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The Exhibition Seeing the World of Sound: The Cover Art of
Folkways Records
Part I
Moses Asch and Folkways Covers
About Moses Asch
and Folkways
In 1979, writing about the album cover art and design that had
been done for Folkways Records over a period of more than 30
years, Moses Asch, founder and director of Folkways, emphasized
that "the marriage of the front art and the inside content" was of
paramount importance. In Asch's view, the artist's work, like that
of the musician, needed to be recorded and then broadly
disseminated. The visual component of the album cover should
both reach out to and be an expression of humanity.
The Folkways
Philosophy
The album cover, as will be seen, functioned in a number of
ways. On a purely pragmatic level, it housed and protected the
record. It was also, however, a marketing and communication tool
that would serve as a visual entry point to the specific recording
inside, as well as part of a larger identity and marketing program
for Folkways Records as a whole. On yet another level, Folkways
record covers facilitated the broad dissemination of the art and
photography of the covers (an important consideration in Asch's
conception, as seen above) not to mention the totality of the
design, to those who purchased the records. They communicated
visually something complementary in stylistic range and
thematic focus to the breathtaking diversity of the socially
relevant, highly topical and, often, politically radical recordings
within.
Folkways Records and Service Corporation was founded in 1948
by Moses Asch and continued under his direction until his death
in 1986. It was a small operation with a huge output. Never
employing more than a half dozen people, Moses Asch produced
over 2,000 titles in the 38 years of the company's existence--an
average of one record a week. Even more remarkable, he never
deleted a single title from the Folkways catalogue regardless of
sales. If someone brought him material that he believed was a
genuine expression, he was interested; and if it became a
Folkways record, it became a document, and an integral and
lasting part of the Folkways catalogue. You don't delete
documents, Asch made clear, saying, "Just because the letter J is
less popular than the letter S, you don't take it out of the
dictionary."
The kinds of materials on which Moses Asch placed greatest
emphasis were those sounds and voices that would otherwise not
have been heard and those communities that would otherwise not
have been represented. Folkways, then, represents a vast and rich
repository of music and sound recordings--of work, play, prayer,
discourse, protest, praise, sorrow, despair, triumph, struggle,
Moses Asch's
Artistic Sensibility
The Folkways
"Reach"
A Library of Sound
hope and joy; of nature, science, history, literature, art,
community and humanity.
Art and artists were an ever-present part of Moses Asch's world:
as a child growing up in Europe and New York, the son of a
famous Yiddish writer and intellectual, Sholem Asch; as a student
of sound technology in Germany between the wars; and as a
lifelong New Yorker. His knowledge of and interest in significant
figures, movements and events in western art, particularly that of
the twentieth century, did not preclude a deep appreciation and
respect for folk art and non-western art and, especially, art that
reflected a particular social or political experience. Many of the
artists who were his contemporaries, who he admired, and whose
work appears on Folkways covers shared his aesthetic
sensibilities and social conscience.
Seeing the World of Sound: The Cover Art of Folkways Records,
which commemorates the birth centennial of Moses Asch, is the
first exhibit to focus on the album covers, foregrounding the
historically important and richly diverse visual archive that is
also Folkways Records.
For most people, Folkways Records is synonymous with the
recordings of the iconic folk and blues musicians Woody Guthrie,
Huddie Ledbetter (Lead Belly) and Pete Seeger. But for committed
fans of early jazz giants such as James P. Johnson and Mary Lou
Williams or traditional music greats Dock Boggs and Jean Ritchie,
Folkways is their label. And for many Folkways collectors, it was
the record company that did world music - first and most. Want
to hear Hopi Katchina songs or ragas of India or classical Chinese
opera? Go to Folkways.
More than a couple of generations have raised their children on
the genuine music of Ella Jenkins and dozens of other Folkways'
records for children. Thousands of teachers and librarians, in the
United States and around the world, have introduced students to
the history of the American civil rights movement, and other
significant international struggles for freedom and justice,
through Folkways. Then there is the much smaller group of
people who know Folkways for lectures and literature and lives
recounted - from the famous to the virtually unknown - contained
within the Folkways' spoken word collection. And very few,
indeed, are acquainted with those remarkable Folkways
soundscape documents of mid-twentieth century everyday life
and experience such as the Sounds of Steam Locomotives and the
Sounds of the Junkyard.
THE FOLKWAYS CATALOGUE AND ITS EMPTY SPACES
The last edition of the Folkways catalogue listed over 2000
individual recordings. The vast majority of these were divided
into categories, based on genre, beginning with the 2000 series
and ending with the 9000 series. A relatively small number,
including stereo reissues and boxed sets, were assigned to
numerical categories beyond the 9000 series.
Over the years new titles were added to each category, but the
numbers they were assigned were not in strict numerical
sequence. In fact, Moe Asch intentionally left gaps in the
numbering system within and between every category to reserve
space for future recordings--recordings that would fit, in his
mind, in very specific places.
(A Library of Sound
2nd panel)
INTRO
Catalogue No. 3508
Catalogue No. 2022
Catalogue No. 2868
To illustrate, if we look at the section of the catalogue described
as the International Series, the first recording listed is Melodies
and Rhythms of Arabic Music, numbered 8451. It is followed by
8452, then 8454, then 8460, 8470, 8471, 8501 and so on, ending
with Festival of Japanese Music in Hawaii: Volume 2, catalogue
number 8886. So while there are 136 recordings in the
International Series, there is space reserved for 299 additional
titles.
Over the thirty-eight years as director of Folkways, Moses Asch
used many metaphors to describe his life's work: an
encyclopedia, talking books, a depository of the world's sounds.
But in looking at the actual catalogue and its unique numbering
system, another metaphor comes to mind. Just as a library
organizes books by categories and assumes that more will follow
and fill in, Moses Asch, in creating those spaces in the catalogue,
seems to have envisioned Folkways as a library of sound.
Album: John A. Lomax, Jr. Sings American Folk Songs
Year: 1956
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
The structure of the cover, using cropping, a low horizontal
image format and type set along the top edge, suggests the open
expanses of the western landscape. In 1925, Moe Asch purchased
a copy of Cowboy Songs and Frontier Ballads by John A. Lomax,
Sr., beginning his lifelong passion for American folksongs. The
son of the renowned folklorist sings this collection of songs.
Album: Cowboy Ballads
Year: 1985
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Ben Shahn
David Stone Martin illustrated and designed covers for many
early Folkways recordings, as well as Asch and Disc recordings.
Martin was a friend of Ben Shahn's and introduced him to Moe
Asch which resulted in numerous collaborations in the early
years of Folkways. This simple line drawing by Shahn conveys
both the hardships and simplicity of this collection of ballads.
Album: The History of Jazz
Year: 1978
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Joan Miró
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The Miró painting reflects the playful, dynamic nature of the
various kinds of jazz recorded here. The form and colour of the
type subtly reiterate the whimsical qualities of the painting.
Contrast is provided by the warmth of the orange ground. Mary
Lou Williams was a pioneer jazz musician, arranger and
composer, and one of Moe Asch’s favourite artists.
Album: Negro Folk Songs for Young People
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Frederick Ramsey Jr.
Moses Asch had the greatest respect for Huddie Ledbetter (Lead
Belly) who was not only a powerful singer and musician but a true
scholar of African American music. This grainy photograph
conveys the honesty and integrity of the man, absorbed here in
playing for a young audience in his preferred dress of suit and
tie.
Album: Niloh Service
Year: 1973
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
The sketchy quality of the image and hand-rendered letter-forms
give currency and immediacy to this traditional service. The first
recordings made by Moe Asch were popular Yiddish songs, Jewish
commentaries and educational programming for radio station
WEVD. Jewish, as well as other religious liturgical material,
became an important part of the Folkways catalogue.
Album: Woody Guthrie: This Land Is Your Land
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Craig Meirop
Photograph: Sid Grossman
The two superimposed images show Guthrie’s passion and
intensity during performance. The orange drop-shadows of the
title identify the album as a recording of the 60s. It was Woody
Guthrie’s association with Moses Asch that yielded the bulk of his
prodigious recorded legacy. A single one-day session, in March
1944, resulted in a remarkable 75 recorded songs.
I Influences and Collaborations
The two superimposed images, printed in sepia-like tones, show
Guthrie’s passion and intensity during performance. The orange
drop-shadows of the title identify the album as a recording of the
60s. It was Woody Guthrie’s association with Moses Asch that
yielded the bulk of his prodigious recorded legacy. A single oneday session, in March 1944, resulted in a remarkable output of
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Catalogue No. 5571
Catalogue No. 4251
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seventy-five recorded songs.
Album: Eugene V. Debs
Year: 1979
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
The bold, slab serif typeface and posterized photograph give
weight and power to the recording of Eugene Debs’ revolutionary
voice. The red, white and blue colour scheme underlines his
passion for the America “of the people”. Moe Asch’s first
recordings in the 1930’s were for radio station, WEVD: call letters
that stood for the initials of Eugene Victor Debs.
I Influences and Collaborations
Moe Asch’s first recordings in the 1930’s were for radio station,
WEVD in New York City. The call letters stood for the initials of
Eugene Victor Debs. “For fifty years, until his death in 1926,
Eugene V. Debs devoted his life to the struggles of the American,
and international, working class.” (From the album’s liner notes
edited by Bernard Sanders)
Album: Healing Songs of the American Indians
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
The photography of Frances Densmore, which documents early
sound technology, shows her playing a recording on a wax
cylinder phonograph. A Native American singer interprets it in
sign language (Washington DC 1914). The extended, serif type of
the title is reminiscent of wood types characteristic of the early
American west.
Album: Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 2
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Ben Shahn
The condensed, serif type and the Ben Shahn photograph, are
rendered in two colours: the brown superimposed on a pale tint
of orange, gives a warm, earthy, rural sensibility to the overall
design. The three-volume Anthology of American Folk Music by
Harry Smith is considered one of the most-important recordings
in the Folkways catalogue.
Album: Gazette
Year: 1958
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Antonio Frasconi
Key Folkways singer Pete Seeger saw American folk music as
being “a living, vital, creative force in our lives…as much a
reflection of the present as of the past.” Playing on the
arrangement of a newspaper front page, this design uses the
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 2501
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35503
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3/4
expressive Frasconi woodcut, which captures Seeger’s stage
presence perfectly, to create a tone that is popular, accessible
and reflective of the music.
I Influences and Collaborations
Key Folkways recording artist Pete Seeger saw American folk music
as being “a living, vital, creative force in our lives…as much a
reflection of the present as the past.” The cover design plays on
the arrangement of a newspaper front page to create a tone that
is popular accessible and reflective of the music, while the
expressive Frasconi woodcut of Seeger captures his stage presence
perfectly.
Album: All the Homespun Days: A Narrative Poem
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Norman Studer
The weathered face of an old man of the Catskill backcountry is
enhanced by overprinting the photograph on to a grey-green
ground evoking the regional authenticity of the poetry. Ronald
Clyne, designer, established the distinctive Folkways look seen
here: the dark background and edges and simple, 2-toned
printing are characteristic of his work.
Album: Statement: Lecture at Columbia University
Year: 1977
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Hermann Struck
A traditional, centered arrangement, along with the surrounding
border and colour selection, lend a serious and solemn tone to
the cover. The profile of Sholem Asch conveys a sense of
vulnerability, while the title Statement adds a sense of defiance.
The lecture was Asch’s response to attacks by some in the Jewish
community concerning his writings on Christian themes.
Album: Asch Recordings
Year: 1939, 1967
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Issued in 1967, this album is a compilation of songs that first
appeared on Asch and Disc Recordings, predecessor labels to
Folkways. The cover design features hand-generated type for
which Rosenhouse became known. The 2-colour design makes
use of overprinting to create a third colour and reversal to render
the typographic elements in white.
Archival Info
‘Display Cases’
Archival Materials
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Shown here, on these “mechanicals”, is a photo-mechanical
transfer, or PMT of Lucienne Bloch’s image, along with the photoset type. The finished, printed label can be seen above.
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This mechanical artwork, needed to prepare the film for
commercial printing of a record album cover, shows the collage
technique that was used to create the image.
Specification for the creation of film for printing are written on a
tissue overlay.
The mechanical artwork for the Berkeley Farms album shows
Rubylith film on an acetate overlay cut precisely to create the
silhouette image. Instructions for creating white type on a
coloured ground (reverse type) appear on the bottom edge, jotted
on the masking tape.
Here, the signature Rosenhouse script and his ink drawing on
tracing paper are visible, as are the colour chips above. The
printed label shows an alternate two-colour rendering of the
album cover seen on the wall.
On the upper left is David Stone Martin’s lithograph used for
Struggle – Woody Guthrie.
To the right is mechanical artwork for the front cover of the
Sacco & Vanzetti album.
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At the bottom is mechanical artwork with an acetate overlay
showing Rubylith film that delineates the peach-coloured areas
on Folksongs of Vietnam album cover.
Mechanical artwork for the printing of the cover and the liner
notes for The Pit and the Pendulum appear here together with two
different colour variations of the album. A third colour variation
is visible on the wall.
