America Works Season 4 Episode 1
The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress is kicking off 2023 with the much-awaited fourth season of “America Works,” a podcast series celebrating the diversity, resilience and creativity of American workers in the face of economic uncertainty. The new season, launched today, features captivating job-related stories from a range of occupational groups, including a professional wrestler, a cement plant worker, a neonatologist and a grocery store cashier. The first episode is available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and at loc.gov/podcasts. Subsequent episodes will be released every week on Thursdays through April 27, 2023.
You can read more about the series and find more resources alongside the Library’s press release at this link:
https://newsroom.loc.gov/news/library-of-congress-releases-fourth-season-of--america-works--podcast/s/b3ad4169-dc88-4547-a662-656a5107ee12?loclr=fbafc
But, if you just want to jump to the podcast itself, they’ll be at the link below, with the most recent episode on top:
https://loc.gov/podcasts/america-works/index.html?loclr=fbafc
The photo shows Jude Bejarano, Cement Plant Worker, Evansville, Pennsylvania, whose interview features in today's episode.
Ravioli and Sauce with Lou Maiuri
This film by Mike Costello and Amy Dawson of Lost Creek Farm presents Lou Maiuri, 92, the son of Italian immigrants who arrived in West Virginia in the early 1900s. “Italians are big on food,” Lou says from his basement cellar, where the shelves are lined with preserved peppers, canned beans, and a family-recipe pasta sauce he’s been making for 70 years. In this video, Maiuri shares his recipe for homemade pasta sauce and ravioli, made from his mother’s recipe with tomatoes he grew on his Summersville farm in Nicholas County. As he works, Maiuri reflects on food as a sensory memory that connects him to his mother and other family members who have since passed.
Bennett Konesni and Friends: Work Songs from Maine
Bennett Konesni is a singer, farmer, musician and administrator, based where he grew up in midcoast Maine, and also at Sylvester Manor on Shelter Island, NY, where parts of his family have lived since 1652. He has been singing work songs while working since he was a teenager on schooners in Penobscot Bay. At Middlebury College, he wrote a thesis based on research into Zulu work song traditions done while studying abroad in South Africa and involving a workshop at the Middlebury College Farm in 2004—one of the first work song workshops on an American farm. After graduating, Bennett studied musical labor on three continents thanks to a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship: musical fishing in Ghana and Holland, singing and dancing farmers in Tanzania, and livestock songs in Mongolia and Switzerland. Since 2007, Bennett has been using work songs at Sylvester Manor Educational Farm. He teaches workshops at farms and farm conferences across the Northeast, and in 2011 he and his wife Edith Gawler shared a song at the TEDx Fruitvale conference. His concert will include work songs of different types, most with connections to Maine, including some from AFC’s Maine collections.
Homegrown Foodways in West Virginia: "Foraging and Relations" with Jonathan Hall
In this film, foodways storytellers Mike Costello and Amy Dawson will be joined by fellow hunter and forager Jonathan Hall as they sustainably harvest and preserve ramps. Like the Black fishers, hunters and foragers recorded for the AFC by Mary Hufford in Harlem Heights in the 1990s, Jonathan reflects on the experience of being a Black outdoorsman hunting and foraging in virtually all-white spaces in rural West Virginia, discussing how racism has created unique barriers to entry to the practice of outdoor foodways traditions in Appalachia. As a teacher to his friends, to his children, and professionally, as a geography professor at West Virginia University, Jonathan uses wild food to educate about the conservation of the resources that sustain us, informed by the ethos of “relations” that has guided Indigenous communities for thousands of years before white settlers arrived in Appalachia.
Hubby Jenkins: Old Time Music from Brooklyn, New York
Hubby Jenkins is a talented multi-instrumentalist who endeavors to share his love and knowledge of old-time American music. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he delved into his southern roots, following the thread of African American history that wove itself through America's traditional music forms. As an integral member of the Carolina Chocolate Drops and later Rhiannon Giddens band, Hubby has performed at festivals and venues around the world, earning himself both Grammy and Americana award nominations. Today he spreads his knowledge and love of old-time American music through his dynamic solo performances and engaging workshops.
Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin: Old Time Music from California
Kate Brislin is a specialist in singing with others, a peerless blender. She was a founding member of the all female Any Old Time String Band in the 1970s. Tone and rhythm are paramount in the way she plays five-string banjo and guitar. Jody Stecher has been a soloist, a band member, an amateur folklorist, a record producer, an unusually enabling teacher, and an individualistic multi-instrumentalist and singer. In recent years he has been dreaming and composing new songs and tunes that sound old.
Kate and Jody have been musical partners for close to 50 years. Their duet vocal sound is at once soaring and soothing. Combining it with their deft playing results in a fully unified sound in which voices and instruments blend into an inseparable and singular musical entity. Their craft is twofold: The creation of arrangements and versions of traditional songs, and the way they perform them, which includes a good deal of spontaneity. They aim to draw the audience in, rather than projecting outward as entertainment. Their recordings have twice been Grammy finalists. Over time, some of their versions of traditional songs have become the standard versions around the world.
Samoan Studies Institute Students’ Association For Faʻasamoa: Traditional Dance from Samoaa
Vrï: Chamber Folk from Wales
É.T.É. : Traditional and Contemporary Francophone Music from Québec
