<head><style>body{font-size:10pt;font-family:arial,sans-serif;background-color:#ffffff;color:black;}p{margin:0px;}</style></head><body><font color="#000000"><font size="2"><font face="arial,sans-serif"><font size="4"><b>Cambridge Forum</b></font><br>3 Church Street ● Cambridge, MA 02138<br>617-495-2727<br>email: director@cambridgeforum.org<br>cambridgeforum.org<br><br><i><b>Release </b></i> October 30, 2013<br><br><br><i><font size="3"><b>Cambridge Forum Celebrates Folk Music Month in Harvard Square<br></b></font></i><br>On <b><u>Wednesday, November 13</u></b>, Cambridge Forum hosts musician and author <b>Stephen Wade</b> as he takes an in-depth look at the ordinary people who recorded live music for the Library of Congress during the 1930s and '40s. Wade, who first played Club Passim in the '70s, has spent two decades tracking down these folk musicians and now brings their stories to light in an award-winning book, The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience. Who were these amateur musicians and what role did music play in their lives? What impact did their participation in the field recording projects have on them? How did they contribute to our understanding of American folk culture? Folklorist <b>Maggie Holtzberg</b> moderates the program at First Parish in Cambridge, 3 Church Street in Harvard Square, beginning at 7 pm. <br><br>Growing up in Chicago in the 1950s and ‘60s, <b>Stephen Wade</b> started playing blues guitar at age eleven and eventually switched to the banjo. Immersing himself in the banjo, traditional music, and American folklore, he traveled across the United States to research American humor and folk tales and meet with folk musicians in the field. Out of these experiences, he created two award-winning theatrical performances combining storytelling, traditional music, and percussive dance, Banjo Dancing and On the Way Home. He has published numerous essays, reviews, and articles, written and narrated a film, Catching the Music, and released several CDs, including the 1997 Rounder collection, A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings and the 2012 Banjo Diary: Lessons from Tradition. Since 1996 his occasional commentaries on folksongs and traditional tunes have appeared on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. Wade is most recently the author of the book The Beautiful Music All Around Us: Field Recordings and the American Experience (with a companion CD), which recently won a Deems Taylor award from ASCAP. Wade will receive the award in New York City on November 14.<br><br><b>Maggie Holtzberg</b> is the Manager of the Folk Arts & Heritage Program at the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Director of Cultural Programming, Lowell National Historical Park. She is the author of Keepers of Tradition: Art and Folk Heritage in Massachusetts, The Lost World of the Craft Printer, and Portrait of Spirit: One Story at a Time; producer of the sound recording Georgia Folk: A Sampler of Traditional Sound, and co-director/producer of the documentary film Gandy Dancers. <br><br>The program is free and open to the public. Cambridge Forum is recorded and edited for public radio broadcast. Edited podcasts are available at www.cambridgeforum.org. Select forums can also be viewed in their entirety on YouTube.<br><br>#####<br></font></font></font></body><pre>
Cambridge Forum
3 Church Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
Phone: 617-495-2727
email: mailto:director@cambridgeforum.org
website: http://www.cambridgeforum.org
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