Immigration Pier, New Bedford. Photo by Nelson Wood, courtesy New Bedford Whaling Museum. Part of the cultural documentation found in Massachusetts's Local Legacies projects.

Massachusetts

The collections of the American Folklife Center contain rich and varied materials from Massachusetts that document the diversity of the state's folk traditions. Among its unique recordings are folk music dating from the 1930s to the present, including Anglo-American ballads, shanties, and African Methodist Episcopal religious services. In 1982, the Center's Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools Project documented a Polish school in Taunton. From 1987 to 1988, the Center conducted the Lowell Folklife Project, which documented the city's many ethnic communities. The photographs, recordings, and transcripts created during this project include material on the Cambodian, Greek, French, Irish, Portuguese, Puerto Rican, and Vietnamese American communities.

Collections

• Finding aid: Massachusetts Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture [draft available upon request]
• Massachusetts participated in the Library's Bicentennial Local Legacies project, which includes documentation of local traditions and celebrations for the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture. View Massachusetts's Local Legacies projects

Field Research Projects

• 1978-88 Lowell Folklife Project. [catalog record] [finding aid]
• 1982 Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools Project (Armenian and Portuguese). [catalog record] [finding aid]

Publications

• "The Official Portuguese School of the Taunton Sports Club," Ethnic Heritage and Language Schools in America. [catalog record]
• "Report to the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission on the Lowell Folklife Project." [available in Folklife Reading Room]