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January 15, 2009
Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea Now Available
Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea an exceptional collection of authentic maritime songs sung by celebrated vocalist and author Dan Milner, is now available from Smithsonian Folkways. Featuring an impressive array of guest musicians and singers, including Tim Collins of the renowned Kilfenora Ceili Band, champion fiddler Brian Conway, Gabriel Donohue of the Chieftains, The Johnson Girls, Joanie Madden, and John Doyle,
Irish Pirate Ballads captures centuries of tradition and the revelry, mischief, tales of love and caution that characterize nautical life.
Click here to learn more.
January 12, 2009
White House Workers: Traditions and Memories DVD Now Available
White House Workers: Traditions and Memories explores the dedication, skills, and sacrifices of residence staff whose extraordinary service has helped the White House fulfill its multiple roles as a family residence, seat of government, ceremonial center, historic building, and museum. Features the 32-minute film Workers at the White House for the first time on DVD, plus more than 2 hours of additional material. Please
click here for more information.
December 16, 2008
Grammy Nominations and Independent Music Award Finalists
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings received two
2008 Grammy nominations, with Mariachi’s Los Camperos de Nati Cano’s
Amor, Dolor y Lágrimas: Mariachi Los Camperos de Nati Cano nominated for the Best Regional Mexican Album and Michael Doucet’s
From Now On nominated for the Best Zydeco Or Cajun Music Album. This is the fifth time in six years the label has been nominated for multiple Grammy Awards in a single year, with a total of thirteen nominations in the last five years. The award show takes place February 9th, 2009.
In addition, five Smithsonian Folkways were selected as Finalists for the 8th
Independent Music Awards.
Click here to listen to and vote for your favorite albums on the Independent Music Awards website
November 14, 2008
Nine Smithsonian Folkways Albums Named to "Recordings to Hear Before You Die" List
Nine Smithsonian Folkways albums were selected in the new book
1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die, a Listener’s Life List released in August by Workman Publishing. Written by frequent National Public Radio contributor Tom Moon,
1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die features music from all genres, and the Smithsonian Folkways selections (just under one percent of the total!) are equally as diverse:
- Dock Boggs: His Folkway Years, 1963-68, Dock Boggs (Folk)
- ¡Viva el Mariachi!, Nati Cano's Mariachi los Camperos (World/Mexico)
- New Orleans Street Singer, Snooks Eaglin (R&B)
- The High Lonesome Sound, Roscoe Holcomb (Folk)
- Lightnin' Hopkins, Lightnin' Hopkins (Blues)
- The Original James P. Johnson 1942-1945, James P. Johnson (Jazz)
- Where Did You Sleep Last Night: Lead Belly Legacy, Vol. 1, Lead Belly (Folk/Blues)
- The Anthology of American Folk Music, Various Artists (Folk)
- Zodiac Suite, Mary Lou Williams (Jazz)
Smithsonian Folkways recording artists
Big Bill Broonzy,
Ella Fitzgerald,
Woody Guthrie,
Dave Van Ronk, and
Pete Seeger were also selected for albums they released on other labels. Please visit
www.1000recordings.com to submit comments about the Smithsonian Folkways selections, as the albums with the most comments will be featured on the site!
October 21, 2008
Tom Glazer's uncanny ability to "speak to children as saints speak to birds," as touted by the New York Times, rings loud and clear in this signature collection of live performances by this legendary children's artist. His own delightfully silly "On Top of Spaghetti" and "Honk-Hiss-Tweet-GGGGGGGGGG" stand as eternal favorites alongside "The Bus Song," "This Old Man," "Jimmy Crack Corn," and many more of these two dozen newly compiled and remastered classic tracks. Please
click here for more information.
October 14, 2008
Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways, a behind-the-scenes look at the "little label that could", is now available nationwide. If you order directly from folkways.si.edu, you will also receive an exclusive 26-track Worlds of Sound Sampler CD free for a limited time while supplies last. Please
click here for more information.
October 9, 2008
Introduced and narrated by Academy Award-winning actor, producer and United Nations Messenger of Peace Michael Douglas,
Nobel Voices honors the achievements of the last century's Nobel Peace Prize winners in disarmament and arms control and those who have been inspired by their work.
Click here to stream the album free and download a free lesson plan.
September 25, 2008
Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways, a behind-the-scenes look at the "little label that could", is now available for pre-order and each order will include an exclusive 26-track Worlds of Sound Sampler CD free for a limited time while supplies last. Please
click here for more information.
September 23, 2008
Veteran musician Rafael Manríquez, paired with an array of Chilean musician notables, crafts a stunning portrait of Chilean folk music and captures the stylistic evolution of the genre from the mid-20th century to the present. Influenced by the extraordinary work of performer-researchers Margot Loyola, Violeta Parra and Gabriela Pizarro, who documented the musical traditions of the Chilean countryside during the 1960s, Manríquez pays tribute to his homeland with songs that epitomize its rich, albeit tumultuous, cultural heritage. Ultimately,
¡Que Viva el Canto! aims to offer a new rendition of Chilean folk music that bridges the past and the present.
September 12, 2008
Thanks to the indefatigable efforts of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1949.
Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways will be available for purchase from this website soon, and will include an exclusive 26-track Worlds of Sound Music Sampler free for a limited time. Please
sign-up to our monthly newsletter to find out when it will be available and
click here for more information.
September 8, 2008
This compilation of live blues performances in a variety of styles is just
$9.99 on CD format and $5.99 as a digital download through September, 2008.
Blues Routes features 17 tracks from a wide range of artists, including Cephas & Wiggins, Luther "Guitar Junior" Johnson, Willie "Pinetop" Perkins, Etta Baker, the Georgia Sea Island Singers, and more.
Click here to purchase the album.
September 5, 2008
CEPHAS & WIGGINS IN BILLBOARD, WALL STREET JOURNAL
Richmond Blues, the new Smithsonian Folkways album by Cephas & Wiggins, entered the Billboard Blues Chart last week at #14 and was the subject of a Wall Street Journal article on the Piedmont blues style.
Click here to read the article and
click here for more information on
Richmond Blues.
August 26, 2008
Alfred Nobel created the Nobel Peace Prize in 1901 to honor such advocacy. In this collection of archival and new spoken word recordings, Nobel laureates and other proponents of peace remind us of their profound efforts on behalf of world peace. Click
here for more information.
June 24, 2008
MÚSICA DEL PUEBLO: A VIRTUAL EXHIBITION OF LATINO ROOTS MUSIC AND CULTURE IN THE UNITED STATES AND LATIN AMERICA
The
Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has partnered with
Smithsonian Folkways and the
Smithsonian Latino Center to create a Flash-based virtual exhibition featuring a diverse range of Latin American and Latino musics.
Música del Pueblo draws its content from many sources: research and documentation from the
Nuestra Música: Music in Latino Culture programs from the Smithsonian Folklife Festival; research and recordings from the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Tradiciones/Traditions series of
música latina CDs; and new documentation of music done partnering with community organizations and researchers around the United States. The exhibition includes twenty four high-quality video features arranged by thematic categories. Content includes Puerto Rican
bomba,
plena, and
jíbaro music, South Texas
conjunto, Mexican
mariachi music, Mexican
huasteco,
jarocho, and Michoacán Tierra Caliente
son, Afro Cuban sacred music, Colombian
vallenato, Dominican
merengue típico, Salvadoran
chanchona music,
corridos, Guatemalan marimba music, Chilean
nueva canción, and Latino hip-hop. These videos are accompanied by brief essays and links to related content in other sections of the
Música del Pueblo website and on
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
June 8, 2008
SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS LAUNCHES NEW WEB SITE
We hope you are enjoying the new Smithsonian Folkways website, which is an effort to provide greater access to the more than 3,000 recordings that make up the collection. Browse our
new releases,
staff picks, best sellers, or the more than 40 genres represented. Try our enhanced
advanced search, listen to song samples, and when you find recordings you'd like to purchase, you can choose between CD or
Digital Download format.
May 30th, 2008
DISCOVER MÚSICA VALLENATA IN FREE FILM SCREENING AND IN SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE
Join the
Smithsonian Latino Center, the
National Museum of Natural History,
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings,
Smithsonian Channel and the
Embassy of Colombia for a free screening of
The Accordion Kings, a new documentary film about vallenato, the soulful music of Colombia's Caribbean coast. Following a brief discussion of the film, José Vásquez, Pangue Maestre, Ivo Díaz, and Daniel Castilla will perform a special concert of música vallenata featured in the film and on the new recording
¡Ayombe!:The Heart of Colombia's Música Vallenata, available now from Smithsonian Folkways. The event will begin at 6pm on Friday, June 6th, at the Baird Auditorium in the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C.
