Customer Reviews

Anthology of American Folk Music

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I half heard a story about the Anthology on Natl Public Radio a few months ago while I was getting ready for work. The story kept coming back to me, until I had to buy the Anthology to get some peace. Instead of peace, I find that I am now disturbed, intrigued, and haunted.

Music is ill-suited to being described in words, so I'll use an entirely different experience to try and convey what listening to this Anthology is like.

I once knew a fellow who had grown up on Bechtel construction project sites around the world. As a kid playing in the dirt at these sites, he'd collected a box full of those stone tools that humans made and used for something like three million years. I found that once I had turned one of these slips of chipped obsidian or shale over for a moment, it settled naturally into my hand. There was a spot for my thumb, another spot for my forefinger, and my hand was making a scraping or digging motion with the thing. The tool and my hand still remembered their ancient partnership, without any volition from me. This sensation was simultaneously disturbing and satisfying and made the hair stand up on my neck.

This sensation is very close to what I feel listening to this anthology. You will not hear the familiar, highly produced music we're now so comfortable with. You will hear the voice and sound of music as it has been for millions of years -- and you will recognize what you are hearing as being utterly, essentially human.

These recordings were, of course, made only 75 years ago in the 1920's, surely part of the modern era. Yet this was the last moment in time between the old world and the new world. We still sing and play music for the same reasons we always have, but the way we used our voices and instruments for millions of years has been changed by technology. So if these not very old recordings feel strangely like a link to something ancient and mysterious, that's because they actually are.

There is a great beauty in the voices on these recordings, many of which are almost shrill, almost off-key -- unfamiliar to our pampered contemporary ears -- but also perfectly right. There is a mystery in the odd and sometimes fragmentary lyrics, whose once important meaning is now lost.

We can still share the depth of feeling through the music itself, sometimes so strongly that your heart leaps as though you'd been kicked from inside. But, as it says in the booklet of notes, while we can share in the emotions that impelled someone to sing about The Coo Coo Bird in the first place, we'll never know why it was important to live on a mountainside in order to see Willie go by.

Perhaps the true power of this Anthology is that every recording is genuine in a way that is no longer possible. I recommend it.

Simply said, I awaited this set with great anticipation and was terribly disappointed. The reason is not because of the precarious sound quality on many of the songs, but rather the overall lack of diversity of the music. Perhaps I'm not as scholarly as many of the previous reviewers in terms of the historical nuances of American Folk Music, and possibily that academic perspective is necessary to fully savor this set. All I know is that the vast majority of these songs sounded exactly the same to me and only one or two caught my attention as being poignant in the way I expected the majority of them to be. I don't think there was a single song that actually got my foot tappin' or a hum goin'. I've been compiling a blues/folk collection and I expected this to be one of the crowning jewels and I assure you it fell far short of that.

However, I can recommend another set that is along the same lines and is, in my opinion, vastly better. Title: "Roots 'N Blues Retrospective 1925-1950" on Sony/Columbia. It is a four CD set (it still has much more music than this Anthology set; the six CD's here are not that long) and there isn't a bad song on any one of them. It has a broader scope: folk, bluegrass, acoustic blues, and lots of very unique stuff that is somewhere between vaudeville and burlesque. It has all the charm and humor of a simpler and more genuine era in American life. That set proved to be what I expected this set to be. (I won't mention that it is only two-thirds the price as well, because if you're seeking out music of this genre the cost is probably of incidental concern.)

The Retrospective set has only a few reviews behind it but please don't let that chill you. If you get it and strongly agree/disagree with me, I'd be interested in knowing as I'm really curious why this set has the notoriety and that set does not. But I'm confident that if you throw a few logs on the fire and pour yourself an icy cold beverage of your choice and put one of the Retrospective CD's on, you'll have a glowing smile on your face in no time at all. With this Anthology set some other state of mind will predominate, one less visceral and ultimately less fun.

Much ink & many electrons have been devoted to explaining both Harry Smith (and a lot of explanation is necessary -- very interesting man) and this wonderful collection of recordings from the 1920's and 30's, so I won't go into too much detail here. If you'd like a good treatise on the work itself as a cultural object, and how it relates to other thematically similar items, I would reccomend Griel Marcus' book Invisible Republic.
This is the greatest mix tape ever made, and an essential cultural artifact, not only of the vernacular music of the hills & highways of pre-electrification America, but also of the folk movement ofthe fifties and sixties (the primer fromwhic all else was derived) and by extension of the hippy movement following closely thereafter.
SOme of this music is really wild...

