Guy Hughes Carawan Jr. was an American folk musician and musicologist. He served as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee.
The Almanac Singers was an American New York City-based folk music group, active between 1940 and 1943, founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie. The group specialized in topical songs, mostly songs advocating an anti-war, anti-racism and pro-union philosophy. They were part of the Popular Front, an alliance of liberals and leftists, including the Communist Party USA, who had vowed to put aside their differences in order to fight fascism and promote racial and religious inclusiveness and workers' rights. The Almanac Singers felt strongly that songs could help achieve these goals.
The New Lost City Ramblers, or NLCR, was an American contemporary old-time string band that formed in New York City in 1958 during the folk revival. Mike Seeger, John Cohen and Tom Paley were its founding members. Tracy Schwarz replaced Paley, who left the group in 1962. Seeger died of cancer in 2009, Paley died in 2017, and Cohen died in 2019. NLCR participated in the old-time music revival, and directly influenced many later musicians.
Ella Jenkins is an American folk singer and actress. Dubbed "The First Lady of the Children's Folk Song" by the Wisconsin State Journal, she has been a leading performer of children's music for over fifty years. Her album, Multicultural Children’s Songs (1995), has long been the most popular Smithsonian Folkways release. She has appeared on numerous children's television programs and in 2004, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
Talking Union is a 1941 album by the Almanac Singers: Millard Lampell, Lee Hays and Pete Seeger. It is an enduring collection of working man’s anthems that have been passed down through generations of laborers. Liner notes include an introduction by Pete Seeger and song explanations. In 2010 it was selected by the Library of Congress as an addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary recordings, and performed in more than 40 other recordings. He desired to make known the caretakers of culture that inspired and taught him.
Paul Clayton was an American folksinger and folklorist who was prominent in the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s.
Smithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways Records, donated the entire Folkways Records label to the Smithsonian. The donation was made on the condition that the Institution continue Asch's policy that each of the more than 2,000 albums of Folkways Records remain in print forever, regardless of sales. Since then, the label has expanded on Asch's vision of documenting the sounds of the world, adding six other record labels to the collection, as well as releasing over 300 new recordings. Some well-known artists have contributed to the Smithsonian Folkways collection, including Pete Seeger, Ella Jenkins, Woody Guthrie, and Lead Belly. Famous songs include "This Land Is Your Land", "Goodnight, Irene", and "Midnight Special." Due to the unique nature of its recordings, which include an extensive collection of traditional American music, children's music, and international music, Smithsonian Folkways has become an important collection to the musical community, especially to ethnomusicologists, who utilize the recordings of "people's music" from all over the world.
Elizabeth Mitchell is an American singer, songwriter and musician. She began her career performing with Lisa Loeb as the duo Liz and Lisa, then founded the indie rock band Ida in 1991, of which she continues to be a member. As a solo artist, she has been recording and performing music for children since 1998.
American singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie's published recordings are culled from a series of recording sessions in the 1940s and 1950s. At the time they were recorded they were not set down for a particular album, so are found over several albums not necessarily in chronological order. The more detailed section on recording sessions lists the song by recording date.
"Brown Girl in the Ring" is a traditional children's song in the West Indies. It was originally featured in the game of the same name, thought to have originated in Jamaica.
The Union Boys was an American folk music group, formed impromptu in 1944, to record several songs on an album called Songs for Victory: Music for Political Action. Its "all-star leftist" members were Josh White, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Pete Seeger, Burl Ives, Tom Glazer.
Jacqueline Steiner was an American folk singer, songwriter and social activist. Steiner is known for having written the lyrics to the song "M.T.A.", about a man stuck on the Boston subway because he could not pay the exit fare. "M.T.A." was co-written with Bess Lomax Hawes as part of a Boston political campaign in 1949 and later altered slightly by the popular folk group the Kingston Trio, becoming one of their hits in 1959.
Suni Paz is an Argentinian singer, songwriter, guitarist, poet, folklorist, translator, and teacher, who has recorded and has been published extensively. Paz is part of the progressive Latin American music movement known as nueva canción.
Woody Guthrie Sings Folk Songs is a remastered compilation album of American folk songs sung by legend Woody Guthrie accompanied by Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, Sonny Terry, and Bess Lomax Hawes originally recorded for Moses Asch in the 1940s and re-released in 1989 by Folkways Records.
American Folk Songs for Children is a studio album released by Pete Seeger in 1953 by Folkways Records. It was Seeger's first solo album.
New Mexico music is a genre of music that originated in the US State of New Mexico, it derives from the Puebloan music in the 13th century, and with the folk music of Hispanos during the 16th to 19th centuries in Santa Fe de Nuevo México. The style went through several changes during pre-statehood, mostly during the developments of Mexican folk and cowboy Western music. After statehood, New Mexico music continued to grow in popularity with native New Mexicans, mostly with the Pueblo, Navajo, Apache, Neomexicanos, and the descendants of the American frontier. Shortly after statehood, during the early 1900s, elements of Country music and American folk music began to become incorporated into the genre. The 1950s and 1960s brought the influences of Blues, Jazz, Rockabilly, and Rock and roll into New Mexico music; and, during the 1970s, the genre entered popular music in the state, with artists like Al Hurricane and Freddie Brown receiving airtime locally on KANW, and international recognition on the syndicated Val De La O Show. Other artists prominently featured on the Val de la O Show were other Southwestern artists, performing Regional Mexican, Tejano, Texas country, and Western music, which brought a more general audience to New Mexico music.
Cimarrón is a Colombian musical group of festive dance music joropo from the plains of the Orinoco River. This Grammy nominated band makes latin music with its Andalusian, Indigenous American native and African roots. Their music includes four-stringed cuatro, harp, maracas, and also peruvian-flamenco cajón, brazilian surdo, afro-colombian tambora, a stomp dance as a percussion component and tribal indigenous whistles.
Jeff Place is the Grammy-award-winning Archivist and Curator at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. He and Anthony Seeger were the first two full-time employees hired in 1987 when the Smithsonian acquired Folkways Records from the estate of Folkways founder Moses Asch.
Gazette, Vol. 1 is a studio album by American folk singer Pete Seeger. It was released in 1958 by Folkways Records. It was later re-released by Smithsonian Folkways. The album artwork is by Antonio Frasconi and the design by Ronald Clyne.
