by Lisa Rathje | Sep 17, 2023
Getting to the earliest sources of traditional Cajun and Creole songs is a veritable mutual obsession for Ann Savoy and me. We are friends and bandmates in the Magnolia Sisters, the premier all-women’s Cajun band from South Louisiana. A song collector, musician,...
by Lisa Rathje | Sep 16, 2023
South Louisiana is not an easy place to live. Hurricanes, heat and humidity, coastal erosion, bad roads, economic hardship, and poor education standings are just a few threats to our daily quality of life. Yet, cultural lifeways and traditions are fiercely vibrant and...
by Lisa Rathje | Sep 16, 2023
Delia Zapata Olivella, daughter, mother, sister, friend, bruja…. She was an Afro-Colombian woman born in 1926 in Santa Cruz de Lorica and lived her childhood in Cartagena, Colombia. Delia Zapata Olivella was a renowned dancer, artist, teacher, activist,...
by Lisa Rathje | Sep 16, 2023
The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, houses the works of the ethnomusicologist Frances Theresa Densmore, including a collection of more than 2,500 American Indian songs she recorded between 1907 and 1941. Approximately 260 of Densmore’s cataloged...
by Lisa Rathje | Sep 15, 2022
This interview engages with how one folklorist’s interests in recording spoken sounds and memories of his grandmother opened a pathway to recording the memories and sounds of living descendants of traditional Appalachian balladry. Through the processes of engaging...
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