Folkways Records
Encyclopedia
Folkways Records was a record label
Record label
In the music industry, a record label is a brand and a trademark associated with the marketing of music recordings and music videos. Most commonly, a record label is the company that manages such brands and trademarks, coordinates the production, manufacture, distribution, marketing and promotion,...

 founded by Moses Asch
Moses Asch
Moses Asch was the founder of Folkways Records. Asch ran the label from 1948 until his death...

 that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...

 in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways...

.

History

The Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded by Moses Asch
Moses Asch
Moses Asch was the founder of Folkways Records. Asch ran the label from 1948 until his death...

 and Marian Distler in 1948
1948 in music
-Events:*May 20 - The Second International Congress of Composers and Music Critics 1948 opens in Prague.*June 5 - Opening of the first Aldeburgh Festival, founded by Benjamin Britten, Eric Crozier and Peter Pears....

 in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. Asch sought to record and document sounds and music from everywhere in the world. From 1948 until Asch's death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. In 1964, Asch helped MGM Records
MGM Records
MGM Records was a record label started by the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio in 1946, for the purpose of releasing soundtrack albums of their musical films. Later it became a pop label, lasting into the 1970s...

 start Verve Folkways Records which evolved in 1967 into Verve Forecast Records
Verve Forecast Records
Verve Forecast Records is a record label specializing in cutting-edge material which was founded in 1967 by Verve Records and since been revived twice....

. The albums are very diverse in content including traditional and contemporary music from around the world; spoken word, poetry, and multi-lingual instructional recordings; and field recordings of communities, individuals, and natural sounds. It was also an early proponent of the singers and songwriters, such as Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...

, Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...

, and Leadbelly
Leadbelly
Huddie William Ledbetter was an iconic American folk and blues musician, notable for his strong vocals, his virtuosity on the twelve-string guitar, and the songbook of folk standards he introduced....

, who formed the center of the American folk music revival.

The label became very influential on a generation of folk singers
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....

 because of its release of a great number of old-time
Old-time music
Old-time music is a genre of North American folk music, with roots in the folk music of many countries, including England, Scotland, Ireland and countries in Africa. It developed along with various North American folk dances, such as square dance, buck dance, and clogging. The genre also...

 recordings by re-discovered performers from the 1920s and 1930s like Dock Boggs
Dock Boggs
Moran Lee "Dock" Boggs was an influential old-time singer, songwriter and banjo player. His style of banjo playing, as well as his singing, is considered a unique combination of Appalachian folk music and African-American blues...

 and Clarence Ashley
Clarence Ashley
"Tom" Clarence Ashley was an American clawhammer banjo player, guitarist and singer. He began performing at medicine shows in the Southern Appalachian region as early as 1911, and gained initial fame during the late 1920s as both a solo recording artist and as a member of various string bands...

, as well as contemporary performers like the New Lost City Ramblers
New Lost City Ramblers
The New Lost City Ramblers is a contemporary old-time string band that formed in New York City in 1958 during the Folk Revival. The founding members of the Ramblers, or NLCR, are Mike Seeger, John Cohen, and Tom Paley...

. The Anthology of American Folk Music
Anthology of American Folk Music
The Anthology of American Folk Music is a six-album compilation released in 1952 by Folkways Records , comprising eighty-four American folk, blues and country music recordings that were originally issued from 1927 to 1932.Experimental filmmaker and notable eccentric Harry Smith compiled the music...

originally appeared on the Folkways label, as did the accompanying album
The Country Blues
-Side two:...

 to The Country Blues
The Country Blues (book)
The Country Blues is a seminal book by Samuel Charters, published in 1959 and generally acknowledged as the first scholarly book-length study of country blues music. An album of the same name was issued on Folkways Records as an accompaniment to provide examples of the artists and styles discussed...

by Samuel Charters
Samuel Charters
Samuel Charters, born Samuel Barclay Charters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1, 1929 , is an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet...

. Folkways was also one of the earliest companies to release albums of world music
World music
World music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...

, including the Music of the World's Peoples collection edited by Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell
Henry Cowell was an American composer, music theorist, pianist, teacher, publisher, and impresario. His contribution to the world of music was summed up by Virgil Thomson, writing in the early 1950s:...

