Listening to Boston radio from her Baltimore home in the late 60s, folklorist Millie Rahn,
American studies '74, absorbed new worlds through the personal words of folk and blues singers.
"They were not just singing, but telling their lives at a moment in history where avenues of
communication were opening up at a grassroots level all over the country," says Rahn.
This exposure to living stories began Rahn's fascination with tracing and documenting the history
and traditions of communities through song, memories and daily experience.
Likewise, the UMBC American studies department of the early 1970s guided her future by providing
her with a rich, humanities-based education that has influenced her career as a folklorist, leading
to an advanced degree in folklore from the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Rahn learned to
record oral histories and provide individualized attention. Now 25 years later, she uses her
educational experience constantly "in terms of putting everything into context," a necessity for all
social sciences and archival practices, but also for contact made in the everyday. "UMBC equipped me
with the tools to read a landscape, look at culture and ask the right questions." Since her
graduation in 1974, she has sustained her connection to UMBC, most recently by speaking
at the spring 1999 American Studies Alumni Dinner.
From Watertown, MA, Rahn is currently involved with numerous projects engaged in the living
memories of people. "Being a folklorist really means hanging out with people. The traditionalizing
impulse is incredibly strong," she acknowledges, as evidenced by the growing interest in the history
of the 1960s and a growing number of archives nationwide.
Most recently she has been working with Wellesley College on an oral history project documenting
the institution's history in the 20th century. Since 1993 she has been collaborating with folk
performer turned television producer James Field on a three-part public television documentary
called "An Ocean of Diamonds: The Folk Years, 1958-1969." As the official folk revival show in the
PBS pipeline, "Ocean of Diamonds" will integrate footage from the United States and abroad, involving
many artists and performers from the era. A forthcoming book, Let Us Gather by the River: Club 47
and the Folk Revival , is also in process and has led to Rahn working closely with Betsy Siggins,
executive director of Club Passim in Cambridge. Their archival project, affiliated with Harvard
University's Archive of World Music, collects oral histories and memorabilia of the folk revival of
the 60s and of the local music scene of the present.
Joanna Raczynska is the program assistant for UMBC's Office of Arts Management.
