Folkways Records
Folkways Records is an independent American record label founded in 1948 by Moses Asch and Marian Distler. Since the takeover by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, the label is now called the Smithsonian Folkways .
History of origin
Moses Asch was not inexperienced in managing record companies, as he had founded Asch Records in 1939 , which he merged with Stinson Records to form Asch-Stinson in 1941 . This label went bankrupt in December 1945. Finally, in May 1948, he founded Folkways Records & Service Corporation on a $ 10,000 loan from his father. The managing director was Marian Distler as a straw man because Asch was not allowed to be managing director due to the bankruptcy. Distler was his longtime assistant at the previous record labels and hired Asch as their advisor.
In line with the company's founder's intentions, the label specialized from the start on music that was not usable in the music industry on a large scale and was therefore of no interest to commercial record companies. Non-commercial, little-noticed music should have a place here. Therefore Folkways began working with jazz recordings, square dance recordings , folk music of Woody Guthrie , Pete Seeger , ethnic and world music . This market niche was served by Asch consistently and with great intensity, because the catalog increased by at least one LP per week. Singles were not released.
Woody Guthrie and his friends Pete Seeger and Cisco Houston often sharply criticized social and political grievances in their songs and thus brought a new style into the folk scene of that time . A milestone was the patriotic This Land Is Your Land by Guthrie, produced by Asch in his own recording studio , recorded after April 25, 1944. The now hymn-like song came from a highly productive recording session with 160 songs that were composed within just 14 days. Other representatives of the early folk scene at Folkways were Huddie Ledbetter and Josh White ("Negro Folksongs").
Long before the term world music became fashionable, Folkways was already recording music by artists from all over the world. Series about musical instruments were recorded as well as children's songs, sounds from nature, songs from the women's movement and music from the classical avant-garde . There were also recordings of social and political events such as Bertolt Brecht's hearing before the Committee for Un-American Activities in 1947 and the documentation of the Civil Rights March in Washington, DC, 1963.
Folkways was also active in the reissue area and published a large number of recordings of then rediscovered artists from the 1920s and 1930s such as Clarence Ashley and Dock Boggs . The record label also released songbooks, teaching materials and later videos.
When Moses Asch died on October 19, 1986, the Smithsonian Institution took over the record company on February 28, 1987, along with master recordings and archive, to ensure that the catalog was not only preserved as a national cultural asset, but was also upgraded. This happened on the one hand by the establishment of a website and on the other hand by the fact that Smithsonian re-released a steadily growing number of remastered recordings from the 2,168 LPs (with over 22,000 songs) comprehensive catalog of the most uncommercial music in the USA. The principle already introduced by Moses Asch applies to this day that almost all records ever recorded are repeatedly reissued and thus made accessible to an interested new audience.
In the course of its existence, Folkways had a significant influence on the development of today's popular music. This was evident not least at the birthday party for the 40th anniversary of the record label in 1988, for which guests such as Bruce Springsteen , Bob Dylan , U2 , Brian Wilson , Emmylou Harris , Taj Mahal and many others gathered. This resulted in the LP A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Lead Belly ( Columbia Records ; August 1988), the proceeds of which were used to finance the purchase price for Folkways.
literature
- Making Peoples Music: Moe Asch And Folkways Records , Peter Goldsmith, 1998
Web links
- Smithsonian Folkways Recordings Site (English)
swell
- ^ Richard Carlin, Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways , 2008, p. 8
- ↑ Eric Alterman, The Nation vol. 266 no.23, from June 29, 1998, Folkways Records History
