Music Films

Accordions Rising offers entertaining, conversation-style interviews, anecdotal commentary, and both formal and informal music performances by celebrated accordionists, composers,…

Pete and Toshi Seeger, their son Daniel, and folklorist Bruce Jackson visited a Texas prison in Huntsville in March of 1966 and produced this rare document of of work songs by…

This video tells how and where Arkansas ballad singer Almeda Riddle began her 10 year stint of singing old ballads all over the country. In an informal manner, folk musician Starr…

Across time, oceans and cultures, "Amazing Grace" has endured as one of the most popular pieces of music in the English language. Its universal appeal inspired the acclaimed…

"Amen!" explores the rich traditions, historical significance, and meaning of Black church music in a concert film, recorded before a live audience at the Second Baptist Church in…

This film examines the thrilling regional phenomenon of Cajuns who wade in murky bayou waters to catch huge catfish and turtles by reaching into hollow logs and stumps with their…

Alan Lomax travels through the Southern Appalachians investigating the songs, dances, and religious rituals of the descendents of the Scotch-Irish frontiers people who have made…

In 1833 Mrs. Frances Silver was hanged in Morganton, North Carolina, for the ax murder of her husband Charles. Tom Davenport's film explores the case through the singing and…

Banjo Spirits explores the legacy of the banjo through the eyes of Don Stover and Stephen Wade who assess the central role the banjo plays in their lives as a tool for creative…

This is one of three short films in the Living Texas Blues series. Battle of the Guitars shows the influence of Aaron "T-Bone" Walker through the performance of Pete Mayes and Joe…

I’d like for them to remember me as the father of Bluegrass music, the man that originated this music. —Bill Monroe

An intimate and humorous look at the life and career of the legendary blues pianist Alex Moore, a native of Dallas, was the first African American Texan to receive a National…

John Jackson, John Dee Holeman, Friz Holloway and others perform and reminisce about old-time houseparties in North Carolina and Virginia

A film portrait of the last Black medicine-show performer, Arthur "Peg Leg Sam" Jackson, with harmonica songs, tales of hoboing, buckdances, and a live medicine-show performance.