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.