Announcement of Additions to the American Memory Historical Collections

[Danna Bell-Russel]

Following are announcements of two new American Memory collections
presented by the American Folklife Center. These announcements have been
sent to a number of lists. Please accept our apologies for any duplicate
postings.


"NOW WHAT A TIME": BLUES, GOSPEL, AND THE FORT VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVALS
(1938-1943)

Audio recordings from what may be the first folk festival created by and
for African-Americans are featured in the latest addition to the
American Memory online collections of the Library of Congress.

"Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals,
1938-1943 is a folk music collection consisting of approximately one
hundred sound recordings and related documentation such as song lists
and correspondence created during trips to the Fort Valley State College
Folk Festival in Fort Valley, Georgia. These recordings, which are a
part of the American Folklife Center collections held at the Library of
Congress, were made in 1941 and in March, June and July 1943.  Recorded
at a historically black college founded in 1895, the recordings include
blues and gospel songs recorded by John Wesley Work III, Lewis Jones,
and Willis Laurence James, with the support of the Library’s Archive of
American Folk Song, now known as the Archive of Folk Culture.  These
recordings include both choral and instrumental works performed by
artists such as Will Chastain, Buster Brown, the Silver Star Singers,
and Traveller Home Singers.  Supplementing the recordings and song lists
are other publications about the festival, including a special issue of
the Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University) student
newsletter, the Peachite.  Also included in this collection are
recordings made in Tennessee and Alabama between 1938 and
1941 by John Wesley Work III.  These recordings include six songs by
Sacred Harp singers created in 1938 and a recording of the Holloway High
School Quartet made in 1941.

As the Fort Valley Music Festivals took place during World War II, this
collection also provides a unique opportunity to feature the Center's
wartime collections documenting soldiers’ songs and other folkloristic
material growing out of the war.  In addition to preserving blues and
gospel songs of the time, “Now What a Time” also documents the topical
re-wording of several standard gospel songs to address the wartime
concerns of those performing at the festival.  Users will enjoy
listening to the music and will learn more about the impact of World War
II on the people within the African-American community.

The presentation of "Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort
Valley Music Festivals (1938-1943) is made possible by the generous
support of The Texaco Foundation.

This collection can be found at the following URL:
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ftvhtml/>


FIDDLE TUNES OF THE OLD FRONTIER: THE HENRY REED COLLECTION

The American Folklife Center's Henry Reed Collection is now available
online through the Library of Congress American Memory Web site at the
following URL:
<http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hrhtml/>

This unique American music collection, released on the 116th anniversary
of his birth in Peterstown, West Virginia, features traditional fiddle
tunes performed by Henry Reed. Recorded in Glen Lyn, Virginia, by
folklorist Alan Jabbour in 1966-67, when Reed was over eighty years old,
these tunes represent the music and evoke the history and spirit of the
Appalachian frontier. Many of the tunes presented in this collection
have enjoyed new popularity during the fiddling revival of the later
twentieth century, and are performed today by a new generation of
musicians.

The online presentation includes 184 sound recordings, available in
WaveForm, MP3, and RealAudio formats; Jabbour's fieldnotes; and
sixty-nine musical transcriptions. New descriptive notes on tune
histories and musical features accompany the sound recordings, and an
extensive listing of related publications and a glossary of musical
terms provide further avenues for exploration.

An essay by Alan Jabbour (with photographs by Carl Fleischhauer, Karen
Singer Jabbour, and Kit Olson) discussing Reed's life, art, and
influence accompanies the collection as a special presentation.

The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress was created by
Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife." The Center

incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established at the
Library in 1928 as a repository for American Folk Music. The Center and
its collections have grown to encompass all aspects of folklife from
this country and around the world. Other folklife-related online
collections, selected publications of the American Folklife Center, and
information about products and services are available from the Center's
home page: <http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife>

American Memory is a project of the National Digital Library Program of
the Library of Congress, which, in collaboration with other
institutions, is bringing important American historical materials to
citizens around the world. Through American Memory, over seventy
multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded
sound, motion pictures, and text are now available online, free to the
public for educational purposes. These collections are the eighth and
ninth collections from the American Folklife Center to be added on the
American Memory Web site. All American Memory collections can be
accessed through:

http://memory.loc.gov.

Please direct any questions to ndlpcoll at loc.gov.