Shown here is the mechanical artwork for the Niloh Service album
with Irwin Rosenhouse’s drawing on tracing paper. The script is
written directly on the illustration board, allowing little margin
for error.
Also included in this case are a different iteration of the John
Lomax cover than the one on the wall and another example of Ben
Shahn’s image used for Cowboy Ballads, shown here on a piece of
ephemera.
In this case are the mechanicals for Let’s Put the Axe to the Axis,
which shows colour breaks on the tissue overlay, and the
mechanicals for Mexico: Imagenes Cotidianes.
Examples of cover design for Songs to Grow On done over a fifty
year time period; they include recordings for Disc, Folkways and
Smithsonian Folkways.
Mechanical artwork with colour and text variations.
Seen here are examples of paste-up boards for liner notes, along
with mechanical artwork and printed label for Likembi Song Book.
These are examples of mechanical artwork and printed label for
albums in this room. Here, the hand-written instructions to the
printer are clearly visible on the tissue overlays.
Archival Materials
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David Stone Martin was one of the numerous artists whose works
appear on Folkways album covers. His original drawings here are
but a small sample of the breadth of style and subject matter
found in this prominent artist’s oeuvre.
PART II
The Visual Identity of Folkways Records
About the Visual
Identity
The design and art that appear on Folkways record covers literally
provide visibility to the recordings within. It was a prominent and
essential component of the complex whole that made up each
recording.
Design History
Process and
Production
Moses Asch’s technical and marketing innovations – from
microphone placement for the most natural studio sound, to the
now commonplace inclusion of liner notes, complete with song
lyrics and ethnographic or historical commentary and
illustrations – stamped every Folkways recording with a sense of
permanence and seriousness that was shared by all the persons
represented on the recording as well as the customer, the fan, or
the collector who sought it out. The record cover is an integral
part of this larger equation.
In 1948, the year Folkways was founded, the long-play vinyl
record was just being introduced to the recording industry. The
“sleeve” or “cover” developed quickly to be more than a
protective envelope for the record.
It soon became a site of graphic experimentation and innovation.
By the late 50s and into the pop era of the 60s the covers had
achieved an important position in defining cultural identity –
becoming icons of a succession of subcultures from beat through
pop, psychedelic rock and beyond. Against this backdrop of what
was often commercial design done for the mass market, Folkways
continued its own much more financially modest design
production, at times coming up with the most innovative and
groundbreaking of covers.
Moses Asch’s challenge was to create a successful record
company that was as broad, eclectic and inclusive as possible
with little money, little advertising, and a limited distribution
system. He recognized the importance of creating a strong visual
identity for “the product” in order to get the attention of the
consumer. This visual identity would turn out to be key to
marketing and sales for Folkways Records.
Visually, Folkways cover designs were and are unique and
distinctive in several ways. The use of limited colour printing, the
trademark black background and edges, and the tactile, uncoated
paper used in their production differentiated these covers from
most others. In record stores, Folkways albums were easy to
identify by their matte, black edges and by the feeling of the
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warm, textured paper among all those cold, glossy “mainstream”
covers. These features also allowed the visual differentiation of
music genres within the Folkways catalogue, while creating a
consistent visual relationship between covers.
Many of the cover designs featured the work of important artists,
illustrators, photographers and graphic designers such as David
Stone Martin, Ben Shahn, and Walker Evans. A Woody Guthrie
drawing appears on one of his covers. Although many graphic
designers worked for Folkways over the decades, the designs of
David Stone Martin, Irwin Rosenhouse and Ronald Clyne
dominate the body of work.
Designer/client relationships were based on Moe Asch’s respect
for his designers’ abilities, although he had definite opinions
about the designs. The project briefs and working processes were
simple. Asch would describe the album’s content to the designers
and then leave it to them to devise a concept and to design a
cover that would reflect the content, occasionally providing a
photograph or illustration he wished to be included. Uppermost
in his mind was the marriage of the visual design to the sound.
Carefully considered images, typography and layout gave the
covers a dignity and validity and reflected the origins of the
sounds within the album in a sensitive and respectful manner.
The social, political and stylistic attributes of the music and the
moment were “recorded” visually with integrity on Folkways’
album covers.
Tight budgets for design, production and printing played a part
in the way covers looked, but never to their detriment—they were
always appropriate to the rare, the unusual, humble or sometimes
radical or avant-garde recordings. In some cover designs, the
clever use of inexpensive, 2-colour printing yields a third colour
through careful overprinting of one colour on another. In the
interest of economy, images occasionally appeared on more than
one cover and the same mechanical artwork (used to print the
album covers) was sometimes printed in different colour
combinations to make up a series of covers.
The Folkways visual identity, characterized by the frequent use
of a black background, limited colour range, uncoated paper and
the use of authentic imagery that was true to the recording it was
to accompany, remained strong over the decades with later
designers maintaining the original “Folkways look”.
Catalogue No. 2383
The cover designs had an enormous impact on the identification
of the albums by the record-buying public and helped create a
strong and distinctive identity for the albums within the
marketplace.
Album: Van Ronk Sings
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Eric von Schmidt
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Lively, hand-rendered letterforms harmonize with the expressive
monoprint-style image of a guitarist. The placement of the title
leads the eye to the face of the figure. Colours are soft in stark
contrast with the formal quality of the image. The cover art,
signed “von Schmidt”, is likely the work of influential folk-blues
guitarist and artist Eric von Schmidt.
Album: Blues with Broonzy, Terry, McGhee
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Designers Collaborative
Photograph: David Gahr
A graduated dot screen pulls the viewer’s attention back into the
image space where the strongly horizontal format of the
photograph reinforces the sense of the animated “jam session”
taking place.
Album: Little Brother Montgomery
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
This design shows a line image of Montgomery overprinted in
blue on the brown ground which creates some blue type, but also
a third colour, charcoal grey. The placement and contrast of the
stark, white title “Blues” against the ground is particularly strong
visually. The scale of the face creates a sense of intimacy with
the viewer/listener.
Album: The World Music Theatre of Jon Appleton
Year: 1974
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Lufti Ozkok
Linear forms of the typeface relate to modulated sound of the
electronic music being represented. Appleton’s “hip”, tinted
sunglasses are rendered in a tone derived from the red “o”s, a
subtle play on the “apple” in his name and a visual device that
commands the viewer’s attention.
Album: God Bless the Grass
Year: 1972
Cover Design: R. O. Blechman
Illustration: R. O. Blechman
This album deals with conservation and was produced,
appropriately, on recycled paper. Printed only in green, the
charming illustration gives a friendly, accessible tone to the
cover design. The blocky, slab serif typeface provides a dramatic
contrast to the humorous, finely rendered line drawing of Seeger.
IV Songs of Peace and the Environment
37232
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This album dealing with conservation was produced,
appropriately, on recycled paper. Printed only in green, the
charming illustration gives a friendly, accessible tone to the cover
design. The blocky, slab serif typeface provides a dramatic
contrast to the humorous, finely rendered line drawing of Pete
Seeger.
Album: 14 Numbers, Letters and Animal Songs
Year: 1972
Cover Design: Henry Post
Illustration: Chris Davis
Davis’ charming, child-like drawing of a rabbit in a windy
landscape is defined by the striking yellow ground. The irregular,
hand-printed style of the letterforms above reinforces the
whimsical nature of the image.
Album: This is Rhythm
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Ella Jenkins
The child-like line drawings of percussion instruments are
anthropomorphized and create two rows of rhythmic dancing
figures. The tone of the image and character of the lettering
reflects Jenkins’ playful instructional style.
Album: Precious Memories
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: George Pickow
The evocative photograph of this humble interior, which
dominates the cover, is rendered in warm black and marigold,
lending a nostalgic tone to the design. The neck of the banjo
suggests a structure line that separates the performer’s name
from the title of the album and along with the dulcimer, frames
the mirror in which Richie’s image appears.
Album: Take This Hammer
Year: 1950, 1968
Cover Design: Craig Meirop
Illustration: Craig Meirop
This image of Lead Belly shows him in his customary suit and tie.
The capital sans serif letterforms create a simple band of
typographic elements along the top edge which allows the
powerful, full-colour illustration to dominate.
I Influences and Collaborations
This image of the legendary Lead Belly shows him in his customary
suit and tie. Lead Belly was not only a powerful singer and guitar
player, he had a vast knowledge of African American music with a
repertoire ranging from children’s play party songs to prison
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songs. Asch allowed him to record anything he wished, resulting in
a canon that continues to influence musicians worldwide.
Album: The Fugue
Year: 1964
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
The word “fugue”, repeated and gradually increasing in size,
provides a sense of depth to this cover design. The smallest title,
and the most emphatic in terms of contrast, represents the single
musical subject on which the fugue grows step by step to result
in a complex polyphonic form. The muted colours give the cover
a dignified, austere and historical feeling.
Album: Electronic Music
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
This typographic cover design uses a sans serif typeface with
contrasts of size and colour, as well a rectilinear, diagonal
composition of the title repeated to create a visual representation
of modern, “electronic” energy.
Album: Jazz Volume 1: The South
Year: 1958
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
This album is one of 11 covers that uses and identical layout
scheme. Printed in different 2-colour combinations, and with
changes in titling information, they create a set of visually
related designs that form a series. The large word “jazz”, which
dominates the cover, becomes the visual identity for the series.
Album: The Pit and the Pendulum
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Animation of the typographic pendulum is created by gradually
decreasing the height of the repeated titles and tapering the top
of each one. Visual weight is suggested by the white M “hanging”
at the bottom. The dark background and stark design reinforce
the macabre and mysterious quality of Edgar Allan Poe’s work.
Album: The Unquiet Grave
Year: 1951
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Rubbing by Ann Parker and Avon Neal
The elegant, roman capital letters of the title echo the handcarved letterforms of the textured, historical gravestone rubbing.
The muted colour scheme gives this design a contemplative tone.
Printed in two colours on beige paper.
Album: American Banjo
Year: 1966
Cover Design: Designers Collaborative
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Shaped typography defines the “head” of the banjo, while thin
rules act as the strings. The letterforms combine the look of
American wood type with 60s styling in a “sunny” combination of
yellow and green.
Album: Old-Time Tunes of the South
Year: 1957
Cover Design: Unknown
The cutout image parts together make up a lively banjo with type
integrated between strings. The stamped flowers in the
background activate the imagespace and, along with the vibrant
colour scheme, serve as a lively connection to the music.
Album: Songs of Nature and the Environment
Year: 1978
Cover Design: Henry Post
Illustration: Irwin Rosenhouse
The silhouetted children’s faces create a framework for the
interior “fantasy space” containing simple forms which represent
creatures of the earth, air and water. Curvilinear Rosenhouse
cursive script is well integrated with the organic image
components. Clever use of overprinting the three colours creates
a rich, textural palette of additional colours.
IV Songs of Peace and the Environment
The silhouetted children’s faces create a framework for the
interior “fantasy space” containing simple forms which represent
creatures of the earth, air and water. Curvilinear Rosenhouse
cursive script is well integrated with the organic image
components. Clever use of overprinting the three colours creates a
rich, textural palette of additional colours.
Album: The Untypical Politician
Year: 1956
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Ben Shahn
The use of Ben Shahn’s illustration for this recording shows,
perhaps, what untypical politicians are up against. The figures, in
top hats, suggest the elitism of political power brokers while the
tightness of the group suggests the clubbiness of typical
politicians.
Album: The Untypical Politician
Year: 1956
Cover Design: Unknown
Album: Berkeley Farms
Year: 1972
Cover Design: Globe Propaganda
Illustration: George Hunter
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Brush script type for the title contrasts the simple, hard-edged
image forms of this farm scene. The two colours plus reversals of
the type, clouds, and sunrays, give the flat “cutout” forms a
sense of depth and space. The use of black reinforces the idea of
a silhouetted image.
Album: This Land is My Land
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Irwin Rosenhouse
This rough, organic, stamped image reinforces the notion of
hands-on labour involved in farm work further epitomized by the
silhouetted worker, hoe in hand. Overprinting of various tints of
pink and blue make good use of the two-colour printing and
create a rich third colour: a dark purple. The hand-generated
Rosenhouse letterforms above animate the whole.
II Songs of Work and Struggle
Album: This Land is My Land: American Work Songs, Songs to
Grow On
This rough, organic, shaped image reinforces the notion of handson labour involved in farm work further epitomized by the
silhouetted worker, hoe in hand. Overprinting of various tints of
pink and blue make good use of the two-colour printing and create
a rich third colour: a dark purple. The hand-generated Rosenhouse
letterforms above animate the whole.
Album: Music Hall Sidelights
Year: 1963
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Claire Luce
This sketchy, expressive image suggests Colette’s coquettish
stage presence. Both the hair of a performer and the curtain of
the music hall are playfully suggested. Green has been
overprinted on red to create the black elements. Typography is
hand-rendered in the style of the image and well-integrated.
Album: Nadi Qamar
Year: 1975
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: David Stone Martin
This lively ink drawing of transparent hands, superimposed on a
layering of African instruments, creates a sense of animation and
rhythm. The quirky forms of the hand-lettering contrast the
capital letters of the sans serif typeface used for the subtitle.