I dont think there is a need to go into to much detail about this *6 CD* set. If you can fork over the cash, just buy it. If you have any interest in roots music, just buy it. If you thought ol' Bobby Dylan and the Band made some great weird music in the basement of big pink in '67 .. for the love of god, BUY THIS! strange, unadorned, raw music , just buy it.

let me just say that listening to the anthology of american folk music was a big contributor to my decision in switching my college major from sculpture to ethnomusicology. for those who have heard the anthology, i really don't have to go into detail as to how mind-blowing this collection is. i recommend looking into other things harry smith has done; he was an amazing artist and well...my hero!

The "Anthology of American Folk Music" put together by Harry Smith was originally issued in 1952 in three volumes of 2 LPs each, with a total of 84 tracks collected from old records. It is said that this collection played a seminal role in the folk music revival of the late 1950s and early 1960s, influencing and inspiring the generation of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. Once you listen to these songs you will have little doubt that was indeed the case. The three volumes focus on Ballads, Social Music, and Songs respectively. I did not recognize enough of these 84 songs to use all of the fingers on my guitar picking hand and I could not care less. You can look over the playlist above and see if anything looks familiar, but, obviously, that is beside the point here. These songs involve a definition of "folk" that is expansive enough to include blues singers like Blind Lemon Jefferson and Richard "Rabbit" Brown. The authenticity of these songs is overpowering, transporting you to a time and place when radio was just starting to make inroads into the backwoods of America.

The collection includes a 100-page booklet that features harry Smith's original handbook of songs, an essay by critic Greil Marcus, along with other essays, song notes, photos, graphics, and recollections by legendary artists about how this anthology inspired their own careers. The overall effect is like taking a college course on American Folk Music. Whether your interest in this type of music comes from listening to the Weavers, Peter Paul, & Mary, or the soundtrack to "Brother, Where Art Thou?" hopefully your enjoyment of folk music will lead you back to this seminal collection. Additional Note: There is also an excellent website put together by the Smithsonian Folkways that will tell you for not only alternate titles (e.g., "The Wagoner's Lad" is also known as "Loving Nancy" and "My Horses Ain't Hungry"), but other recorded versions organized by styles (e.g., traditional American Folk, Folksong revival, Post revival, Country/String Band, Bluegrass, and British). Like everyone else, I have been greatly impressed by the way the Smithsonian Institute has been protecting our nation's heritage when it comes to folk music. They take their job seriously and they are very, very good at it.

You should buy this just to hear where all those folk and blues revivalists of the 60s got a large chunk of their material. Back then, these albums were the only way to hear these recordings unless you were willing to go to great lengths to collect old records (like the compiler of this Anthology, Harry Smith).

If you enjoy the Anthology music you can hear a lot more of the same style on Yazoo Records' various "rural music" anthologies. Nearly every disc they issue has an Anthology track or two on it, or other work by artists who appear on this Anthology. I actually find Yazoo's "Before The Blues" series more enjoyable, track for track, than this collection. It's likely, though, that there would be no Yazoo records today if the AAFM hadn't come along in the early 1950s. Also, this Anthology includes secular, spiritual and "social" music in a rather comprehensive way, so understandably there don't seem to be many people who like EVERY song. Even Harry Smith didn't like every song in the collection (read the liner notes).

and it is all damned fine. This is a remarkable anthology and makes the case that compiling the works of others can be a work of art in and of itself. The liner notes point out the way that Harry Smith arranged the songs so that they built on each other, either by repeating melodies or subject matter or just the general vibe. Listening to this in one sitting takes a serious investment in time but it pays dividends by allowing you to see the Anthology as a whole as opposed to a collection of unrelated songs.

Someday, someone may put out the "The Anthology of American Hardcore Music 1980-1988" and pay tribute to those forgotten bands who toiled in obscurity, releasing singles (or just cassettes) of their tunes. That person could do no better than to use Harry Smith's work as their template.

This is one fantastic anthology. It is wonderfully annotated, and they give you a reproduction of the original liner notes. From what I saw on the Smithsonian's website, though, they are no longer producing this box set so if you want it you'd better act fast.

Recently aquired The Band's remasters, and the Dylan Bootleg Series vols 1-3, and the Q Magazine Special on Bobby - which linked Dylan/The Band back to the Anthology - via Greil Marcus's book, Invisible Republic. Which I read first! So, looking for something I hadn't heard before, and eager to hear the music I'd "heard" Marcus talking about, I decided to give the Anthology a whirl last weekend - and have been spinning ever since. It is wierd, wonderful, and spooky - and profound! What a combination - the more you commit to it, the worse/better it gets. Just stunning. An aquired variety of tastes, sure, but so is malt whisky. And once you get the taste, you're addicted - so tread carefully.