Click here for more information.
In addition, June's edition of
Smithsonian Magazine features a profile of vallenato, video clips from The Accordion Kings, and an audio stream of "Matilde Lina", one of the songs from
¡Ayombe!:The Heart of Colombia's Música Vallenata.
Click here for the profile and video clips, and
click here for the audio stream of "Matilde Lina".
May 14, 2008
TWO FOLKWAYS RECORDS ADDED TO THE NATIONAL RECORDING REGISTRY
Two recordings from the Folkways collections were included in the 2007 National Recording Registry:
You'll Sing a Song and I'll Sing a Song recorded by legendary children's music artist Ella Jenkins in 1966 and
Freight Train recorded by folk songwriter and guitarist Elizabeth Cotten in 1959 (reissued in 1989). The National Recording Registry was established in 2000 in the Library of Congress to maintain and preserve sound recordings and collections of sound recordings that are culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant. Read more about the Registry and these Folkways artists
here.
May 7, 2008
SMITHSONIAN AND UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA JOIN TO CONSERVE FOLKWAYS' COVER MATERIAL
When the Smithsonian Institution acquired Folkways Records from the estate of its founder, Moses Asch, in 1987, it received all of the company's business papers and files in addition to a complete catalog of its recordings. Among these materials were more than 2,000 envelope files, called "job bags," containing photographs, artwork, cover text and other production materials for each of Folkways' distinctive album covers.
Now, researchers from the
University of Alberta in Canada are collaborating with
Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage archivists and
Smithsonian Folkways staff to document and preserve the contents of these job bags. Smithsonian Folkways recordings are available for digital download from
Smithsonian Global Sound.
Read more here.
April 1, 2008
IN MEMORY OF SAM GESSER (1930-2008)
We learned from a friend at the Jewish Public Library in Montreal that Sam Gesser passed away this morning in Montreal General Hospital, Quebec, Canada. Sam visited Folkways founder Moses Asch in 1951 and asked why there was no Canadian material in the Folkways Records catalogue. Asch said he was waiting for Gesser to provide it. Between 1951 and 1963 Gesser produced nearly 100 records of Canadian music traditions, introduced many others to Asch and became the first Folkways distributor for Canada. He is a member of the Order of Canada, has been honored with other awards, including a 2005 certificate from Smithsonian, a 2007 lifetime achievement award from the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame and late last year the very first Resonance Award, established by the Canadian Museum of Civilization to honour outstanding lifetime contributions to Canada's musical heritage.
More about Sam Gesser.
March 31, 2008
SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS RECORDINGS ANNOUNCES AVAILABILITY OF DIGITIZED ARTIFACTS FROM YAHOO! TIME CAPSULE
On Wednesday, March 26, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings will obtain access to a Yahoo! Time Capsule of more than 150,000 digitized artifacts from Yahoo! and may make it available for future study by the academic community under an agreement with Yahoo!. Beginning today, the Yahoo! Time Capsule will be accessible to scholars and others associated with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings by appointment from the Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.
March 29, 2008
LA INDIA CANELA IN THE NPR STUDIO
Dominican accordionist La India Canela visists the USA and NPR to discuss her new Smithsonian Folkways album,
Merengue Típico from the Dominican Repbulic and to perform in the studios. Listen
here.
January 18, 2008
CLASSIC AFRICAN AMERICAN GOSPEL ON NPR WEEKEND EDITION
Kip Lornell, compiler of Classic African American Gospel from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings (to be released on January 29, 2008), discusses this history of African American gospel and plays music from the upcoming release. Listen
here.
November 13, 2007
2007 LATIN GRAMMY WIN FOR SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS RECORDINGS
Congratulations to Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto from Colombia for winning a 2007 Latin GRAMMY for Best Folk album for
Un Fuego de Sangre Pura. With
Un Fuego de Sangre Pura (A Fire of Pure Blood), the roots of the cumbia thrive in the music of Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto from Colombia's violence-torn Caribbean hinterlands. The sounds of long-tubed
gaita flutes, unique drums, and maraca stoke the fire of the cumbia and of other regional dances-the fast-paced
puya and
porro, the cadential
gaita corrida, and the
bullerengue. Los Gaiteros de San Jacinto, the senior statesmen of their tradition, are an animated emblem of Colombian nationhood and a resilient fountainhead for some of Latin America's favorite dance rhythms.