Album: Vocal Music of Contemporary China, Vol. 2
Year: 1980
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
Catalogue No. 4091
Catalogue No. 9571
Catalogue No. 9580
Catalogue No. 4312
Catalogue No. 4442
The second album in this series shows the same layout structure
as the first and features a playful, paper cut image of two
musicians playing traditional, Chinese instruments. The bright,
red and yellow colour scheme emphasizes the lively music of
contemporary China.
Album: Vocal Music of Contemporary China, Vol. 1
Year: 1980
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
A traditional, central layout contrasts with the contemporary sans
serif type helping focus the viewer’s attention on the paper cut
art of the agricultural worker below. The warmth of the orange
colour, against the black ground, reinforces the rural nature of
the scene.
Album: Goethe: Urfaust
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Harry Clarke
Provocatively dramatic and mannered figures, reminiscent of
Aubrey Beardsley, are rendered in a stage-like setting. They,
along with the Fractur letterforms, create a gothic mood.
Psychological tension between the two figures highlights the
complexities and diabolical nature of Goethe’s masterwork within
this unusual, and somewhat rarified interpretation.
Album: Poems of Federico Garcia Lorca
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
This abstract, multi-layered design makes good use of two
colours to create a somber, dream-like backdrop for the clean,
sans serif typography which emphasizes the poet’s name,
through a change in scale, and the subtitle, through a change in
direction. The visual tone of the design subtly evokes the tragic
circumstance of Lorca’s death at the hands of the Spanish
fascists.
Album: Folksongs of Saskatchewan
Year: 1963
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Stark expanse of prairie sky dominates and serves as a backdrop
for worn, degraded “typewriter” letterforms. The low horizontal
format of the photograph superimposed on a taupe ground
evokes a sense of isolated prairie towns of the region.
Album: Religious Music of the Falashas
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Unknown
Catalogue No. 4421
Catalogue No. 4405
Catalogue No. 4220
Catalogue No. 8980
Catalogue No. 2372
This album picks up on the previous two of the series, using the
same image and compartmentalized structure. In this case the
colour scheme is vibrant and warm with the orange advancing
from the neutral grey ground. The geometric sans serif type, used
in the previous example, is here made bolder and condensed for
added emphasis.
Album: Music of South Arabia
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: R. W. Kane
In this second example of the use of this design, lighter tints of
the two colours are used to create an illusion of depth in a colour
scheme that emphasizes a strong relationship between the people
and the earth.
Album: Folk Music of Ethiopia
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: R. W. Kane
This is the first of three albums in the exhibition from the
earliest recordings in the Ethnic Library series. Each uses the
same print to symbolize the flora, fauna, musical and artistic
styles of the various regions. In this case, the image and
surrounding type are not integrated into a structured layout. The
colours create a sense of life within an arid world.
Album: Shigin
Year: 1975
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
The simple, minimal layout structure combined with sand
coloured ground, and snowflake pattern alludes to a nature-based
Japanese aesthetic. The photograph more specifically refers to
the music while the type style relates clearly to a 70s version of
pop-derived typography.
Album: The Way of Eiheiji
Year: 1960
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Unknown
The vertical emphasis of the elegant, Japanese calligraphic
character is echoed by the composition of the western
typography to the right. The colour scheme, light, sans serif
typeface and simple, spare structure create a quiet contemplative
mood.
Album: The Fisk Jubilee Singers
Year: 1955
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Unknown
Catalogue No. 9786
The cut style of the type echoes the paper cut art of the image to
unify the design. The attitudes of the figures, foliage and
radiating lines, upwardly directed, reflect the spiritual feeling of
the music. This design was produced in more that one colour
combination.
Album: Stories and Poems of New Guinea
Year: 1979
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Ronald Clyne
Clyne illustrates this album cover using carvings (New Guinea
houseposts) from his own collection to dramatic effect. The two
parts of the title, set along the top edge, are each anchored to one
of the heads creating a strong layout structure which divides the
square format into three equal parts exhibiting the modernist
aesthetic so prominent in his work.
PART III
The Thematic Content of Folkways Records
Social Relevance…
…AND ACTIVIST ENGAGEMENT
…with the formation of Folkways Records I started the more
intense catalog of protest songs, workers songs, protest poetry,
documentation, etcetera. – MOSES ASCH
Reading through the titles of the Folkways catalogue is like
reading through the table of contents of a book on the history of
American activism and human rights issues. The union
movement, the American civil rights movement, Martin Luther
King speeches, the Vietnam War and student protests of the
sixties, the women’s movement, Watergate, the environmental
movement, gay rights – all, and much more, are represented in
Folkways. The recordings were highly topical and anything but
mainstream or canonical. The covers, likewise, often represent
the radical, the edgy – an art of the people.
It is relevant to note, in respect to this populist emphasis, that a
number of Folkways’ key artists, photographers and designers,
including Ben Shahn, David Stone Martin and Walker Evans had in
the 1930s and early 40s worked for public arts projects initiated
by Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Depression years. These
projects not only provided financial relief to artists during this
period of economic hardship, they also documented the
American people of this period, often highlighting social
problems and injustices. Another side of this remarkable new era
of government-endorsed public art and design projects, is that a
large, popular audience responsive to this new visual culture was
emerging. Although short-lived (in general, these projects ended
in 1945, along with Roosevelt’s presidency), they set the stage for
a period of increased popular visual literacy. It was both in the
From Expressionist
Energy…
context and the spirit of these public art projects, about the
people and for the people, that the early Folkways covers were
firmly grounded.
…TO VERNACULAR TRADITION: PASSION AND POPULISM
The kind of art and design found on the covers of Folkways
Records is as eclectic as the music collection itself: it includes
reproductions of art ranging from the widely recognized works of
Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall, to that of artists more closely
associated with Moses Asch and Folkways Records such as Ben
Shahn, Antonio Frasconi, David Stone Martin and Irwin
Rosenhouse, through to the anonymous folk art of various
periods and peoples, the world over.
Some covers focus exclusively on abstract design components –
often with a spare, minimalist aesthetic representing the edgiest
tendencies in post-World War II graphic design. In spite of this
plurality, however, there are two aspects of the representations
found on the covers that are particularly striking in terms of the
overall visual program of Folkways. That is, first, a recurring use
of a raw, powerful, expressionist idiom and, second, a related
reference to and use of numerous vernacular pictorial traditions –
including an emphasis on pre-industrialized, and non-western
artistic techniques such as woodcut prints, cutout art, and other
kinds of folk handwork – reinforcing the idea that this is an art of
the people, for the people.
The Portrait Gallery PEOPLE, COMMUNITY, PLACE
Just as Folkways Records gave a voice to ordinary people,
including the disenfranchised within society, the covers
functioned to make visible the invisible or the underrepresented.
In this way many of the covers may be seen as a kind of a
photographic “portrait gallery”, visually commemorating,
documenting and, indeed, making visible the musicians,
communities and locales represented in sound on the recordings.
Catalogue No. 5259
The photographers whose works are represented on the covers
reflect the diversity of the Folkways collection as a whole. They
range from the well-established early work of the professional
New York photographer Walker Evans through to examples of
works by David Gahr, especially ground-breaking in his
photographs of the folk music scene of the 60s; from the
sensitive and wide-ranging works of ethnographer and musician
John Cohen to those of pre-eminent Chicago blues and jazz
photographer Raeburn Flerlage. Numerous photos on the covers
are taken by non-professional photographers – often by field
ethnographers, family members or others who were close to the
musicians in the picture. In many cases the works are
anonymous.
Album: Songs of the West
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 5259
Catalogue No. 3347
Catalogue No. 4036
Catalogue No. 4430
Catalogue No. 8764
Catalogue No. 4450
Catalogue No.
32028
Catalogue No. RBF
46
Catalogue No. 5558
The photograph of a group of men in cowboy hats with musical
instruments, sitting around a campfire, captures both the
spareness and the camaraderie of life on the range. The image
stands in stark contrast to that of the slick singing cowboy of
early television westerns.
II Songs of Work and Struggle
The photograph of a group of men in cowboy hats with musical
instruments sitting around a campfire captures both the spareness
and the camaraderie of life on the range. The image stands in
stark contrast to that of the slick singing cowboy of early television
westerns.
Album: Charles Ives, Vol. 2
Year: 1965
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Ann Charters
Album: Folksongs and Dances of the Netherlands
Year: 1963
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Album: Songs and Pipes of the Hebrides
Year: 1952, 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
Album: Songs and Ballads of Northern Saskatchewan and
Northern Manitoba
Year: 1960
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Album: Songs from Cape Breton Island
Year: 1955
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Album: Get on Board
Year: 1952, 1980
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Walker Evans
Bridge, Houses and Train
Philipsburg, New Jersey, 1935
Album: Swingin’ Piano 1920-1946
Year: 1983
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Walker Evans
New Orleans, 1935
Album: New York 19
Year: 1955
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Unknown
Catalogue No.
31010
Catalogue No. 3501
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 3501
Catalogue No. 2854
Catalogue No. 4414
Catalogue No. 2853
Catalogue No. 5560
The number 19 in the title refers to the postal district area where
Tony Schwartz lived (New York 19, NY) and where all of the
sounds and voices on the album were recorded. The cover image
shows the neighbourhood framed by the rails of the balcony at
the bottom and the microphone on the right, alluding implicitly
to Schwartz himself and to the recording process.
Album: Poor Boy
Year: 1968
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Walker Evans
Railroad Station, Edwards, Mississippi, 1936
Album: When I was a Boy in Brooklyn
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
III Songs and Sounds of Community
This record is an unabashed reconstruction of a piece of American
life that disappeared between the wars, presenting the boyhood
experiences of Israel Caplan. “The asphalt and the cobblestone
pavements of Brooklyn spawned a resilient and self-contained
comitatus that was able to perform that strangest of all human
duties – entertaining itself.” (From the liner notes)
Album: Jazz Violins of the Forties
Year: 1981
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Walker Evans
New York City, 1934
Album: Folk Music of France
Year: 1951
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Album: Dixieland Jazz in the Forties
Year: 1978
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Walker Evans
Main Street Architecture, Selma, Alabama, 1935
This photograph by Walker Evans is just one example of many by
this important photographer featured on Folkways covers. Always
concerned with people and their environments, Evans here
records, with clarity and dignity, main street architecture from
the southern town of Selma, Alabama.
Album: Millions of Musicians
Year: 1954
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Joseph Carpini
Carpini’s print is a close-up rendering of the face and hand of a
Catalogue No. 8972
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 8972
Catalogue No.
31303
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No.
31303
Catalogue No.
31026
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No
31026
man in a cap that evokes the notion of “everyman”, underlining
the intent of producer Tony Schwarz to create a document of
everyday people’s everyday sonic expressions.
Album: The Doukhobors of British Columbia
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
III Songs and Sounds of Community
The Doukhobors, a religious community originally from Russia,
first established agricultural communities and small-scale
industries in British Columbia in the 1920s. They were persecuted
and even jailed for their pacifist beliefs during the war years, and,
in the 1950s, Doukhobor children were taken from their families
and made to attend schools run by the province.
Album: Folk Songs of Vietnam
Year: 1968
Cover Design: Zetlan and Stephens
Illustration: Unknown
These folk songs, recorded at the height of the Vietnam war,
serve as a poignant reminder of the humanity of the Vietnamese
people. The white disc of the sun, reiterated in the sunhats of the
workers, is set against the warm tone of the background
suggesting the heat of the tropical location.
III Songs and Sounds of Community
Album: Folk Songs of Viet Nam
These folk songs, recorded at the height of the Vietnam war, serve
as a poignant reminder of the humanity of the Vietnamese people.
The white disc of the sun, reiterated in the sunhats of the workers,
is set off against the warm tone of the background suggesting the
heat of the day in the rice fields.
Album: Where Have All the Flowers Gone
Year: 1968
Cover Design: Craig Mierop
Illustration: Irwin Rosenhouse
A literal, uncomplicated cover design reinforces the message of
the title song. Where Have All the Flowers Gone, written in 1961,
was based on an Irish tune and inspired by a few lines from an
old Russian folk song. It has become one of Pete Seeger’s
signature songs and remains a simple, eloquent anthem for
peace.
IV Songs of Peace and the Environment
A literal, uncomplicated cover design reinforces the message of the
title song. Where Have All the Flowers Gone, written in 1961, was
based on an Irish tune and inspired by a few lines from an old
Catalogue No. 8580
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 8580
Russian folk song. It has become one of Pete Seeger’s signature
songs and remains a simple, eloquent anthem for peace.
Album: Gay & Straight Together
Year: 1980
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Andreas Feininger
Designer Ronald Clyne remarked that he selected this famous
Feininger photo of crowds at Coney Island in order to reinforce
the record’s title and subject: we are all together, gay and nongay, and belong within the larger category of humanity.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: Gay and Straight Together
Catalogue No. 9701
Catalogue No.
34006
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No
34006
Catalogue No. 5354
Designer Ronald Clyne remarked that he selected this famous
Feininger photo of crowds at Coney Island in order to reinforce the
record’s title and subject: we are all together, gay and straight,
and belong within the larger category of humanity.
