Spring 201 4

SPRING 201 4 VIRGINIA FOUNDATION FOR THE HUMANITIES • VIRGINIAHUMANITIES.ORG THE 21st Century DIGITAL Challenge BY MATTHEW GIBSON let alone a Hi-8. And I only know VHS the musicians’ performances, stories, ABOVE: The Challenge 1986 National Heritage tapes because I’ve got a dozen or so boxed and interviews. What is more, unlike the Fellow John Jackson n 1992, the Virginia Folklife up in my attic. Even if my VCR didn’t small VHS library in my attic, if my old PHOTO BY TOM PICH Program at the Virginia Foundation now eat tapes, I wouldn’t watch them. VCR ate these tapes, that would be it—the for the Humanities brought together The movies look and sound better on stories and music captured on this tour the Commonwealth’s finest living DVD, and streaming them is more conve- would be lost, a loss almost as poignant IPiedmont blues guitarists and singers nient. If I weren’t lazy, I’d throw those old as the fact that nearly all of the musicians to perform at ten sites across the state. tapes in the trash. themselves have passed away. The tour featured National Heritage That’s not an option for VFH, of The mission of each VFH program Fellowship recipients John Jackson and course. In this case, the content that encompasses some aspect of Virginia’s John Cephas, along with Phil Wiggins, lives on DAT and Hi-8 doesn’t just one past with an eye toward how that past Daniel Womack, and the Foddrell day appear in an updated format. It’s our informs the present and is relevant to Brothers. VFH recorded their live per- job to update it and, in so doing, act as our future. The Folklife Program, for formances and accompanying interviews good stewards of the invaluable material instance, strives to document diverse folk using what were then state-of-the-art we create every day. After all, unlike my traditions to advance our understanding technologies: Digital Audio Tape (DAT) personal tape library, the Virginia Folklife and appreciation of the state’s traditional and Hi-8 backed up on U-matic and Program’s twenty-two-year-old docu- cultures and to help Virginia commu- VHS tapes. mentation of Piedmont blues legends is nities strengthen their own cultural If you took all of this footage in all of a unique record of the Commonwealth’s traditions. In documenting these ways these once state-of-the-art formats and cultural heritage and history. And yet in of life we also recognize that we have an dumped them on my office floor today, I their current state only the person in pos- implicit duty to preserve what has been wouldn’t even be able to pick out a DAT, session of these tapes can see and hear captured so that others can use and learn CONTINUED ON PAGE 2 Segregation, Desegration A Dance Card STEM and INSIDE 4 and Civil Rights 7 for Dolley 11 the Humanities DAT machines in 2005, officially making HIGHLIGHTS The 21st Century that format obsolete.) While the content OF THE Digital Challenge on these old media can still be moved to CONTINUED FROM COVER newer, web-accessible, and, at least for now, VIRGINIA FOLKLIFE more stable platforms, the task is easier said than done. MEDIA ARCHIVE from it. Otherwise, what is the point of documentation? The Scope of Virginia Piedmont Guitar Tour Jon Lohman, the program’s director, cer- and Interviews tainly recognizes that duty, and has worked Our Challenge The 1992 Virginia Folklife Program tour featured hard to create, preserve, and deliver his con- Increasingly, VFH programs require National Heritage Fellowship recipients John tent through new media. “You’d be amazed Jackson and John Cephas, along with the lesser more resources to produce and manage at the things we have recorded over the last content on the web or in other Internet- known but equally formidable Daniel Womack twenty years,” Lohman says. With his recent and the Foddrells. accessible applications for their audiences. efforts to resurrect some of this material, The Virginia Indian Programs, in col- Galax Fiddlers Convention Lohman points laboration with Encyclopedia Virginia (EV), Now in its seventy-fifth year, the to the work of recently created a repository of images Galax Old Time Fiddlers Convention the great R&B and oral histories from various Virginia is the oldest, and still among the musician Charlie Indian communities, the Virginia Indian largest, fiddlers conventions in the McClendon. Archive, that will continue to grow over country. Folklife has been docu- “Hailing from menting this event for the better the next few years to support the explora- part of our organization’s history, the Hampton tion and understanding of Virginia Indian on a variety of audio and video Roads area, history and culture. With content such as formats, showcasing on-stage McClendon was the McClendon recordings, the Folklife instrument contests, parking lot