Fifth-grade students at North Cedar School in Mechanicsville help to reset a tombstone at historic Pioneer Grove Cemetery as part of their Prairie Voices project. Part of the documentation in Iowa's Local Legacies projects.

Iowa

The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S. Congress through Public Law 94-201 and charged to "preserve and present American folklife." The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established at the Library of Congress in 1928, and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.

Collections

The collections of the American Folklife Center contain rich and varied materials from Iowa that document the diversity of the state's folk traditions. Among its unique recordings are hammered dulcimer music; German festival music; fiddle tunes; cylinder recordings of Mesquakie songs collected in the 1910s; Amish and Mennonite music; tapes of the 1976 Iowa Folk Festival; and duck calls. In 1982, the Center's Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools Project documented a Czech school in Cedar Rapids and a Dutch school in Pella. The material created during this project has been incorporated into the collections of the Folklife Center.

• Iowa Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture [full text]

Iowa participated in the Library's Bicentennial Local Legacies project, which includes documentation of local traditions and celebrations for the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture.

• View Iowa's Local Legacies projects

Concert Webcast

July 26, 2006: Natasinh Dancers & Musicians. Lao music and dance from Iowa. [webcast and event flyer]

Field Research Projects

• Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools (Czech School; Dutch School). [catalog record] [finding aid]

Publications

• "Czech School," Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America. [catalog record]

Published Recordings

• Play and Dance Songs and Tunes, Library of Congress AFS L9. [audiocassette]