Folkways: Search & Destroy

is this the one where the folklorists sing versions of the same ballad and its cousins (streets of laredo, one morning in may, etc.). yeah, the music isn't great, but the liner notes are really interesting.

i like the hammered dulcimer; i expect you just haven't heard the right hammered dulcimer yet.

Destroy: American Banjo -- a mediocre comp that fails to live up to the diversity of sound possibilities suggested by the name. Also, anything by Sweet Honey in the Rock. Also, most of the Big Bill Broonzy albums. They're not bad or anything, just sort of lackluster next to a lot of the other blues stuff of his era.

i always wanted to hear this

oh yeah, totally search.

that stuff is great! i love irrelevant protest music.

I built a lot of treehouses and other such fortresses of solitude when I was a wee lad in rural and suburban New England.

Have you built a house, cap'n?

By Jacqueline Trescott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, April 1, 2005

The Smithsonian Institution is entering the highly competitive world of music downloads by offering the Smithsonian Folkways collection of ethnic and traditional music in an online music store.

Smithsonian Global Sound, the new project, will be formally launched during the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in June. The enterprise is in the same vein as Microsoft's MSNmusic, Apple's iTunes Music Store and Sony's Connect.

"This is a museum of sound," says Richard Kurin, director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Folkways will offer music that ranges from the earliest American folk songs to contemporary groups doing traditional music from Europe, Africa, Asia and South America. The music includes the songs of Woody Guthrie; the music of Mwenda Jean Bosco, the late guitar pioneer from Congo; the sound of the Turkish saz, a stringed instrument similar to a lute; playground songs by Suni Paz of Argentina; and the rich North Indian music of Kamalesh Maitra.

Global Sound will charge 99 cents a song, which are available in MP3 format. The Smithsonian will pay royalties to the artists, as its recording label has done with records and CDs.

The potential broad exposure pleases many Folkways artists.

"I'm all for it," says Mike Seeger, a member of the New Lost City Ramblers. The son of musicologist Charles Seeger and half-brother of Pete Seeger, Seeger has spent much of his life promoting southern and folk music. "I have a feeling of mission that I would like to have people get to know this realm of music better. This is a way to afford it," Seeger says.

"When we saw the blossoming of the Internet, we thought, what if we could use this as a device for opening up the archives?," says Kurin, who is in charge of the Folkways archives. "People who don't usually have a voice can have a voice in a democratic, central way."

With monetary returns to the artists, Kurin hopes the payments establish the ownership of the music. Over the years Folkways has fought to give the original voices their due. "There are world music stars who mine the traditional music, and the question is, what is the ownership, what is the moral commitment and how much is going back? When we give them the money, that establishes the intellectual property rights," Kurin says.

The pay to artists is a percentage of each download, but the formula varies according to contracts, he explains. If the Smithsonian or its archives' partners can't locate an artist, the money is put in escrow.

Since this is new territory for the Smithsonian, the staff needed to create the Global Sound unit. They recruited Jon Kertzer, an ethnomusicologist and Microsoft executive, and Anthony Seeger, an anthropologist, former director of Smithsonian Folkways and nephew of Pete Seeger, to assemble a development team in Seattle.

The start-up money came from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, Allen Foundation for Music and Folkways Alive! at the University of Alberta. Rockefeller provided $850,000, part of which would be paid back if Global Sound makes money.

The Web site, www.smithsonianglobalsound.org, will allow searches by artist, geographic location, language, cultural group or instrument. All of the Folkways archives, including photographs, can be downloaded onto a screen. Also in development are scrolling translations of some of the music for use on a personal computer. Right now the Haya Heroic Ballads, a form of storytelling found in northwest Tanzania, is being translated into English on the Web site.

To help people navigate the site, Kurin hopes to add contemporary personalities, like Mary Youngblood, the award-winning Native American flute player, and Mickey Hart, former drummer for the Grateful Dead, to guide people to their genre of world music, or their favorites.

The service also includes music from the International Library of African Music in Grahamstown, South Africa, and the Archives and Research Center for Ethnomusicology outside New Delhi, not only to expand the Smithsonian's holdings but also to "give them a marketplace," Kurin says.

