OK, we know bluegrass compilations aren't exactly a rarity these days, but this set from Folkways is about as good of one these things as we've seen – and it's from Folkways after all, not some creepy sub-major label exploitation set! In the late 50s Folkways was pretty much the main reservoir for true bluegrass LPs, and this set mines the best of the catalog from the time. The necessary great ones and the label heroes are represented, of course – Bill Monroe and his Bluegrass Boys, the Stanley Brothers, Doc Watson – but like the best similar comps, there are also tons of fine tunes that tend to get lost without a broad cultural trend to stir them up out of the ground. Not just for archivists by any stretch – if a title like Classic Bluegrass From Smithsonian Folkways sounds interesting to your ears you'll love this thing! 25 tracks, including "Little Birdie" and "Rabbit In A Log" by the Stanley Brothers, "Get Up John" by Bill Monroe, "(Legend Of The) Brown Mountain Light" by The Country Gentlemen, "The Train That Carried My Girl From Town" by Doc Watson, ""Wayfaring Stranger" by Cullen Gaylean And The Virginia Mountain Boys", "Teardrops In My Eyes" by The Friendly City Playboys, and tons more. CD

27 songs from Paul Robeson, Bobbie McGee, Pete Seeger, Joe Glazer, Mike Seeger, Peggy Seeger, the Almanac Singers, Woody Guthrie, Utah Phillips, Joe Uehlein, and Larry Penn – plus great notes on each of the songs! CD

A beautifully poetic take on the transplantation of African sounds in the US scene – played on a variety of different instruments by Bilal Abdurahman! The tracks are mostly short, percussive ones – with the strongest focus on instrumentation, but with occasional vocal refrains from Bilal – usually in wordless or chanted form, although there's a few nice spoken bits too! Instrumentation is quite diverse – and includes balafon, xalam, and even Ugandan harp – on titles that include "Spirits Of Congo Square", "Ancestral Ode", "Fusion", "Congo Square Procession", "Lament", "Blues Is Born", and "Gogi Solo". CD

Great long-form work from electronics wizard Jon Appleton – performed in the early 80s on the synclavier, but with the same sort of sensitivity as his early electronics experiments! Most tunes here are relatively extended – and work together with a slightly poetic feel that lives up to the "fantasies" in the title – dark soundscapes with some occasionally lyrical moments, but played in a way that's definitely left of center! Titles include "Kapingamarangi", "Stet", "Sashasonjon", and "The Sweet Dreams Of Miss Pamela Beach". CD

A hip batch of underground poetry tracks – collected together by the Before Columbus Foundation, a group dedicated to promoting the works of African-American and Native American artists! Despite the 1980 date, the collection has a feel that's similar to earlier righteous poetry albums on the Folkways label – proof that the flames were still burning strong in the underground, even though artists such as these weren't getting as much mainstream attention at the end of the 70s! Most readings are recorded live, with a relatively spare, stark sound – and performances include "Dope" by Amiri Baraka, "St Louis Woman" by Ishmael Reed, "For The Poets" by Jayne Cortez, "Bark Is What Us Dogs Do" by David Meltzer, "Flipochinos, Being Your Woman, & Pacific Lover" by Cyn Zarco, and "Artist/Art This" by Victor Hernandez Cruz. CD

A really unique document of the struggle and story of Angela Davis – recorded in 1971 by ABC news, and packaged together here as kind of a sonic program by Folkways! The record works like a short news program – starting out with a statement by Angela, then moving to a narrated introduction, then a long interview conducted by Joe Walker of Muhammad Speaks. Side two continues with a panel discussion on the case, then ends with some very cool "man in the street" style interviews! Capped off with a really great cover photo of Angela too! CD

A fantastic record from Nancy Dupree – a hip poet with a mission towards raising social consciousness and increasing a sense of pride and power in the younger generation – all of which comes through very strongly in this classic Folkways Records set! The album is way more than just another album of poetry – as Nancy introduces all of her writing before reading things direct – with a voice that's very down to earth, and which, in reaction with the small audience on the recording, provides this fantastic context of the material – most of which is still amazingly relevant all these many decades later. Selections include "Self Praise", "Black Success", "Letter To Young Sisters", "Tears", and "Bulletholes". CD

