Anthology of American Folk Music (1952)
what happened was, my dad bred me as a music history fiend. sometimes i feel like 90% of my youth was spent in the passenger seat of a 1986 gray Ford Mustang with red interior, on the way to who knows where, while my father quizzed me on whatever song was on the radio. [who sang this? the who. who? the who! who? THE WHO!] he'd ask what other songs the artists sang. he'd ask, do you know what this song was about? and i'd say, no. and then he'd tell me about the kent state shootings, or the assassination of mlk jr. or he'd say, this song was on dark side of the moon, and then put the cassette in so i could hear the whole thing. it was always about that next layer down, that bigger picture.
so, it is instilled in my brain to want to know about the album behind the song, and then the artist behind the album, and then the genre behind the artist, and then the influences behind the genre. i have spent inordinate amounts of time reading/watching interviews from the beatles, jeff buckley, bob dylan, hanson [surprisingly impressive], bruce springsteen, etc. regarding their influences.
the first time i ever listened to the old 97's [will be thanking wishtheworst for this until my dying day] was also the first i ever heard about alternative country. i got excited about contemporaries -- ryan adams and wilco -- and then followed the line backward through whiskeytown, the jayhawks, son volt & jay farrar, right to uncle tupelo. and there we are. no depression. alt-country record #1. it becomes an obsession.
this is why i spent three weeks of my life agonizing over whether to spend $100 on bruce springsteen's darkness on the edge of town 3 cd/3 dvd boxset, or anthology of american folk music. this is why folk music won, despite my utter disease of needing to consume all things bruce.
download via mediafire:
vol. 1: "Ballads"
vol. 2: "Social Music"
vol. 3: "Songs"
i am still in the exploratory process of this anthology, and can only share with you a rudimentary summary of what it encompasses. [for those better-acquainted, please share in comments!] in all honesty, i will spare you from much of my OMG and stick to the basics. i highly recommend, if you listen and become obsessed, to obtain a copy for yourself [amazon]. the documentation of it is truly an inspired thing, and incredible to read.
this is a six-disc collection separated into three distinct volumes; it is comprised of 84 selections spanning the dawning age of electronic recording up until its halt during the depression [1927-1932]. it was put together and annotated by harry smith, who as far as i can tell was an eccentric and bizarre man who obsessed over his record collection, which landed in the thousands, and was always broke. he is quoted within the anthology's liner notes: I'm glad to say I saw my dreams come true. I saw America changed through music.
the songs themselves have come to be viewed as isolated snippets of regional cultures; tiny histories of the south, and cajun tradition, and delta blues, and appalachia. they are church and dance songs, melodic allegories, folklore and supernatural story-songs, as well as ballads that date back to 16th century england and scotland that still persisted in early 20s/30s musical tradition. dominant musical instruments consist of the banjo, harmonica, mandolin, fiddle, autoharp, and hawaiian guitar.
the anthology was originally issued in 1952 as a set of 78s, and became some extraordinary musical rune for the folk revival of the 50s and 60s, and from that point forward directly influenced PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE: pete seeger, odetta holmes [who is omfg THE MOST DEVASTATING], johnny cash, the kingston trio, hank williams, bob dylan, joan baez, john denver, csny, bruce springsteen, YADDA, YADDA. it is truly remarkable. one day i will be a music historian, and be able to make these connections and draw this musical tree with more accuracy. [NOT.]
a few snippets from the documentation included with the set, which i found to be the most interesting in describing the collection of music as a whole:
Anthology introduced [John] Cohen and hundreds, then thousands of others to performers from the 1920's and 30's - artists, Cohen said, "who became like mystical gods to us." The "Anthology was our bible," singer Dave Van Ronk wrote in 1991 of the Greenwich Village folk milieu in the mid-fifties. "We all knew every word of every song on it, including the ones we hated. They say that in the 19th-century British Parliament, when a member would begin to quote a classical author in Latin the entire House would rise in a body and finish the quote along with him. It was like that.
There was, the artist Bruce Conner, who encountered the Anthology in the early 1950s in the Wichita Library, "a confrontation with another culture, or another view of the world, that might include arcane, or unknown, or unfamiliar views of the world, hidden within these words, melodies, and harmonies - it was like field recordings, from the Amazon, or Africa, but it's here, in the United States!
... [I]n our current vast wasteland of cultural artifacts, the Anthology is known to a miniscule number of Americans. In retrospect, one suspects that the audience who took the Anthology and its "rich heritage" for their own, intended or not, was the questing young of the 1950s and 1960s, whose post-Eisenhower seekers after an America somehow more authentic than the plastic version they saw being offered to them in the mass media. For that generation of urban youth who began to seek their truer America in its vernaculer musics, the Anthology became a central and most powerful document.
We found the music emotionally shattering yet culturally incomprehensible. Although we frequently failed to understand the words sung by the musicians, we found ourselves entranced nevertheless by the pure sound of their voices and instruments and by the intoxicating rhythms of their performances. These lost, archaic, savage sounds seemed to carry some peculiarly American meaning for us, albeit in a syntax we couldn't yet decipher.
