Recording Spotlight

Featured items from Smithsonian Folkways

• Sounds of a Tropical Rain Forest: Produced for the American Museum of Natural History
  FW06120 / FX 6120 (1952) In the fall of 1951, Moses Asch was asked by the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) to create a soundtrack for their upcoming exhibit, Men of the Montaña.
• Civil War Naval Songs: Recording 19th-Century Historical Ballads
  SFW40189 (2011) Recording historical songs often can require no more effort than searching the Internet for pre-existing sound files, and finding performers who can replicate performances already regarded as seminal.
• A Grain of Sand
  PAR01020 (1973) A Grain of Sand: Music for the Struggle of Asians in America, a 1973 Paredon Records release, is widely recognized as the first album of Asian American music.
• JAZZ: The Smithsonian Anthology
  SFW40820 (2011) The new 111-track, 6-CD, 200-page compendium of the great American musical invention, traces the turning points of this 20th-century tale through its legendary innovators and notable styles.
• Ding Dong Dollar
  FW05444 (1962) In 1962, Folkways Records, founded and run by Moses Asch, released a rather unlikely recording entitled Ding Dong Dollar: Anti-Polaris and Scottish Republican Songs.
• Rainbow: Chronicle of a Collaboration
  SFW40527 (2010) Rainbow emerged from an ambitious process of collaborative creativity that reached across continents and cultures, and across musical categories and conventions.
• Worlds of Sound^™: The Ballad of Folkways
  Film (2010) A one-hour documentary about Moses Asch and the 60-year history of Smithsonian Folkways.
• Worlds of Sound^™: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways
  Book & CD A book by Richard Carlin in association with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings.
• Nobel Voices for Disarmament: 1901-2001
  SFW47005 (2007) Smithsonian Folkways recently released Nobel Voices for Disarmament: 1901-2001, a stirring collection of new and archival spoken-word recordings by the most prominent advocates for peace during a century marred by war and bloodshed.
• Anthology of American Folk Music^™
  SFW40090 (1997) The Anthology of American Folk Music^™, Edited by Harry Smith, is one of the most influential releases in the history of recorded sound.
• The Best of Broadside 1962-1988
  SFW40130 (2000) Broadside was a small underground magazine smuggled out of a New York City housing project in a baby carriage, filled with new songs by artists who were too creative for the folkies and too radical for the establishment.
• Fast Folk: A Community of Singers and Songwriters
  SFW40135 (2002) Folk music wasn't just something that happened in the 1960s. The sound and the scene continued to thrive throughout the 1980s and 1990s, mostly because of the efforts of Fast Folk, a group of singers.
• Heartbeat: Voices of First Nations Women
  SFW40415 (1995) "A woman hums songs to a child. Three old ladies sing as they pick chokecherries or cactus buds, husk corn, or dig camus root. A woman's high-pitched lu-lu-lu-lu rises over the men's voices at the end of an honoring song for returned veterans.
• Where Did You Sleep Last Night
  SFW40044 (1996) This recording is a testament to two men, the Louisiana African-American musician and composer, Lead Belly (born Huddie Ledbetter, 1885-1949), and New York recording engineer and Folkways record company owner Moses Asch.
• That's Why We're Marching: World War II and the American Folksong Movement
  SFW40021 (1996) Songwriter and labor organizer Joe Hill wrote, "A pamphlet is never read more than once, but a song is learned by heart and repeated over and over."
• The Silk Road: A Musical Caravan
  SFW40438 (2002) At the end of the 13th Century C.E., Marco Polo set out on a legendary journey from Europe to eastern Asia. Listen to rich musical traditions present along the Silk Road.