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From The Archives




The Country Blues
Rural soul music of the Southern USA

On his WFMT radio program in the mid-1950s, Studs Terkel asked, "Say Bill, what’s the blues?" Big Bill Broonzy replied confidently, "Well a real blues, you don’t mix that with nothing. You just play the blues. Now a real blues, a Mississippi blues, you just change [chords] when you feel like it and you play what you feel"...








¡Que Viva el Mariachi!
Music, Meaning, and Movimiento

Mexican mariachi music is made to move you. It is direct, driving, and designed to instill emotion. Happy, sad, proud, angry, desolate, romance-stricken, and rebellious are some of the moods...








La Nueva Canción
The New Song Movement in South America

The 1970 victory of the Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende in Chile marked the rise of the first democratically elected socialist government in Latin America. After years of social and political unrest, the election of the Allende government was seen as a beacon of hope...








National Heritage Awards
Honoring Traditional Artists in the USA

The National Endowment for the Arts National Heritage Fellowships are the highest form of recognition for folk and traditional artists in the USA. Each year since 1982, ten to thirteen individuals, "national living treasures" from across the country, are chosen...








Connecting Cultures
Music of the Mekong River

Like the Yangtze, the Nile, and the Mississippi, the Mekong River in Southeast Asia is a giver of life; countless communities depend on it for their existence. Like these other rivers as well, the Mekong River means more than environmental and economic stability...








Strings of the North
National Instruments of Sweden, Norway, and Finland

Scotland has its bagpipes, India its sitar, and Russia the balalaika. The banjo, some say, defines the USA's soul. Musical instruments often become symbols of national, cultural, and ethnic identity. Even each of the seemingly similar Nordic countries...








We Sing a Song
Global Sound for Children

The music that children are raised on will influence them for the rest of their lives. In the music for children on Smithsonian Global Sound you will find songs that are hundreds of years old and that have been passed from parent to child because they are good songs...








Music of Ghana
Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of Ghana's Independence

On March 6, 1957, the nation of Ghana declared its independence, becoming the first formerly colonized sub-Saharan African nation to do so. Formed from the combination of the Gold Coast and Togoland, two former British colonies, Ghana stretches...








A Sound Legacy
20 Years of Folkways Records at the Smithsonian

Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded in 1948 in New York City by Moses Asch (1905–1986) and Marian Distler (1919–1964). Under Asch’s enthusiastic and dedicated direction, Folkways sought to record and document the entire world of sound...








Say it Loud
African American Spoken Word

The spoken word occupies a central and indispensable position in African American history and culture. As a vessel for remembrance, the oral tradition carried African narratives to a new continent and sustained them through...








The Roots and Branches of Virgina Music
The past is present

The year 2007 marks the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, Virginia, the first permanent English settlement in what is now the USA. Communities throughout Virginia and the mid-Atlantic region laid the roots of American folk music...








Latino Chicago
Music and community

The Latino presence in Metropolitan Chicago offers us a distinctive window into Latino culture in the United States and the role music plays in creating communities....








In Our Own Voice
Songs of American Indian Women

Very little is known and appreciated about American Indian women's songs and voices, even among people who are familiar with American Indian music....








Paredon Records
Activist songs and speeches from 1970 to 1985

Between 1970 and 1985, Paredon Records released fifty albums that covered major left-wing and liberation movements on five continents during the turbulent years of the 1970s. Founded by Barbara Dane and Irwin Silber...








Labor's Troubador
Joe Glazer and Collector Records

Since the Industrial Revolution, working people have been organizing and campaigning for better treatment from their employers. The labor movement and its unions struggle for fair wages, safe working conditions, and many other benefits....








Drum Sounds and Their Many Meanings
By Mickey Hart, former Grateful Dead drummer

One of the few things we know about our universe is that everything in it is vibrating, is in motion, and has a rhythm. Rhythm is anything that repeats itself in time: the moon cycling around the earth, sap rising in the spring, the pulsing arteries of the body....








Throat-Singing
Unique vocalization from three cultures

Throat-singing, a guttural style of singing or chanting, is one of the world’s oldest forms of music. For those who think the human voice can produce only one note at a time, the resonant harmonies of throat-singing are surprising...








Rebel Music
A musical tour of Maroon communities

Between the 15th and 19th centuries, in remote areas throughout the Americas, hundreds of self-liberated communities of Africans sprang up in blatant defiance of the slave system. Many of these maroon communities fought with great skill and courage against tremendous odds to preserve their freedom....








The Music in Poetry
Ballad and blues stanzas

What makes a poem sound pleasing to the ear? A solid rhythm for one thing - something we know a good song also depends on. There are two poetic forms that began as song forms: the ballad stanza of British and American literature...








Songs of the Water Ways
Maritime music

The sea and other water ways such as large lakes, long rivers, and wide bays, have inspired songs for centuries. Maritime music plays a major role in life on the water, through its ability to entertain, motivate, and pace seamen in their work....








Puerto Rican Bomba and Plena
Shared traditions - distinctive rhythms

Bomba and plena are percussion-driven musical traditions from Puerto Rico that move people to dance. Often mentioned together as though they were a single musical style, both reflect the African heritage of Puerto Rico...