An extremely righteous bit of soul jazz – originally issued in a very small pressing by Folkway Records, at a time when the label was doing some great underground recordings! The sound is loose and free – spiritually building in a manner that recalls the work of Ahmed Abdul Malik, Phil Cohran, and some of the AACM – and the album has a style that's exploratory, but never goes too far out, or loses its sense of rhythm and swing. Tracks are longish, and the core group features soprano sax and Korean reeds by Bilal Abdurahman and vibes by Ameen Nuraldeen – plus guest work on bass by James Smith, and appearances by a lot of different world percussion players. There's a nice Eastern feel to some of the tracks, and titles include "Mevlana", "Ti Ti", "Sun Flower", and "Bent El Jerusalem". CD

Appalachian vocals and banjo tunes from great Roscoe Holcomb – mid 60s Folkways recordings with his gorgeously weary, soul stirring and sometimes otherworldly passionate voice commanding your attention and cutting real deep – and his banjo playing making a playful progressions underneath. Holcomb puts it all in that voice of his, an impressive, cutting instrument on its owns – and getting a lot of different sounds out of his banjo than many players of the era. Titles include "Wandering Boy", "Hook And Line", "Omie Wise"., "In The Pines", "Little Bessie", "Willow Tree", "Married Life Blues" and more. CD

A very cool record! Langston tells the story of jazz, using snippets of work from the Folkways catalog – like tunes by Louis Armstrong, Baby Dodd, Ma Rainey, Leadbelly, and others – all sewn together in a rich narrative on the history of the music, delivered with some surprising illumination by Hughes! His voice is always a treat, and even though his narration of the material is designed for an audience of newcomers to jazz, it more than held our attention throughout – and the record's got almost as much appeal as some of his own jazz poetry work. CD

A wonderful collection of work from Langston Hughes – material pulled from a handful of albums recorded for the Folkway labels in the 50s, all of which are pretty darn great and long out of print! Hughes' writings are well known – part of a rich tradition of African-American expression in the 20th Century – but his readings of his own work are equally great – performed at a level that really illuminates the text, and balances them with all the right stress and meaning that can sometimes be overlooked given the simple nature of his language. Most of the sides here feature Hughes alone, reading his work – but a few also feature bits of music too – touches of jazz or gospel that further set the scene, and point to Langston's later experiments with Charles Mingus. Titles include "Breath Of A Spiritual", "Homesick Blues", "The Weary Blues", "I Too", "The Negro Speaks Of Rivers", "Simple Prays A Prayer", "Rhythms Of The World", "The Struggle", "Youth", and "Mother to Son". CD

One of the weirdest sound effects ever recorded – a record that's filled with sounds of the human body! Side one features a bizzare surgical operation – narrated by the doctor, who's removing a cyst from the neck of a small boy. You hear his talking more than the operation, but side two offers up a variety of odd sounds heard through a stethoscope – including a fair bit of odd sounds from the lungs, heart, and bowels – all narrated by the doctor too! CD

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A wonderful early bit of psychedelia from an academic perspective – a record that features Timothy Leary, Ralph Metzner, and Richard Alpert – all reading from the book The Psychedelic Experience A Manual Based On The Tibetan Book Of The Dead! The album's divided up into two sections – "Going Out" and "Coming Back" – and there's a nice "scientific" feel to some of the work, especially striking given the early date! Vocals are recorded in a stark sort of way – almost dream-like at times – and there's a bit of Tibetan bells which further adds to this quality of the record. CD

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A really beautiful record from Ann McMillan – one of the lesser-known talents in the female legacy of electronic music – but one we'd put right up there right next to Daphne Oram for her inventive genius! The set was recorded at the legendary Princeton Center For Electronic Music – and has a great approach in which McMillan mixes together sounds from nature with some acoustic instruments – then creates a blend through creative electronics, so that air, sea, traffic, and nature sounds are combined with percussion and other elements. One song is completely created from The Gong sound sculpture by artist Frederick Kiesler; another mixes New York Harbor sounds in an amazing way; and still another reworks a variety of unusual sonic emanations from a harpsichord. Titles include "Gateway Summer Sound", "Gong Song", "Amber 75", "Syrinx", and "Episode". CD

