Introduction

David A. Whitman, photographer. *Tintamarre and tug-of-war, Grande Riviere Festival, Van Buren, Maine; Bridge in Saint-Lenoard, New Brunswick.* Tintamarre celebrants using pots, pans, and bells as noisemakers in a French Acadian tradition. July 14, 1991. Maine Acadian Cultural Survey Collection. Library of Congress American Folklife Center.

The collections of the American Folklife Center contain rich and varied materials from Maine that document the diversity of the state's folk traditions. These include the first ethnographic field recordings, made in 1890 of Passamaquoddy Indian music and tales in Calais on wax-cylinders by Jesse Walter Fewkes. There are also maritime and lumbering traditions; oral histories from Aroostook county; and African American Baptist services. The Center conducted the Maine Acadian Cultural Survey in 1991, which documented the ongoing traditions of the Acadian people of the northernmost regions of the state.

Maine Acadian Cultural Survey Collection

The Maine Acadian Cultural Survey was an eight-week study conducted in 1991 as a joint project of the American Folklife Center and the North Atlantic Regional Office of the National Park Service to research information to be used in planning an Acadian Cultural Center in Maine. Project personnel worked closely with the Archives Acadiennes, Maine Arts Commission, Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History, and the University of Maine at Fort Kent. In addition, fieldworkers had considerable contact with a large number of local historical societies and other cultural organizations based in the study area.

The collection consists of more than 5000 photographs, 3600 pages of print materials, fieldnotes, manuscripts and catalogs, 40 hours of audio recordings, 50 pages of sketches, and an assortment of ephemeral material. These materials were used to compile a 199-page report, titled The Maine Acadian Cultural Survey, that was submitted to the National Park Service. The report contains the findings of the survey of Acadian culture in Maine as well as recommendations for the development of a Maine Acadian Cultural Center. The fieldwork includes documentation of vernacular architecture, music, dance, storytelling, material culture, and occupational culture in the Upper Saint John River Valley on the Maine and New Brunswick Canadian border.

Explore the Maine Acadian Cultural Survey Collection
This collection consists of sound and video recordings, photographs, manuscript materials, printed materials, correspondence, field notes, and administrative files documenting folklife--including architecture, music, dance, storytelling, material culture, and occupational culture--in the Upper Saint John River Valley on the Maine and New Brunswick border.

Collections of Interest

The following materials link to fuller bibliographic information in the Library of Congress Online Catalog. Links to digital content are provided when available.

Jesse Walter Fewkes collection of Passamaquoddy cylinder recordings
Call Number: AFC 1972/003
Published/Created: 1890-1891
Collection of field recordings of Passamaquoddy narratives, vocabulary, number lists, a few songs, and subsequent demonstrations of the Edison cylinder recording apparatus to a Passamaquoddy visitor, recorded by Jesse Walter Fewkes in Calais, Maine, in March 1890, and probably in the Boston area about a year later. The 1890 recordings of Noel Joseph and Peter Selmore are the earliest known field recordings of Native American song and narrative on wax cylinders.
Alan Lomax recordings of Carrie Grover
Call Number: AFC 1941/023
Published/Created: 1941
Collection of ballads, folk songs, lumbermen's songs, sea songs, Robin Hood songs, and Irish and Irish American songs performed by Mrs. Carrie Grover of Gorham, Maine.
Horace P. Beck collection of folk songs from Maine
Call Number: AFC 1951/013
Published/Created: Before 1951
Field recordings of traditional songs, ballads, sea songs, tunes played on harmonica, conversations, and a poem performed by Dale Potter of Kingman, Maine, and Capt. Archibald Spurling of Cranberry Island, Maine, and other singers. Recorded by Horace P. Beck on unidentified dates, circa 1950.
Maine Folklife Center Collection
Call Number: AFC 2012/047
Published/Created: 1960-2011
Collection of field recordings, primarily of interviews with various residents of Maine and the Atlantic Maritime region on topics including boats and boat building, lobstering, fishing and commercial fisheries, environmental issues, labor relations, railroads, lumbering, agriculture -- including potato farming, horses and horse racing, maple sugar making, foodways, folksongs, folklore, folk medicine, folk music, folk music festivals, homemaking, paper industry, politics, town meetings, local histories, cross-border migration, wildlife and hunting, smuggling, American Indians, sporting camps, schools, tall tales, vernacular architecture, material culture, beliefs, religion, holidays, various immigrant and ethnic groups, women in Maine, and other topics recorded from about 1960 to 2011 by Edward "Sandy" Ives and others, including students at the University of Maine. The collection includes the Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History.

Podcasts and Blog Posts

Paul Brady, Carrie Grover, Bob Dylan, and “Arthur McBride”
Read folklorist Stephen Winicks's blog post about “Arthur McBride,” beginning with a recording of the song sung by Carrie Grover of Maine (Folklife Today blog: December 2, 2015)
Caught My Eye: Reading a Quilt from Maine
Read folklorist Stephanie Hall's blog post about the history and social issues behind a quilt from Maine in the Lands’ End All-American Quilt Collection. (Folklife Today blog: March 30, 2020)

Public Programming

This panel discussion highlights a collaborative initiative to digitally restore, provide access to and curate the oldest recordings in the Library of Congress collections, the 1890s wax cylinder recordings of the Passamaquoddy tribal nation of Maine. The collaboration involves the Passamaquoddy community, the American Folklife Center and university-based digital platforms—the Mukurtu content management system and Local Contexts, which develops Traditional Knowledge (TK) attribution labels for heritage materials based on indigenous cultural protocols. Presenters include members of the Passamaquoddy community working on the project and a performance of two songs by Dwayne Tomah.

Additional Public Programming

Wayne Newell and Blanch Sockabasin: Traditional Passamaquoddy Music From Maine
Wayne Newell and Blanch Sockabasin, members of the Passamaquoddy Tribe in Maine, perform at Coolidge Auditorium. They share music and culture of the Passamaquoddy Tribe. Blanch Sockabasin was a teacher of Native music, drumming, singing and dancing at the Indian Township School in eastern Maine. Wayne Newell is a storyteller, singer of Passamaquoddy and other Native music. Both made preserving and passing on Passamaquoddy language and culture their life's work. September 16, 2009.

American Folklife Center Collections: Maine

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