Songs to Make Winter Bright
Traditions of singing at Christmas and other winter holidays

Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is a time of darkness and cold. Is it any wonder that winter holidays, coming during the shortest days of the year, center around light and song to make life brighter and easier...








African Music in the USA
The music of African immigrants

In the past three decades, new African diaspora communities have emerged within the United States of America. Unlike mass and forced migrations of Africans to America from the 16th to the 19th centuries...








Música Latina
Sounds of Latino USA

Latin America, including Latino communities in the United States, is one of the most diverse, dynamic musical regions of the world, marked both by longstanding traditions and by unceasing creativity....








From the Andes to the Arctic
Explore American Indian heritage through music

Smithsonian Global Sound offers many archival recordings of American Indian music, as well as contemporary pieces by innovative and traditional musicians. Each track illuminates the central role that music plays...








Voices of Struggle
The Civil Rights movement, 1945 to 1965

We honor African-American history and music with a look at the profound cultural contribution of the Civil Rights Movement, called by Guy Carawan "the greatest singing movement this country has experienced." The African American struggle for civil rights...








Women Breaking Musical Barriers
She isn't supposed to play that

Recordings by women fill the archives of Smithsonian Global Sound, but we shouldn't take them for granted. Gender discrimination and gender segregation have posed considerable barriers to women's musical talent. Still, many women musicians around the world challenge traditionally held beliefs about gender and women's social status...








Na Leo Hawai'i
Musics of Hawai'i

Asians and Pacific Islanders make up the majority of the population of Hawai'i. Music has always played a central role for all these communities. In early Hawai'i, mele, or chant, was the most important means of remembering myths of gods and deeds of powerful people. Today, Hawaiians continue...








Islands of Song
Musics of the Bahamas

For hundreds of years along the 700 scattered limestone islands in the Caribbean sea that make up The Bahamas, the human voice has been raised in melodious strains to a rhythmic pulse that is deeply influenced by the African ancestry of most Bahamians....



SI Folklife Contact Copyright Privacy Credits
©2007 Smithsonian Institution

Produced with major support from The Rockefeller Foundation
Full Text Only Catalog

Smithsonian Global Sound

www.smithsonianglobalsound.org

"The ethnographic answer to iTunes" -- New York Times

Smithsonian Global Sound is an unparalleled experience of world music. Download music and sound from acclaimed international archives such as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, the International Library of African Music, the Archives & Research Centre for Ethnomusicology in India, and Central Asian recordings from the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

Many tracks at www.smithsonianglobalsound.org are rare, newly preserved recordings that are now extensively cataloged and easily accessible around the world. Royalties support artists and archives, honoring and establishing intellectual property rights. By distributing these exciting sounds, Smithsonian Global Sound increases interest in traditional world music and promotes the appreciation of cultural diversity around the world.

Smithsonian Global Sound increases interest in traditional world music and promotes the appreciation of cultural diversity around the world. Royalties support artists and archives, honoring and establishing intellectual property rights. Many tracks are rare, newly preserved recordings that are now extensively cataloged and easily accessible. By distributing these exciting sounds around the world, Smithsonian Global Sound aims to inspire future generations of musicians to continue to promote their cultural heritage.

The Smithsonian Global Sound Experience

Browse, sample, and download thousands of beautiful and culturally significant tracks of music and sound. Don't know where to start? Listen to Radio Global Sound, watch video on Global Sound Live, read fascinating and in depth Artist Profiles, or discover exciting new music through our Musical Journeys from world music celebrities.

Downloads are available in versatile MP3 format or CD quality FLAC files. Our open files allow access through any computer or any portable media player. Smithsonian Global Sound is unique in that it offers a rich store of free material to accompany the audio, including original Folkways liner notes and new contextual information created by archival collaborators.

"Smithsonian Global Sound - the most exciting online music happening in quite some time." -- Salon.com

Enhancing Education via music in the Classroom

Smithsonian Global Sound is an invaluable tool for ethnomusicology, social sciences, and language arts educators. This virtual music library of the future gives teachers, students, and scholars instant access to original recordings and extensive documentation from diverse cultures all over globe. Many libraries from Harvard University to the University of Wisconsin to the Denver Public Library have already enhanced their collections with a subscription from Smithsonian Global Sound.

"The Smithsonian Global Sound site is a fabulous resource of authentic music, and I am looking forward to sharing it with my students." � DeKalb, Illinois
Middle school teacher

Supporting Musicians and Archives of Traditional Music

Royalties earned from the sale of music on the site go to the artists, their communities, the archives that preserve their recordings, and further development of Smithsonian Global Sound. These groundbreaking practices give musicians and artists a chance to maintain their cultures and profit from their work while forging new bonds between local sound archives and the communities whose music they preserve.

If you are an archive or collection interested in joining with Smithsonian Global Sound, please contact smithsonianglobalsound@si.edu.

"When we saw the blossoming of the Internet, we thought, what if we could use this as a device for opening up the archives? People who are not usually heard can project their voices around the planet." - Richard Kurin, Director of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage