FESTS FETE FOLKWAYS

The 75th anniversary of Folkways Records, the beacon of American folk music, will be celebrated with festivals in D.C. and Brooklyn and LP reissues of titles ranging from Doc Watson to frog sounds.

Smithsonian Folkways will present Folkways at 75, a program featuring Jake Blount, No-No Boy, and a screening of Early Abstractions, short films by Anthology of American Folk Music compiler Harry Smith, at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on 7/6. Free and open to the public, the event will held on the National Mall.

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Alice Gerrard, Sonia Sanchez and Peggy Seeger will celebrate the anniversary 11/10-12 at the Brooklyn Folk Festival along with artists currently releasing music on Smithsonian Folkways, Blount, Dom Flemons, Charlie Parr and the Down Hill Strugglers. There will also be multiple tributes to the ingenuity of Harry Smith, including a performance by The Fugs and a Q&A with author John Szwed. Details are here.

Smithsonian Folkways will be reissuing and re-pressing many classic Folkways titles on LP, packaged in the classic black tip-on jackets with wrap-around, paste-on artwork. The Sounds of North American Frogs will be available on LP for the first time since 1958; The New Lost City Ramblers with Cousin Emmy will be available on LP for the first time since 1968; and two albums from the late 1970s by poet Sarah Webster Fabio, Jujus/Alchemy of the Blues and Together to the Tune of Coltrane’s “Equinox” will be reissued as well.

Details on new releases celebrating the legacy of Folkways Records will be shared throughout the year.

We look forward to some frogs croaking out “This Land is Your Land.”