To learn more about Russian music and culture, come to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and explore the archival collections. Despite the word “American” in its title, the American Folklife Center has ethnographical materials in over 500 languages (including Russian), documenting cultural expression around the world. The Center also holds collections featuring performances of Russian-Americans. Learn how to make the most of your visit to the American Folklife Center.
Citation: W.P.A. California Folk Music Project collection (AFC 1940/001), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Description: This New Deal project was organized and directed by folk music collector Sidney Robertson Cowell for the Northern California Work Projects Administration. Sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley, and cosponsored by the Archive of American Folk Song (now the American Folklife Center archive), this undertaking was one of the earliest ethnographic field projects to document European and Slavic folk music in one region of the United States. Approximately nine months following the December 1937 American premiere Prokofiev’s second violin concerto, Cowell made several recordings of singing in the Russian language by members of the Russian Molokan Church in San Francisco. Prokofiev had lived briefly in San Francisco following the collapse of the Russian Empire.
Link: Pinelands Folklife Project
Citation: Pinelands Folklife Project collection (AFC 1991/023), American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Description: The Pinelands Folklife Project collection represents the culmination of a three-year effort to identify and record the cultural traditions in and around the Pinelands National Reserve in the Pine Barrens region of southern New Jersey in the mid-1980s. The project includes recordings of a Russian Orthodox radio program from Dallas, Pennsylvania, and a Russian Orthodox Mass at Saint Mary’s Russian Orthodox Church in Jackson, New Jersey. Prokofiev had been born into a Russian Orthodox family, but he later became a follower of Christian Science.
Listen online:
To learn more about Irish music and culture, come to the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and explore the archival collections. Despite the word “American” in its title, the American Folklife Center has ethnographical materials in over 500 languages, documenting cultural expression around the world. The Center also holds several collections featuring Irish music and the performances of Irish-Americans. Learn how to make the most of your visit to the American Folklife Center.
To navigate the ambundance of resources, consider consulting this pair of articles from Folklife Today, the official blog of the American Folklife Center. In Songs and Tunes from “Fearless: A Tribute to Irish American Women” and “More Songs and Tunes from ‘Fearless: A Tribute to Irish American Women,’” Center folklorist Steve Winick explores a total of ten musical selections from different archival collections. You can listen to each of the songs on line through these links.
Amy Beach: A Guide to Primary and Secondary Resources at the Library of Congress
American Folklife Center Collections: Cuba
This guide provides access to ethnographic resources documenting Cuban expressive culture in Cuba and the United States in the collections of the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.
Katharine Beardmore recordings of Cuban folk music
Call Number: AFC 1948/025
Published/Created: 1947
Collection of studio recordings of the rhythms of popular black music in Cuba. The purpose of the recordings was to give examples of rhythm alone for students interested in the study of Cuban drumming. The examples recorded include columbia, comparsa, conga, guaguancó, and lucumí rhythms and one example of combined rhythms. The guaguancó is a subgenre of rumba.
George and Ira Gershwin Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress
The George and Ira Gershwin Collection contains music manuscripts, handwritten and typewritten lyric sheets, printed music, correspondence, photographs, programs and publicity materials, legal and financial documents, and thirty-one scrapbooks, which present nearly a complete record of the Gershwins’ lives and work as they were chronicled in the contemporary press. The centerpiece of the George and Ira Gershwin collection is the music material, which spans their entire careers and primarily relates to their stage and screen musicals but includes George’s concert works as well. The music material includes music manuscripts, many in George’s hand or in the hand of orchestrators, arrangers, or copyists; handwritten and typewritten lyric sheets; musical sketchbooks; and printed music.
The holograph score for Cuban Overture is held in this collection.
Harvey Granat collection on George and Ira Gershwin and others, 1909-1978 (bulk 1935-1967)
The collection consists of original materials of composer George Gershwin (1898-1937) and his lyricist brother Ira (1896-1983). The highlight of
Granat’s collection is the original manuscript for “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” written for the film “Shall We Dance” (1937). Additional
materials include correspondence, sheet music, legal documents, and other biographical and souvenir items.
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