Moses Asch (1905-1986) founded Folkways Records with Marian Distler in 1948. Asch had already launched other labels, including Asch and Disc, both of which ended in bankruptcy. But Folkways survived and thrived to become one of the largest independent record labels in the world--one that had a tremendous influence on musicians, scholars, and enthusiasts who heard the sounds recorded on 2,168 albums Asch issued between 1948 and 1986, just before the Smithsonian Institution acquired Folkways.
Asch liked the name "Folkways" for his label because he considered everybody to be part of "the folk"--he produced John Cage's avant-garde music as enthusiastically as he produced the last performers of the Selk'nam chants. Asch wanted to capture a whole world of sounds. His recordings ranged from remote Amazonian villages to New York avant-garde music and poetry, from unaccompanied ballad singers to bluegrass and urban music forms, from Greek literature read in ancient Greek to contemporary Soviet poetry read in Russian. Asch not only documented sounds, he documented human aspirations--struggles for liberation and justice in Africa, Ireland, Poland, the United States, and elsewhere. The sum of his recordings is a stunning collection of unique sounds and brilliant performances by a wide variety of artists.
Asch considered his Folkways recordings to be educational as well as entertaining. Most Folkways albums included a small pamphlet describing and sometimes analyzing the sounds on the recordings. Folkways recordings were more often found in public libraries than on the shelves of hit-oriented record stores.
Asch considered every recording an important contribution to human understanding and kept nearly all of his recordings in print, no matter how little a recording might sell. "What good is the collection," he would say, "if this tribe isn't in it? Do you delete the letter Q from the alphabet just because you don't use it as much as the others?"
The Smithsonian acquired Folkways soon after Asch's death in 1986 in order to ensure that the sounds and genius of its artists would continue to be available to future generations. Virtually every recording Folkways issued continues to be available, whether it sells 8,000 copies each year or only one copy every five years.
Without Moses Asch's vision, the Folkways collection would never have come to be. As we celebrate what would have been his 100th Birthday on December 6, 2005, we look back on his incredible catalogue of recordings--a body of work that is a testimony to Asch's vision, the genius of his artists, and the contributions of all those who worked with him over the years. To them we all owe a debt of gratitude.