A gift to the Library of Congress from a University faculty member is a valued addition to the national library.
Jim Delahoussaye, an adjunct researcher in the Department of Anthropology, is a zooarchaeologist, an expert in identifying animal bones.
He’s familiar with field work and field recording in remote regions. When he was a graduate student, he traveled extensively in North and South America, recording the sounds of frogs to identify their calls.
Since 1972, he has interviewed the families of the Atchafalaya Basin and recorded their stories. He recently shipped 96 audiotapes of those conversations to Washington, D.C., where they have been added to the archives of the Library’s American Folklife Center. The Center has one of the largest ethnographic archives in the world, and preserves and presents folklife through research, training, archival preservation and public programs.
In the 1970s, Delahoussaye was a commercial fisherman in the Basin. His mentor was Joe Sauce, whose family has fished there for generations.
“Through him, I met his parents and through them, the community that they lived in. I began to make tapes of them and I’m still making tapes of the same group of people,” Delahoussaye said. He has recorded more than 40 individuals.
“These families were 18th and 19th century immigrant families. When I started working within the community of Myette Point, there were four languages being spoken, in addition to English.” Various families also spoke French, Spanish, German and Italian.
Around the dinner table, they shared the day-to-day details of life in the swamp. Their conversations cover topics such as fishing and boat building, cooking, medicine, weather and community gatherings.
Todd Harvey, acquisitions coordinator for the American Folklife Center, said Delahoussaye’s contribution is unique and outstanding, in part because it deals with immigrant families. It also filled a gap.
The archives, which were established in 1928, include a body of recordings from the American South, but the Center had no recordings from the Atchafalaya Basin.
“The library only accepts donations of materials that are of national importance,” Harvey added.