May 20, 2009 American Folklife Center Announces 2009 Season of Concerts and Lectures

The American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress kicks off its 2009 season with a concert featuring New Hampshire fiddle music in May and a lecture on the 1963 documentary “The High Lonesome Sound.”

The 2009 Homegrown concert series includes eight concerts, one per month from May through December. The series presents the best of traditional music and dance “homegrown” in the United States, as selected by state folklorists from around the nation.

The ongoing Benjamin A. Botkin Folklife Lecture Series features a lecture each month and honors Botkin’s intellectual contributions to the field of folklore. Speakers from academia and the public sector will present findings from their ongoing research and fieldwork.

The Homegrown series and the Botkin series are free and open to the general public.

HOMEGROWN 2009: THE MUSIC OF AMERICA
All Homegrown concerts are at noon in the Coolidge Auditorium on the ground floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First St. S.E., Washington, D.C. The Homegrown series is co-sponsored by the Kennedy Center's Millennium Stage. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/rr/perform/concert/0809-folklife.html

Thursday, May 28
Brendan Carey Block and friends, Cape Breton fiddle music from New Hampshire

Thursday, June 18
Ollin Yoliztli Calmecac, Aztec dance from Pennsylvania

Thursday, July 16
Northern Kentucky Brotherhood Singers, quartet style a capella gospel music from Kentucky

Thursday, August 20
Sreevidhya Chandramouli and friends, Northern Indian Vina, or lute, music from Oregon

Wednesday, September 16
Wayne Newell and Blanche Sockabasin, traditional Passamaquoddy music from Maine

Wednesday, October 7
Rodeo poet Paul Zarzyski and cowboy singer-composer Wylie Gustafson from Montana

Wednesday, November 18
Barbara Lynn and friends, Texas Rhythm and Blues

Thursday, December 3
The Berntsons, Traditional Norwegian-American dance music from Virginia

BENJAMIN A. BOTKIN FOLKLIFE LECTURE SERIES 2009
All Botkin lectures are at noon in the Mary Pickford Theater on the third floor of the James Madison Building, 101 Independence Ave. S.E., Washington, D.C. For more information, visit www.loc.gov/folklife/events/botkin-lectures.html

Thursday, June 11
“The High Lonesome Sound Revisited: Documenting Traditional Culture in America,” presented by John Cohen, documentary filmmaker

Thursday, August 13
“Documenting Katrina and Rita in Houston,” presented by Carl Lindahl, University of Houston, and Pat Jasper, founding director of Texas Folklife Resources

Wednesday, September 23
“Built with Faith: Place Making and the Religious Imagination in Italian New York,” presented by Joseph Sciorra, Queens University, City University of New York

Wednesday, October 14
“The Stations of the Nation: Yiddish-American Radio 1925-1955,” presented by Henry Sapoznik, University of Wisconsin

The American Folklife Center was created by Congress in 1976 and placed at the Library of Congress to “preserve and present American Folklife” through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, reference service, live performance, exhibition, public programs and training. The center includes an archive of folk culture, which was established in the Library in 1928 and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world. Visit the AFC on the web at www.loc.gov/folklife/.

The Library of Congress, the nation's oldest federal cultural institution, is the world's preeminent reservoir of knowledge, providing unparalleled collections and integrated resources to Congress and the American people. Many of the Library’s rich resources and treasures may also be accessed through the Library’s website, www.loc.gov, and via interactive exhibitions on a new, personalized website at myLOC.gov.