Album: The Psychedelic Experience
Year: 1966
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Edward Epstein
The fantastic, starburst image evokes the mind-expanding,
psychedelic experience for which Leary was known. Readings
here are from the book The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual
Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. Details of the image
reference numerous mystical belief systems from North American
Indigenous peoples through to Eastern philosophies.
Album: Whale-Wail, in Peace, en Paix
Year: 1986
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Ann McMillan
This album coming out of the early popular environmental
movement, uses a simple, pastel design, evoking both intimacy
and peacefulness alluded to in the title. The recording captures
vocalizations of whales interspersed with verse in English and
French by the album’s creator, Ann McMillan.
IV Songs of Peace and the Environment
This album coming out of the early popular environmental
movement, uses a simple, pastel design, evoking both intimacy
and peacefulness alluded to in the title. The recording captures
vocalizations of whales interspersed with verse in English and
French by the album’s creator, Ann McMillan.
Album: Plutonium
Year: 1979
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Sarah Cohen
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 5354
Catalogue No.
32850
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No
32850
Catalogue No. 5444
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 5444
Collage is used to combine newspaper headlines, images and
parts of articles with a photograph of the singer Mark Cohen. The
use of newspaper snippets reinforces the topicality of the subject
and suggests the fragmentary nature of available information
concerning accidents in the nuclear industry. Collage embodies
the idea of a democratic form of visual communication.
IV Songs of Peace and the Environment
Collage is used to combine newspaper headlines, images and parts
of articles with a photograph of the singer Mark Cohen. The use of
newspaper snippets reinforces the topicality of the subject and
suggests the fragmentary nature of available information
concerning accidents in the nuclear industry. Collage embodies the
idea of a democratic form of visual communication.
Album: No More Nukes
Year: 1979
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
The cover shows the band members superimposed on a scene of
urban decay and isolation, presenting, literally, the background
of the band members who grew up in Essen, Germany, a mining
and industrial centre that was decimated during World War II. The
image of the abandoned building, suggestive of post-nuclear
destruction, also references the title of the recording.
IV Songs of Peace and the Environment
The cover shows the band members superimposed on a scene of
urban decay and isolation, presenting, literally, the background
of the band members who grew up in Essen, Germany, a mining
and industrial centre that was decimated during World War II. The
image of the abandoned building, suggestive of post-nuclear
destruction, also references the title of the recording.
Album: Ding Dong Dollar
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
The photograph is a gathering of young people shown singing
protest songs to the accompaniment of guitar, peace sign
prominently displayed. The Anti-Polaris referred to in the title is
in reference to American nuclear submarines docking in Scotland.
IV Songs of Peace and the Environment
Album: Ding Dong Dollar: Anti-Polaris and Scottish Republican
Songs
The photograph is a gathering of young people shown singing
Catalogue No.
38516
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No
38516
Catalogue No. 7752
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 7752
Catalogue No. 5531
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5531
protest songs to the accompaniment of guitar, peace sign
prominently displayed. The Anti-Polaris referred to in the title is in
reference to American nuclear submarines docking in Scotland.
Album: The Bottom Line
Year: 1984
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
The loosely sketched, Cubist-inspired musicians merge with the
page of the musical score in this image, conveying the sense of
playful confusion and irreverence of the comedy revue.
II Songs of Work and Struggle
The loosely sketched, Cubist-inspired musicians merge with the
page of the musical score in this image, conveying the sense of
playful confusion and irreverence of the comedy revue performed
by The Labor Theatre (TLT) of New York City. “TLT…takes the side
of working people and presents that view to the world at large.”
(From the liner notes)
Album: The Glory of Negro History
Year: 1958
Cover Design: Edgar Fitt
Illustration: Tom Feelings
The two young black girls represented on the cover suggest a
sense of innocence and vulnerability. The image of the American
flag and the electoral voting district poster, in reference to the
voting registration activity of the civil rights movement,
reinforces a sense of hope for the future.
III Songs and Sounds of Community
The two young black girls represented on the cover suggest a
sense of innocence and vulnerability. The image of the American
flag and the electoral voting district poster, in reference to the
voting registration activity of the civil rights movement, reinforces
a sense of hope for the future.
Album: Bertholt Brecht Before the Committee…
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Bob McCarron
Photograph: M. Holmes
The “red scare” of the post-World War II period in the United
States is here visualized, literally, with the red tone of the
photograph. The album records the questioning of Berthold
Brecht in October 1947 by the House Un-American Activities
Committee. Numerous artists and performers were investigated
for supposed communist sympathies, even non-Americans like
Brecht.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: Bertholt Brecht Before the Committee on UnAmerican
Activities
Catalogue No. 8768
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 8768
Catalogue No. 5537
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5537
Catalogue No. 9671
The “red scare” of the post-World War II period in the United States
is here visualized, literally, with the red tone of the photograph.
The album records the questioning of Berthold Brecht in October
1947 by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Numerous
artists and performers were investigated for supposed communist
sympathies, even non-Americans like Brecht.
Album: Entre Hermanas/ Between Sisters
Year: 1977
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Elsa Garcia Pandavenes
Repeated, stylized image in dark blue of Suni Paz in traditional
Mexican dress, appears against a backdrop of white above which
the vibrant pink of the lettering reinforces that this recording is
for, by and dedicated to women.
III Songs and Sounds of Community
The repeated, stylized image in dark blue of Suni Paz in
traditional Mexican dress, appears against a backdrop of white.
The vibrant pink of the lettering reinforces that this recording is
for, by, and dedicated to women.
Album: What If I Am a Woman?
Year: 1977
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
The cover engraving is of Sojourner Truth who was born a slave
and freed in 1827 and became known for both anti-slavery and
women’s rights speeches. The album of the speeches of African
American women includes Sojourner Truth’s Woman’s Rights,
delivered in 1853.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
The cover engraving is of Sojourner Truth who was born a slave
and freed in 1827 and became known for her powerful antislavery and women’s rights speeches. The album of the speeches of
African American women includes Sojourner Truth’s Woman’s
Rights, delivered in 1853.
Album: Langston Hughes’ Jerico-Jim Crow
Year: 1964
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Bert Andrews
The cover photograph is likely a scene from Hughes’ song play
Jerico-Jim Crow. First performed in 1964, it chronicles events and
attitudes of the Civil Rights Movement of the early 1960’s. The
photographer, Bert Andrews (1931-93), was a pre-eminent
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 9671
Catalogue No. 5487
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5487
photographer of the African American theater in New York.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: Lest We Forget, Vol. 2
Year: 1980
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: Charles Moore
Hands and fists, raised in gestures of solidarity, dominate the
photograph of the group of peaceful civil rights protesters at the
top. Below, two scenes – one with a water cannon, the other with
police dogs – serve as reminders of the police response to such
civil rights rallies.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: Lest We Forget Volume 2: Birmingham, Alabama, 1963
Catalogue No. 8739
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 8739
Catalogue No. 6913
Hands and fists, raised in gestures of solidarity, dominate the
photograph of the group of peaceful civil rights protesters at the
top. Below, two scenes – one with a water cannon, the other with
police dogs – serve as reminders of the police response to such
civil rights rallies.
Album: Songs of the Ghetto
Year: 1965
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
This sepia-like photograph of a Polish ghetto, in which a group of
Nazi soldiers preside, relates to the World War II experiences of
Abraham Brun who survived the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. His music
is part of a larger project within Folkways: recording the artistic
expression of those interned during the Holocaust.
I Influences and Collaborations
This sepia-like photograph of a Polish ghetto, in which a group of
Nazi soldiers preside, related to the World War II experiences of
Abraham Brun who survived the Lodz Ghetto in Poland. His music
is part of a larger project within Folkways: recording the artistic
expression of those interned during the Holocaust.
Album: Mexican Corridos
Year: 1956
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Irwin Rosenhouse
“Corridos” are stories told in song. The simple, “primitivist” style
used in the design transforms the figure of a Mexican
revolutionary into the personification of death in a carnival-esque
combination of playfulness and the macabre that evokes the Latin
American Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) holidays – the
Exhibit Catalogue
Errata
Catalogue No. 6913
Catalogue No. 6834
Catalogue No. 9944
Catalogue No. 5411
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5411
Catalogue No.
37700
celebration of remembrance of deceased ancestors.
Album: Mexican Corridos
Year: 1956
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Album: Songs and Dances of Honduras
Year: 1955, 1964
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Francisco Ameghetti
The simplified sun motif on the left and band of linear and
zigzag geometric design on the right are references to the
Indigenous people and crafts of the Honduras. The architectural
church backdrop within the image, on the other hand, points to
the Spanish colonial influence found in the music.
Album: L’Honneur des Poetes
Year: 1968
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
The understated cover shows portrait drawings of the four
notable French resistance writers. They are arranged, along with
the titles of their selections, on what appears to be vertical,
irregularly cut, grey strips of paper, informally arranged on a
black ground. This collage-like arrangement suggests a link
between the visual avant-garde and the writers.
Album: People’s Music
Year: 1970
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
In this highly charged image of human suffering, the figures are
rendered in a jarring shorthand that underlines the pathos of the
music by Mikis Theodorakis. The recording was produced during
the period of the composer’s exile from Greece (1967-74) during
which the military dictatorship banned playing and even listening
to Theodorakis’ music.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: People’s Music: The Struggles of the Greek People
In this highly charged image of human suffering, the figures are
rendered in a jarring shorthand that underlines the pathos of the
music by Mikis Theodorakis. The recording was produced during
the period of the composer’s exile from Greece (1967-74). The
military dictatorship in power during this period banned playing
and even listening to Theodorakis’ music. Royalties from the sale
of the record went to the relief of Greek political prisoners.
Album: Songs from the Depths of Hell
Year: 1979
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Gertrude Degenhardt
Catalogue No. 5282
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 5282
Catalogue No.
5485a
Catalogue No.
5485b
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Catalogue No.s
5485a and 5485b
The stark, nightmarish figure of the dead child held by the
leaning, robed figure in Gertrude Degenhardt’s drawing conveys
the hopelessness and depth of human misery of the
concentration camps. Degenhardt’s emotive and highly
expressive style takes its impetus from earlier German
expressionist art.
Album: Yankee Go Home
Year: 1975
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Related to graffiti art, this simple cover design showing a
message scrawled in chalk, effectively underlines the antiimperialist stance of Connelly’s songs by using this compelling,
democratic form of visual communication.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: Yankee Go Home: Songs of Protest Against American
Imperialism
Related to graffiti art, this simple cover design showing a message
scrawled in chalk, effectively underlines the anti-imperialist stance
of Connelly’s songs by using this compelling, democratic form of
visual communication.
Album: Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti (back cover)
Year: 1965
Cover Design: Designers Collaborative
Illustration: Antonio Frasconi
The songs on this album commemorate the two Italian
immigrants and anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
who, in what was to become a notorious miscarriage of justice,
were tried and executed in Boston during the 1920s.
Album: Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti (back cover)
Year: 1965
Cover Design: Designers Collaborative
Illustration: Antonio Frasconi
Frasconi’s woodcuts were undoubtedly informed by Ben Shahn’s
Social Realist paintings from the early 30s dealing with this
subject.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: Ballads of Sacco and Vanzetti (front and back of the cover)
This album, commissioned by Moses Asch, commemorates the two
Italian immigrants and anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo
Vanzetti who, in what was to become a notorious miscarriage of
justice, were tried and executed in Boston during the 20s.
Frasconi’s woodcuts were undoubtedly informed by Ben Shahn’s
Social Realist paintings from the early 30s dealing with this
Catalogue No. 5441
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5441
subject.
Album: Freedom Fighters of Algeria
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Bob McCarron
A green star and crescent moon, seen through a tangled web of
barbed wire, underline the notion of an oppressed people whose
spirit clearly shines through despite hardships. The star and
moon are references to the Algerian flag while the colour green,
in a more general sense, is a traditional symbol of Islam.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: Freedom Fighters of Algeria (FLN)
Catalogue No. 5448
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5448
Catalogue No. 2485
Chivers Exhibit
A green star and crescent moon, seen through a tangled web of
barbed wire, underline the notion of an oppressed people. The star
and moon are references to the Algerian flag while the colour
green, in a more general sense, is a traditional symbol of Islam.
Album: Mexico: Imagenes Cotidianas
Year: 1979
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Andrea Gomez
The illustration shows a circle of people with their attention
focused on a page being held aloft by two central figures. What
they are doing is unclear. Are they singing? Are they reading a
political tract or labour agreement? The ambiguity present allows
the image to be read in a number of ways – reinforcing the
diversity of themes and moods in the songs.
II Songs of Work and Struggle
The illustration shows a circle of people with their attention
focused on a page being held aloft by two central figures. What
they are going is unclear. Are they singing? Are they reading a
political tract or labour agreement? The ambiguity allows the
image to be read in a number of ways – reinforcing the diversity
of themes and moods present in the songs on the album.
Album: Struggle
Year: 1976
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: David Stone Martin
David Stone Martin’s lithograph, a reference to Guthrie’s “Union
Burying Ground”, is an example of two related themes in
Folkways: the struggle of the working people and the history of
the American labour movement. The simplified form and raw
expressive power of the print, framed by the red border with
black letters, typifies a colour combination and style of Folkways
albums dealing with themes of peoples’struggles.