Kenneth Patchen, like Kenneth Rexroth, was one of the few poets who really understood what it meant to read and write in a jazz idiom – as you'll hear on this excellent set of beatnik jazz tracks! The album features Patchen reading in a great style – angular, cynical, really working the words of his poems perfectly over backings by the Alan Neil Quartet. The poems are set to music written by George Wallington, Charlie Parker, and others – and tracks include "There's A Place", "They Won't Let You In There", "Do I Not Deal With Angels", "Not Many Kingdoms Left", "The Lonesome Boy Blues", "As I Opened The Window", and "A Sight Is Little Altered". CD

Very righteous work from this obscure 70s poet – a contemporary to Nikki Giovanni, Camille Yarbrough, and others – but not nearly as widely recorded! The album features no instrumentation, just Sonia reading her poems – and the work itself is pretty progressive, very much in the spirit of other hip female poets of the time, although perhaps a bit more personal in some of the subject matter – especially given that the album is introduced by Sanchez as "talking about love – a black woman's love for her man, children, nation." Titles include "A Black Woman Speaks", "Listen To Big Black", "Liberation Poem", "A Needed Poem For My Salvation", "When We Come", "It's A New Day", and "To Anita". 24 tracks in all. CD

West coast Latin jazz legend John Santos digs even deeper than usual here – serving up a set of tracks that trace the roots of the Cuban descarga style, but all with some of the warmth and personality that have made his previous records so great! John's core group features the leader on percussion, Melecio Magdaluyo on saxes, John Calloway on flute and piano, Marco Diaz on trumpet and piano, Saul Sierra on bass, and David Flores on drums. But there's plenty of contributions from older Latin legends – like Jerry Gonzalez on trumpet, Orlando Maraca Valle on flute, and Orlando Torriente on vocals – part of an expanded lineup that also changes up the sound a bit too, in way that isn't strictly a recreation of the late 50s/early 60s descarga modes – but instead shows how much those roots have evolved to inform the modes of Latin jazz. Titles include "14 Mission", "Juego De Ajedrez", "Lo Tuyo No Va", "Descargarara", "Tichin", "Descarga Con Changui", and "Los Misterios". CD

Tony Schwartz must have been one of the coolest cats working on the New York scene in the 50s – not a musician, or a singer – but instead a sound artist whose legacy was dedicated to documenting the city in a very poetic way! This album may well be Tony's masterpiece – a long tone poem love letter to New York – narrated by Tony, but filled with sounds that he captured on his travels around the city – people, ships, machines, animals, vehicles, and lots lots more – all with a keen ear for the vibrancy of the New York story at its best – the kind of true promise the city has to offer, captured here in an array of actual sounds from the postwar years! CD

An album from the 80s, but one that echoes a much older tradition of folk and blues – with a vibe that hardly fits the dated spelling of the duo's name! Serious Bizness is the team of Jaribu and Ngoma Hill – who harmonize together on some very message-oriented music, in a way that was often a bit overlooked in the generation of beatboxes and keyboards, but which has all the pride and power of acoustic sessions from the Civil Rights generation! Instrumentation is just acoustic guitar on most numbers, but Jaribu and Ngoma have a way of really making the songs ring out with a great deal of power – on titles that include "High Tech", "Southern Shame", "Down Underground In A Company Town", "Stolen Dreams", "Stop The Bosses", and "Malcolm Lives". CD

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An amazing record – one we'd easily rank right up there with some of our favorite 60s albums from Brazil – including work by Baden Powell or Elis Regina! This session has echoes of the best of both of those artists, but also predates their key moments too – a groundbreaking record that combines older folkloric themes and groovier rhythms of the post-bossa generation – all with an echoey brilliance that reminds us a lot of Powell's classic Afro Sambas record, but sung with the fierce emotion we've always loved in Elis. We've never seen another record from Zelia Barbosa, but this one moment of genius is more than enough to make us love her – a bold, righteous album that no doubt languished in the 60s in the world/folk underground of the Monitor label, but which would have exploded in Brazil had it been issued on Philips or Forma! Just about every cut's a winner, and titles include "Pedro Pedreiro", "Cheganca", "Nega Dina", "Zelao", "Cancao Da Terra", "Sina De Caboclo", "Feio Nao E Bonita", and "Opiniao". CD

Great work from the legendary Cook label – a full album that combines two earlier 10" albums of experimental sounds! First up is Speed The Parting Guest, a wonderful combination of music and sound effects – very similar to some of the bigger label work from artists like Jack Fascinato or Dean Elliott over at Capitol Records in the late 50s, but an even more sonically-sensitive session done for the smaller Cook imprint! Jimmy Carroll leads an assortment of vibes, bells, harps, toys, percussion, and other odd instruments – all in a weird and playful mix of melodies that almost come across like mini-cartoons in sound! There's not much in the way of larger or conventional instrumentation – which makes Jimmy's work even different than bigger label experiments like this – and the recording quality from Cook really makes all the odd sounds come through with great clarity! Titles include "Happy Little Woodpile", "Tinkle Tinkle Little Bell", "Speed The Parting Guest", and "Hong Kong Local". Next up is The Hot Tempered Clavichord – a session that features mostly clavichord musings from Red Camp – more of a rootsy pianist on other records, but working here on an electrified clavichord – which is a bit like an electric harpsichord in sound, only rougher! The tracks are these cool electric boogie-woogie numbers – and include "Ragout", "Blues In Minore", and "The One I Love". CD

One of the few straight rock records ever issued on the mostly-folk Monitor Records label – a great 60s outing from Freeborne, a group with a sound that's as tripped-out as you might expect from the cover! Instrumentation is heavy on organ and guitars, both acoustic and electric, but there's also some cool percussion too – and interesting use of recorders, in a way that comes across with an ocarina-like charm! Vocals are somewhat soft, but have a dark undercurrent – and there's a really great folk-into-psyche sort of feel to the whole thing. Titles include "Images", "Land Of Diana", "But I Must Return To Frenzy", "Inside People", "Yellow Sky", "Peak Impressions & Thoughts", and "Visions Of My Own". CD

A wild little record – and hardly the set of square dance material that you might expect! Instead, the album's a weird blend of folk, blues, and a little bit of soul – delivered by Frederick Douglass Kirkpatrick in a jaunty, upbeat style that's downright optimistic – at one level the kind of playful Folkways album that was often aimed at the younger crowd, but at another an earthier, grittier kind of recording that feels like it might have come from the vaults of Alan Lomax! Titles include "Stay By Me", "Here We Go Loop The Loop", "Take A Little Peep", and "Swing Your Own Thing". CD

Collects Victor and Vocalion sides from the late 20s plus Folkways and Bluesville sessions from 1959 and 1961 – 46 tracks in all. CD

A really great set of Italian electronics – a set that's maybe known better to Americans than most of the generation, due to a surprising 70s release on Folkways Records! Yet this set is quite different than the more academic electronics that usually grace that label – and echo more that shift towards moogier modes that would really crest in the Italian clubs of the next decade – still here more in a sound library mode, but turned towards nice little tunes that move between spacey instrumentals and keyboard groovers! Gianni Safred plays a range of different instruments – minimoog, polymoog, Arp Odyssey, Fender Rhodes, and Roland keyboards – layering the electronics in a way that's nice and warm, and surprisingly soulful at most moments too. Tracks include "Jazz Computer", "Future City Traffic", "Electronic Brain", "Supermind", "The Life To Come", "Disco Satellite", "Autumn 2001", and "Robot Party". LP, Vinyl record album

A landmark album – and one of the best records you'll ever find by Mary Lou Williams! The record's a mixture of jazz and spiritual themes, and it features Mary Lou's piano set in some super-hip jazz arrangements that include players like Grant Green, Budd Johnson, Larry Gales, Melba Liston, Ben Tucker, and Percy Heath. The bass and piano work is amazing, and many tracks have a dark groove that's very subtle, but very compelling. About half the tunes feature hip choral vocalizing – in the mode of some of the Donald Byrd or Max Roach albums from the same time – mostly handled by the group of Howard Roberts. Includes the classic groover "A Grand Nite For Swinging", plus "A Fungus Amongus", "Anima Christi", "Miss DD", "The Devil", "It Ain't Necessarily So", and "My Blue Heaven". Great stuff all around – and even better than we're describing it! This CD issue features the original Mary Records cover art – different than the Saba/MPS or later Smithsonian CD versions. CD

