Southwest

Arizona

Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area

The Santa Cruz Valley National Heritage Area celebrates the region's natural resources, history and heritage shaped by generations of Native American, Spanish and Mexican inhabitants.

The above audio clip is from the collection "Living Words: A Collection of First Peoples Poetry" (AFC 2020/004). This collection contains 47 contemporary Native American poets reading and discussing an original poem. Poets represented in the project are from various tribes throughout the United States, representing the diversity of Indigenous cultures. Poets chose their featured piece and accompanying commentary based on the theme of place and displacement. Ofelia Zepeda is Tohono O'odham and a Regent's Professor of Linguistics at the University of Arizona, where she is also the director of the American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI). To see more about this item, visit the online collection.

Arizona Borderlands Humanitarian Aid Work collection, 2019
Call Number: AFC 2019/056
This collection mainly focuses on the occupational folklife of humanitarian U.S.-Mexico borderland work. It comprises 8 interviews with humanitarian aid workers in the Sonoran Desert of Arizona (Tucson and Ajo areas). Some interviewees were born and raised in the Sonoran Desert, and describe their Mexican-American and Tohono O'odham cultures. The collection also comprises photographs of places and spaces mentioned in interviews as being important to their work (e.g. aid offices in Tucson and Ajo; planning maps; staging "barn" in Ajo) and ephemera relating to the organizations.
Richard K Spottswood recordings of waila ("chicken scratch") music
Call Number: AFC 1975/041
Collection of audio recordings of waila (or "chicken scratch") band music played on accordion, alto sax, fiddle, 12-string guitar, etc., by Papago musicians: Mike Enis and his group.
Fresh Produce Workers in Arizona: Archie Green Fellows Project, 2015-2016
Call Number: AFC 2015/028
Alternate title: Crossroads of Confianza: a study of the fresh produce industry in Nogales, Arizona. For generations, Nogales has been a major commercial hub for the marketing and distribution of fresh fruits and vegetables grown in southwestern United States, Mexico and Latin America. Folklorist Nicholas Hartmann interviewed a wide variety of workers involved in Nogales' century-old fresh produce industry. The 22 in-depth oral history interviews in this collection also examine how social, economic and technical changes are impacting life and work along the Arizona-Sonora borderland.

There is an online presence for this collection.

Frances Densmore collection of Papago (Tohono O'odham cylinder recordings
Call Number: AFC 1948/131
Collection of six hours of field recordings of Papago (Tohono O'odham) songs recorded by Frances Densmore in February, March, and December 1920, on the Papago reservation (Sells, Vomari Village, and San Xavier) in Arizona.

Colorado

Cache La Poudre River National Heritage Area
Sangre de Cristo National Heritage Area

The Cache La Poudre River National Heritage Area commemorates the development of water law in the Western United States, the evolution of water delivery systems, and how the river has shaped the region's cultural history. Programs and sites along the working river's flood plain highlight the region's scenic beauty and abundant outdoor recreation offerings.

Michael A Gowan collection of Colorado dutch hop music
Call Number: AFC 1988/020
Collection of field recordings of Dutch Hop dance music and songs performed by nine Volga German bands. Recorded in Colorado by Michael A. Gowan, October 1986 to May 1987. Dutch Hop includes polkas, waltzes, schottisches, country western and popular tunes in a style developed in northeastern Colorado, western Kansas, and Nebraska by Russian Germans, who settled in the area in the 1870s. The collection includes Michael A. Gowan's report on the project, "Dutch Hop Music of Northeastern Colorado," (17 p.), a brochure, correspondence dated 1986-1989, and tape recording logs.
Colorado Springs field school collection, 1995
Call Number: AFC 1995/044
The collection consists of color slides documenting several farmers' markets; sound cassettes of interviews with farmers and vendors at farmers' markets in Colorado Springs, with one videotape of a vendor; and interviews conducted at farms in or near Pueblo, Colorado City, Fort Collins, Security, Rye, Platteville, and Colorado Springs. Researchers interviewed Italian American family farmers, Mexican migrant workers, women farmers, and others on the subjects of farming, marketing, irrigation, water rights, and family histories. Manuscripts and ephemera in the collection include field notes, recording logs, photograph logs, and administrative files; plus a few recipes, a local seed catalog, a package of seeds, and labels for local food specialties.

