Group Celebrates Local Folk Music Legacies

In 1958, a young, soon-to-be Boston University dropout named Joan Baez played her first live show. It was at a venue called Club 47 just outside of Harvard Square, and only eight people were in attendance. From this inauspicious beginning Baez soon rose to be the queen of the folk genre, and with the likes of Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger changed the world with her music.

It is this history, among others in the folk tradition, that is being celebrated by the New England Folk Music Archives, an institution that was founded two years ago. It is dedicated to bringing the rich style of folk music back into the public eye. In November, the group installed a temporary gallery at 30 Brattle Street with a collection of photographs and books and placed a small collection of photographs in J.P. Licks on Massachusetts Avenue.

“Our job is to present and promote the history of folk music,” says George Pratt, a volunteer at the Archives. The location of the Archives, just blocks away from the original Club 47, is no coincidence. “A lot of this came out of Club 47, which in the 1950s and 1960s was the center of the folk revival,” Pratt says.

The Archives catalogs Cambridge’s rich musical history with pictures of musicians like Bruce Springsteen, who was rather ironically refused a gig at Club 47’s successor Club Passim.

Betsy Siggins, the founder of the New England Folk Music Archives, was a key member of the Club 47 scene back in the 60s and counted several famous folk musicians among her friends. “I do this because it is a natural progression for me… to try to consolidate this history into a cohesive body of work,” she says.

However, the Archives is not only a gallery. As of this December, the institution will be moving into a new space in the Somerville Armory. Along with a smaller gallery, the Archives will be running a music school as well as a conference space.

The New England Folk Music Archives has also formed a relationship with the Haggerty School, a public school in west Cambridge. The Archives work with modern musicians to teach the history of folk music to local children.

“We had Alastair Moock who did a piece on the history surrounding Woody Guthrie,” says Karen Kosko, the librarian at the Haggerty School. “We also were able to give each of the 63 kids a harmonica, and gave them the opportunity to make their own music.”

The school plans to continue working with the Archives this year on a similar project based around the children’s family life in order to help them—many of whom are from immigrant communities—to draw connections between their experiences and the experiences of other Americans.

For Kosko, folk music is a great tool to help forge this connection. “I feel that there is this whole layer of folk music that is a story,” she says. “Many of my kids are from other cultures and they have no idea about the history of the music in this country. They live in Cambridge, and folk music is part of Cambridge’s history, and they can actually relate to that. When I mention Woody Guthrie now, a lot of kids get it. They know who I’m talking about.”

The New England Folk Music Archives is the type of project that Siggins has been trying to put together for years as a way to ensure that Cambridge’s rich folk music legacy continues to be remembered and celebrated.

“I’m happy to be doing this… and to be putting together a team of people who are completely devoted to it,” she says.