The mighty Alan Lomax has maybe done more to document rural American music in the 20th century than anyone else – most famously for a midcentury series of recordings for the Library Of Congress and Folkways Records, which established Lomax as having an incredible ear for lesser-heard sounds in the hinterland of the US! Here, Lomax returns to that role with the important American Patchwork project in the late 70s and early 80s – recordings that were not initially his idea, but which revived his talents in a tremendous way, to document a rich array of blues and rural musicians who were still out there, working far from the spotlight, the radio, and the record labels – even in an era of greater mass communication. The scope of the sounds here is wonderful – every bit as rich and important as earlier Lomax projects – and the package features 24 field recordings, by artists who include Joe Savage, Sheila Kay Adams, Janette & Joe Carter, Boyd & Ruth May Rivers, Clyde Maxwell, Vaughn Eller, Dennis McGee, Holly Springs Sacred Harp Singers, Napoleon Strickland, Moving Star Hall Singers, Ray Hicks, Nimrod Workman, Canray Fontenot, and RL Burnside – the last of whom might well be the only person here who got more exposure in later years. LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic document of the first-ever Ann Arbor Blues Festival – the start of a great event that would blossom into other styles of music in the 70s, but which stood as a strong blues-based event in its initial year of 1969! In some ways, the three day series of concerts is a roots answer to Woodstock – which took place just a few weeks before – as the festival featured a great scope of blues talents, from the rootsier sort of artists who were recording for labels like Folkways or Arhoolie, to some of the sharper modern talents rising to the top on Chess or Delmark! The package alone is almost worth the price of admission – beautiful photographs of the event, detailed notes, and the first-ever release of this music – which has sat in the vaults for decades, finally to see the light of day. Titles include "Dirty Mother For You" by Roosevelt Sykes, "So Glad You're Mine" by Arthur Big Boy Crudup, "Everybody Must Suffer/Stone Crazy" by Luther Allison & The Blue Nebulae, "Help Me" by Junior Wells, "I Wonder Why" by Jimmy Dawkins, "Too Much Alcohol" by JB Hutto & His Hawks, "So Many Roads So Many Trains" by Otis Rush, "Long Distance Call" by Muddy Waters, "Off The Wall" by James Cotton Band, "Juanita" by Big Joe Williams, "Jelly Jelly Blues" by Shirley Griffin, "I Feel So Good" by Magic Sam, "Call It Stormy Monday" by T-Bone Walker, "Death Letter Blues" by Son House, "Key To The Highway" by Sam Lay, and "Mojo Hand" by Lightnin Hopkins. CD

An amazing 3CD set, put together from mid 50s recordings by Unesco – and featuring one of the richest looks at Indian music we've ever heard! The collection is much more ethnographic than the better-circulated Indian recordings of the time – and although the word "classical" is used in the title, the overall feel is often quite rootsy – filled with earthy percussion, raw vocal passages, and some especially captivating use of flute! Original material was issued by the Ducretet Thomson label in 1955 – but this set features a full 3CDs' worth of titles – 33 tracks in all, with a great sense of variety. CD

A great spare set, produced by Samuel Charters in a mode that's more Folkways than Prestige Records! The set features both Larry Johnson and Hank Adkins on vocals and guitar – with no other players at all. LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic document of the first-ever Ann Arbor Blues Festival – the start of a great event that would blossom into other styles of music in the 70s, but which stood as a strong blues-based event in its initial year of 1969! In some ways, the three day series of concerts is a roots answer to Woodstock – which took place just a few weeks before – as the festival featured a great scope of blues talents, from the rootsier sort of artists who were recording for labels like Folkways or Arhoolie, to some of the sharper modern talents rising to the top on Chess or Delmark! The package alone is almost worth the price of admission – beautiful photographs of the event, detailed notes, and the first-ever release of this music – which has sat in the vaults for decades, finally to see the light of day. Titles on this first volume include "Dirty Mother For You" by Roosevelt Sykes, "So Glad You're Mine" by Arthur Big Boy Crudup, "Everybody Must Suffer/Stone Crazy" by Luther Allison & The Blue Nebulae, "Help Me" by Junior Wells, "I Wonder Why" by Jimmy Dawkins, "Too Much Alcohol" by JB Hutto & His Hawks, and "So Many Roads So Many Trains" by Otis Rush. LP, Vinyl record album

