Folkways Recording Project

In 1987 the Smithsonian Institution acquired Folkways Recordings. Since then, the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage has issued new recordings and reissued historic recordings of a wide range of music and spoken word. This archive is a rich resource known by too few people and deserves greater visibility. The National Museum of African American History and Culture initiated an assessment, undertaken by ethnomusicologist Mark Puryear, of more than 7000 tracks of recordings of particular interest to those studying the African American experience.

The range of the recordings includes spoken word and poetry read by the authors Sterling Brown, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez and Margaret Walker. Ruby Dee and her late husband Ossie Davis bring historical figures such as Harriet Tubman, Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglass to life. There are interviews with W.E.B. Du Bois, Angela Davis and Huey Newton. Recordings of music include traditional religious music such as the McIntosh County Shouters, the Moving Star Hall Singers, Flora Molton and field recordings in Georgia and South Carolina. African American pianists include James P. Johnson, Memphis Slim and Art Tatum. There are guitar and banjo pioneers and innovators as well as music of the Civil Rights Movement. Other recording artists include Paul Robeson, Ledbelly, Mary Lou Williams and Bernice Johnson Reagon. There is music for children and music of Africa and its Diaspora.

In 2007 the first two African American Legacy Recordings were issued, and the series grows to three in 2008. In May of 2007, a new CD of Paul Robeson’s Folkways recordings were released, including extensive liner notes, photos and updated materials on Robeson. In June of 2007, in conjunction with the Smithsonian Folklife Festival program, The Roots of Virginia Culture: The past is present, a new recording by the Paschall Brothers (more info), a Hampton Roads A Capella Gospel group, was released. And in July of 2008, the third installment, Richmond Blues, by traditional-blues masters Cephas & Wiggins, will be released.

Each year the National Museum of African American History and Culture will collaborate with Smithsonian Folkways Recordings to reissue historic recordings with the goal of making these recordings accessible to new audiences and issue new recordings of contemporary African American traditions.