Folklife Center News Volume 27(1-2) Winter/Spring
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ONLINE INFORMATION STAFF RESOURCES Administration The American Folklife Center’ s Peggy A. Bulger, Director Website provides full texts of Gene Berry, Assistant to the Director many AFC publications, informa- Doris Craig, Administrative Assistant tion about AFC projects, multi- Michael Taft, Head, Archive of Folk Culture media presentations of selected Acquisitions and Programs collections, links to Web re s o u rc e s David A. Taylor, Coordinator on ethnography, and announce- Research and Programs ments of upcoming events. The Ilana Harlow, Folklife Specialist The American Folklife Center a d d ress for the hom e page is Guha Shankar, Folklife Specialist was created in 1976 by the U.S. h t t p : / / w w w. l o c . g o v / f o l k l i f e / A n Congress to “preserve and present Processing and Cataloging index of the site’s contents is American folklife” through pro- Sarah Bradley-Leighton, grams of research, documentation, available at h t t p : / / w w w. l o c . g o v/ Processing Technician archival preservation, reference ser- f o l k l i f e/a f c i n d e x . h t m l Catherine Hiebert Kerst, Archivist vice, live performance, exhibition, Maggie Kruesi, Cataloger publication, and training. The The Website for The Ve t e r a n s Judy Ng, Processing Technician Center incorporates the Archive of History Project p ro v i de s a n Valda Morris, Processing Technician Folk Culture, which was established o v e rviewofthe project, an online Marcia Segal, Processing Technician in the Music Division of the Library “kit” for participants re c o rding oral Nora Yeh, Archivist, Coordinator of Congress in 1928 and is now one histories of veterans, and a brief of the largest collections of ethno- Publications p resentation of some examples of g r a p h i cmaterial from the United Stephen D. Winick, Editor v i d e o -and audio-re c o rdings of vet- States and around the world. Public Events erans’ stories. The address is Theadocia Austen, Coordinator h t t p : / / w w w. l o c . g o v / v e t s Reference Jennifer A. Cutting, Folklife Specialist BOARD OF TRUSTEES The Folkline Information Ser- Judith A. Gray, Folklife Specialist, vice is a cooperative announce- Coordinator Librarian Appointees ment program of the A m e r i c a n Stephanie A. Hall, Automation Specialist Tom Rankin, Chair, North Carolina F o l k l o re Soc ie ty and the A m e r i- Todd Harvey, Folklife Specialist Jane Beck, Vice-chair, Vermont can Folklife Center. It is available Ann Hoog, Folklife Specialist Norma Cantú, Texas only on the American Folklore Audio Engineering Kojo Nnamdi, District of Columbia Society’s server: w w w. a f s n e t . o r g The service provides timely infor- Matthew Barton, Audio Engineer Congressional Appointees Jonathan Gold, Audio Technician Daniel Botkin, California mation on the field of folklore and folklife, including training and Digital Conversion Penn Fix, Washington John Barton, Specialist Mickey Hart, California p rofessional opportunities, and news items of national intere s t . Reference Service Dennis Holub, South Dakota Tel: 202 707–5510 William L. Kinney Jr., South Carolina Fax: 202 707–2076 Judith McCulloh, Emerita, Illinois E-mail: [email protected] Marlene Meyerson, New Mexico Veterans History Project Presidential Appointees FOLKLIFE CENTER NEWS Diane Kresh, Director Cynthia R. Church, Assistant Secretary for Stephen D. Winick, Editor Peter T. Bartis, Senior Program Officer Public and Intergovernmental Affairs, David A. Taylor, Editorial Advisor Anneliesa Clump Behrend, Department of Veterans Affairs Sheryle Shears, Designer Public Affairs Specialist Fran Mainella Peggy Pixley,Production Jeffrey Lofton, Public Affairs Specialist Director, National Park Service Debra Murphy, Special Assistant Sonya E. Medina, Assistant Director of Folklife Center News publishes ar- Sarah Rouse, Senior Program Officer Projects, Office of the First Lady, ticles on the programs and activ- Timothy Schurtter, Program Officer The White House ities of the American Folklife Cen- Eileen Simon, Archivist Ex Officio Members t e r, a s w el l as o th er ar t ic l es o n Taru Spiegel, Program Officer James H. Billington, Librarian of traditional expressive culture. It is Congress available free of charge from the Lawrence M. Small, Secretary of the Library of Congress, A m e r i c a n C ov e r : The Washington Chu Shan Smithsonian Institution Folklife Center, 101 Independence Chinese Opera Institute perfo rm e d Dana Gioia, Chairman, Avenue, S.E., Washington, D.C. scenes