One of Folkways' most popular reissues is Sounds of North American Frogs (SFW CD 45060), with 92 tracks, including "Chorus of Spadefoot Toads" and "The Mating Call of the Dwarf Mexican Treefrog."
Media inquiries, please contact:
Rob Krauser
Shore Fire Media
32 Court Street, 16th Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Phone 718-522-7171 x12
Fax 718-522-7242
Email rkrauser@shorefire.com
August 6, 2008
RAHIM ALHAJ PROFILED ON CNN
Grammy-nominated oud master Rahim Alhaj was the subject of a feature video on CNN in conjunction with his July 31st, 2008 performance at the Smithsonian Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. Alhaj, with percussionist Souhail Kaspar, released When the Soul is Settled: Music of Iraq on Smithsonian Folkways and earned a 2008 Grammy nomination in the traditional world music category. Click here to watch the CNN profile, featuring both interview and performance footage.
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.
Upcoming Releases:
Classic Piano Blues from Smithsonian Folkways to be released June 24
African American Legacy Series, Vol. 3: Richmond Blues by Cephas & Wiggins to be released July 29
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.
December 8, 2007
TWO GRAMMY NOMINATIONS FOR SMITHSONIAN FOLKWAYS RECORDINGS
When the Soul is Settled: Music of Iraq by Rahim Alhaj and Singing for Life: Songs of Hope, Healing, and HIV/AIDS in Uganda both nominated for Best Traditional World Music Album.
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.