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Community Corner

Unsung Hero of Folk Music in Concert

Hear Joe Hickerson — an unsung hero of the 1960s folk music revival — in concert on Sunday, July 13, 2014 at the Seekers Church in Takoma Park.  Joe’s solo concert is part of the 50th Anniversary Celebration of the Folklore Society of Greater Washington (FSGW), an association that Joe was instrumental (pardon the pun!) in founding.

For more than 45 years, Joe Hickerson has been a scholar, performer and popularizer of American folk music.  He is a former director of the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress. With Pete Seeger, he is the co-author of the classic protest song, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”  He has performed his vast repertoire of songs over a thousand times throughout the United States, Canada, Finland, and Ukraine.  He has an extensive catalogue of recordings on the Folk Legacy and Folkways labels.  Semi-retired, Joe lectures and writes on a variety of folk music topics, and is available for song and copyright research (past projects include researching copyrights for the Coen Brothers’ film, “O, Brother, Where Art Thou?)”

Joe sings mostly traditional songs with various American roots, African-American, Anglo-American, Celtic or other. He is also a fine left-handed guitar player who is noted for his ability to lead chorus songs and to crack appallingly funny puns. 

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When:  July 13, 2014 8:00 p.m.

Where: Seeker's Church, 276 Carroll St. NW, Washington, DC 20012 (one block from the Takoma Metro Station.

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Admission: General admission $20, FSGW members $15, students $10

Information & Directions: fsgw.org or contact Liz Milner, publicity@fsgw.org

In addition to his gig at the Seekers Church, Joe will also present a talk entitled "Folk Music, Archives, and Performing: Experiences, Adventures, and Great Stories" as part of the Benjamin Botkin Folklife Lecture Series at the Library of Congress on Tuesday, July 15, 2014, from 12:00 noon to 1:00 pm in the Mumford Room on the sixth floor of the James Madison Building.  For this event, Joe will be interviewed by American Folklife Center Ethnomusicologist/Folklorist Jennifer Cutting, who will ask about his career as an archivist, researcher, singer and songwriter.


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