Inspired by the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and their Folklife Archive Challenge, the Vermont Folklife Center and Middlebury College Special Collections are teaming up on the Vermont Folklife Archive Challenge!
For years the American Folklife Center (AFC) has invited musicians to draw inspiration from their holdings to create their own new recordings. In response to COVID-19, AFC recently put out a special call to artists to use AFC’s online collections as a part of their Archive Challenge from Home initiative.
Now it’s Vermont’s turn! The Vermont Folklife Center and Middlebury College Special Collections each hold extensive collections of Vermont traditional music—and many of these recordings and manuscripts are available online.
They invite musicians and artists to dive into their online collections of traditional song and instrumental music and use what you find to create something new. They’d love to hear your Doom Metal versions of ballads like “Young Charlotte,” your EDM takes on old New England fiddle tunes like “Crystal Schottische,” or your straight-up renditions of “C’était une bergère.”
Please note: the challenge is not limited to music! Visual artists, writers, poets: create work inspired by a recording from our archives. The Vermont Folklife Archive Challenge is for you, whether you cleave close to tradition or make a song your very own—regardless of the medium you chose.
So how does this work exactly?
Start by exploring the Vermont Folklife Center’s online digital collections or Middlebury College Special Collections’ Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection. All these materials are free to access.
Pick some material that moves you—then recreate it!
Share it on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram using #VtArchivesChallenge
Record yourself (audio or video) performing your song
Take a picture of your visual art pieces
Post your poem or literary work
Email listening@vermontfolklifecenter.org to let us know!
About the collections
Vermont Folklife Center:
The Desrosiers/Joyal Family Collection; explore.vermontfolklifecenter.org/digital-archive/collections/collections/show/5
Manuscripts and audio recordings of French and English language songs created by the members of the Desrosiers and Joyal families.
The Margaret MacArthur Collection; explore.vermontfolklifecenter.org/digital-archive/collections/collections/show/6
Field recordings made by Vermont folk singer and song collector Margaret MacArthur (1928-2006) in Vermont and New England between 1960 and 1969.
The Martha Pellerin Collection of Franco-American Song; explore.vermontfolklifecenter.org/digital-archive/collections/collections/show/1
Field recordings of French-language songs made by the late Franco-American performer and cultural advocate Martha Pellerin. Collection also includes manuscripts of lyrics donated by Pelleriin.
Revitalizing Franco-American Song in the Champlain Valley of Vermont; vermontfolklifecenter.org/revitalizing-franco-american-song
Recordings, notation, transcriptions and translations of 12 Franco-American songs
Middlebury College: Helen Hartness Flanders Ballad Collection; middlebury.edu/library/special-collections/collections/flanders
Recordings of Vermont and New England folk songs made between 1930 and 1960 by Helen Hartness Flanders (1890-1972). One of the most significant folk song collections in the United States.
The Vermont Folklife Center’s mission is to broaden, strengthen, and deepen our understanding of Vermont; to assure a repository for our collective cultural memory; and to build connections among the diverse peoples of Vermont.
I was raped by Kirin Schmidt and Casey Wait and Robin and Dan MacArthur of Brattleboro & Marlboro covered it up, reported me to the police, and painted me as a bigot and drug abuser while I was beginning transitioning/coming out and traumacentric therapies.
I was the MacArthur artist in residence for over two years. I archived all of their folk music digitally for the @vermontfolklifecenter and assisted in editing a book of Margaret MacArthur’s folksongs. I was brought there to do folk music research, but they gave me no direction, payment, and attacked me for making my own art to process my childhood trauma. They took most of my savings as “rent,” which they raised without explanation when my roommate moved out (despite the artist residency) and moved friends of my rapist next door.
Robin MacArthur used to post “how little she made” as an independent author living in the woods, as a statement of transparency. That statement didn’t mention the MacArthur trust fund, nor how they were siphoning off a disabled person’s savings (mine).
When I moved out of the MacArthur house, because my trauma response was mounting, the MacArthurs went through my room and boxed up all of my possessions without my permission or notice.
Also as I was tapering off drugs I was forced to be on for two decades, they keep asking if I was doing heroin and telling me I needed to go back to coercive institutions and take medication that literally cause nerve death
I’ve never done heroin, but the MacArthurs pressured me into going to outpatient therapy to continue my forced drugging, and so I mostly made friends with kids on recovery there and tried to help them out. So yes, I did have friends who I was trying to help through heroin withdrawal. Stigmatizing me as a junkie for trying to help people is medical discrimination.
Yet Casey suggested that I reconnect with my ex-rapist while I was coming off medication. Yes I did this because I’m a gullible autistic idiot and it led to more flashbacks and dissociation, which again, was blamed on me.
Their response to me bringing this up, having severe PTSD reactions from it, and trying to start a dialogue with a group of people who spearheaded their local #metoo chapter?
Well, The ONLY member of the MacArthur family who reached out to apologize was Meg, who the family constantly warned me about as a mad person, and who was the only person who listened to my trauma, helped me find a therapist, or helped me find noninvasive seizure remedies.
Dan MacArthur, on the other hand, keeps reporting me to the police, who I told him many years ago aggressed me and did not listen to me.
Robin MacArthur, who once signed a book I bought from her “Our favorite adoptive MacArthur,” simply said “I’m not doing this anymore.” That’s not solidarity. That’s not demonstrating accountability for rape, forced drugging, nor all the other gaslighting they put me through.
Dan MacArthur said “you’re welcome here any time” when I left conf used about my rape. Megan MacArthur told me “welcome to the family” after I confided my childhood abuse in her. Now they won’t listen to my trauma, which involves them, because I’m “unstable.”
Of course I’m unstable — I’ve been raped, drugged, and beaten for decades. Why not just label me a “hysterical woman”? The people who guilted me into being an “ally” covered up for my rape and drugging, and stigmatized me locally for it.
When I tried to confide in Robin about my forced drugging, she scoffed at me (she was always quick to equate me with drug abusers), and suggested I use Instagram to help myself feel better instead. Well, now I am broadcasting.
This is gaslighting. This is victim abuse. This is saving face when you know you hurt someone.
The MacArthurs don’t care about people who are raped, regardless of personhood, as they claim to. From what I saw, they only care about their legacy. I regret contributing to the @vermontfolklifecenter and Vermont heritage preservation. Many of the songs they cling to are sexist, promote rape, or literally derived from blackface.
I just remembered how when i was doing an unpaid 2-month internship at the Vermont Folklife Center, the VFC director came in one day while I was archiving and just started complaining about how he and husband got too high with their fuckbuddy and were super hung over. These were the working conditions under which the MacArthur Collection was digitized and archived online. This was not mentioned in the press briefing.
And then the archivist I was working under came in and said “don’t molest the interns” sort of jokingly — but also not?
And they were super nice but like what the fuck? Why did i have to experience this, when I was just starting antidepressants and doing work for them for free.
And then the Vermont Folklife Center hosted a fundraiser that was a drag show, and the director was like in a leather thong/vest and I had to ask him to lead me to the bathroom, and it was super uncomfortable and he was super drunk.
Casey Waite and Anais Duplan were there, and they’re social justice types, but they don’t acknowledge when I come out about these kinds of thing, and I fear they’d accuse me of homophobia (even though I’m queer as hell).
I don’t need older men hitting on me in workplace either so what’s the difference? My allies have abandoned me, and my employers have exploited me.