. They also released many spoken word albums, and other unusual repertoire. The albums always came with a pull-out leaflet containing extensive sleeve notes.

Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 acquired Asch's Folkways recordings and business files after his death in 1986. This acquisition was initiated by Ralph Rinzler
Ralph Rinzler
Ralph Rinzler was the co-founder of the annual Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the Mall every summer in Washington, D.C., where he worked as a curator for American art, music, and folk culture at the Smithsonian....

, of the Smithsonian, before Asch's death and completed by the Asch Family to ensure the sounds and artists would be preserved for future generations. As a result, it was agreed to continue Asch's policy that all of the 2,168 titles would stay in print indefinitely regardless of market sales. The Smithsonian Folkways website uses the internet to make the recordings available as streaming samples, DRM
Digital rights management
Digital rights management is a class of access control technologies that are used by hardware manufacturers, publishers, copyright holders and individuals with the intent to limit the use of digital content and devices after sale. DRM is any technology that inhibits uses of digital content that...

-free digital downloads in MP3
MP3
MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...

 and lossless FLAC format, and on CDs via mail order.

A complete set of the Folkways recordings was also donated to the University of Alberta
University of Alberta
The University of Alberta is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford, the first premier of Alberta and Henry Marshall Tory, its first president, it is widely recognized as one of the best universities in Canada...

 where Michael Asch, Moe Asch's son, was an anthropology professor; FolkwaysAlive, a joint initiative between the University and the Smithsonian, is involved in digitization and archiving of the collection as well as maintaining a research center and sponsoring student research scholarships and an annual concert series.

Since acquiring Folkways, the Smithsonian has expanded Asch's collection by adding several other record labels, including Cook
Cook Records
Cook Records was a record label founded by Emory Cook . Cook was an audio engineer and inventor. From 1952 to 1966, Cook used his Sounds of our Times and Cook Laboratories record labels to demonstrate his philosophy about sound, his recording equipment, and his manufacturing techniques.- Recording...

, Monitor
Monitor Records
Monitor Records is a Hong Kong-based music shop selling various rare and alternative CDs and music items. Monitor Records is also a distributor of Hong Kong indie bands and independent musicians such as the Pancake, Elf Fatima and Alok...

, Fast Folk, Dyer-Bennet, and Paredon. They have also released over 300 new recordings.

The mission statement of Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways...

 states that their mission "is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document 'people's music.'" They "are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity
Cultural diversity
Cultural diversity is having different cultures respect each other's differences. It could also mean the variety of human societies or cultures in a specific region, or in the world as a whole...

 and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound", and that "musical and cultural diversity contributes to the vitality and quality of life throughout the world." By making these recordings available, they intend "strengthen people's engagement with their own cultural heritage
Cultural heritage
Cultural heritage is the legacy of physical artifacts and intangible attributes of a group or society that are inherited from past generations, maintained in the present and bestowed for the benefit of future generations...

 and to enhance their awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of others."

Smithsonian Folkways has also produced or co-produced a number of radio series based on the Folkways collections. "The Folkways Collection" and "Sounds to Grow On" are co-produced with CKUA
CKUA
CKUA is a Canadian radio station. Originally located at the University of Alberta in Edmonton , it now broadcasts from studios in downtown Edmonton and south Calgary. CKUA was created in 1927 through a provincial grant which allowed the University of Alberta's Extension Department to purchase the...

 radio; "Tapestry of the Times" was co-produced by WYPR
WYPR
WYPR is a public radio station that services the Baltimore, Maryland metropolitan area. The station broadcasts on 88.1 MHz on the FM band. Its studio is in the Charles Village section of Baltimore and its transmitter is westward in the Park Heights section...

 radio; and "Sound Sessions" was produced by the Smithsonian and broadcast on WAMU
WAMU
WAMU is a public radio station that services the greater Washington, D.C. metropolitan area. The station broadcasts on 88.5 FM, online at wamu.org, and on HD Radio at 88.5-HD1, 2 and 3. WAMU is on-air 24 hours a day. It is licensed to American University, and its studios are located near the campus...

radio. "Sounds to Grow On" is hosted by Michael Asch, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and the son of Moses Asch.

External links

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