II Songs of Work and Struggle
Catalogue No. 2485
Catalogue No. 5233
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5233
Catalogue No. 2386
Catalogue No. 5304
Catalogue No. 3539
Catalogue No. 2411
David Stone Martin’s lithograph, a reference to Guthrie’s “Union
Burying Ground” is an example of two related themes in Folkways:
the struggle of the working people and the history of the American
labour movement. The simplified form and raw expressive power
of the print, framed by the red border with black letters, typifies a
colour combination and style of Folkways albums dealing with
themes of peoples’ struggles.
Album: Songs of Struggle and Protest
Year: 1964
Cover Design: Ronal Clyne
Illustration: Lucienne Bloch
The family in the foreground provides a stark contrast to the rich
crop of corn from which they are separated by a barbed-wire
fence. The electric power lines make reference to the
electrification of rural America begun in the 1930s, but which
was of little use to the poor who could not afford it. The cover
visually echoes the injustices outlined in the songs.
II Songs of Work and Struggle
The family in the foreground provides a stark contrast to the rich
crop of corn from which they are separated by a barbed-wire
fence. The electric power lines make reference to the electrification
of rural America begun in the 1930s but which was of little use to
the poor who could not afford it. The cover visually echoes the
injustices and inequities outlined and protested in the songs.
Album: Memphis Slim and Willie Dixon
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: David Gahr
Album: The Village Fugs
Year: 1965
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
The Fugs represent a bridge between the Beats of Ginsberg and
Kerouac and the Yippies of the late 1960s Anti-War Movement.
They were musicians, poets, actors, activists and avant-garde
fixtures of the 60’s urban, and especially New York, scene. This
album includes songs with lyrics from poems by Blake and
Swinburne and the famous Nothing.
Album: David Honeyboy Edwards
Year: 1979
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Anton J. Mikofsky
Album: The Country Gentleman on the Road
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Catalogue No. 2309
Catalogue No. 3536
Catalogue No. 2480
Catalogue No. 2968
Catalogue No. 7682
Catalogue No. 3526
Catalogue No. 2351
Catalogue No. 3820
Photograph: Unknown
Album: Old Love Songs & Ballads
Year: 1964
Cover Design: John Cohen
Photograph: John Cohen
John Cohen’s remarkable cover photograph seems to place the
viewer right next to the couple without intruding on their
privacy.
Album: Chicago Blues
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: Raeburn Flerlage
Album: Cisco Houston
Year: 1964
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Album: Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
Year: 1983
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Album: Adventures in Rhythm
Year: 1982
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Photograph: Jo Banks
Album: Folk Songs and Instrumentals with Guitar
Year: 1958
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
One of the most familiar songs, Freight Train, was written by
Elizabeth Cotton which she was a child. As the photograph shows
and Mike Seeger’s liner notes discuss, “Elizabeth Cotton picks the
regular guitar and banjo upside down, or left-handed, using
country ragtime style...using the first string as thumb string”.
Album: Dock Boggs
Year: 1964
Cover Design: A. Doyle Moore
Photograph: Unknown
Dock Boggs was a legendary old-time singer and banjo player.
The cover image is a formally arranged photograph of him as a
young man. Boggs, who spent much of his adult life working in
the coal mines, was introduced to an appreciative northern
audience by Mike Seeger in the 1960s, leading to this and other
recordings.
Album: Mississippi’s Big Joe Williams
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Raeburn Flerlage
Catalogue No. 2328
Catalogue No. 2483
Catalogue No. 2343
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 2343
Catalogue No. 5551
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5551
Album: Big Bill Broonzy Sings Folk Songs
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Big Bill Broonzy, an early blues giant, was one of Moe Asch’s
favourite singers. The cover photograph strikes a contemplative
mood with its cropped image of Broonzy’s face that fills the
entire cover. The highlighted features gain a sculptural, immortal
quality that reinforces the musician’s stature.
Album: Woody Guthrie
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Album: When Kentucky Had No Union Men
Year: 1967
Cover Design: John Cohen
Photograph: John Cohen
II Songs of Work and Struggle
George Davis, the Singing Miner of Hazard, Kentucky, started
working for the Crawford Coal Company in 1920 at the age of 14.
He started playing guitar in 1933 when the mines were first being
organized by the United Mine Workers Union. He wrote countless
songs about mining life including “Sixteen Tons”, popularized by
Tennessee Ernie Ford, for which he never received any royalties.
Album: Watergate, Vol. 1
Year: 1973
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Through the use of a broken faceting of the building’s façade,
this series of album covers vividly and literally illustrates the
public’s “shattered” faith in the White House in the wake of the
Watergate hearings. Colour and typography provide variation
within the otherwise consistent layout of the series.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
Album: Watergate, Volumes 1 - 5
Catalogue No. 4052
Chivers Exhibit
Through the use of a broken faceting of the building’s façade, this
series of album covers vividly and literally illustrates the public’s
“shattered” faith in the White House in the wake of the Watergate
hearings. Colour and typography provide variation within the
otherwise consistent layout of the series.
Album: Lumbering Songs from the Ontario Shanties
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
II Songs of Work and Struggle
Catalogue No 4052
Catalogue No. 4443
Catalogue No. 4534
Catalogue No. 4000
Catalogue No. 4176
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 4176
Catalogue No. 4212
Catalogue No. 2513
Chivers Exhibit
The eighteen songs on the album were collected in 1958 by
renowned Canadian folklorist, Edith Fowke, and represent over a
century of songs sung in lumber camps and shanties in Canada
and the United States. “A large proportion of the lumberjack
ballads tell of tragic accidents and sudden death.” (From the liner
notes)
Album: Music of the Ukraine
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Sovfoto
Album: Traditional Folk Songs of Japan
Year: 1966
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: Unknown
Album: Folk Music of Hungary
Year: 1950, 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Béla Bartók
Album: Selk’nam Chants of Fierra del Fuego
Year: 1972
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Anne Chapman
The cover presents a memorable close-up photograph of Lola
Kiepja taken by the album’s producer, ethnologist Anne
Chapman. According to Chapman, Lola Kiepja was the last person
to speak the language of her people.
III Songs and Sounds of Community
The cover presents a memorable close-up photograph of Lola
Kiepja taken by the album’s producer, ethnologist Anne Chapman.
According to Chapman, Lola Kiepja was the last person to speak
the language of her people.
Album: Music of Guatemala
Year: 1969
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Jacques Jangoux
Album: Sing Out! Hootenanny
Year: 1963
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: Unknown
The cover presents two of the most familiar scenes of the folk
music revival period of the 1960s. The top photograph shows an
evening crowd gathering outside of Carnegie Hall where Pete
Seeger performed annually for years. The bottom photograph
shows a crowd, likely attending an outdoor folk festival, intent on
the performance despite the rain.
III Songs and Sounds of Community
Catalogue No. 2513
Catalogue No. 4530
Catalogue No. 3825
Catalogue No. 9742
Catalogue No. 5527
Catalogue No. RBF
48
Catalogue No. 4344
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 4344
Catalogue No. 3842
Catalogue No. 2951
The cover presents two of the most familiar scenes of the folk
music revival period of the 1960s. The top photograph shows an
evening crowd gathering outside of Carnegie Hall where Pete
Seeger performed annually for years. The bottom photograph
shows a crowd, likely attending an outdoor folk festival, intent on
the performance despite the rain.
Album: Folk Music USA, Vol. 1
Year: 1958
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Collection of the Library of Congress
Album: The Women Blues of Champion Jack Dupree
Year: 1968
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
The cover photograph by David Gahr is as intimate and sensual
as a French Impressionist painting, capturing a mood of the New
Orleans blues period of Champion Jack Dupree.
Album: The Making of Americans
Year: 1963
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Carl Van Vechten
Illustration: Richard Banks
Album: The Meaning of July 4th for the Negro
Year: 1975
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Album: They All Played the Tiger Rag
Year: 1983
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Walker Evans
42nd Street, New York City, 1929
Album: The McIntosh County Shouters
Year: 1984
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Margo Newmark Rosenbaum
III Songs and Sounds of Community
“The shout is the oldest Afro-American performance tradition
surviving on the North American continent. This impressive fusion
of call and response singing, percussive rhythm, and expressive
and formalized dance-like movement…has survived in continuous
practice since slavery times in McIntosh County, on the coast of
Georgia.” (From the liner notes)
Album: Been in the Storm so Long
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Robert Yellin
Album: Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 1
Catalogue No. 2953
Catalogue No. 2691
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 2691
Catalogue No. 5403
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5403
Catalogue No. RF
610
Year: 1967
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Ben Shahn
Album: Anthology of American Folk Music, Vol. 3
Year: 1966
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Ben Shahn
Album: Music Down Home
Year: 1965
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Philip Evergood
The illustration suggests a sense of community through the
juxtaposition of one central musician’s face and grouped figures
of various ages. These figures relate to the music on the album
which includes roots music and protest songs of the civil rights
movement.
III Songs and Sounds of Community
The illustration suggests a sense of community through the
juxtaposition of one central musician’s face and grouped figures
of various ages. These figures relate to the music on the album
that includes roots music and protest songs of the civil rights
movement.
Album: From the Cold Jaws of Prison
Year: 1971
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Photograph: Unknown
The shadowy, outstretched hands in the photograph embody
what is referred to in the liner notes as “a cry of a people for
justice and human dignity”. This recording was issued the year
Attica prisoners held a four-day revolt for better living
conditions, showers and education. It ended when over 1000
state troopers and National Guardsmen stormed the facility,
resulting in 40 deaths.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
The shadowy, outstretched hands in the photograph embody what
is referred to in the liner notes as “a cry of a people for justice and
human dignity”. This recording was issued the year Attica
prisoners held a four-day revolt for better living conditions,
showers and education. It ended when over 1000 state troopers
and National Guardsmen stormed the facility, resulting in 40
deaths.
Album: Let’s Put the Axe to the Axis
Year: 1981
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
Catalogue No. 5212
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 5212
Catalogue No. 5436
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 5436
Catalogue No. 5437
The World War II poster featured on this album cover focuses on
combat and action in a dramatic, propagandistic image intended
to gain support for the war effort. It is and appropriate visual
accompaniment to the songs on the recording. Written quickly
and in direct response to a specific war event, they are late
examples of the topical song tradition.
Album: Dust Bowl Ballads
Year: 1964
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Arthur Rothstein
Some of the most enduring images of the “dustbowl” come from
photographers such as Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and Arthur
Rothstein who documented the rural poor while working for the
Farm Security Administration. Arthur Rothstein’s famous 1936
image, Fleeing a Dust Storm is the perfect image for Guthrie’s
Dust Bowl Ballads.
II Songs of Work and Struggle
Some of the most enduring images of the “dustbowl” come from
photographers including Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and
Arthur Rothstein who documented the rural poor while working
for the Farm Security Administration. Arthur Rothstein’s famous
1936 image, “Fleeing a dust Storm” is the perfect image for
Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads.
Album: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, Vol. 1
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Interdesign
Photograph: Unknown
The Spanish Civil War is an important subject in this section as it,
in effect, represents the beginnings of World War II and the fight
against fascism. The fire-scorched photograph here documents
soldiers of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, American volunteers
who fought on the side of the republic against the rebellion led
by Franco.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
The Spanish Civil War is an important subject in this section as it,
in effect, represents the beginnings of World War II and the fight
against fascism. The fire-scorched photograph here documents
soldiers of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, American volunteers
who fought on the side of the republic against the rebellion led by
Franco.
Album: Songs of the Spanish Civil War, Vol. 2
Year: 1966
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Picasso
The image is Picasso’s famous mural Guernica which
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 5437
commemorates the Basque town attacked by German bombers
under Franco’s command. Documenting human suffering through
the use of distorted, cubist and surrealist-based imagery, the
nightmarish world presented is a potent indictment of fascism
and the horrors to which it leads.
V Words and Songs of Freedom and Justice
The image is Picasso’s famous mural Guernica which
commemorates the Basque town attacked by German bombers
under Franco’s command. Documenting human suffering through
the use of distorted, cubist and surrealist-based imagery, the
nightmarish world presented is a potent indictment of fascism and
the horrors to which it leads.
PART IV
Folkways Records
“Like an Encyclopedia”…
Materials were offered to Moe Asch by scholars, photographers,
journalists and others knowledgeable of and sensitive to the
communities they recorded. Above all, he approached the whole
world with a deep respect for other people’s truths. To uphold
this respect he pioneered liner notes with extensive ethnographic
information, including photographs. Some appear on the LP
covers, even though field photography rarely yielded high quality
images. The design of the covers in this section, like the music
itself, strove to allow these cultures to speak for themselves –
whether through photographs of their own art or of the
musicians or others from their communities.
World Music…
Cover art was used to represent world cultures in a creative array
of styles and subjects, creating striking, individual visual
identities. At the same time the label’s visual identity was
retained in the album’s overall design.
…FROM ALASKA TO ZAIRE
Probably the most influential Folkways category outside the
American folk orbit is world music, or what in the 1950s was
called “ethnic” music. With its hundreds of recordings of songs,
dances, and rituals from cultures around the world, Folkways
introduced world music long before it became current as a
concept. With this came a major shift away from personal studio
recordings to field recordings created anywhere in the world.