just so important Program wants to build an archive that jams, and interviews. to the vibrant will require multiple terabytes of storage R&B scene that Galax Music Film Project and many hours to transport, refresh, and was happen- Along with documentation of the back up. Old Time Fiddlers Convention, former State Charlie McClendon ing there in the The radio program With Good Reason Folklorist Gary Barrow conducted extensive film holding one of his original 1960s. This was also sees the need to create a digital archive and field recordings of artists in and around reel-to-reel recordings a time and place PHOTO BY PAT JARRETT of its past and current shows. According the Galax region in the mid-1990s, including of great music to Sarah McConnell, the show’s director, Calvin Cole, Jesse Lovell and Emily Farmer, and great struggle. You had schools being With Good Reason consistently receives Gregg Hooven and the Konarock Critters, Wayne closed under Massive Resistance to fight off Henderson, Audrey Hash Ham, and others. appeals from teachers who want to use desegregation and then you had this strong interviews in the classroom. “Wouldn’t it Wayne C. Henderson message of vitality and hope coming out be great,” McConnell says, “to give them Guitar Competition of music. With generous private support easy access to this treasure trove of sound? Wayne Henderson, recipient of the prestigious we’ve been able to create an online exhibit For instance, we have a series of interviews National Heritage Fellowship for his guitar- of recent and archival material that allows with great African American poets like building and -playing, hosts one of the prominent users to get into the depths of McClendon’s Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez, and Frank guitar contests in Virginia and the country. work and to see it in the context of Virginia’s X. Walker. With a searchable archive con- Folklife recorded the only video of several civil rights struggles.” years of this contest, including the All-Star taining this wealth of material a teacher Competition, featuring the winners of the first “To allow these kinds of materials to go from anywhere at anytime could quickly ten years of the festival, including stars such as unpreserved and inaccessible,” continues find and play the whole series. With over Doc Watson. Lohman, “would be a horrendous loss not twenty years of features and interviews it just to Virginia’s cultural memory but to is imperative that we find a way not just to Coalfield Gospel Collection the nation’s.” (If you haven’t gone to the preserve and maintain this material but also For more than ten years, Folklife has been Folklife website and explored the audio and to provide access to it—to give these rare recording gospel singing and hymnody from the video footage in “Magnificent: The Charlie coalfields of deep Southwest Virginia, including conversations of the past new life!” pieces from Old Regular Baptist, Church of McClendon Story,” you are missing some- VFH has identified similar needs with Brethren, and Primitive Baptist congrega- thing special.) the partners we support through our grants. tions. Some of the more prominent groups In choosing state-of-the-art formats We recently sent a survey to more than recorded include the Reverend Frank Newsome and standards to record and create content thirty Virginia cultural organizations that (we produced a CD in partnership with Jim twenty-two years ago, we were responsible are current or past grantees to get a sense Lauderdale for him) and the Mullins Family (we stewards of our mission; however, like all of their digital environments, future needs, produced their fifty-year anthology.) technologies, these were subject to the and content management strategies. When slings and arrows of planned (sometimes asked if they created and saved their digital unplanned) obsolescence. (Sony, the devel- collections using archival standards and oper of DAT, for example, stopped making with sufficient storage and backup policies 2 VFH Views / SPRING 2014 GREAT INTERVIEWS IN THE WITH GOOD REASON ARCHIVE TONI MORRISON (Princeton University, Emerita) won the Nobel Prize for literature. “I don’t care what the world thinks. I want the Wayne Henderson in his Grayson County workshop people who know me to say that they could PHOTO BY TOM PICH count on me, and that I was a person whose in place in case of hard drive failures or will have to be established, hard questions friendship was of some value. That’s good. That’s really good.” other catastrophe, 75 percent of VFH grant- will have to be asked, and dif cult deci- ees and education partners responded in sions made about what we can and should BRUCE GREYSON (University of Virginia) is the negative.

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