Thursday, October 1
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
Registration Required Below
What can a song, a story, or a half-remembered melody tell us about the people who carry it?
Join folklorist, researcher, and performer Derek Piotr for a fascinating look at his Fieldwork Archive, a collection of more than 1,500 audio recordings made since 2020. Derek’s focus will be on how he documents the stories of people who often have no musical background, yet can still relate a folkloric memory through songs, stories, hymns and poetry.
Piotr will share stories from his fieldwork journeys, from Iceland to Appalachia and explore how he finds, records, and preserves these often-overlooked areas of folklife. Come hear the remarkable songs and stories that live in ordinary voices.
About Our Speaker
Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher, and performer whose work centers on the human voice. His interests include fieldwork, vocal performance, preservation, and autoethnography, with a particular focus on tenderness, fragility, beauty, and brutality. He has collaborated with artists including Scott Solter, Nathan Salsburg, and Thomas Brinkmann across a range of disciplines.
He is lead archivist and creative director of The Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive (fieldwork-archive.com), which was established by Derek in August 2022. The Archive contains over 1,500 audio recordings made from March 2020 onward, and preserves diverse representations of folklife, including ballads, hymns, tales, poems, children’s songs, and interviews.