As the Smithsonian fine-tunes this new service, the promoters hope new audiences for underappreciated artists of traditional music will develop.

"There's a guy in Punjab who is doing wonderful, meaningful work and it is never going to be heard," says Kurin. "Here is a way."

get one aunt molly jackson album.

my fave folkways album is probably the sci-fi sound effects one i have from the 50's. it's rad. i just sold my dockstader album to some dude from germany. but i taped it before i sent it.

ok sure, perhaps the direct political sentiment is irrelevant, but the music, both a a document of something many of us didn't live through and as intrinsic performance/music, can be quite good if not entirely great.

is singing about not getting someone/thing out of yr head going to be any less or more relevant in so many years.

But, yeah sure...Pete Seger and other old lefty's still pushing the same old bag as a means to motivate the modern society can be trying...but "protest music" has always been better when you go with the spirit and overlook the often forced lyrics (xceptions abound, na klar)

Indonesian Guitars = a revelation. Wow.

I might need to hear that.

Oo, I'll look that one up!

More recommendations (or warnings) would be cool as there's now like 35 million Folkways albums on eMusic.

I have two copies of the N. American Frogs one. When you do a comic book about a frog, people will give you frog stuff all the time.

Did anybody else mention Elizabeth Cotton's Freight Train and other North Carolina Folk Songs and Tunes? That's probably my favorite. (Howdy Jon)

Hi Jeff! What a sooprize!

Yeah, Elizabeth Cotten is definitely a favorite of mine too.

Jean Ritchie - British Traditional Ballads in the Southern Mountains = amazing

Search search search: Saint's Paradise: Trombone Shout Bands of the United House of Prayer

Along similar lines, the Doug and Jack Wallin unaccompanied songs album is really good.

Jordan, are you sure that's on Folkways? I can't find it on their site or on emusic.

Nevermind, found it.
http://www.folkways.si.edu/search/AlbumDetails.aspx?ID=2649

Dark Holler: Old Love Songs and Ballads

"...field recordings of Appalachian ballad singers collected by John Cohen in the Big Laurel region of Madison County, NC, in the early and mid-'60s"

This looks kind of amazing. Not only for the songs, but the documentary that comes with it, which was made at the time of the recordings. The focus of it seems to be a man called Dillard Chandler, who was illiterate poor, and lived in a beaten old shack.

more here:
http://www.mustrad.org.uk/reviews/d_holler.htm

Anyone heard/seen this?

i've always wondered about this one...

http://www.amazon.com/Street-Gangland-Rhythms-Improvisations-Trouble/dp/B000S5ACUU

What I've heard of it was pretty good, but I feel like the title and story gives it a mystique it may not otherwise deserve.

But folkways generally has a knack for coyly appealing titles.

Richard Carlin

author of

Worlds of Sound:
The Story of Smithsonian Folkways

w/ musical guest, Mariachi Los Amigos

Saturday, November 1, 3 p.m.

Politics & Prose bookstore
5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW • Washington, DC
www.politics-prose.com

Would go.

also lol wow I was a dick a few years ago in my obnoxious dismissal of protest singing.

Re: The Fugs - The Fugs First Album was originally released on Folkways as "The Village Fugs Sing Songs of Protest, Dissatisfaction, Annoyance and Fucking in the Streets" or sommat such. Totally classic beardo/wacko stuff recorded with the Holy Modal Rounders, way more "beat" and literary, kicks their rock & roll stuff out the door IMO. That and the abovementioned Virgin Fugs, which has more great stuff from that session but which didn't come out on Folkways. Apparently Harry Smith had them sign the contract as "The Fugs Jug Band" so Moe Asch would take 'em on as a folk group.

Search AND Destroy: Bob Dylan vs. A.J. Weberman, which is phone conversations between Dylan and the dude who dug through his garbage. Interspersed with the worst song ever written, performed by some other dude, as a segue piece. Dylan put the kybosh on the LP soon after it was issued and it's pretty much impossible to get.