June 25, 2007
HELP DOCUMENT THE SMITHSONIAN FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL
For the first time in Smithsonian history, the Smithsonian Photography Initiative and the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage have invited visitors to add to the rich history of photo documentation of the Festival. To see a selection of these photos alongside photos taken by Smithsonian volunteers and staff, click on the link below. Upload your photos for inclusion in the exhibiton.
View slideshows of photos by Smithsonian staff, volunteers, and visitors
Upload your photos
March 14, 2007
ELLA JENKINS CELEBRATES 50 YEARS AS A FOLKWAYS ARTIST, CATALOGUE NOW AVAILABLE DIGITALLY
The First Lady of Children's Music, Ella Jenkins, recorded her first album, Call and Response, for Folkways Records in 1957. For the past 50 years, she has been an integral part of the Folkways and Smithsonian Folkways catalogue and mission.
Today, three and sometimes four generations of fans still sing along with Miss Ella. And a whole new generation of children can learn the groundbreaking songs of Ella Jenkins on
Smithsonian Global Sound, where, for the first time, the entire catalogue of Ella Jenkins's songs is available for digital downloading.
February 26, 2007
FOLKWAYS ARTIST MARK SPOELSTRA PASSES AWAY
Mark Spoelstra (1940-2007) was a major figure in the folk music scenes in Greenwich Village and Cambridge, Massachusetts during the 1960s. He recorded a live record at Cambridge's Club 47 in 1963.
Born in Kansas City, Spoelstra was raised in California. He remembered moving to New York, where he started out playing for tips in coffee houses, playing at various clubs as a duo with Bob Dylan. On one such occasion, Gil Turner saw him playing with Dylan and brought him to the attention of
Broadside Magazine, which began to publish his songs. Folkways Records subsequently released Mark's first two albums,
Songs of Mark Spoelstra and the
Live at Club 47 album. Folkways also released a rare 45 single of Mark (accompanied by the Two Timers). He went on to record for Elektra, Fantasy, Columbia and Origin Jazz Library. Among his well known compositions were "White Winged Dove" and "5 and 20 Questions."
Mark moved back to California in the late 1960s and joined the band Frontier Constabulary with Mitch Greenhill. In the early 1970s, he moved to Palo Alto, California and began to study the bible and from 1974-1979, Mark used his music as part of a music ministry. He continued to perform both religious and secular music. His last album was released in 2001. His final years were spent living with his family in the Sierra Mountains.
February 2, 2007
ERIK VON SCHMIDT DIES AT AGE 75
Erik von Schmidt was an American singer-songwriter associated with the folk and blues revival of the 1960s. He was a prominent figure in the East Coast folk scene, influencing heavily the work of Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and many others. He recorded
Rolf Cahn and Erik von Schmidt for Folkways Records with his friend Rolf Cahn in 1961 and won a 1997 GRAMMY Award for his work on the liner notes to the Smithsonian Folkways reissue of
The Anthology of American Folk Music. Smithsonian Folkways honors his passion for American folk and blues and his comitment to sharing the music with others.
December 5, 2007
MUSIC OF CENTRAL ASIA NOMINATED FOR A 2007 GRAMMY AWARD FOR BEST TRADITIONAL WORLD MUSIC
Smithsonian Folkways recording
Music of Central Asia vol. 2: Invisible Face of the Beloved: Classical Music of the Tajiks and Uzbeks, by Academy of Maqam was nominated for a 2007 GRAMMY Award in the Best Traditional World Music category. Amid the mosques and minarets of Samarkand and Bukhara, generations of vocalists set the mystical, Sufi-inspired verse of Hafiz and other classical poets to lyrical melodies, creating a spiritual art music of great refinement and sublime beauty called Shashmaqâm, confirming its important place among the great art music traditions of Euasia. Music of Central Asia is a co-production of the Aga Khan Music Initiative in Central Asia, a program of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, and the Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. The aim of the series is to present leading exponents of Central Asia's rich and diverse musical heritage to listeners outside the region.