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Following are announcements of two new American Memory collections presented by the American Folklife Center. These announcements have been sent to a number of lists. Please accept our apologies for any duplicate postings. "NOW WHAT A TIME": BLUES, GOSPEL, AND THE FORT VALLEY MUSIC FESTIVALS (1938-1943) Audio recordings from what may be the first folk festival created by and for African-Americans are featured in the latest addition to the American Memory online collections of the Library of Congress. "Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals, 1938-1943 is a folk music collection consisting of approximately one hundred sound recordings and related documentation such as song lists and correspondence created during trips to the Fort Valley State College Folk Festival in Fort Valley, Georgia. These recordings, which are a part of the American Folklife Center collections held at the Library of Congress, were made in 1941 and in March, June and July 1943. Recorded at a historically black college founded in 1895, the recordings include blues and gospel songs recorded by John Wesley Work III, Lewis Jones, and Willis Laurence James, with the support of the Library’s Archive of American Folk Song, now known as the Archive of Folk Culture. These recordings include both choral and instrumental works performed by artists such as Will Chastain, Buster Brown, the Silver Star Singers, and Traveller Home Singers. Supplementing the recordings and song lists are other publications about the festival, including a special issue of the Fort Valley State College (now Fort Valley State University) student newsletter, the Peachite. Also included in this collection are recordings made in Tennessee and Alabama between 1938 and 1941 by John Wesley Work III. These recordings include six songs by Sacred Harp singers created in 1938 and a recording of the Holloway High School Quartet made in 1941. As the Fort Valley Music Festivals took place during World War II, this collection also provides a unique opportunity to feature the Center's wartime collections documenting soldiers’ songs and other folkloristic material growing out of the war. In addition to preserving blues and gospel songs of the time, “Now What a Time” also documents the topical re-wording of several standard gospel songs to address the wartime concerns of those performing at the festival. Users will enjoy listening to the music and will learn more about the impact of World War II on the people within the African-American community. The presentation of "Now What a Time": Blues, Gospel, and the Fort Valley Music Festivals (1938-1943) is made possible by the generous support of The Texaco Foundation. This collection can be found at the following URL: <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ftvhtml/> FIDDLE TUNES OF THE OLD FRONTIER: THE HENRY REED COLLECTION The American Folklife Center's Henry Reed Collection is now available online through the Library of Congress American Memory Web site at the following URL: <http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hrhtml/> This unique American music collection, released on the 116th anniversary of his birth in Peterstown, West Virginia, features traditional fiddle tunes performed by Henry Reed. Recorded in Glen Lyn, Virginia, by folklorist Alan Jabbour in 1966-67, when Reed was over eighty years old, these tunes represent the music and evoke the history and spirit of the Appalachian frontier. Many of the tunes presented in this collection have enjoyed new popularity during the fiddling revival of the later twentieth century, and are performed today by a new generation of musicians. The online presentation includes 184 sound recordings, available in WaveForm, MP3, and RealAudio formats; Jabbour's fieldnotes; and sixty-nine musical transcriptions. New descriptive notes on tune histories and musical features accompany the sound recordings, and an extensive listing of related publications and a glossary of musical terms provide further avenues for exploration. An essay by Alan Jabbour (with photographs by Carl Fleischhauer, Karen Singer Jabbour, and Kit Olson) discussing Reed's life, art, and influence accompanies the collection as a special presentation. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress was created by Congress in 1976 "to preserve and present American Folklife." The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established at the Library in 1928 as a repository for American Folk Music. The Center and its collections have grown to encompass all aspects of folklife from this country and around the world. Other folklife-related online collections, selected publications of the American Folklife Center, and information about products and services are available from the Center's home page: <http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife> American Memory is a project of the National Digital Library Program of the Library of Congress, which, in collaboration with other institutions, is bringing important American historical materials to citizens around the world. Through American Memory, over seventy multimedia collections of digitized documents, photographs, recorded sound, motion pictures, and text are now available online, free to the public for educational purposes. These collections are the eighth and ninth collections from the American Folklife Center to be added on the American Memory Web site. All American Memory collections can be accessed through: http://memory.loc.gov. 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