Leland Library Summinars: To Know Ourselves Better — The Discovery of American Folk Music 1920–1942

The 1920s and '30s saw an explosion of interest in regional American folk music. On one hand it was commercial: record companies discovered a huge market for phonograph recordings of vernacular songs and tunes performed by "the folk." On the other, the New Deal's Federal Writers Project stocked the Library of Congress with field recordings of traditional music. Nathan Salsburg explores the era’s lasting effects.

Nathan Salsburg is a guitarist, composer, and historical audio collector, researcher, and producer. He worked for the Association for Cultural Equity's Alan Lomax Archive for 24 years, half of that time in the capacity of curator, compiling and producing album releases of the renowned folklorist's recordings and managing the Archive's online audio, photo, and video catalogs. He has compiled and/or produced over 20 reissue projects of historical audio recordings and has been nominated for Grammy awards in the Best Historical Reissue and Best Liner Notes categories. As a guitarist he's made seven solo albums and contributed to records by Shirley Collins, Bonnie "Prince" Billy, the Weather Station, Jake Xerxes Fussell, and Joan Shelley, among others.