Another shift was from identified individual performers to
communities. Folkways Records was often the first to present the
music of these communities. Some categories within the Folkways
world music genre are remarkable for their numbers and
diversity. This is particularly true of Indigenous music from
around the world (particularly from North America), historical
English-Irish-Scottish music, and music of North American
communities that have their historical antecedents in the British
Isles or continental Europe. The historical references within the
Spoken Word
Music for
Children…
Soundscapes…
Diversity,
Eclecticism and
Global Reach
cover art in this section often complement the historical content
on the records.
The postwar cultural and literacy movements of the 1950s saw a
strong interest in using sound recordings to capture and
disseminate works of literature. In his “Spoken Word” category
Moses Asch built an extensive collection of classical and
contemporary literature, crowned by major writers reading their
own works.
It is here that cover art shines in setting historical and stylistic
contexts, with portraits, artworks, and other references to EuroAmerican artistic and intellectual trends. Together with Western
art music recordings, these covers demonstrate and explicit
inclusion of elite culture, but they clearly privilege words from
the margins, including progressive, avant-garde, and oppositional
voices. Such voices also dominate the interview recordings of
important twentieth century figures, and their covers reinforce
their historical significance and progressive edge.
…AND FOR LEARNING
Moses Asch had a special mission to reach and teach children,
and children’s albums have held a central place for generations
of Folkways’ fans. It was a stroke of genius to get great folk
singers to sing for children, and to create a genre of Folkways
children’s songs that matched the progressive pedagogy of the
1960s and beyond. The cover art here resonates with the kind of
children’s book illustrations that have an aesthetic which
articulates this pedagogy while also appealing to children. In the
same spirit, Folkways pioneered recordings of folk musicians
teaching how to make music on their instruments, and important
addition to straight performance.
Asch’s cross-cultural vision led also to the production of a wide
variety of instructional recordings of different music traditions
and languages.
…OF NATURE, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Folkways Records pioneered capturing sonic environments as a
source of both knowledge and experience. Where animal sounds,
or sounds generated by technology, these recordings are unique
documents of the science and soundscapes of their era, and of
the inspirational power of early sound recording technology and
its visual representations. Soundscape cover art is highly
effective in representing the diverse sources of these sounds and
their associative, even nostalgic power. Images for these unique
sonic documents were generally provided by the producer of the
record.
PARTS OF A WHOLE
No matter how many albums we display, they represent only a
small part of a breathtaking vision engendered by the universal
presence of sound and its special power to communicate,
whether as medium, message, or sensation. In Moses Asch’s
words, Folkways means: “everything occurring on the earth and
in the contemporary time is being recorded. It is a record
company to describe the human race, the sound it makes, what it
creates”. He turned each Folkways recording into what he called
“a talking book” complete with cover, sleeve, and extensive liner
notes and illustrations. Holding it all together was a catalogue
listing records broadly by categories and genres. Asch’s guiding
concept was that of an encyclopedia, a reference work for
generations to come.
How could such a small record company produce recordings of
such quality and originality from so many constituencies and
what kind of cover art could be employed to complement such
diversity? First, Moses Asch was an eclectic. He put his
technology at the service of performers, visual artists and
documentors with an openness to opportunity and diversity.
What attracted them in turn was that Moe would respect the
integrity of their voices. “He trusted me” was Moe’s frequent
answer to why and artist chose Folkways. He built a large circle of
trust relationships that expanded as people encountered other
people who had come to Moe.
Trust was also a key to the lasting collaborations with
professional contributors—anthropologists and folklorists,
scientists, and more generally lovers of the extraordinary in the
world of sound.
Catalogue No. 9826
Catalogue No. 9871
Folkways was a pioneer in presenting unfamiliar sounds on
record. How Folkways cover art responded to the special
challenge to invite discovery of these albums is seen in this
section, which highlights the many ways in which the album
covers attract us through information, associations, and intuitive
appeal.
Album: Brendan Behan on Joyce
Year: 1968
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: John
The cover drawing of James Joyce, which is simply signed “John,
1930” depicts the famous writer in a direct, informal manner. The
recording is from a lecture given by Irish author Brendan Behan
to the James Joyce Society at the Gotham Book Mart in New York
City. The liner notes contain an application for membership to
the Society—founded in 1947, it is still active.
Album: Dante: The Inferno
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
A striking red and black cover depicts Dante and his guide
standing on a mass of dark bodies convulsed on the ground.
Catalogue No. 9788
Catalogue No. 2043
Catalogue No. 2215
Catalogue No. 6837
Catalogue No. 8707
Backlit by the relentless brightness of hellfire, the gruesome
image evokes mass destruction for the post-World War II modern
viewer.
Album: God’s Trombones
Year: 1965
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: H. Pippin
God’s Trombones by author, lawyer and diplomat, James Weldon
Johnson, is a collection of seven sermons written in free verse. It
demonstrates the dignity and power of African American culture,
using the powerful, vernacular voice of the black preacher whom
the author likened to a trombone. The image, entitled
Harmonizing, reinforces the musical metaphor.
Album: The Pete Seeger Sampler
Year: 1955
Cover Design: Carlis
Illustration: Sampler by Augusta Seeger
A unique cover in the form of an embroidered sampler includes a
signature “Augusta Seeger aged 10, 1823”. Through the image of
the old-fashioned hand-sewn sampler, the cover at once plays off
the album title and the recorded material, and associates Pete
Seeger with his family’s history and songs rooted in the American
past.
Album: Pennsylvania Dutch Folk Songs
Year: 1955, 1961
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Carlis
The cover uses Pennsylvania Dutch design elements, visually
situating these songs typical of the Lancaster region and its
German-speaking settlers. The cursive handwritten script used by
Carlis conveys an untutored traditionalism that suggests an
earlier era of American folk music.
Album: Haitian Piano
Year: 1952
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: R. W. Kane
The large centrally placed piano dominates the cover design
emphasizing the music within. Harold Courlander recorded
performer Fabre Duroseau who comes from an important Haitian
musical family. A collection of Haitian Meringues was composed
by members of the Duroseau family.
Album: She Was Poor But She Was Honest
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No. 8707
Catalogue No. 4069
Catalogue No. 5378
Catalogue No. 4429
Catalogue No. 4520
A bright red banner-like strip presents the record’s title like a
newspaper headline: “She was poor but she was honest”, the title
song of the record. The image shows the milieu of its
performance, the pub, where such songs were popular working
people’s entertainment until the end of World War I.
III Songs and Sounds of Community
A bright red banner-like strip presents the record’s title like a
newspaper headline: “She was poor but she was honest”, the title
song of the record. The image shows the milieu of its
performance, the pub, where such songs were popular working
people’s entertainment until the end of World War I.
Album: Eskimo Songs from Alaska
Year: 1966
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Illustration: Unknown
The cover photograph shows an Inuit blanket toss game with a
player in mid-toss. Traditionally, the “blanket” is made of seal or
walrus skins sewn together; the winner is the player who bounces
the highest. The blanket toss game is played at festivals and
other Inuit celebrations.
Album: Music of the Shakers
Year: 1976
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
This nineteenth century illustration of the Shaker “wheel dance”
depicts four concentric circles of Brothers alternating with Sisters
to symbolize the four spiritual cycles of Shaker theology. The
“Shakers” were so named because they believed that shaking and
agitating the body would free them from worldly ills. This form
of dance led to their song repertoire.
Album: Folk Music of Japan
Year: 1952, 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Utamaro
Edited by Harold Courlander this 1951 collection of Japanese folk
music includes folk theatre, Buddhist religious music, and trade
songs. The superbly refined print by Kitagawa Utamaro (17531808) provides an instant identification with Japanese culture,
especially since his works have been favored by collectors since
the nineteenth century and are known in the West.
Album: Folk Music from Italy
Year: 1956, 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
Field recordings of Italian folk music made by Walther Hennig in
Catalogue No. 6815
Diversity
identity
Catalogue No. 4252
Catalogue No. 4285
Catalogue No. 8368
Catalogue No. 4255
1954, contain examples of songs and dances from Sardinia, Sicily,
Capri, the “Albanian” villages of southern Italy and elsewhere.
The striking photograph of a coastal town in dark sepia is
appropriately suggestive of old high culture, dry earth and a
warm climate.
Album: Sones of Mexico
Year: 1950
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Unknown
This recording of regional Mestizo music by the Trio Aguilillas
includes the use of instruments depicted in the stylized cover
illustration of the three musicians in traditional garb.
World Music recordings, belonging to special series called either
Asch Mankind or Ethnic Folkways, are recognizable by the small
insignia that appears at the top of the album cover next to the
series name.
Album: Music of the Plains Apache
Year: 1969
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
This recording of Apache music includes children’s songs and
lullabies. The cover image, an old print of unknown origin,
depicts a peaceful domestic scene of a woman and young child
sitting together in the shade of the teepee. The colour of the
cover is a rich summer ochre.
Album: Afro-Dominican Music
Year: 1983
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
This recording presents the culturally complex Afro-Dominican
musical traditions. The cover, an old black and white image of
slaves working on a plantation, points to the origins of these
traditions. The liner notes indicate that, particularly under the
dictator Trujillo, “Afro-Dominican music and dance was often
suppressed and prohibited.”
Album: The Ragas of India
Year: 1962
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
The cover is a beautiful photo of Adinath Temple (Buddhist) on
Mount Abu, Dilwara. Though not directly linked to the music, the
elaborate sculptures effectively evoke the ancient connection
between art and spirituality, which also applies to raga music,
and elevates the status of this unique didactic recording by a
renowned Indian music pedagogue.
Album: Tea House Music of Afghanistan
Year: 1977
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: S. and R. Michaud
Catalogue No. 3518
Catalogue No. 8905
Catalogue No. 8708
Catalogue No. 4208
Catalogue no. 6241
This culturally meaningful photograph depicts a turbaned Afghan
gentleman drinking tea, likely in conversation; his falcon is
perched on top of a water pipe or huqqah. It presents an image of
a bygone lifestyle, which today remains a cultural ideal preserved
in songs.
Album: Irish Folk Songs for Women
Year: 1958
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Miriam Schottland
The rich, decorative patterning of this block print evokes a folk
art tradition. The green of the woman’s dress and the harp she is
playing clearly mark the album as Irish, while the script and
decorative framing suggest early Irish manuscripts.
Album: Into the Secret of the Heart
Year: 1976
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
The cover image contains Sufi-Islamic symbols. Rendered in
green, the colour associated with Islam, it has the shape of a
prayer mat (pointing to Mecca). An inverted heart contains the
first letter of the Arabic alphabet, Alif, which stands for One God;
it is decorated with peacocks favored in Indian and Iranian
cultures.
Album: British Broadside Ballads…
Year: 1957
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
The cover depicts a military figure on horseback, perhaps from
the period of the Napoleonic Wars, holding a broadside.
Broadsides, popular ballads printed on single sheets of paper,
were sold throughout the British Isles since the time of
Shakespeare.
Album: Ballads, Wedding Songs, and Piyyutim…
Year: 1983
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Henrietta Yurchenco
New York ethnomusicologist Henrietta Yurchenco took the cover
photograph of Tetuan, one of the Moroccan centers of Sephardic
music that she researched. The image presents iconic traits of the
“oriental” location (architecture, palm trees) with which
Sephardic culture is often identified.
Album: Travelon Gamelon
Year: 1982
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Michiel Hendryckx
Catalogue No. 6129
Catalogue No. 6142
Catalogue No. 6156
Catalogue No. 6178
Inspired by Gamelon sounds, Richard Lerman’s bicycle music
consists of striking the spokes of the bicycles as the wheels are
turned by hand (in concert) or by riding (in promenade). The
cover photo shows him and a playful, happy team of Belgian high
school students on amplified bicycles doing the promenade
version of Travelon Gamelon in Ghent, 1981.
Album: Cable Car Soundscapes
Year: 1982, 1983
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Peter Macandless
This photograph was likely taken by album producer Peter
Macandless. Its centrally placed position and vertical format,
along with the lines created by the tracks leading into the
photograph, transport the viewer into the scene, along for the
cable car ride.
Album: Sounds of the Office
Year: 1964
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
A typewriter dominates this cover alluding to the mechanically
generated soundscape of a New York office. The shadowy,
negative photographic image also uncannily suggests the
impending transformation of this “epitome of everyday life” into
an artifact of the past.
Album: Sounds of Steam Locomotives, Vol. 5
Year: 1976
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Reginald Marsh
First inspired by the train from Kicking Horse Pass in the
Canadian Rockies, Vinton Wight’s main interest was to preserve
the steam engine sounds that would soon be gone. The 1929
etching by Marsh is historicizing, placing the steam engine
visually into the past even when it was still functioning. Moses
Asch likely selected the image since it was from his collection.
Album: Sounds of Insects
Year: 1960
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Albro T. Gaul
The cover photograph, a greatly enlarged negative image of the
formidable hornet, visually reflects the sounds of the insects on
the recording: greatly amplified and somewhat distorted.
