Bandcamp recently featured our new podcast The Female Bob Dylan and gave us the floor to pick and write a few words about some favorite albums on the platform. I chose Natalia Beylis’ Variations on a Sewing Machine, Cath and Phil Tyler’s The Ox and The Ax, Fawn Wood’s Kikāwiynaw, and Norma Tanega’s I’m the Sky: Studio and Demo Recordings, 1964-1971.
You can check Sophie and Sarah’s excellent picks, our blurbs about each, and Mariana Timony’s full write-up here.
Harvard Folklore Symposium: Appalachia Betwixt & Between
Looking forward to learning from colleagues and presenting at Harvard Folklore & Mythology's Symposium this weekend! I'll be speaking on how expressive culture (aka folklore) was used by public educators during the 2018-2019 West Virginia Educators' Strike to bolster worker power, teach the public, and forge a new reality, and how those lessons still resonate today.
Thank you to Sarah Craycraft for the invitation and organizing work!
Learn more here
Grist: "As climate change fractures communities, folklorists help stitch them back together"
Grateful to Katie Myers for talking with me about visionary folklore and for amplifying the work other folklorists like Maida Owens and Kimi Eisele do in collaboration with cultural communities impacted by climate change.
Read the full article in Grist here
Smithsonian Folkways Goes Foodways Playlist
Under the auspices of SPINSTER, I curated a foodways themed playlist for Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (my old employer and first favorite record label!). With thematic connections to SPINSTER's recent release, Measure, Pour & Mixtape: Music for Cooking, the playlist brings together food songs from across the Folkways catalog for a sonic meal of snap beans, potatoes, cornbread, pie, singing turkeys, and more, paired with blueberry wine and served by a well-tipped waitress.
I also love the graphic by D. Norsen Design, which evokes early Chez Panisse and Moosewood signage, and connects to my inspirational motto for the selections: "What if Les Blank soundtracked a (another) foodways film."
Listen to the playlist here.
Rural Free Delivery Collection Now Available via the Library of Congress
I'm pleased to share that my 2021 Archie Green Fellowship Occupational Folklife project Rural Free Delivery: Mail Carriers in Central Appalachia is now accessible via the Library of Congress.
The project documents the value of rural carriers to their communities and includes interviews with 25 rural mail carriers and clerks in Appalachian regions of Kentucky, West Virginia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Ohio, as well as photos of rural post offices.
There are also some choice videos of retired rural mail carrier, guitar maker, and National Heritage Fellow Wayne Henderson jamming with current rural carrier Brian Grim, and Merle Haggard's guitarist Redd Volkaert (I found that many rural mail carriers are also musicians).
Read more about the project in this interview on the American Folklife Center blog.