UW Center for the Study Of Upper Midwestern Culture

03/12/2025

Check out this footage from the 2025 Lac du Flambeau Snow Snake Championship on March 1 hosted by Wayne Valliere and Lawrence Mann:

Lac du Flambeau Snow Snake championship, March 1, 2025. Introduced by Wayne Valliere, Mino Giizhig.

04/17/2024

Thanks to everyone who came to today's nyckelharpa pop-up shop, hosted by folk musician-in-residence Renee Vaughan! Even Bucky Badger gave the nyckelharpa a try!

04/17/2024

Didn't get a chance to catch the McNordiques concert the other week? Check out one of their sets below!

Want to hear more? Follow our YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/), where we will post more clips from the concert soon!

Irish/Scandinavian/French Set:

"The Bugle Hornpipe" - Traditional - Irish
"Griffenfelt" - Traditional - Norwegian
"La Sansonette" - Dominique Forges - French

Renee Vaughan - Nyckelharpa
Tom Klein - Uilleann Pipes
Dan Newton - Accordion
Elizabeth Rowan - Guiro

04/04/2024

TONIGHT IS THE NIGHT! Due to the cold weather, this event will now take place indoors. Join us in Morphy Hall at 7:00 pm for a toe-wiggling good time with the McNordiques!

Send a message to learn more

02/06/2024

Join us Friday, February 9, at 4 pm!

The period of large-scale migration from Europe to North America during the 19th and into the 20th century coincided with the invention of recorded sound. Through obsolete media such as phonograph cylinders and shellac records, Šír will share a curated historical soundtrack of the famous singer Bohumil Pták (1869-1933), who performed folksongs and operatic arias on tours across North America.

This talk will illuminate one of Pták’s rarest recordings, a duet he recorded with Hanna Foerster in New York on January 24, 1912, of “Vaška a Mařenky” from Bedřich Smetana’s opera The Bartered Bride, which is in the Mills Music Library 78-rpm Recordings Collection. Focusing on stories of migrants (Pták and other Bohemians) as well as historical events and music, Šír will show an American story from the early 20th Century and bring the audience to a time when New York, Baltimore, Cleveland, Chicago, and the rural Upper Midwest were new homes for Bohemian/Czech immigrants.

11/01/2023

November 10 & 11: a series of events bridging campus & community to celebrate our Hip Hop roots in the Midwest. Supporting the next generation of performers, activists and community leaders, charting the paths to a brighter future.

10/15/2023

https://news.wisc.edu/ojibwe-birchbark-canoe-returns-to-lake-mendota-after-10-years-connecting-to-1000s-of-years-of-art-and-culture/

Ten years after it first cut through Lake Mendota, a traditional birchbark canoe returned to the water, paddled by its maker, Wayne Valliere, who shared the experience with members of a first-year experience group focused on Indigenous arts and science.

09/29/2023

Join us next week!

On Tuesday, October 3, we'll be joining Jim Leary, Marcus Cederström, and our good friends at Mills Music Library, the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, and the Nordic Folklife Project for a multimedia presentation on "Swede Home Chicago." The event is free and open to the public. Learn more:
https://folklife.wisc.edu/event/swede-home-chicago-the-wallins-svenska-records-story-1923-1927/

09/22/2023

Looking forward to seeing everyone at tonight’s Bowery dance at 6:30. Please note that Lot 36 is closed for parking. Free parking is available in Lot 34, however!

09/12/2023

It’s time again for our annual fall dance! Instead of a barn dance, we’re hosting a bowery dance. What’s a bowery? UW–Madison and the Dictionary of Regional American English has you covered.

Music will be provided by Madison’s own Scandinavian American Old-Time Dance Music Ensemble, a mix of community members, UW-Madison students, faculty and staff, and by Iowa musicians Jon Rotto and Beth Hoven Rotto, who was musician-in-residence on campus in 2022. Come dance to waltz, polka, schottische and other old time dances on campus at Allen Centennial Garden.

This event is free and open to the public and is sponsored by the Nordic Folklife Project, the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures, and the Department of German, Nordic, Slavic+.

https://gns.wisc.edu/events/bowery-dance/