from The Monkey King and National Endowment for the Arts 20540–4610. Folklife Center News other Peking operas on May 18, 2005, Bruce Cole, Chairman, National does not publish announcements in the American Folklife Center’s 2005 Endowment for the Humanities f rom other institutions or re v i e w s Homegrown Concert Series. In this Michael Owen Jones, President, of books from publishers other photo, Master Zhu Chu Shan performs American Folklore Society than the Library of Congre s s . as the Monkey King. For a full listing of Timothy Rice, President, Readers who would like to com- Homegrown concerts, see p. 23 or visit Society for Ethnomusicology ment on Center activities or us on the Web at www.loc.gov/folklife. Peggy A. Bulger, Director, newsletter articles may addre s s (Photo courtesy of Washington Chu American Folklife Center their remarks to the editor. Shan Chinese Opera Institute) 2 Folklife Center News ARTHUR MILLER—A VIEW FROM THE FIELD By Matthew Barton It was only natural that f o l k l o re and folkso ngs When the great play- would be used in such pro- wright Arthur Miller died grams, but Alan Lomax, in February, obituary writ- the twenty-six-year-old di- ers focused on his most rector of the A rc h i v e , famous work and his trou- sought a more active role bled marriage to Marilyn for his division in the proj- Monroe. Miller’s life and ect. In a report to Mac- work prior to All My Sons Leish, he described a docu- and Death of a Salesman mentary series based on received little attention, new field recordings that particularly his brief but would demonstrate “a new memorable stint as a field- function for radio; that of worker for the Library of letting the people explain Congress in 1941. themselves and their lives In 1941 the twenty-six- to the entire nation.” To y e a r-ol dMiller was just that end, Lomax, Liss, and another struggling, unem- others traveled the country ployed writer. As a stu- in the summer of 1941 dent at the University of in a sound truck outfitted Michigan he had won a with new disc re c o rd i n g pair of drama awards, and equipment. They inter- in 1939 his political satire viewed people about their The Pussycat and the Expert lives, homes, and work, Plumber Who Was a Man The playwright and fieldworker Arthur Miller, pictured and re c o rded their had been produced for sometime after the war. Source: Library of Congress thoughts about the war in CBS Radio’s C o l u m b i a Prints and Photographs Division Europe, and if or when the Wo r k s h o p while he was United States would enter making $22.77 a week on the WPA such as the regional surveys of the the fray. Theater Project in New York. Since Federal Writers Project, the hold- How Miller, who had no experi- then, his career had stalled. ings of the Library’s Manuscript ence as a field collector, came to be In December 1940 Miller’ s Division, and the collections of the responsible for collecting the mate- friend from the Columbia Workshop Archive of American Folksong (the rial and writing the script for the series, Joseph Liss, was hired as precursor of the American Folklife sixth and final show is not quite project editor for the Library of Center’s Archive of Folk Culture). clear, and at the time, Lomax ques- Congress’s Radio Research Project, One of Miller’s programs, called tioned his qualifications. In a note andhebrought in Miller as a “Buffalo Bill Disremembered,” fea- to Radio Research Project director s c r i p t w r i t e r. The Radio Researc h tured an aging Buffalo Bill Cody Phillip Cohen dated October 15, Project was an ambitious foray into looking back at his life, trying to 1941, the day that Miller set out in broadcasting conceived by Librar- separate fact from fiction. This pro- asoundtruckforWi l m i n g t o n , ian of Congress A rchibald Mac- gram struck a chord, and many lis- North Carolina, with engineer John Leish and funded by the Rocke- teners wrote in with Buffalo Bill Langenegger, Lomax wrote: feller Foundation. MacLeish saw it stories that had circulated in their “[Arthur Miller] making the trip as an opportunity to use the families. Another Miller script means for the project to make other Library’s resources in a popular dramatized the early history of sacrifices. Mr. Miller is an awfully f o rum to educate theA m e r i c a n New Orleans. Programs by other nice lad, but if his ability to handle public about the history of a free writers dealt with the building of regional materials is evidenced in nation in a time when freedom was the Erie Canal, the history of the the New Orleans script and in the under fire.