A blog sponsored by the Michigan State University Museum's Michigan Traditional Arts Program, a partnership with the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs. Sharing news and information about the Great Lakes Folk Festival, Quilt Index, the MSU Museum's traditional arts activities, Great Lakes traditional artists and arts resources, and much more. Development of content for this blog supported by funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Tuesday, January 20, 2015

FolkStreams.net Offers Films About Traditional Culture

FolkStreams.net is a fantastic resource for those interested in traditional art, culture, music, and dance... especially for those interested in documenting these practices. From their website:
     "Folkstreams.net has two goals. One is to build a national preserve of hard-to-find documentary films about American folk or roots cultures. The other is to give them renewed life by streaming them on the internet. The films were produced by independent filmmakers in a golden age that began in the 1960s and was made possible by the development first of portable cameras and then capacity for synch sound. Their films focus on the culture, struggles, and arts of unnoticed Americans from many different regions and communities."
Many of Alan Lomax's films can be found here. Lomax received a Michigan Heritage Award in 2014 for his documentation of Michigan music and traditional culture during his 1938 collecting trip through the state. While these films do not reflect this trip, they are fascinating records of traditional American music, from Cajun to old time.

This site is a partnership between FolkStreams, Inc., Ibiblio.org, the University of North Carolina, and the Soutern Folklife Collection.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your post will be moderated by MSU Museum staff