What happens when folk song archives are placed in conversation with one another? Join us for a talk exploring how contemporary song catching, centered on memory, fragments, and everyday voices, extends and reanimates earlier regional collecting efforts.

Drawing on folklorist Derek Piotr's Fieldwork Archive, materials from the Fife Folklore Archives, and their collaboration through Intermountain Song Trails, speakers Joe Kinzer and Derek Piotr examine how the mid-twentieth-century tradition of "song catching" is being reimagined today.

Focusing on remembered songs, fragments, and everyday voices, the talk traces how songs travel across regions and generations, how memory shapes archival collections, and how new community contributions extend and speak back to earlier regional documentation efforts by collectors such as Austin and Alta Fife, founders of the Folklore Archives at Utah State University.

Using field recordings, community-submitted songs, and archival materials, the speakers reflect on collaborative archival practice and the circulation of folk song across time and place. The presentation considers how independent and institutional archives can work together to support shared stewardship, ethical reuse, and community-centered approaches to memory and sound.

Event Details

• Date & Time
  March 20, 2026 at 1:30 PM
• Location
  LIB 101, Utah State University
• Audience
  Open to students, faculty, and the public

An accompanying display will feature fieldwork materials and recordings illustrating regional folk song documentation, past and present.

This event is hosted by Special Collections & Archives at Utah State University Libraries in collaboration with the Derek Piotr Fieldwork Archive. Funding is provided by USU Libraries, Utah Humanities Council, and Utah Historical Society.