Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesThe River Harvest Project surveyed mainly Upper Mississippi River commercial fishing, clamming, and duck hunting traditions in 1987, including custom wooden and aluminum flatboat building, wooden duckboat building and duck decoy carving, net-fishing, hoop-net knitting as well as fish pickling and smoking. Folklorist Janet C. Gilmore formally interviewed over half of the c. 30 commercial fishermen, fish marketers, and boat builders that she visited on both sides of the river in northeastern Iowa, southwestern Wisconsin, and northwestern Illinois. The survey led to presentations in Iowa and Illinois, photo exhibits at Highland Community College and the Dubuque County Historical Society Museum, as well as commercial fishing demonstrations at the Dubuque County museum in concert with other programming.Contact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesThese records represent the productive and varied work that has characterized the state folk arts program at the Iowa Arts Council for more than two decades. Collections include administrative files and ethnographic documentation for numerous projects, programs, and productions, including folk arts apprenticeships, folk arts in education outreach, folklife programming technical assistance, exhibits, folklife festivals, and folk arts tours. Ethnographic materials and productions represent the work of more than 60 folklorists and community scholars, and hundreds of folk artists of diverse indigenous, old and new immigrant ethnic backgrounds that range from North and South America, to Africa, southeast Asia, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and Europe. Practices documented include varied musical, dance, needlework, metalworking, and woodworking traditions, beadwork and fingerweaving, foodways and egg decorating, and occupational traditions like fishing and net making, farming and ... MoreContact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesThe Wisconsin Swiss Traditional Music Project identified, documented, and recorded a broad sampling of Wisconsin Swiss traditional music, mostly in Green and Dane counties, during 1987-1988. Managed by Project Director Phil Martin, the resulting audiocassette release, Swissconsin: My Homeland , features contemporary and historical studio recordings and portrays primarily the highly proficient, public-oriented performance style often heard in community-produced concerts, recordings, and festivals. The publication Yodeling in Dairyland: A History of Swiss Music in Wisconsin also emerged from the survey in 1991. The collection includes folklorist James P. Leary's interview sound recordings with five Swiss-American musicians, notes from interviews with three more, and selected research materials; Lewis Koch's photography; and Wisconsin Folk Museum project and production files.Contact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesThe German-American Music Project documented significant aspects of German-American music and related cultural traditions in Wisconsin, mainly in Dodge, Sheboygan, Wausau, and Milwaukee counties. The research and fieldwork, conducted from 1984 to 1986, uncovered a wealth of traditional music and related information on German-American customs, including weddings and holidays. Three fieldworkers and a photographer documented 25 bands or organizations and 60 individuals. The research resulted in a two-disc commercial LP recording of traditional music, a two-hour Wisconsin Public Radio program, and a 30-minute slide/tape program. Materials include field reports, slides, sound recordings, sound recording indexes, and other documentation generated and collected during the project, and the slide/tape program.Contact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesThe Minnesota Polka Project documents the polka music traditions of German-American, Czech-American, Slovenian-American, and Polish-American ethnic groups throughout Minnesota. Sixteen bands and 21 of the bands' musicians were documented, resulting in a 44-minute anthology of Minnesota polka recordings and an accompanying 20-page booklet in 1990. Available materials include recorded interviews with band leaders and members, color slides of musicians and performance venues, and artist files containing correspondence, tape logs, electronic versions of the tape logs, and news clippings. The project was co-sponsored by the Minnesota Historical Society and the Minnesota State Arts Board and was also known as the Minnesota Polka Oral History Project.Contact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesWestern Illinois University Archives and Special Collections houses ethnographic documentation from two publicly-funded folk arts projects that occurred in 1987. They are accessible through the collection designations of 8220;The Gregory Hansen Collection8221; and 8220;The Schuyler Arts Folk Music Project Collection.8221; The Gregory Hansen Collection includes documentation of more than 30 duck decoy carvers in West Central Illinois along the lower Illinois and Rock rivers as well as a stretch of the Upper Mississippi River. Folklorist Gregory Hansen conducted the survey for the Illinois Institute of Rural Affairs and the Western Illinois University College of Fine Arts. The documentation includes typescripts of interview information, recorded interviews, photographs and negatives, as well as a photo log with contact sheets. Musician Chris Vallilo, on behalf of the Schuyler Arts Council (Rushville, Illinois) in conjunction with the Illinois Arts Council and the American Folklife ... MoreContact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesThe Ethnic Music in Northern Wisconsin and Michigan project began as a reconnaissance survey of traditional music spanning the northern tier of counties in Wisconsin and the western upper peninsula of Michigan along Lake Superior's south shore. Numerous community members, folklorists, ethnomusicologists, regional research specialists, and Northland College students contributed to the survey during 1979-1981, which resulted in 200 potential contacts and recorded interviews with over 100 musicians. Field and commercial recordings, field notes, color slides, and secondary resource materials obtained during the project represent the region's mix of European ethnic musical traditions including Cornish, Bohemian, Croatian, Finnish, French-Canadian, German, Hungarian, Italian, Norwegian, Polish, Russian, Scotch-Irish, Slovenian, Slovak, Swedish, Swiss, and Ukrainian immigrant sacred and secular music, singers, instrumentalists, dance hall veterans, and private soloists. Project outreach ... MoreContact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesTwo storytellers recorded supernatural stories from 6 individual tellers and a middle school group of 10-15 in Wisconsin's Iowa County during 1991-1992. They obtained over 50 stories and story segments including legends, urban legends, memorates, personal experience narratives, and superstitions featuring the Ridgeway ghost, ghostly animals, gamblers, vanishing hitchhikers, poltergeists, haunted houses, troubled deaths, and more. The interviewers transcribed the recorded stories and used them as the basis for versions they published in The Bookcase Ghost and tell to public audiences.Contact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesThe Rosemaling in the Upper Midwest collection documents the Norwegian-American folk painting tradition of rosemaling in Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, and the greater Upper Midwest region. Phil Martin and Jean Johnson of the Wisconsin Folk Museum interviewed rosemalers, while Martin and Lewis Koch photographed them and their work. Martin and Johnson borrowed, commissioned, and purchased artifacts, and produced several versions of a rosemaling exhibit, representing the work of more than 50 rosemalers. The first exhibit was installed in 1988 at the Folk Museum, and the last one ran into 1995. The book and exhibit catalog, Rosemaling in the Upper Midwest: A Story of Region and Revival , also resulted from this research.Contact InformationFinding Aid
Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern CulturesLeonard Finseth (1911-1991) was a Norwegian-American folk fiddler, farmer, and factory worker from Mondovi, Wisconsin. In addition to maintaining the family farm, Finseth played and participated in fiddle festivals throughout the Midwest and published two albums of Norwegian folk music, The Hills of Old Wisconsin and Scandinavian Old Time Folk Fiddler from Wisconsin . The Finseth collection's recordings are a mix of concerts, personal recordings, and recordings of old time fiddlers who influenced Finseth. There are a large number of old time fiddle songs, with special emphasis on Norwegian tunes. Also present are photographs, newspaper articles, a reminiscence by Finseth of his World War II experiences, and other items.Contact InformationFinding Aid
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