> other links of interest:
anthology of american folk music on wikipedia
the american folk music revival
THE OLD, WEIRD AMERICA, a blog that uses anthology as a guide for further exploration into folk music [nicely summarized & recommended here]
times ain't like they used to be, another folk music blog
the world's jukebox, vintage recordings of ethnic music
history of the record
glad there was so much interest in this; apologies for blathering on as i have. hope you enjoy!
so, it is instilled in my brain to want to know about the album behind the song, and then the artist behind the album, and then the genre behind the artist, and then the influences behind the genre. i have spent inordinate amounts of time reading/watching interviews from the beatles, jeff buckley, bob dylan, hanson [surprisingly impressive], bruce springsteen, etc. regarding their influences.
the first time i ever listened to the old 97's [will be thanking wishtheworst for this until my dying day] was also the first i ever heard about alternative country. i got excited about contemporaries -- ryan adams and wilco -- and then followed the line backward through whiskeytown, the jayhawks, son volt & jay farrar, right to uncle tupelo. and there we are. no depression. alt-country record #1. it becomes an obsession.
this is why i spent three weeks of my life agonizing over whether to spend $100 on bruce springsteen's darkness on the edge of town 3 cd/3 dvd boxset, or anthology of american folk music. this is why folk music won, despite my utter disease of needing to consume all things bruce.
download via mediafire:
vol. 1: "Ballads"
vol. 2: "Social Music"
vol. 3: "Songs"
i am still in the exploratory process of this anthology, and can only share with you a rudimentary summary of what it encompasses. [for those better-acquainted, please share in comments!] in all honesty, i will spare you from much of my OMG and stick to the basics. i highly recommend, if you listen and become obsessed, to obtain a copy for yourself [amazon]. the documentation of it is truly an inspired thing, and incredible to read.
this is a six-disc collection separated into three distinct volumes; it is comprised of 84 selections spanning the dawning age of electronic recording up until its halt during the depression [1927-1932]. it was put together and annotated by harry smith, who as far as i can tell was an eccentric and bizarre man who obsessed over his record collection, which landed in the thousands, and was always broke. he is quoted within the anthology's liner notes: I'm glad to say I saw my dreams come true. I saw America changed through music.
the songs themselves have come to be viewed as isolated snippets of regional cultures; tiny histories of the south, and cajun tradition, and delta blues, and appalachia. they are church and dance songs, melodic allegories, folklore and supernatural story-songs, as well as ballads that date back to 16th century england and scotland that still persisted in early 20s/30s musical tradition. dominant musical instruments consist of the banjo, harmonica, mandolin, fiddle, autoharp, and hawaiian guitar.
the anthology was originally issued in 1952 as a set of 78s, and became some extraordinary musical rune for the folk revival of the 50s and 60s, and from that point forward directly influenced PRETTY MUCH EVERYONE: pete seeger, odetta holmes [who is omfg THE MOST DEVASTATING], johnny cash, the kingston trio, hank williams, bob dylan, joan baez, john denver, csny, bruce springsteen, YADDA, YADDA. it is truly remarkable. one day i will be a music historian, and be able to make these connections and draw this musical tree with more accuracy. [NOT.]
a few snippets from the documentation included with the set, which i found to be the most interesting in describing the collection of music as a whole:
Anthology introduced [John] Cohen and hundreds, then thousands of others to performers from the 1920's and 30's - artists, Cohen said, "who became like mystical gods to us." The "Anthology was our bible," singer Dave Van Ronk wrote in 1991 of the Greenwich Village folk milieu in the mid-fifties. "We all knew every word of every song on it, including the ones we hated. They say that in the 19th-century British Parliament, when a member would begin to quote a classical author in Latin the entire House would rise in a body and finish the quote along with him. It was like that.
There was, the artist Bruce Conner, who encountered the Anthology in the early 1950s in the Wichita Library, "a confrontation with another culture, or another view of the world, that might include arcane, or unknown, or unfamiliar views of the world, hidden within these words, melodies, and harmonies - it was like field recordings, from the Amazon, or Africa, but it's here, in the United States!
... [I]n our current vast wasteland of cultural artifacts, the Anthology is known to a miniscule number of Americans. In retrospect, one suspects that the audience who took the Anthology and its "rich heritage" for their own, intended or not, was the questing young of the 1950s and 1960s, whose post-Eisenhower seekers after an America somehow more authentic than the plastic version they saw being offered to them in the mass media. For that generation of urban youth who began to seek their truer America in its vernaculer musics, the Anthology became a central and most powerful document.
We found the music emotionally shattering yet culturally incomprehensible. Although we frequently failed to understand the words sung by the musicians, we found ourselves entranced nevertheless by the pure sound of their voices and instruments and by the intoxicating rhythms of their performances. These lost, archaic, savage sounds seemed to carry some peculiarly American meaning for us, albeit in a syntax we couldn't yet decipher.
> other links of interest:
anthology of american folk music on wikipedia
the american folk music revival
THE OLD, WEIRD AMERICA, a blog that uses anthology as a guide for further exploration into folk music [nicely summarized & recommended here]
times ain't like they used to be, another folk music blog
the world's jukebox, vintage recordings of ethnic music
history of the record
glad there was so much interest in this; apologies for blathering on as i have. hope you enjoy!