Restrictions to Access

No restrictions. Open for research.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Alison Joanne Kahn Collection of North Carolina Coastal Fieldwork #20228, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Acquisitions information unknown (Acc. 103649).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Processed by: Anne Wells, July 2019

Encoded by: Anne Wells, July 2019

Archival processing of the Alison Joanne Kahn Collection of North Carolina Coastal Fieldwork was made possible through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• Art--North Carolina.
• Artists--North Carolina.
• Blues music--North Carolina.
• Church music--North Carolina.
• Folk music--North Carolina.
• Folklore--North Carolina.
• Gospel music--North Carolina.
• Kahn, Alison Joanne, 1954-
• North Carolina--Coast.
• Tales--North Carolina.

Alison Joanne Kahn is a white independent writer, editor, and folklorist. In 1982 she received her master's degree in folklore from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, where she conducted her masters thesis on the Eastern European Jewish community in St. John's, Newfoundland. She later published Listen While I Tell You: A Story of the Jews of St. John's (1987), based on her master's thesis fieldwork. In 1989 the North Carolina Arts Council hired Kahn to conduct fieldwork for a National Endowment for the Arts grant funded project on the traditional arts and maritime trades of North Carolina's coastal region. Mary Anne McDonald and George Holt of the North Carolina Arts Council conceptualized and oversaw the project, while Mike Dunn of the North Carolina State parks helped coordinate the project within the state park system. From July to October of 1990, Kahn conducted fieldwork in Beaufort and Hyde counties, resulting in field recordings, photographs, and related documentation on church choirs, musicians, composers, self-taught artists, quilters, storytellers, and community members involved with the region's maritime and farming traditions. Kahn is now based out of Takoma Park, Md., where she continues to work as an independent writer, editor, and folklorist.

Field recordings and documentation related to a National Endowment for the Arts and North Carolina Arts Council-funded project on traditional arts and maritime trades of North Carolina's coastal region. Alison Joanne Kahn, a white independent writer, editor, and folklorist, conducted the fieldwork in Beaufort and Hyde counties in the summer of 1990. Mary Anne McDonald and George Holt of the North Carolina Arts Council conceptualized and oversaw the project, while Mike Dunn of the North Carolina State parks helped coordinate the project within the state park system. The collection includes Alison Kahn's field recordings and related documentation on church choirs, musicians, composers, self-taught artists, quilters, storytellers, and community members involved with the region's maritime and farming traditions.

The majority of the field recordings consist of live recordings of church choirs in Beaufort and Hyde counties, including recordings made at African Methodist Episcopal, Mennonite, and Baptist churches. Other recordings include interviews with self-taught artists, storytellers, composers, and performers of folk, old-time, and blues music, as well as two recordings of self-released gospel music (FS-20228/628, FS-20228/629) presumably collected by Alison Kahn while she was conducting her fieldwork for the project. Of particular note is a recording with Bill "Meter Man" Ebison (FS-20228/618), an African American composer, singer, and guitarist of Washington, N.C., who composes and sings songs about his job as a meter reader for the electric company, as well as recordings of Ann Bell (FS-20228/615-616), a self-taught painter who uses water colors with pen and ink to portray everyday scenes from her childhood as a sharecropper's daughter. All recordings are on audiocassette.

Documentation consists mostly of grant project materials created and compiled by Kahn, including tape logs, time logs, reports, and release forms, as well as clippings, maps, flyers, programs, and other ephemera related to North Carolina's coastal region and the grant project's interview subjects. The collection also contains materials related to the grant project proposal, including a letter of intent to the NEA from George Holt, who was Director of the Folklife Section of the North Carolina Arts Council at the time, a copy of the grant proposal, a fieldworker job posting for the grant project, and Kahn's application for the position.

• Audiocassettes (FS-611-629)