A fantastic document of the first-ever Ann Arbor Blues Festival – the start of a great event that would blossom into other styles of music in the 70s, but which stood as a strong blues-based event in its initial year of 1969! In some ways, the three day series of concerts is a roots answer to Woodstock – which took place just a few weeks before – as the festival featured a great scope of blues talents, from the rootsier sort of artists who were recording for labels like Folkways or Arhoolie, to some of the sharper modern talents rising to the top on Chess or Delmark! The package alone is almost worth the price of admission – beautiful photographs of the event, detailed notes, and the first-ever release of this music – which has sat in the vaults for decades, finally to see the light of day. Titles on this second volume include "Long Distance Call" by Muddy Waters, "Off The Wall" by James Cotton Band, "Juanita" by Big Joe Williams, "Jelly Jelly Blues" by Shirley Griffin, "I Feel So Good" by Magic Sam, "Call It Stormy Monday" by T-Bone Walker, "Death Letter Blues" by Son House, "Key To The Highway" by Sam Lay, and "Mojo Hand" by Lightnin Hopkins. LP, Vinyl record album

A really unique little record – an album of original songs based on older tradition, and one that interweaves elements of Portuguese culture with deeper roots of Angolan music! Lilly Tchiumba penned all the tracks herself, and sings in the Angolan language of Kimbundu – but there's a mix of percussion, guitar, and soaring vocals that echoes strongly with rootsier Brazilian, Cuban, and Haitian styles too – maybe in part because the Monitor label did such a wonderful job of recording the songs, and giving them this righteous, powerful vibe that still holds up strongly over the years! And by all of that, we almost mean that there's this sort of trans-global power to the whole record – one that moves beyond just a regional expression of culture, and past any sort of basic ethnographic mode – a lot like the Songs Of Protest album by Zelia Barbosa, also on the Monitor label. Titles include "Manazinha", "Gilagi Bu Kanga", "N'Zambi", "Mona Ki N'Gui Xissa", "Luanda M'Bolo", and "Kubata Di Rosinha". CD

A wealth of recent recordings from the SWP label – an ethnographic powerhouse who are really furthering the sorts of material initially captured by earlier labels like Folkways or Ocora! The style here is very much like the latter – very faithful to the presentation, and very well-recorded – and there's also a clear social mission to really push deeper and farther – in this case well into the eastern side of Zambia's Luangwa province, which includes some musical styles and cultures that have never been recorded before! The set is huge – 4CDs with a tremendous amount of music – presented in a very cool book-styled cover, with copious notes – and separately themed CDs, with titles that include Southern Province Mix, Leya Ceremony & Songs, The Complete Kalonda Band Recordings, and Chikunda Nsenga Soli Cewa. CD

An amazing collection – and one that really lives up to the genius of the original Anthology Of American Folk Music put together by Harry Smith for Folkways Records! That groundbreaking set is the stuff of legend – a package that collected rare blues, folk, string band, hillbilly, and other styles from Smith's own collection of 78rpm singles – then brought together by Folkways with copious notes and a huge amount of detail that opened the door to this lost world of music for listeners over many decades. Here, the collection goes back to further Smith's choices – by offering up the flipside of all the records included in the original set – tracks that are almost always as great as the other sides, given that so many of these artists were getting a brief time in the studio, and really gave their all during the recordings. The package is one of the nicest we've ever seen on Dust To Digital – done with more than enough notes and packaging detail to live up to the spirit of the original – in a set of 84 tracks, with work by Dick Justice, Clarence Ashley, Coley Jones, Bill & Belle Reed, Buell Kazee, Buster Carter & Preston Young, Williamson Brothers & Curry, The Masked Marvel, William & Versey Smith, Carter Family, GB Grayson, Mississippi John Hurt, Uncle Eck Dunford, Uncle Bunt Stephens, Carolina Tar Heels, Furry Lewis, Ernest Phipps, Cannon's Jug Stompers, Richard Rabbit Brown, Rev Moses Mason, Alabama Sacred Harp Singers, Cincinnati Jug Band, Rev JM Gates, Jim Jackson, Breaux Freres, Blind Willie Johnson, Dock Boggs, Bascom Lamar Lunsford, Julius Daniels, Ramblin Thomas, Sleepy John Estes, and many others! CD