Restrictions to Access

Use of audio or moving image materials may require production of listening or viewing copies.

Restrictions to Use

No usage restrictions.

Copyright Notice

Copyright is retained by the authors of items in these papers, or their descendants, as stipulated by United States copyright law.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], in the Jay Anania Collection #20076, Southern Folklife Collection, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Acquisitions Information

Acquisitions information unknown (Acc. 102547).

Sensitive Materials Statement

Manuscript collections and archival records may contain materials with sensitive or confidential information that is protected under federal or state right to privacy laws and regulations, the North Carolina Public Records Act (N.C.G.S. § 132 1 et seq.), and Article 7 of the North Carolina State Personnel Act (Privacy of State Employee Personnel Records, N.C.G.S. § 126-22 et seq.). Researchers are advised that the disclosure of certain information pertaining to identifiable living individuals represented in this collection without the consent of those individuals may have legal ramifications (e.g., a cause of action under common law for invasion of privacy may arise if facts concerning an individual's private life are published that would be deemed highly offensive to a reasonable person) for which the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill assumes no responsibility.

Encoded by: Anne Wells, March 2016

Archival processing of the Jay Anania Collection was made possible through a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The following terms from Library of Congress Subject Headings suggest topics, persons, geography, etc. interspersed through the entire collection; the terms do not usually represent discrete and easily identifiable portions of the collection--such as folders or items.

Clicking on a subject heading below will take you into the University Library's online catalog.

• African American musicians--Interviews.
• Blues (Music)
• Blues musicians--South Carolina--Interviews.
• Folk music--South Carolina.
• Jackson, Arthur, 1911-1977.
• Johnson, Henry, 1908-1974.
• Medicine shows.
• Oral history.
• Piano music (Blues)
• Radio broadcasters--United States--Biography.
• Radio broadcasting--United States--History.
• Songs, English--South Carolina.

• Tom Davenport Papers (#20025)
• Peter Lowry Collection (#20017)
• Southern Folklife Collection Field Notes (#30025)
• Southern Folklife Collection Moving Image Materials (#30002)
• Charles White and Dave Rhees Collection (#20099)

Vincent (Jay) Anania heads the directing program at the graduate film school at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He has been making films since the mid-1970s. After working in experimental forms for several years, he began making documentaries for television, primarily for PBS and ABC. His documentary films covered political subjects throughout the Third World, including Northwest Pakistan, The Phillipines, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, Ethiopia, Sudan, Malawi, Egypt, and the South Pacific. Anania shot, directed, edited, and wrote his docuemtaries, and often worked as a one man crew.

Anania continues to make documentaries on cultural and political subjects, but has also, since the mid-1990s, begun writing, directing and editing narrative features. His dramatic features include: The Pagan Book of Arthur Rimbaud (1995), Long Time Since (1997), The Citized (1999), The Girl Under the Waves (2001), Her Name is Carla (2003), Day on Fire (2006), Drinking Sand (2008), Shadows and Lies (2010), and The Letter (2012).

Biography courtesy of New York University's Tisch School of the Arts

The Jay Anania Collection consists of 2 open reel audio recordings, 1973, featuring music and interviews from blues performers Arthur Jackson (1911-1977) and Henry Johnson. Filmmaker, Jay Anania, made the recordings while he was an undergraduate student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. They were conducted in collaboration with folklorist and record producer, Bruce Bastin, as part of Anania's personal film project on Jackson. Commonly known as Peg Leg Sam, Jackson was an African American blues harmonica player and medicine show performer, from Jonesville, S.C. In his interview Jackson discusses his experiences in show business, medicine shows, radio broadcasting, and riding freight trains. The collection also contains an interview with Henry Johnson, an African American blues performer from Union, S.C. This recording primarily consists of Johnson playing and singing blues songs on guitar. Both Jackson's and Johnson's musical careers ranged from the mid-1930s to the mid-1970s.

• Audiotapes (FT-20076/242-243)
• Field tape notes (Folder 406 within the Southern Folklife Collection Field Notes #30025)