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Kentucky
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 Kentucky that document the diversity of the Bluegrass State's
folk traditions. Among its unique recordings are hundreds of hours of folk
music, recorded from the 1930s to the present, including banjo, dulcimer,
and fiddle tunes; religious music and sermons; and Southern Harmony singing
and Baptist "lining-out" hymns. (Pictured right: Kentucky text of the ballad
"Pretty Molly.")
- Kentucky Collections in the Archive
of Folk Culture [full text]
Kentucky 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.
Exhibitions
- 1983 "Generation to Generation: Sharing the Intangible,"
Western Kentucky University, Ivan Wilson Center for Fine Arts, Bowling
Green; and University of Kentucky, Council on Aging, Lexington.
Publications
- "The Photographs of Maggie Lee Sayre: A Personal Vision of Houseboat
Life," Folklife
Annual 90. [catalog record]
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