Harry Smith had a wealth of influences that helped him to put togeather this collection. Harry had a past full of the arts. He made movies, painted, all sorts of things. He also lived in many different environments such as New York and Oregon. He also was exposed to many different cultures. He lived with Indians and even though he was white he spent time around african americans. At that time that was rare. These experiances helped shape what he chose as well as his yearning to experiance things that were out of his norm. A lady from the radio said that "Harry did not collect the songs bases on what he liked." and there was a quote from Harry saying: "I was looking for exotic records."
She then told a story about how a man went to a library and found the set of records and brought them to Harry Smith. Harry said he had not heard them in 30 years. The man when away and came back and there were actually tears in his eyes. I think that he had many memories built into this anthology. I believe that he took his experiances that he had in his life and associated them with songs that he found, and upon hearing these songs later in life they brought back memories or his past.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Monday, October 23, 2006
Folkways episode 4
When I first tried to listen to this episode I was annoyed to find that about a fifth of the way though it would stop loading for me. So after borrowing someone elses computer I finally got it to work.
Episode 4 to me was a little less enjoyable then episode 3 was. It focus on a set of folk records released by folkways in the 1950s of songs that had long been out of print. What I found interesting about this episode was the fact that Smith intentionally release only songs that had been recorded by companies for sale before. He did this because these songs were released for people who really wanted to hear their own music. This was the true folk music of the time, what the people played. On top of that I found it very interesting that he did not list the race of the artists on the records so that the music would be judged on its merit. This probally caused some people to listen to songs they normally would have avoided due to racism or just that fact that they did not think they would like so called "black" music. The is a very good way to circumvent any possiblity of racism creeping into music sales.
This is about all im gonna write from this, i was kinda working on my performance at the same time. At least im honest.
Episode 4 to me was a little less enjoyable then episode 3 was. It focus on a set of folk records released by folkways in the 1950s of songs that had long been out of print. What I found interesting about this episode was the fact that Smith intentionally release only songs that had been recorded by companies for sale before. He did this because these songs were released for people who really wanted to hear their own music. This was the true folk music of the time, what the people played. On top of that I found it very interesting that he did not list the race of the artists on the records so that the music would be judged on its merit. This probally caused some people to listen to songs they normally would have avoided due to racism or just that fact that they did not think they would like so called "black" music. The is a very good way to circumvent any possiblity of racism creeping into music sales.
This is about all im gonna write from this, i was kinda working on my performance at the same time. At least im honest.
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Folkways episode 3
This is the first of three posts that we are supposed to make on the folk ways series. This is my post for the first required listening.
"What is Folkways? What can we say? Cause its so many different things. What you got to ask yourself is, What kinds of personality, what kind of mind, what kind of will would say in the latter part of the 20th century: I am going to make a document that is the sound archive for the 20th century." Michael Asch
The quote goes on to talk about how the creators goal was not money but to create the archive.
This is important because without people like Moses Asch we would not have these great recordings in all sorts of styles and some are not even songs. We get recordings of speeches like Martin Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech. We get ragtime recordings, poetry, folk music, Blues, Jazz, music from all over the world. Moses Asch created a archive of so much music that will last for a long time. Unlike music from the past this music will survive in its original form. Before recordings all that could be save of music was sheet music. This did not always hold every detail in the songs, like the feelings and emotions the writer felt. Not to mention many folk songs of the past would not have been written down at all. Recordings allow us to save all the great music created by the original artists, and allow us to hear the emotions they felt when they sang the song. Moses Asch set out to create a documentation of music of the times. He did not care for money that would possibly be made but instead cared about keeping this music around for the public to listen to when they needed it.
The connection to the course is obvious. These recordings are a great source of roots music that have survived to modern times as preformed by the original artists. This is the music that the music we listen to today grew out of. This is roots music, this is the memory of what came before.
"What is Folkways? What can we say? Cause its so many different things. What you got to ask yourself is, What kinds of personality, what kind of mind, what kind of will would say in the latter part of the 20th century: I am going to make a document that is the sound archive for the 20th century." Michael Asch
The quote goes on to talk about how the creators goal was not money but to create the archive.
This is important because without people like Moses Asch we would not have these great recordings in all sorts of styles and some are not even songs. We get recordings of speeches like Martin Luther King Jr.'s I have a dream speech. We get ragtime recordings, poetry, folk music, Blues, Jazz, music from all over the world. Moses Asch created a archive of so much music that will last for a long time. Unlike music from the past this music will survive in its original form. Before recordings all that could be save of music was sheet music. This did not always hold every detail in the songs, like the feelings and emotions the writer felt. Not to mention many folk songs of the past would not have been written down at all. Recordings allow us to save all the great music created by the original artists, and allow us to hear the emotions they felt when they sang the song. Moses Asch set out to create a documentation of music of the times. He did not care for money that would possibly be made but instead cared about keeping this music around for the public to listen to when they needed it.
The connection to the course is obvious. These recordings are a great source of roots music that have survived to modern times as preformed by the original artists. This is the music that the music we listen to today grew out of. This is roots music, this is the memory of what came before.
The Carter style
Currently I am taking guitar lessons here at college, and we have been givin several handouts of stuff to learn. One of these books was on blugrass like guitar. Much of the stuff sounds like country and other older styles. On the last page of this book, which i found out recently, is a page entitled "The Carter Style." Because of my FYS I realized that the page was actually music from the Carter Family. I tried to play this for a while, and i realized that, me being new to the guitar, it was too hard for me to play. Just trying to play this song made be realize that country is not as simple as it often sounds to me. The speed at which the changing rythems are played was to much for me, so i ended up playing it much slower, often times with pauses that weren't supposed to be there but i had to create in order to play it. I realize that if I had more experiance on the guitar i might have been able to play this better, but still it comes to me as a suprise that rock music by Pink Floyd like "Wish you were here" is more simple then the Carter family.
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