Folkways Records is a record label that documents folk and world music. It is now owned by the Smithsonian Institution.
The Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City. Asch sought to record and document sound from the entire world. From 1948 until Asch's death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. The albums are very diverse in content including traditional and contemporary musi...
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Folkways Records is a record label that documents folk and world music. It is now owned by the Smithsonian Institution.
The Folkways Records & Service Co. was founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City. Asch sought to record and document sound from the entire world. From 1948 until Asch's death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. The albums are very diverse in content including traditional and contemporary music from around the world; spoken word, poetry, and multi-lingual instructional recordings; and field recordings of communities, individuals, and natural sounds. It was also an early proponent of the singers and songwriters, such as Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Leadbelly, who formed the center of the American folk music revival.
The label became very influential on a generation of folk singers because of its release of a great number of old-time recordings by re-discovered performers from the 1920s and 1930s like Dock Boggs and Clarence...
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