We were originally scheduled to read an article this week, but I think I'm going to have us listen to some podcasts instead. I would like everyone to listen to episodes 3, 4, and 5 of the The Folkways Collection. This is a very cool 24 episode podcast covering the strange and wonderful history of Moses Asch's great Folkways label, which was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution upon Asch's death. The Folkways label recorded and released an enormous variety of music, poetry, and spoken word material, all of which are discussed in various ways in these podcasts.
The particular episodes I want you to listen to are about Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music [Smithsonian pages about the anthology, with info on each song][Wikipedia article][AllMusic review] that Eagan talked about when he visited our classes last week. This is a truly remarkable collection, and had a profound influence on me both musically and in how I've always thought about this course. It's a sign of its importance that they devoted a full 1/8 of their podcasts to a discussion of this one release.
Each episode is just under an hour long. I'd like everyone to listen to at least the first two by Tuesday (24 Oct), and then the third by Thursday (26 Oct). For each episode, write a blog post with a specific quote or bit of music from that episode that you found important. Indicate why you think it's important and how it connects to our course. (So I'm expecting three separate posts on each of your blogs to result from this.)
This is very cool stuff - enjoy!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment