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Tuesday, February 18, 2003 |
anyway you want it, that's the way you need it
When I was growing up, I used to haunt the two big sections of LP recordings that the Joliet Public Library had next the card catalog. Bless whatever librarian picked them out that wildly eclectic mix; it was my introduction to John Cage and John Coltrane, to Pete Seeger and Pete Townsend, to a recording of music "written" by a computer program running on a University of Illinois mainframe. They had a lot of the old Folkways recordings, and I used to listen to some of the Appalachian music they had. It never was a favorite; as a teen I wasn't experienced enough to see past the often primitive recording quality and the amateurish quality of the sharecroppers and coal miners who sang on those records, but a bit of them stuck with me, and helped expand my musical tastes past whatever Top-40 records WLS and WCFL was playing. Moses Asch, the owner of Folkways, was passionate about keeping music available, whether it was popular or not.When he died, his estate sold the Folkways catalog to the Smithsonian, on the condition that they would keep the entire catalog in print, all the time. The Smithsonian has done something that is an exemplar for, and a reproach to, the mainstream recording industry in this country. The entire Folkways catalog is available via burned-on-demand CDs, priced at $20/pop.
Smithsonian Folkways Dusts Off Titles With New Technology
