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Massachusetts
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 Massachusetts that document the diversity of the state's folk traditions.
Among its unique recordings are folk music dating from the 1930s to the present,
including Anglo-American ballads, shanties, and dialect; and African Methodist
Episcopal religious services. From 1987 to 1988, the Center conducted the
Lowell Folklife Project, which documented the city's many ethnic communities.
The photographs, recordings, and transcripts created during this project
include material on the Cambodian-, Greek-, French-, Irish-, Portuguese-,
Puerto Rican-, and Vietnamese-American communities. In 1982, the Center's
Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools Project documented a Polish school in
Taunton.
Massachusetts 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.
Field Research Projects
Publications
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