I missed Carlin's Folkways book talk in DC as I was out of town. Anybody go or see him elsewhere? How's the book I wonder?

I got a great LP of early Klezmer last week. It's like 1910 to 1941 IIRC? Really awesome stuff.

http://www.bolingo.org/audio/texts/fr127_128_3.JPG

It has these dudes on the cover.

those "music of new orleans" LPs put together by sam charters are amazing. really rough recording quality in some cases, but i like it. you get the ambiance of the dance halls, not just the music.

http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/images/album_covers/SF700/FW02463.jpg

that looks pretty awesome ...

really want to find this one:

http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemid=617

http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/images/album_covers/SF270/FW03846.jpg

hi there

this and many other folkways albums are on spotify :)

http://media.smithsonianfolkways.org/images/album_covers/SF700/FW05589.jpg

also you don't have to feel guilty abt listening to folkways records on spotify because god knows the artists never got paid anyway :/

i wish there was a way to browse all of a labels releases on spotify

Yeah been googling but doesn't seem to be a definitive list

Folkways app like blue note would be so sweet

elizabeth cotton lps are sodamngood, only listen to elizabeth cotton

cottEN, EN, elizabeth cottEN, like that

so this got me searching around and i ended up making giant playlists of all the folkways records stuff i could find on spotify. you can search by label ("label:folkways"); it took 15 min of paging down to load all the tracks (31847 total!). seems to include most of the Folkways releases proper, along with many/most of the post-Smithsonian releases. there's a 10k song/playlist limit, so i split it into four, divided alphabetically by album title. voila:

1-E: http://open.spotify.com/user/majorgreg/playlist/6XoB1ygkX4B4w9OVjDrTty
F-L: http://open.spotify.com/user/majorgreg/playlist/0Swfc514BaMAxJ9nuzqPi1
M-R: http://open.spotify.com/user/majorgreg/playlist/5jYBvjNe5getECNps9XX7P
S-Z: http://open.spotify.com/user/majorgreg/playlist/5s7j6HU73NLVz0NKgZREKN

it's a little clunky to browse since many artists are split up among multiple playlists, but if you put them into a playlist folder, you can click on the name of the folder and it'll bring up the contents of all four at once and let you sort and filter them together. no replacement for a blue note style app but fun to browse around in...

i like the idea of spotify but whenever i run it on my 3-year-old macbook it slows everything down. a memory hog

thanks cooking it up right!

The Smithsonian sometimes sells vinyl and cassettes of Folkways stuff for reasonable prices at the annual Smithsonian Folklife fest near the Washington Monument at the end of June/beginning of July

http://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/music/from-woody-to-lead-belly-the-master-of-smithsonian-folkways/2015/04/17/0574a67a-e1f7-11e4-81ea-0649268f729e_story.html

Article about Folkways curator Jeff Place:

“I’ll tell you one thing,” says Ian MacKaye, the former Minor Threat and Fugazi frontman who has gotten to know Place. “There is no app that can replace that brain.”

This is one of my favorite Folkways releases:
http://www.folkways.si.edu/chris-kando-iijima-joanne-nobuko-miyamoto-charlie-chin/a-grain-of-sand-music-for-the-struggle-by-asians-in-america/american-folk-protest/music/album/smithsonian

The Smithsonian owned label is tweeting a job posting for a marketing director in case anyone is interested

Asch died in 1986 before the acquisition was finalized, but he left behind an important-yet-tricky stipulation: Each of the label’s original recordings had to be kept available in print forever. This posed significant logistical challenges, as most of the label’s recordings are not great sellers and are not carried in stores.

So the label created a system for making CDs available to the public strictly on the basis of demand.

“If people want one, we make one,” says Dan Sheehy, who succeeded Seeger as director and curator from 2000 to 2015. “We finally got to a place where someone in Boise can, at 3 a.m., order a custom CD. We’ll come in in the morning and the CD will already be made with the disc art on there, and another machine will have the sleeve. We just wrap them up and send them out.”

... A recent Big Bill Broonzy release sold more than 18,000 copies, making it the biggest selling release in Smithsonian Folkways history.