Entomologist, Albro T. Gaul produced the record based on his
Catalogue No. 6166
Catalogue No. 7214
Catalogue No. 7661
Catalogue No. 8358
Catalogue No. 3534
book The Wonderful World of Insects.
Album: Sounds of North American Frogs
Year: 1958
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
Once a bestseller, this album, produced in cooperation with The
American Museum of Natural History, presents field recordings of
the sounds of different kinds of North American frogs. These
sounds are captured visually on the cover through a series of
concentric ovals emanating like sound waves from the frog’s
mouth. The background, appropriately, is green.
Album: Children’s Game Songs of French Canada
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Photograph: Unknown
Another image by Rosenhouse, dominated by vivacious black
pencil lines drawn on a glowing pink background, outlining,
shaping, and filling in spaces to create four lively children
huddled in play and laughter.
Album: Jambo…
Year: 1974
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: Bernadelle Richter
One of many of Ella Jenkins’ Folkways recordings, this one is
based on Tanzanian call and response songs. Jambo means
“hello” in Swahili. The photographs by Bernadelle Richter
evocatively document Ella Jenkins’ visit with Tanzanian children,
and with the American children’s group “Choir in Training” who
perform with her on this album.
Album: Blues Harp
Year: 1965
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
The cover photograph focuses all attention on the source of the
music: the blues musician’s mouth in contact with the harmonica.
The blue background underscores the subject at hand.
Album: American Guitar
Year: 1960
Cover Design: Bob Sloan
Illustration: David Stone Martin
Photograph: David Gahr
The cover presents two guitars in juxtaposition: David Stone
Martin’s stylized drawing and in the David Gahr’s photograph.
The images are united visually by the reiterated curves of the
instrument.
Catalogue No 5511
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 5511
Catalogue No. 9750
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 9750
Catalogue No. 9724
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 9724
Album: W.E.B. DuBois
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Bob McCarron
Illustration: Charles White
Moses Asch conducted the interview himself for this recorded
autobiography of the pioneering writer, scholar and early civil
rights leader. The cover portrait, by African American artists,
Charles Wilbert White, conveys Dubois’ great authority, but also a
sense of weariness that he felt throughout his life in his struggle
against racism in America.
I Influences and Collaborations
Moses Asch conducted the interview himself for this recorded
autobiography of the pioneering writer, scholar and early civil
rights leader. The cover portrait, by African American artist,
Charles Wilbert White, conveys Dubois’ great stature as a giant in
the struggle against racism in America.
Album: Readings from Walt Whitman
Year: 1958
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Carlis
This evocative image places the poet against a grass-coloured
ground. Based on a steel engraving by Samuel Hollyeran, the
portrait of Whitman as a young man appeared in the 1855 edition
of Leaves of Grass. Although criticized for its “informality”,
Whitman himself liked its “natural, honest, easy” quality, and in
the 1881 reprint had it placed opposite Song of Myself.
I Influences and Collaborations
This evocative image places the poet against a grass-coloured
ground. Based on a steel engraving by Samuel Hollyeran, the
portrait of Whitman as a young man appeared in the 1855 edition
of Leaves of Grass. Although criticized for its “informality”,
Whitman himself liked its “natural, honest, easy” quality, and in
the 1881 reprint had it placed opposite “Song of Myself”.
Album: An Interview with Henry Miller
Year: 1964
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Cedric Wright
This photo of Henry Miller, his face taking up the entire cover
surface, is particularly expressive and engaging. Ronald Clyne
commented that the cover design was intended to reflect the
controversial nature of the writer: “orange catches your attention
and the full frame photograph makes his presence large.”
I Influences and Collaborations
This photo of Henry Miller, his face taking up the entire cover
Catalogue No. 9933
Catalogue No. 8767
Catalogue No. 9920
Catalogue No. 9587
Catalogue No. 9947
surface, is particularly expressive and engaging. Cover designer
Ronald Clyne intended it to reflect the controversial nature of the
writer, stating: “orange catches your attention and the full frame
photograph makes his presence large.” Miller, whose works were
deemed pornographic in the US until the 1960s, successfully
challenged American censorship laws.
Album: French African Poems
Year: 1977
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Tyani Mayakiv
The cover lithograph, by Tyani Mayakivi is entitled Mr. T.
Moyokin at Age Eighty. The album showcases African poetry of
“negritude,” a concept asserting black identity in response to the
colonial situation. Included among the internationally renowned
poets are Senghor and Cesaire.
Album: songs of Shakespeare’s Plays…
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Unknown
The cover image is a popular print of an actor on stage as he
might have appeared during the Elizabethan period. Tom Kines
sings songs from Shakespeare’s plays and other songs from the
period, with instrumental accompaniment composed or arranged
in the popular style of the time.
Album: The Bhagavad Gita
Year: 1951
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Photograph: Unknown
This famous and beloved sculpture of Lord Krishna in dance
pose, softened and mellowed by yellow and brown tones,
effectively leads to the Bhagavad Gita in which Lord Krishna
figures centrally, offering guidance and wisdom to human beings
torn by contradictions.
Album: La Canson de Roland
Year: 1961
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Unknown
This famous epic poem read in medieval French dramatically
presents Roland’s account of the tragic seventh-century battle
against the Saracens in Spain. The black line drawing is
appropriately set against a somber brown background and
depicts an army of knights, led by Roland, setting off to battle.
Album: The Poetry of Abraham Sutzkever
Year: 1960
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Illustration: Marc Chagall
Catalogue No. 9797
Chivers Exhibit
Catalogue No 9797
Catalogue No. 7015
Catalogue No. 7020
Catalogue No. 7064
This cover image is by Marc Chagall who was a friend of Abraham
Sutzkever, one of the great Yiddish poets. It illustrates
Sutzkever’s poem Sibir, which describes his family’s experience
in Siberia. The poems present life in the Vilna Ghetto during
World War II, the struggle to survive and the atrocities committed
against the Jewish people.
Album: Margaret Walker Reads Poems…
Year: 1975
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Tom Feelings
The impressionistically rendered cover artwork by Tom Feelings
is sensitive and intense. The guitarist is intent on his playing, his
expression conveying the depth of feeling for the music and the
story it tells. The writings of Langston Hughes and Margaret
Walker celebrated ordinary black life and experience and drew
upon African American music for inspiration.
I Influences and Collaborations
Album: Margaret Walker Reads Poems by Langston Hughes
The impressionistically rendered cover artwork by Tom Feelings is
sensitive and intense. The guitarist is intent on his playing, his
expression conveying the depth of feeling for the music and the
story it tells. The writings of Langston Hughes and Margaret
Walker celebrated everyday African American life and experience
and drew upon their music for inspiration.
Album: Songs to Grow On for Mother and Child
Year: 1950, 1953
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
This luminous photograph by David Gahr conveys the intimacy
between a mother and her baby. The first of a series, this record
contains playfully instructive songs by Woody Guthrie about
everyday activities of bathing, eating and playing meant to amuse
and stimulate the imagination of very young children. The liner
notes include drawings by Guthrie.
Album: Songs to Grow On, Vol. 2
Year: 1951
Cover Design: Irwin Rosenhouse
Illustration: Irwin Rosenhouse
Artfully stylized to resemble children’s drawings, the cover by
Rosenhouse shows children playing both together and alone,
fittingly illustrating the songs on the record. Part of the iconic
series of folk music written for children, these songs, performed
by renowned folk artists, represent some of the most well-known
and beloved children’s songs still performed today.
Album: Old Timey Songs for Children
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: Unknown
Catalogue No. 7675
Catalogue No. 7611
Catalogue No. 7857
Catalogue No. 7503
Catalogue No. 7312
This cover shows a picture of two young boys playing harp and
fiddle; their old-fashioned forma dress and caps aptly reinforce
the “Old Timey” title and music of the album. The songs are
meant for both children’s and adults’ enjoyment.
Album: Songs to Grow On, Vol. 2
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: David Stone Martin
This volume of Songs to Grow On contains nursery songs Woody
Guthrie sang to his own daughter. The cover drawing, by David
Stone Martin, shows three children, each one taller than the next,
with the tallest having “grown” right out of the frame of the
picture.
Album: Birds, Beasts, Bugs and Bigger Fishes
Year: 1955
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Carlis
This imaginative children’s cover by Carlis shows a series of
playful animals arranged in a tic-tac-toe formation. The
curvilinear typography appropriately evokes a child’s
handwriting.
Album: Who Goes First? ¿Quien Va Primero?
Year: 1979
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: David Gahr
The cover is a finely textured photograph by David Gahr of a
young girl playfully walking on what looks like an American
street in an urban area, with flyers peeling off the brick wall. The
girl looks ready to join both the Spanish and English games one
hears on the recording.
Album: Woody Guthrie’s Children’s Songs
Year: 1974
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Woody Guthrie
Although known for his songs, Woody Guthrie was also a prolific
writer and artist, illustrating countless numbers of his stories and
songs. The drawing for this collection of songs, with the bright
red background, swinging hammer, and modest little house, is
typical of his style – cheerful, animated and accessible.
Album: The Story of Jazz
Year: 1954
Cover Design: Unknown
Illustration: Carlis
Catalogue No. 7510
Catalogue No. CRB
14
Catalogue No. 8361
Catalogue No. 3355
Signed by Carlis, this cover drawing shows two jazz bands, one
dressed formally in dark suits, and the other, more animated, in
orange. Both the drawing and the text are in a style that recalls
educational material for children in the 1950s. The recording is
based on a book by the famous African American writer, Langston
Hughes, who is also the narrator.
Album: Songs of Camp
Year: 1959
Cover Design: Robert Mentken
Photograph: Robert Mentken
This cover design by Robert Mentken features an idyllic photo of
two young boys enjoying the intimacy and fun of summer camp.
The camp songs on the record are chosen to evoke and spread
that joy. In 1959, showing black and white children, arm in arm,
would have made a bold anti-segregationist statement.
Album: The Mama-Likemibi Instructional Record
Year: 1975
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Leonard Byrd
The cover is a photograph of the Likembi-Mbira, an African finger
percussion instrument (“thumb piano”) built by Nadi Qamar who
created this instructional record for both the instrument and the
African music he composed, performed and taught in America.
Album: Traditional Cajun Fiddle
Year: 1976
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: Unknown
The photograph conveys the pleasure of two people making
music together. Dewey Balfour’s appearance at the 1964 Newport
Folk Music Festival, where this photo may have been taken,
introduced Cajun fiddle music to a very enthusiastic audience.
This reception inspired him to promote Cajun music back home
in Louisiana, where it had almost disappeared.
Album: The Violin, Vol. 5
Year: 1963
Cover Design: Ronald Clyne
Illustration: Ronald Clyne
This abstract cover design visually complements the twentiethcentury modernism that is sonically represented in the
experimental and avant-garde music for violin presented by
renowned Canadian violinist and composer Hyman Bress.
PART V
The Legacy of Folkways
Smithsonian
Folkways
Recordings
The Sound Archive
The Visual Archive
In a Declaration of Purpose written shortly before he died, Moses
Asch stated:
As Director, I have tried to create an atmosphere where all
recordings are treated equally regardless of the sales statistics.
My obligation is to see that Folkways remains a depository of the
sounds and music of the world and that these remain available to
all. The real owners of Folkways Records are the people that
perform and create what we have recorded and not the people
that issue and sell the product. The obligation of the company is
to maintain the office, the warehouse, the billing and collection
of funds, to pay the rent and telephone, etcetera. Folkways
succeeds when it becomes the invisible conduit from the world to
the ears of human beings.
By the early 1980’s Moe began to consider Folkways’ future and
legacy. He wanted to find an enterprise that would continue to
maintain the catalogue as he had, making every Folkways record
available in perpetuity. He also expected this entity to appreciate
and make use of the volumes of unexplored master tapes that he
had yet to turn into recordings. He wanted the new director to
continue to produce recordings regardless of sales statistics. And
he wanted the new Folkways to remain the “invisible conduit
from the world to the ears of human beings”. A tall order, but as
it turned out, not impossible.
In 1987 the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC acquired
Folkways Records from the Asch estate agreeing to all of the
conditions set out by Moses Asch.
In the eighteen years of its stewardship, Smithsonian Folkways
Recordings, which found a home in what is now known as the
Center for Folkways [s/b Folklife – Arndt] and Cultural Heritage,
has continued the Folkways tradition by supporting the music
and other sound recordings by and for people everywhere. It has
continued to make available the entire original Folkways
catalogue, created new compilations using original Folkways
material, and annually produces about twenty recordings of new
material from around the world, all of which are available on
compact disc.
Through the Smithsonian Global Sound internet site
[www.smithsonianglobalsound.org] Smithsonian Folkways’ rich
and expanding catalogue is now available to the whole world,
making connections between people and communities,
transcending time and space.
A review of Smithsonian Folkways’ releases makes clear the
importance it places on the rich visual legacy contained in
original Folkways covers.
Many of these releases are designed with an eye appreciative of
the original “look” represented in all its diversity. Smithsonian
Folkways has preserved the extensive Folkways collection of
designs, prints, photographs and production materials, both for
archival purposes and for the creative reworking of this material
in the production of new recordings. As with the recorded
archive, and in both cases in keeping with the vision of Moses
Asch, Smithsonian Folkways maintains a deep appreciation of the
historical and artistic importance of the many creative
individuals—artists, photographers and designers—who were a
part of Folkways.