Collection of video recordings of a concert of Dutch Hop polka music performed by the River Boys Polka Band, performed in the Coolidge Auditorium, Library of Congress on June 21, 2006, as part of the Homegrown concert series sponsored by the American Folklife Center. The term "Dutch Hop" is used generically to describe traditional dance music of the Volga Deutsch (Germans from Russia who emigrated to the United States and Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries). This tradition has been carried on in Nebraska, eastern Colorado, and Wyoming, where this group's members live. Specifically, Dutch Hop is the name for their unique, quick-tempo polka dance that includes a slight hop. That, and the instrumentation -- a hammered dulcimer, trombone, accordion, and bass -- give the Dutch Hop its unique, lilting sound. Dancers demonstrated the Dutch Hop polka and waltz dance style during the concert. The collection also includes a video recording of band leader Robert Schmer interviewed by Gwen K. Meister, executive director of the Nebraska Folklife Network.
AFC 2006/029

The Sangre de Cristo National Heritage area explores the rich history of Colorado's San Luis Valley. It includes the beginnings of the Rio Grand, the third-longest river system in North America, and contains more than 20 cultural properties listed in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). Recent efforts to diversity NRHP nominations have resulted in the recognition of the area as significant to the region's Latino history.

Juan B Rael collection, 1939-1999
Call Number: AFC 1940/002
This ethnographic field collection documents the musical heritage and Catholic religious and cultural traditions of the Hispano residents of the portion of the northern Rio Grande region spanning northern New Mexco and southern Colorado. It contains sound recordings of alabados (hymns), folk drama, wedding songs, and dance tunes. The collection includes correspondence with Alan Lomax and others at the Library of Congress, administrative materials, and recording logs.

There is an online presence for this collection.

Grave Images: San Luis Valley by Kathy T. Hettinga (By (photographer))
Call Number: GT3208 .H48 2009
ISBN: 9780890135617
Published/Created: 2009-10-16
Beginning in 1994, award-winning photographer and installation artist Kathy T.Hettinga began a fourteen-year project to document an unknown body of funerary folk art displayed in the cemeteries of rural and largely Hispanic communities in the San Luis Valley in southern Colorado. Her photographs of unique grave markers made of wood, concrete, metal, sandstone, glass, and other materials by individuals or families to commemorate the passing of loved ones capture the ethereal beauty of the cemeteries and serve as a touchstone for our common understanding of loss, grief, and the need to memorialize and pay tribute.
Rio Grande Arts Center "Tradiciones del valle -- valley traditions" collection
Call Number: AFC 1986/023
Collection of field recordings of Hispano popular and traditional songs and dance music; Catholic church services and choirs; Hispano evangelical hymns; Mormon Pioneer Day dance; Mexican folk songs; Tejano conjunto band; Anglo-American fiddle tunes and songs; and 1986 Sunshine Festival Fiddle Contest, recorded in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado and northern New Mexico.
Tradiciones del valle: radio program series on KRZA-FM, Alamosa, Colorado
Call Number: AFC 1986/043
Collection of a series of 26 half-hour documentary radio programs produced by Dana Everts for public radio KRZA-FM, Alamosa, Colorado in 1986. The radio programs were produced from field recordings made by Dana Everts in 1985-1986 through a NEA Folk Arts grant to the Rio Grande Arts Center.

New Mexico

Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area

The Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Area, which encompasses 10,000 square miles of high desert and mountains in North Central New Mexico, preserves the natural, historic, and cultural resources of Rio Arriba, Taos and Santa Fe counties. The heritage area is home to eight of New Mexico's Pueblo settlements and the Jicarilla Apache, along with descendants from Spanish colonists who settled in the area in the late 16th century.

New Mexico Folklife Project collection, 1984-1985
Call Number: AFC 1991/032
Documentation from New Mexico fieldwork conducted by Carl Fleischhauer, consultant, of the American Folklife Center, in the summers of 1984 and 1985, with folklorist Laurie Beth Kalb, for the Museum of International Folk Art (Santa Fe). In 1984, Kalb documented the art of Hispanic carvers in northern New Mexico. In 1985 she contributed to a joint project of the Museum and the New Mexico Historic Preservation Office to survey historic architecture in the northeastern quadrant of New Mexico. Topics documented in field notes and sound recordings include Hispanic art, folk art and culture; Pop Shaffer's folk art environments in Mountainair; and recordings of a livestock auction in Clayton.

There is an online presence for this collection.

Juan B Rael collection, 1939-1999
Call Number: AFC 1940/002
This ethnographic field collection documents the musical heritage and Catholic religious and cultural traditions of the Hispano residents of the portion of the northern Rio Grande region spanning northern New Mexico and southern Colorado.

