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Through blog posts, podcasts and videos presentations of public programs and concerts, you can learn more about the American Folklife Center's collections directly from folklorists, specialists, and performers.
Folklife Today is a blog for people interested in folklore, folklife, and oral history. The blog features brief articles on folklife topics, highlighting the unparalleled collections of the Library of Congress, especially the American Folklife Center and the Veterans History Project.
The highlighted blog posts below focus on the Seeger Family.
Discover the treasures of the Library through its experts and special guests. Find full podcast series produced by the American Folklife Center by following the links below.
Folklife Today Podcast Series
America Works Podcast SeriesThe selected podcast below focuses on the Seeger Family in the American Folklife Center collections.
Since its inception in 1976, the American Folklife Center has routinely hosted public programs at the Library of Congress in the form of concerts, lectures, panels, and symposia. From 2006 on, most of these public programs have been video recorded and made available online.
There are a number of playlists available on the YouTube page that gather videos from certain seasons of our Homegrown Concert series External or pull together various lectures as a sampler External of the types of topics covered. You can also simply search "folklife" on the YouTube page External to pull up hundreds of videos.
It is also possible to view entire series of American Folklife Center videos on the Library's website. Those links are provided below. Many (if not all) of the same videos can be found on the Library's YouTube channel.
Ethnomusicologist Anthony Seeger is the grandson of Charles Seeger. In this lecture Seeger discusses some of the results of the arrival new ideas and language about music and ceremonial ownership on central aspects of the musical, artistic, and economic life of a group of Brazilian Indians known in the literature as the Suyá, but who now prefer to be called Kïsêdjê. Benjamin Botkin Lecture series, April 08, 2015.
A musician, documentarian, scholar, and founding member of the influential folk revival group New Lost City Ramblers, Mike Seeger (1933-2009) spent more than 50 years collecting, performing and commemorating the culture and folk music of white and Black Southerners, which he called "music from the true vine." Biographer Bill Malone explores the life and musical contributions of folk artist Seeger, son of musicologists Charles and Ruth Crawford Seeger and brother of folksingers Pete and Peggy Seeger. Benjamin Botkin Lecture series, June 12, 2013.
In 2007, the American Folklife Center honored the Seeger family with a two-day celebration called How Can I Keep From Singing? A Seeger Family Tribute. An archived copy of the web site the Center built for that celebration can be found at this link. Note that limitations in web archiving software means that not all subpages or digital objects (especially media items) willl be accessible through the link.
