This post in the Homegrown Plus series features Lily Henley, a talented singer, songwriter, and fiddler who performs traditional and original songs in the Ladino language. Just like other blogs in the series, this one includes a concert video, a video interview with Lily Henley, and connections to Library of Congress collections. Henley’s music is influenced by Sephardic Jewish traditions from across Europe and western Asia, as well as by Celtic music, American old-time, and other folk music genres. Ladino, also called Judeo-Spanish, is an endangered language that evolved from 15th century Castilian Spanish, with influences from Hebrew, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, and other languages of the Jewish diaspora. Ladino is spoken by Sephardic Jewish communities across the globe. In addition to performing ancient Ladino ballads and love songs, Henley is one of the few songwriters composing new songs in Ladino. The blog post features videos of her 2026 concert, which AFC hosted in collaboration with the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History and in partnership with the African and Middle Eastern Division of the Library of Congress, and a conversation between Henley and Stephen Winick of the American Folklife Center staff, discussing her career, the tradition of Sephardic music, and the Ladino language.
Last year, the American Folklife Center brought our Archive Challenge model to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall…and you can watch it all at Folklife Today! Our good friends and colleagues across the Mall cooked up a great festival on the theme of “Youth and the Future of Culture.” As part of the festivities, we engaged groups of young musicians to learn pieces from the Archive of Folk Culture and play them on the festival’s main stage. Some of those sets were streamed in the Festival livestream. As a result, you can see and hear Persian classical music, Appalachian ballads, old-time fiddle tunes, Caribbean steel pan music, traditional Irish music, and Balkan dance music—the last two with special guest Christylez Bacon on human beatbox. Organizing these Archive Challenge sets was a highlight of our year last year, and we feel the result was a highlight of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well. In this blog, we've embedded two of the videos and included a little information on the performers and their selections from the AFC Archive. This time the performers are Sterling Hollifield and Karlie Keepfer playing old time music, the Cultural Academy For Excellence’s Positive Vibrations Youth Steel Orchestra playing calypso, and Balkan Soul Band playing Bulgarian tunes with Christylez Bacon joining in on vocal percussion, or beatbox.
Last year, the American Folklife Center brought our Archive Challenge model to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall…and you can watch it all at Folklife Today! Our good friends and colleagues across the Mall cooked up a great festival on the theme of “Youth and the Future of Culture.” As part of the festivities, we engaged groups of young musicians to learn pieces from the Archive of Folk Culture and play them on the festival’s main stage. Some of those sets were streamed in the Festival livestream. As a result, you can see and hear Persian classical music, Appalachian ballads, old-time fiddle tunes, Caribbean steel pan music, traditional Irish music, and Balkan dance music—the last two with special guest Christylez Bacon on human beatbox. Organizing these Archive Challenge sets was a highlight of our year last year, and we feel the result was a highlight of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well. In this blog, we've embedded one of the videos and included a little information on the performers and their selections from the AFC Archive. This time the performers are Cyrus and Alexander Sabet performing Persian classical and folk music from Iran with their mentor, Ostad Kazem Davoudian; and Elsa Howell singing traditional ballads from Virginia and Ireland, with banjo accompaniment from her father Izak.
Last year, the American Folklife Center brought our Archive Challenge model to the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall…and you can watch it all at Folklife Today! Our good friends and colleagues across the Mall cooked up a great festival on the theme of “Youth and the Future of Culture.” As part of the festivities, we engaged groups of young musicians to learn pieces from the Archive of Folk Culture and play them on the festival’s main stage. Some of those sets were streamed in the Festival livestream. As a result, you can see and hear Persian classical music, Appalachian ballads, old-time fiddle tunes, Caribbean steel pan music, traditional Irish music, and Balkan dance music—the last two with special guest Christylez Bacon on human beatbox. Organizing these Archive Challenge sets was a highlight of our year last year, and we feel the result was a highlight of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival as well. In this blog, we've embedded one of the videos and included a little information on the performers and their selections from the AFC Archive.
