challenge, Hopkins wrote new lyrics for the song “Red Wing,” which originally contained damaging stereotypes of Native Americans. The new lyrics paid homage to pioneering Native film actress Lilian St. Cyr, who was known as “Red Wing.” Hopkins discussed her process and the meanings of the songs with AFC staff members Stephen Winick, Jennifer Cutting, and Meg Nicholas; Nicholas is one of the American Folklife Center’s specialists in Native song, and affiliated with the Munsee-Delaware Nation in southwest Ontario. The episode features the field recordings of both songs, as well as Thea’s new versions, and a fiddle tune by Chippewa fiddler Mary Trotchie. More information on the songs as well as photos of some of the singers and links to all the archival sources, can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife

  8. 10/29/2024

    Scary Stories for Halloween 2024

    This episode looks at scary stories in the American Folklife Center archives, including ghost stories, witch tales, and other terrifying tales. Hosts Stephen Winick and John Fenn talk with AFC intern Hanna Salmon about scary stories in the new guide “Folktales and Oral Storytelling: Resources in the American Folklife Center Collections.” We then listen to and discuss a “Vanishing Hitchhiker” tale from Marty Weathers and Bill Henry of Georgia; the witch story “Skin, Don’t You Know Me?” from J. D. Suggs; a ghostly experience related by humanitarian Eartha M. M. White; and “The Two White Horses,” a classic spooky tale from Connie Regan-Blake. More information on the stories as well as photos of some the tellers and links to all the archival sources, can be found at https://blogs.loc.gov/folklife.

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Ratings & Reviews

4.5
out of 5
22 Ratings

About

Tells stories about the cultural traditions and folklore of diverse communities, combining brand-new interviews and narration with songs, stories, music, and oral history from the collections of the Library of Congress's American Folklife Center.

Information

  • Creator
    Library of Congress
  • Years Active
    2018 - 2025
  • Episodes
    25
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Show Website
    Folklife Today

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