Exploring The Fieldwork Archive with Derek Piotr

The Fieldwork Archive (fieldwork-archive.com) was established by Derek Piotr in August 2022. It contains over 1,500 audio recordings made from March 2020 onward, and preserves diverse representations of folklife; ballads, hymns, tales, poems, children’s songs, and interviews among them. The focus of this collection is on the non-singer: someone with no background in musical performance who can nevertheless relate a song or folkloric memory. In this lecture, Derek will walk you through the process of journeying everywhere from Iceland to Appalachia to record these songs from non-musicians, as well as the organization and development of the Archive as a web-based repository.

Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher and performer whose work focuses primarily on the human voice. His work covers practices including fieldwork, vocal performance, preservation and autoethnography; and is primarily concerned with tenderness, fragility, beauty and brutality. He has collaborated with artists including Scott Solter, Nathan Salsburg and Thomas Brinkmann across various disciplines.