Tapestry of the Times from Smithsonian Folkways
Smithsonian
Join Aaron Henkin on an ear-opening voyage back in time and around the globe as he takes listeners on 36, hour-long tours through the wide-ranging sound archives of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Real music, real people, and the stories behind the sounds. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. We are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound.
Location:
Washington, DC
Description:
Join Aaron Henkin on an ear-opening voyage back in time and around the globe as he takes listeners on 36, hour-long tours through the wide-ranging sound archives of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Real music, real people, and the stories behind the sounds. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. We are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound.
Twitter:
@folkways
Language:
English
Contact:
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings 600 Maryland Ave., SW, Suite 2001 Washington, DC 20024 202-633-6516
Website:
http://www.folkways.si.edu/
Episodes
Episode 6
8/20/2011
French Carpenter plays the fiddle tune that won his grandfather’s release from a Civil War prison camp, Texas Gladden sings of a mother’s spectral encounter with the ghosts of her children, Hatian Vodou practitioners sing a funerary song to release the spirits of the dead and Indonesian pop legend Rhoma Irama.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 7
8/19/2011
Outlaw country music from north of the border, family fiddle tunes from Cape Breton, classic piano blues from juke joints and barrelhouse bars, cowboy ballads and poems, and melodies in memory of labor songwriter Joe Hill.
Duration:00:55:20
Episode 9
8/17/2011
We check out some historical duet performances from old-time music virtuosos Doc Watson and Bill Monroe, Piedmont Blues legends John Cephas and Phil Wiggins, and women bluegrass pioneers Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard and the hypnotizing sounds of Indian Tabla Tarang master Pandit Kamalesh Maitra.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 10
8/16/2011
Aaron invites music historian Richard Carlin to drop in for the hour. Richard has written the book, “Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways,” and he shares some great recordings of legendary performers like folk hero Woody Guthrie, jazz trail-blazer Mary Lou Williams, and banjo balladeer Dock Boggs.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 11
8/15/2011
Comanche flute music, a Native American cowboy ballad, Carolina medicine show hokum & blues, the voice of Langston Hughes, mountain music from Eastern Kentucky, slave shouts from the Georgia coast, protest music from Pete Seeger, a feminist anthem from Peggy Seeger and the sacred rhythms of Cuban Santeria.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 12
8/14/2011
Hear banjo ballads from Virginia coal miner Dock Boggs, blues from the blind preacher Reverend Gary Davis, the tropical sounds of Hawaiian folk legend Ledward Kaapana, songs of love and loss from Chile to Canada and mind-bending sounds from the mountains of Kyrgyzstan.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 13
8/13/2011
Sweet love ballads and bitter blues from Lonnie Johnson, hard-scrabble songs for lean times from Pete Seeger and Joe Glazer, toe-tapping classics from Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry, melancholy fado music from Portugal’s Maria Marques, and songs of strength and hope from the Abayudaya of Uganda.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 14
8/12/2011
Piedmont blues from John Cephas and Phil Wiggins, the poetry of Sterling A. Brown, and Civil Rights singers Bernice Johnson Reagon, Reverend Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick, and Paul Robeson. Plus, a Baltimore sea chantey, a Canadian land prospector’s lonely ballad, and a song learned in a dream.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 16
8/10/2011
The lightning-fast fingers of banjo picker Eddie Adcock and The Country Gentlemen, Saint Louis blues from the legendary JD Short, a work-song sung by the inmates of a Texas prison camp, a chant learned in a trance by an Eskimo medicine man, a melody from the mountains of North Sumatra, and much more.
Duration:00:59:00
Episode 17
8/9/2011
We celebrate melodies from Barack Obama’s ancestral homeland of Kenya, we remember President Abraham Lincoln in words and song, we hear the voice that inspired a nation in 1963 when we listen back to excerpts from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 18
8/8/2011
Bedouin singing from the deserts of Sinai; Bottle-neck slide-guitar from Memphis blues man Furry Lewis; 1940’s vintage jazz from Mary Lou Williams; vocal harmonies from The Democratic Republic of Congo; a devotional song from Indo-Caribbean immigrants in Queens, New York.
Duration:00:59:00
Episode 19
8/7/2011
Mandolin picking at its finest from “The Father of Bluegrass,”Bill Monroe; lyrical gymnastics from Bahamian traditional singer Stanley Thompson; children’s music from alt-folk performer Elizabeth Mitchell; left-handed guitar legend Elizabeth Cotten.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 21
8/5/2011
The mimetic sounds of mountain herders in the Siberian hinterland of Tuva, tropical music from Jamaica, the Bahamas, Trinidad, and The Dominican Republic, and a slide guitar opus from the West Coast’s “Joe Louis Walker and The Boss Talkers.”
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 23
8/3/2011
The late great Piedmont blues singer and guitar master John Cephas, New Orleans’ ebullient chanteuse Lizzie Miles, slave shouts from Georgia’s McIntosh County Shouters, rock music from Indonesia and Vodou music from Port au Prince.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 24
8/2/2011
Sea-faring songs from North Carolina’s Outer Banks; an Irish pirate ballad; cowboy songs from Woody Guthrie, Harry Jackson, and Cisco Houston and a spiritual from Moving Star Hall on Johns Island, South Carolina.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 25
8/1/2011
We hear the soul-soaked boogie woogie piano of Champion Jack Dupree, we check out some 80-year-old original recordings of Blind Willie Johnson, and we explore music forged deep in the coal mines of Appalachia.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 26
7/31/2011
Cowboy songs from the revivalist group The Tex-I-An Boys, the sounds of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, cowpuncher brag talk, work-songs from a Texas prison camp, and contemporary conjunto music from Los Texmaniacs.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 27
7/30/2011
This episode presents a series of one-of-a-kind original recordings made recently on a chilly Saturday afternoon on-site in Elkton, Maryland with the family and friends of the late great American legend, Ola Belle Reed.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 28
7/29/2011
Big Bill Broonzy, Brownie McGhee, and Sonny Terry sing the praises of larger-than-life mythic characters like John Henry and Joe Turner. And we enjoy some distant sounds from Paraguay, Indonesia, and Gambia.
Duration:00:58:59
Episode 30
7/27/2011
Bluesman Reverend Gary Davis sings of a golden city with pearly gates, Paul Robeson compares earthy freedom to divine deliverance, and Doc Watson asks the fundamentally profound question, “Was I born to die?”
Duration:00:58:59