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/arts/music/blog/20862742/smithsonian-folkways-turns-30

yeah, i've ordered a couple things from them, pretty cool, though I like finding the originals in record stores. such great packaging overall.
here's one that was recommended to me recently -- totally great:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d9tpyKszw8

also bought a Mike Seeger LP -- Tipple Loam & Rail -- recently and was happily surprised to find Mike's signature (and phone number!) written on the back. Guess it's too late to call him up, but hey ...

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/arts/music/blog/20862743/folks-on-folkways

Folkways staff pick their faves

Experimental musician and professor Aaron Dilloway (formerly of Wolf Eyes) picked his favorites from the weirdest parts of the Folkways catalog, and it is really phenomenal.

Playlist here: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMKUNfG8UYdeJsZLnfcu0ZKrKgwlk1Utn

also on Spotify and Apple Music.

They've got lots of stuff on bandcamp, incl. some fairly recent recordings:
https://smithsonianfolkways.bandcamp.com/music

https://www.songlines.co.uk/news/smithsonian-folkways-label-director-sacked

the sacking of its director and curator last month. Huib Schippers took on the role in 2016 but, after four years, his contract has not been renewed. “People hire me because I care, I am passionate about stuff and will challenge existing structures if they don’t work anymore,” Schippers says from Washington DC by Skype. Curiously, Smithsonian has made no public statement about Schippers departure. “I’ve been disappeared,” he says, “while ironically Billboard just named me as one of 75 Power Players in the [music] industry.”

https://www.songlines.co.uk/news/smithsonian-folkways-label-director-sacked

the sacking of its director and curator last month. Huib Schippers took on the role in 2016 but, after four years, his contract has not been renewed. “People hire me because I care, I am passionate about stuff and will challenge existing structures if they don’t work anymore,” Schippers says from Washington DC by Skype. Curiously, Smithsonian has made no public statement about Schippers departure. “I’ve been disappeared,” he says, “while ironically Billboard just named me as one of 75 Power Players in the [music] industry.”

xp thanks for the dilloway playlist, table

Anthony Seeger, a former director, curator and chair of the advisory board says: “This is a very unhappy story because Folkways was in the process of being transformed in a number of important ways – with new artists and in terms of moving from sales of physical product to creative ways of making music available in other ways and in terms of reaching out. Huib did all of those things.”

this must include the "Smithsonian Folkways Vinyl Reissue Series" which was recently brought to my attention via this release:

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a1606979887_10.jpg

https://smithsonianfolkways.bandcamp.com/album/tuareg-music-of-the-southern-sahara

(i had seen various folkways "reissues" banging around in the record store bins for a few years, but for various reasons assumed that they were bootlegs. it's cool that they're actually doing this !)

This one is great, and excellently titled

https://i.etsystatic.com/12031125/r/il/733aaa/2342956035/il_794xN.2342956035_kb4d.jpg

Wall-to-wall 1-2 minute absolute fiddle smokeshows, vast majority of which by bands that don't seem to have any body of recorded work. It's like a hardcore compilation except fiddle music.

Hello, look at this!

https://folkways.si.edu/friends-of-folkways

All you need to do to become a Friend of Folkways is to give a continuing monthly donation to the label, a portion of which will be paid out directly to artists as royalties. The minimum contribution is $5 per month, but you can choose to give more (for example, $5, $20, $50, $100, or any other amount you prefer). As a thank you, subscribers will be given unlimited access to stream all of the available titles in the Smithsonian Folkways catalog straight from our website (with the US only at this time), including all its subsidiary labels such as Arhoolie, Folk-Legacy, Paredon, and more. The ability to discover not only a new favorite song, but entire worlds of music and sound that you may have never encountered before, is right at your fingertips. From bluegrass to gamelan to jigs to poetry, the catalog offers countless avenues of exploration. The full amount of your contribution is tax-deductible.

How perfect to be able to do this with this release on the horizon:

https://matmos.bandcamp.com/album/return-to-archive

ooh streaming, but tax-deductible!