Smithsonian Folkways: Other Worlds: Culture / Innovation / Protest

This book features 100s of unique and visually stunning record sleeve artworks from one of the most-iconic record companies in the world – Smithsonian Folkways.

The Folkways Records and Service Corporation was founded in 1948 by Moses Asch, a Polish-émigré living in New York City. Eight years before Asch had met Albert Einstein who first encouraged him to document the ‘sounds of the world’.

Between 1949 and 1987, Folkways released over 2,000 recordings of jazz, folk, avant-garde, world, sounds of nature, spoken word, electronic modernism, civil rights speeches and more. Folkways stands head and shoulders above all ‘world music’ record labels in its depth of representation of cultural diversity and its understanding of the nature of sound itself . Asch’s vision of presenting ‘other music’ in all its myriad forms alongside the homegrown indigenous music of the United States of America (jazz, blues, folk and more) showed an unparalleled vision of modern cultural representation.

Much of the success in bringing together such diverse subjects into one cohesive unique and visual identity for Folkways Records is down to the 100s of stunning artwork designs of Ronald Clyne, the primary designer at the record label. Through typeface, colour and design Clyne gave Folkways record covers both an incredibly stylish and unique look and an underlying seriousness of intent and vision, the perfect match to that of founder Moses Asch.

The book focusses on the numerous stunning and striking record designs that feature across Folkways’ vast and idiosyncratic musical landscape – from The Music of Equatorial New Guinea to The Voices of the Civil Rights Movement, from The Songs and Dances of The Flathead Indians to The Sounds of The Tropical Rain Forest in America. Other diverse music you will find here include: Outer Space Music, Chinese Classical Music, Sea Shanties and Loggers Songs, Drums of the Yoruba of Nigeria, Street Games and Songs of The Children of New York City, Experiments in Computer Music and more.

Folkways recorded some of the greatest names in American music across the fields of jazz, folk, poetry, blues and classical music, including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Nikki Giovanni, Pete Seeger, Langston Hughes, Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Dizzy Gillespie, John Cage, and Charles Ives, all of whom are featured here.

Music editors at the company included the esteemed music anthropologists Harold Courlander, Sam Charters and Harry Smith (who compiled the seminal Anthology of American Folk Music).

As a wholly independent record label with a focus purely on music outside of the mainstream, Asch found unique and innovative solutions to keeping his record company alive for almost 40 years, maintaining the vast catalogue of 2,000 recordings always in print.

Moses Asch died in 1986. The following year Smithsonian Folkways was created after Asch’s family donated the entire catalogue to the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. Smithsonian Folkways remains today a major force in the promotion and documentation of a global vision of music and sound.

About the Author :
Soul Jazz Books is the book publishing company of Soul Jazz Records, the prestigious British record label that for more than 30 years has curated highly-regarded collections of global music styles including Tropicália, New Orleans funk, Chicano rock, Jamaican dancehall and more.

Previous Soul Jazz Books titles include Voguing and The House Ballroom Scene of New York City 1989-92, Dancehall – The Rise of Jamaican Dancehall Culture, Punk 45 – The Singles Cover Art of Punk 1976-80, Yo! The Early Days of Hip-Hop 1982-84 and Freedom, Rhythm and Sound – Revolutionary Jazz Cover Art 1965-83.