Photography: Louise Asselstine, Department of Art and Design*
Printing: McCallum Printing, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
________________________________________________________________
*University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
The Moses and Frances Asch Collection courtesy of the
Smithsonian Institution, Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage,
Ralph Rinzler Folklife: Archives and Collections and Smithsonian
Folkways Recordings.
(logos at bottom of panel: folkwaysAlive!, Alberta Foundation for
the Arts, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, Department of Art &
Design FAB Gallery)
Finally, special thanks to Ronald Clyne for sharing his remarkable
recollections, to Tony Seeger for contributing his personal and
learned reflections on Folkways, and to Michael Asch for his
invaluable insight, knowledge and support from inception to
exhibition opening.
EXHIBITION TEAM
Joan Greer
Department of Art and Design*, Co-curator and Catalogue Editor
Margaret Asch
Co-curator and Catalogue Editor
Susan Colberg
Department of Art and Design*, Catalogue and Exhibition
Designer
Blair Brennan
Department of Art and Design*, Fine Arts Building (fab) Gallery
Manager
Jon McCollum
Department of Music, 2004-2005*
Regula Burckhardt Qureshi
folkwaysAlive! Director* and Canadian Centre for
Ethnomusicology Director*
Atesh Sonneborn
Smithsonian Folkways Liaison
Acknowledgements
Seeing the World of Sound: the Cover Art of Folkways Records is a
collaboration between folkwaysAlive! and the Canadian Centre for
Ethnomusicology at the University of Alberta, and the
University’s Department of Art and Design, Smithsonian Folkways
Recordings in Washington DC and the Asch family. We are
particularly indebted to our partners at Smithsonian Folkways
Recordings for the use of images, sounds and archival material;
for their ideas, support and enthusiasm and thank, especially,
Mary Monseur, Dan Sheehy, Atesh Sonneborn, Jeff Place, Charlie
Weber, Toby Dodds and Mark Gustafson.
We also gratefully acknowledge the creative and administrative
contributions of the staff and students of the Department of Art
and Design, the Department of Music, folkwaysAlive! and the
Canadian Centre for Ethnomusicology, and in particular, Jetske
Sybesma, Liz Ingram, Michael Frishkopf, Stella Chooi, Lorna
Arndt, David Descheneau, Jessica Keyes, Allison Fairbairn,
Shannon Clarke, Teresa Kachanoski and Andrea Pelland.
This exhibition could not have happened without the financial
support of the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, Humanities, Fine
Arts and Social Science Research funding, and the Office of the
Vice President, Research. Thank you all.
Folkways Records… …IN CANADA
Moses Asch had a long-term commitment to recording Canadian
voices that created a broad base from which we can explore our
own music.
Folkways Records produced the largest and most diverse
collection of Canadian people’s music with albums numbering in
the dozens. Recorded mainly during the 1950s-80s, the collection
is an historical record of English and French folk songs; First
Nations communities; Canadian literature and history; children’s
songs; and avant-garde music. The album cover images, as is
evident in this exhibition, provide a remarkable visual
complement to the sonic record, documenting Canadian people
and places.
The Folkways
Collections…
Canadians owe much of this treasure to Montreal impresario Sam
Gesser who was Moses Asch’s Canadian producer. Through his
work, Folkways became the prime venue for Canada’s important
folk song collectors, making their foundational work accessible to
Canadians and the world. Folkways documented the Canadian
folksong revival of the 1950s, and through recordings of
performers such as Jean Carignan and Alan Mills, it created a
canon of Canadian traditional music that performers draw upon
to this day.
…AND THE UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA
In 1985, Moses and Frances Asch donated a complete collection
of Folkways Records to the University of Alberta. It was the only
donation of the entire collection ever made by the Aschs.
What prompted this extraordinary gift? As Michael Asch,
University of Alberta professor emeritus and son of Moses and
Frances Asch tells it:
My father was not a traveler—at least by the time I arrived at the
University in 1971, remaining in New York almost all of the time.
But my parents did come to Edmonton, perhaps six or seven
times during the 1970s and 1980s, making it a place Moe visited
more than any other. Although they came to visit their
grandchildren, Moe always spent time exploring the city and he
was greatly impressed by things that Edmontonians, perhaps,
take for granted.
First, the University of Alberta; Moe saw a University with
sophisticated and mature programs in Social Sciences,
Humanities and, especially, the Fine Arts.
Second, the arts community; Moe took the opportunity to meet a
number of local artists and musicians. He explored the theatre
and music scenes and found creative risk-takers, prepared to do
performances that had an artistic rather than a wholly
commercial focus.
Third, he was impressed with the museums and galleries and,
especially, the City Archives. Here he learned something of the
history of Edmonton and the region. He took a special interest in
the downtown Edmonton Public Library that maintained a
sizeable collection of Folkways records.
Finally, there was CKUA. Here was a radio station that mirrored,
in many respects, the values that he held dear.
folkwaysAlive!
In short, in Edmonton, Moe found a community that was in touch
with its past and willing to take risks to express itself, artistically;
a community with a major, diverse University and a radio station
that provided a space for artistic and social expression with
which he felt at home. So, while my presence here opened the
door, it was qualities my father saw in Edmonton that led him to
decide this was the right location for such a gift.
The Moses and Frances Asch Collection of Folkways Records is an
unparalleled addition to the University of Alberta’s resources. It
represents an opportunity to share in a legacy of respecting and
celebrating people’s voices and creates a direct link to
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings and its stewardship of the
Folkways mission worldwide.
In 2003, the University of Alberta entered into a partnership with
Smithsonian Folkways that established folkwaysAlive! as a place
for research and community outreach with its base and focus on
this unique collection of recordings. folkwaysAlive! is the
university’s initiative to carry Folkways’ legacy forward in
Canada, by linking the content and spirit of Folkways with the
cultural life of our communities. The mission of folkwaysAlive! is
to explore and support Canada’s diverse musical-cultural heritage
and living musical traditions, for education, research,
community-building, and aesthetic enjoyment.
At the center of folkwaysAlive! is a museum and exhibition space
to preserve and showcase the Folkways collection, both
physically and also virtually, on the web. It offers visual and
sonic access and features exhibits highlighting aspects of the
collection. Open to university and
community alike, folkwaysAlive! has its home in the Canadian
Centre for Ethnomusicology in the historic Arts Building.
folkwaysAlive! is committed to research and documentation of
music-making in the remarkably diverse communities of Alberta
and Canada, particularly in the less explored Western and
Northern regions. Complementing the study of heritage is a
mandate to document and record new traditions of Canadian
music. folkwaysAlive! will make the entire collection permanently
accessible for future generations through the development of an
innovative digital database system called MuDoc, for multimedia
music documentation, dissemination, teaching, and analysis.
folkwaysAlive! also hosts performances and especially workshops
that bring the expertise of community musicians into the
university.
folkwaysAlive! creates opportunities for a unique kind of research
and creative collaboration, and fosters connection between the
university and the larger community of which we are a part.
Catalogue No. SFW
40415
Catalogue No. SFW
40815
Seeing the World of Sound: the Cover Art of Folkways Records is
not only folkwaysAlive!’s inaugural research project. It is our
opportunity to introduce Folkways and folkwaysAlive! to the
community and to celebrate and honour Folkways creator, Moses
Asch, on the centennial of his birth.
Album: Heart Beat: Voices of First Nations Women
Year: 1995
Cover Design: Watermark Design
Illustration: Shan Goshorn
The evocative cover brings together earth, sky and drummer in
an image that conveys the spirituality of the music. Rhythms of
the drum, evoked by the luminescent instrument held by the
shadowy musician, are echoed through the orb in the sky and
reinforced by the title Heart Beat.
Compact Disc: Mary Lou’s Mass
Year: 2005
Cover Design: Sonya Cohen Cramer
Photograph: Patrick Hinely
Catalogue No. SFW
40452
Catalogue No. SFW
40491
Catalogue No. SFW
40158
Catalogue No. 2433
Catalogue No. SFW
40044
Mary Lou Williams, a very spiritual and caring woman, composed
sacred music in the jazz idiom in her later years. In 1960, she
founded the Bel Canto Foundation in Harlem to help musicians in
distress. The cover photo, by Patrick Hinely, captures the depth
of her feeling for the music.
Album: Tuva
Year: 1998
Cover Design: Scott Stowell, Open Studios
Photograph: Ted Levin
The animal images, superimposed on a photograph of the
landscape, are petroglyphs from cliffs on the banks of the Yenisei
River in Tuva. The dark, floating spirit-like animals embody the
essence of the recording.
Album: The Heart of Cape Breton
Year: 2002
Cover Design: Sonya Cohen Cramer
Photograph: Gary Samson
This photograph echoes the title in conveying the central place of
music in Cape Breton. The violin, cradled in the musician’s
hands, is the heart of the cover.
Compact Disc: The Lilly Brother & Don Stover
Year: 2005
Cover Design: Sonya Cohen Cramer
Photograph: John Cohen
The Smithsonian Folkways reissue truly represents continuity in
cover design. Sonya Cohen Cramer has subtly redesigned the
original cover for the CD format, making use of the original
Folkways cover photograph and design by her father—musician,
ethnographyer and photographer, John Cohen.
Album: The Lilly Brother & Don Stover
Year: 1961
Cover Design: John Cohen
Photograph: John Cohen
This album produced by Mike Seeger includes, in the liner notes,
an essay on bluegrass music and biographical sketches of the
musicians. The cover photograph is by John Cohen. Seeger and
Cohen introduced numerous traditional musicians to Folkways
and were musicians themselves—members of The New Lost City
Ramblers.
Album: Where did you sleep last night?
Year: 1996
Cover Design: Fritz Klaetke, Visual Dialogue
Photograph: Charles Peterson
Catalogue No. SFW
40438
Catalogue No. 6951
Catalogue No. 6918
Catalogue No. 7108
Catalogue No. 4464
This very compelling cover photograph is as much a portrait of
Lead Belly’s twelve-string guitar as it is of this iconic artist. The
photographer, Charles Peterson, photographed many famous,
mostly jazz musicians during the 1930s, 40s and 50s.
Album: The Silk Road
Year: 2002
Cover Design: Sonya Cohen Cramer
Photograph: Ted Levin
Producer Ted Levin’s evocative photograph draws the viewer into
the vast sinuous landscape of Central Asian nomads, which
together with the urban centres of high culture, creates the rich
musical amalgam captured on this landmark World Music
recording.
Album: Songs and Dances of Quebec
Year: 1956
Cover Design: Unknown
Photograph: Irwin Rosenhouse
The lively silhouetted dancing legs, framed at the upper right
against the forest pattern of sketchily drawn evergreens, combine
with Rosenhouse’s animated script at the lower left to playfully
evoke the Québecois landscape as a backdrop to the reels and
music of the album.
Album: Songs of French-Canada
Year: 1960
Cover Designer: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Unknown
The well-known, bilingual folksingers, Alan Mills and Helene
Baillargeon, did much to disseminate Canadian folk songs in both
French and English. The bilingual cover presents a traditional
Québec village of wooden houses lit up by the horizontal light of
the northern sun.
Album: The Story of the Klondike
Year: 1959
Cover Designer: Unknown
Photograph: Unknown
Iconic Canadian, Pierre Berton, records his well-known narrative
of the Canadian goldrush to the Yukon, taken from his book on
the subject. Berton, born and raised in the Yukon, is pictured in
the foreground, with a drawing by “MacPherson” from the book
of a cortege of gold seekers crossing a valley to meet up with
others in a mountain pass encampment.
Album: Indian Music of the Canadian Plains
Year: 1966
Cover Designer: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: Kenneth Peacock
Catalogue No. 4122
Catalogue No. 4075
Catalogue
slide show
The cover photograph captures the elaborate dress and
movement involved in the Cree Grass Dance. This song and other
Cree and Blood songs are included on the recording.
Ethnomusicologist Kenneth Peacock, who researched and
recorded this music for the National Museum of Canada, took the
photograph.
Album: Kwakiutl
Year: 1981
Cover Designer: Ronald Clyne
Photograph: British Columbia Provincial Museum
The carved wooden mask on the cover evokes the elaborate social
and ceremonial structure of the Kwakiutl and the role of masks in
animating mythological, bird, and animal figures that embodied
ancestors and supernatural beings. Songs and dances, some on
this record, were integral to these occasions.
Album: Songs from the Out-ports of Newfoundland
Year: 1966
Cover Designer: Irwin Rosenhouse
Photograph: Unknown
Created by renowned folklorist MacEdward Leach, this recording
documents the rich oral heritage of the isolated outports and
fishing villages of the island, including well-preserved songs and
stories brought from the British Isles. The photograph depicts a
row of large anchors lined up near the shore, vivid reminders of a
life—and songs—tied to the sea.
This is a digital slide show of the complete Folkways catalogue,
from the beginning to the present, in random order. At about 6
seconds per slide, plan for nearly 4 hours to see them all!