Mar

Career music producer chosen to head Folkways Recordings

Maureen Loughran has been named the director and curator of Smithsonian Folkways, effective March 27. Loughran, a career music producer, archivist and scholar, is currently the senior producer of American Routes, a nationally distributed public radio series featuring the diversity of the country’s musical traditions.

A public ethnomusicologist by training, Loughran has served for over a decade with American Routes, first as its archivist and then as its senior producer. She wrote and edited radio segments on vernacular American cultural topics and artist interviews with a wide variety of important figures of American music, including go-go pioneer Chuck Brown, country music’s trailblazing songwriter and singer Loretta Lynn, music documentary filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and East Harlem “Salsoul” crooner Joe Baatan, among many others. She produced several radio concert presentations of the National Folk Festival, the National Endowment for the Arts’ annual National Heritage Fellows concert, and the Midnight Preserves series at Preservation Hall. She also served as the primary producer for long-feature radio documentaries on Mahalia Jackson, Bessie Smith, Alan Lomax, John Coltrane and Woody Guthrie.

Loughran’s experience includes work in archives, both internationally at the Irish Traditional Music Archive in Dublin, Ireland and nationally at the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress. She served as deputy director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance in New York City, where she oversaw grants, managed artist relations and produced public programs, including its annual concert at Lincoln Center. As a researcher, Loughran documented the sacred and secular music traditions of Baton Rouge for the Louisiana Folklife Program of the state’s Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, while her doctoral research explored underground radio, soundscape gentrification and cultural community organizing in her hometown of Washington, D.C.

Loughran currently serves on the board of the Louisiana Folklore Society and is a mentor to early career ethnomusicologists with the Society for Ethnomusicology. She holds a Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from Brown University.

Richard Kurin, Smithsonian Distinguished Scholar and Ambassador at Large, who is acting as Interim Director of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage until Clifford Murphy assumes the directorship April 6, made the announcement of Loughran’s appointment Tuesday. He also thanked the search committee for its work.

“I would like to take this opportunity to thank Daniel Sheehy, the former director of Smithsonian Folkways who came out of retirement to serve as interim director over the past two years,” Kurin said. “I also thank Folkways’ Associate Director John Smith for his excellent work and leadership. In addition, great thanks are due to the search committee, staffed by Suleyka Lozins, Office of Human Resources, and Greg Bettwy, Chief of Staff to the Secretary, who helped identify this outstanding candidate:”

Kevin Gover, Under Secretary for Museums and Culture (chair)
Monique Chism, Under Secretary for Education
Ginnie Cooper, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage Advisory Council Chair
Tom Downs, CFCH Advisory Council Member
Cynthia Chavez Lamar, Director, National Museum of the American Indian
Selina Morales, CFCH Advisory Board Member
Sabrina Motley, Director, Smithsonian Folklife Festival
Dwandalyn Reece, Associate Director for Curatorial Affairs, National Museum of African American History and Culture
Anthony Seeger, Smithsonian Folkways Advisory Board Chair
John Smith, Associate Director, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

“As a presenter, archivist, public educator and scholar, Loughran has demonstrated a lifelong commitment to preserving the diversity and creativity of musical traditions and promoting their educational role in today’s world. That experience will serve her well as director of Smithsonian Folkways as she leads the ongoing documentation, preservation, production, physical and digital distribution of sound recordings for Smithsonian Folkways comprised of some two dozen record labels and more than 60,000 tracks of music, and the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives with its extensive and wide-ranging collection documenting the community-based traditions of the American and world’s people. Please join me in welcoming Maureen Loughran to her new role at the Smithsonian,” Kurin concluded.