There is an online presence for this collection.

Helen Heffron Roberts papers, 1907-1936
Call Number: AFC 1979/100
Helen Heffron Roberst was a pioneer ethnomusicologist known primarily for her work in native communities in the 1920s and 1930s, some of it done in collaboration with John Peabody Harrington. This collection includes recordings from Rio Grande pueblos in 1930.
Jack Loeffler and Katherin Strain collection of folk music of New Mexico
Call Number: AFC 1979/082
Field recordings of Hispano folk music recorded in New Mexico from 1976 to 1978 comprising 625 tunes and songs, including dance music, fiddle tunes, corridos, matachines, popular music, church music with traditional hymns (alabados), performed on various instruments. The tapes include some interviews with musicians.
Peggy V. Beck collection, 1985-1987
Call Number: AFC 2005/005
This collection comprises research materials created and compiled by Peggy V. Beck for the exhibition "Oremons, Oremons: New Mexican Midwinter Masquerades," at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos, New Mexico in 1987. Included are sound recordings of interviews, rehearsals, and performances; field notes, photographs, drawings, and videocassettes; plus exhibition catalogs and exhibit scripts. The focus of the exhibition is midwinter celebrations and plays, including Los Matachines, Los Pastores, and Los Dias, and photographs and drawings of abuelos and abuelas.

Utah

Great Basin National Heritage Area (NV, UT)
Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area

The land that makes up the Great Basin National Heritage Area is home to four federally-recognized tribes and their reservations: Confederated Tribes of the Goshute, Duckwater Shoshone, Ely Shoshone, and the Kanosh Band of the Utah Paiute. In addition to the history and enduring folklife of these tribal entities, the heritage area also celebrates the area's natural landscape, recreation opportunities, and the pioneers who have explored the region over generations.

Grouse Creek Cultural Survey, 1985
Call Number: AFC 1992/010
The Grouse Creek Cultural Survey was a joint project of the American Folklife Center, the Folk Arts Program of the Utah Arts Council, the National Park Service, the Utah State Historic Preservation Office, Utah State University, and the Western Folklife Center. Collection of duplicate field recordings and photographs of interviews, music, and stage performances recorded in the Grouse Creek region, Box Elder County in the northwestern corner of Utah, by Hal Cannon, Tom Carter, Carol Edison, Carl Fleischhauer, Debbie Randall, and Roger Roper, July-August, 1985. The collection includes two linear feet of architectural survey data, color transparency fiche, correspondence, fieldnotes, guides, logs, published articles, and interview transcripts documenting Mormon ranches and ranch life.
Federal Cylinder Project by Judith A. Gray (Editor); Edwin J. Schupman (Editor)
Call Number: ML156.4.F5 F4 1984
ISBN: 0844406775
Published/Created: 1990-01-01
Multi-volume book series which includes information on federal cylinder project recordings from tribes in the Great Basin.
Volume 2 includes information on recordings by tribes of the Great Basin Plateau.
Willard Rhodes papers, 1938-1979
Call Number: AFC 1980/041
While working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs with equipment supplied in part by the Library of Congress, Willard Rhodes of Columbia University recorded the music of fifty Native American tribes living primarily in the western United States. He documented, in addition to traditional genres, Christian hymns in native languages, songs with English words, and other music of recent composition. Great Basin tribes include Paiute, Ute, and Shoshone.

The Mormon Pioneer National Heritage Area preserves the historic and cultural heritage of Utah's Mormon settlements alongside conservation of the state's natural resources.

Austin Fife and Alta Fife collection
Call Number: AFC 1948/028
Collection of field recordings of African American, Anglo American, Mexican American, Mormon, Navajo and Shoshone music and stories recorded in California and Utah by Alta S. Fife, Austin E. Fife, Martha Huot, M.M. Keller, and Hector Lee, July 1946 - April 1947 and Sept. 3, 1947 - July 9, 1951. The field trips were a systematic attempt to record Mormon folk songs, hymns, Mormon religious inspiration, Mormon pioneer stories, and to a certain extent, beliefs, traditional medical practices, and information on relations with American INdians, including a description of a Hopi snake dance. Includes Mormon religious and secular songs, Nephite stories, visits from the spirit world, prayers, readings, poems, recitations, cowboy songs, parodies, stories about Brigham Young and J. Golden Kimball, from Utah.

National Heritage Areas: Resources in the American Folklife Center

Southwest

Arizona

Colorado

New Mexico

Utah