Folk Music Historian
Discover rich folk traditions from America and the Caribbean by transcribing the notebooks and letters of folklorist Alan Lomax and his collaborators. Lomax had a knack for finding the best performers and coaxing them to record epic stories and songs, many of which are still sung and performed today. These documents serve as the bedrock of our understanding of twentieth-century American and Caribbean folk music.
How do I get started? Just go to the Library of Congress website and start transcribing right now.
How much time will this take? This is a low time commitment. Spend as much time as you want, one hour or many. You will be helping these national treasures to be searchable and discoverable by all!
How do I expand this narrative arc? If historical research or music are in your narrative arc, consider building on this interest with one of the following:
Take an amazing summer course at U.C. Berkely entitled Music in American Cultures
If your school offers the ability to do an independent study or a National History Day project, consider doing a research project on famous musicians influences on culture or conflicts, or even one of these historical figures, using some material from in the letters you transcribe. Note: these letters are Primary Sources for historical research purposes which makes any such research project even more impressive!
Consider doing a community impact project that involves music or folk music, like doing a nostalgia playlist for seniors in a home. Music from your youth has proved to be of huge therapeutic benefit to seniors and a project like this could have a real impact. See our PDF for Executing a Community Impact Project, which has step by step instructions on how to execute a project like this.
HOT TIP: This is a great little project to kick off or complement a general interest in music or even just general historical research. Make sure to build on this project with some in -depth research or the commumity impact project described above.