On February 19, 1976, in what could be considered the first official action of the American Folklife Center, the Library of Congress hosted a reception to celebrate the passage of the American Folklife Preservation Act, which established the Center as part of the Library. The event featured speeches by Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin and by folklorist and lobbyist Archie Green, as well as remarks by folklorists and members of Congress. Most importantly, the celebration featured musical performances by Alonzo Elvis “Tony” Alderman (the last living member of the pioneering old time music group the Hill Billies), The Irish Tradition, Elizabeth Cotten, John Jackson, The Country Gentlemen, and Mariachi America. In this three-part blog post, we’ll present audio selections, photos, and other documentation of the event as part of our celebration of the Center’s 50th anniversary.
This post in the Homegrown Plus series features Nick Gaitan, musician, music historian, band leader, and proud exponent of Houston’s vibrant Chicano music scene. Like others in the series, the blog links to a concert video of Nick’s band in performance in the Coolidge Auditorium in Fall 2025, a video interview recorded with him prior to the concert and links to Latino/a educational resources held in the AFC. The group is composed of Nicholas Valdez (vocals, accordion), Charlie San Miguel (drums), Luis Gonzalez (bajo sexto, guitar), Nick Gaitan (vocals, stand up bass). The band’s self-described “Tejas [Texas] Roots Music” sound is a cover term for a repertoire that encompasses conjunto, cumbia, Louisiana swamp pop, country, and rhythm and blues. These stellar musicians slip seamlessly from one musical style to another during the course of performance and bring the sound of Texas and the wider Gulf Coast region to the Washington, DC, audience. In the interview, Nick Gaitan reflects on his documentation work for Sonidos de Houston, a Community Collections Grant project and his upbringing in the multi-cultural, polyphonic environment of his native Houston and its long-lasting influences on his personal and professional development.
The exciting old time duo The Creek Rocks, the recipients of the 2024 Artists in Resonance Fellowship from the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, bring old songs back to the Library in shiny new arrangements! Accomplished singer and banjo player Cindy Woolf and veteran guitarist and singer Mark Bilyeu established the group in 2015. Much of their work has been interpreting the traditional music of the Ozarks region. The Artists in Resonance Fellowship provided Cindy and Mark the opportunity to immerse themselves in the field recordings of folklorist Sidney Robertson Cowell, who in December 1936 and January 1937 visited communities in the Missouri and Arkansas Ozarks. The Cowell recordings in the American Folklife Center’s archive serve as the source material for this concert, as well as The Creek Rocks' current album-length recording project. This blog presents the concert along with an interview in which we talk with them about their fellowship, their music, and their use of archival sources.
Welcome to the latest post in the Homegrown Plus series, featuring bluegrass quartet The Henhouse Prowlers. After two decades of touring and performing, the Henhouse Prowlers proudly look to the future, expressing their passion for music and humanity. Banjoist Ben Wright and upright bassist Jon Goldfine have been the heart of the band since its inception, while guitarist Chris Dollar and mandolinist Jake Howard (who joined 7 and 5 years ago respectively) bring fresh energy to the band's sound. The Prowlers approach music with a reverence for tradition coupled with willingness to explore beyond the ordinary. In their concert, they apply their trademark four-part harmonies to classic country and bluegrass, as well as modern Americana. In the interview we talk about their music, their history, and their activities with the U.S. State Department and their own nonprofit, Bluegrass Ambassadors, through which they have been able to take American music around the globe.
We're continuing the Homegrown Plus series with a classic from a few years ago with our good friend Dom Flemons, who performs and records as The American Songster. Back in 2020, Dom performed in the Homegrown at Home concert series, the pandemic-era version of Homegrown, in which artists submitted video concerts and we premiered them online. Dom Flemons, a Grammy award winner with the Carolina Chocolate Drops, a four-time Grammy nominee, and a two-time Emmy nominee, was by no means a stranger to AFC. We first met him when he came in to do research in the Archive in 2007, which means that for almost 20 years he's been accessing and interpreting field recordings from our archive. Because of this, his repertoire includes many songs and tunes he learned from recordings of master musicians in the American Folklife Center archives. Appropriately, he was also the first artist featured in the Center's inaugural Archive Challenge in 2015. Dom approached the concert as an Archive Challenge opportunity, so all the songs have a connection to the AFC archive. As usual for this series, you’ll find a concert video, an interview video, and a set of links to explore.
