Foxfire Oral Histories, 2014

We are happy to announce a new partnership with the Foxfire Museum & Heritage Center, and to present a new collection of oral history interviews about Appalachian folk traditions and music,  Foxfire Oral Histories, 2014. The oral history interviews in this collection were conducted for Foxfire’s fiftieth anniversary book, which will be made available in 2016.

The Foxfire Fund grew out of a 1966 freshman English class project at the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School to create Foxfire magazine, based on student interviews of community elders that documented the rich folk culture of Rabun County, Georgia. By 1972, the magazine was anthologized in books published by Doubleday. The Foxfire program was ultimately moved to Rabun County High School in 1977. Kaye Collins, a former Foxfire student, staff member, and now board member of the Foxfire Community Board and Foxfire Board of Directors informs us that “the students handle all aspects of the Foxfire magazine production. The best of those interviews are put in the Foxfire books.” Barry Stiles, curator of the Foxfire Museum, notes that “Foxfire students have been conducting interviews for almost fifty years now. It will be fifty years in 2016.”

Beyond its importance chronicling Southern Appalachia, the Foxfire Fund, Inc. has been instrumental in exposing the student-empowered, community-focused Foxfire Approach to Teaching and Learning to educators that investigates relationships between teachers, learners, and their curriculum. The Foxfire Approach has provided an integrative learning environment for students to study required material, to use their surrounding community as a resource to facilitate learning, and to connect their efforts to an audience beyond the classroom.

Collins’ favorite interviews in the Foxfire Oral Histories, 2014 collection are “all of them!” though she does specifically mention the interview with Beanie Ramey, a native of Tiger, Georgia, who recalls local history in Clayton County. Collins also admires Blairsville soapmakers T. J. and Jenny Stevens , who “are inspiring in their work ethic and lives,” states that master cornshuck doll maker Beth Kelley Zorbanos is “also a great philosopher,” and comments that folk artist Eric Legge “is an artist genius and has a great sense of humor!” Stiles, who has “a great fondness for the guitar” loves the interviews with bluegrass musician Curtis Blackwell (where Blackwell talks about learning to play guitar and playing with the Dixie Bluegrass Boys) and guitar maker Danny White (who discusses the wood and other material he uses to make different parts of the guitars, the merits of custom-built guitars over mass-produced ones and the difficulties in building mandolins).

We hope that you are able to take the time to enjoy these oral history interviews and experience the unique methods Foxfire has developed to preserve Southern Appalachian folk traditions, and to engage students with active learning opportunities outside of traditional teaching spaces.

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The Georgia Folklore Collection

Video of Nathaniel and Fleeta Mitchell, Georgia, 1984. Georgia Folklore Collection, courtesy of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia via the Digital Library of Georgia.
Video of Nathaniel and Fleeta Mitchell, Georgia, 1984.
Georgia Folklore Collection, courtesy of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, Georgia via the Digital Library of Georgia.

We are excited to announce the arrival of the Georgia Folklore Collection through our partnership with the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection. The Georgia Folklore Collection includes over one thousand hours of music, interviews, and storytelling.

The Georgia Folklore Collection consists primarily of field recordings made by Art Rosenbaum donated to the University of Georgia Libraries Media Archives in 1987. The collection also contains associated collections of sound and video recordings from around Georgia, including those made between 1955 and 1983 by volunteers from the Georgia Folklore Society.  Some of the artists represented in the collection include the Tanner family, Reverend Howard Finster, the McIntosh County Shouters, Doodle Thrower and the Golden River Grass, Neal Pattman, Joe Rakestraw, Jake Staggers, the Eller brothers, Doc and Lucy Barnes, Nathaniel and Fleeta Mitchell, R. A. Miller, W. Guy Bruce, Precious Bryant, and many more.

Ruta Abolins, the director of the Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection describes the history of the collection: “The field recordings of the Georgia Folklore Collection were gathered by individuals wanting to collect music and the musicians unique to Georgia. In that group were people like Art Rosenbaum, now a retired art professor at the University of Georgia, George Mitchell, a music historian, and others who collected the recordings during the 1950s to 1980s. They were inspired by the work of Alan Lomax and the field recordings he made all over the world.” Abolins notes:  “The collection as a whole is so rich and diverse that anyone with even a passing interest in music or folklife can find something interesting and informative. I just hope that the content is used to educate, entertain, and inspire.”

Abolins describes the process of making this collection available online:  “We decided what should be digitized and the analog to digital file creation was taken care of by a vendor. We had gathered our basic metadata together and provided that information to the Digital Library of Georgia. The DLG then created the records for the DPLA and now we are represented in a fantastic portal that leads to digital content from all across the United States. It is a win-win-win-win project. Great for the Brown Media Archives, great for the Digital Library of Georgia, great for the Digital Public Library of America, and most importantly a great win for the American people.”

We hope that you take some time to explore the Georgia Folklore Collection and learn more about the Georgia artists represented therein.

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