Released in 1952, the Anthology of American Folk Music was the
singular vision of the enigmatic artist, musicologist, and
collector Harry Smith (1923-1991). A collection of eighty-four
commercial recordings of American vernacular and folk music
originally issued between 1927 and 1932, the Anthology featured an
eclectic and idiosyncratic mixture of blues and hillbilly songs,
ballads old and new, dance music, gospel, and numerous other
performances less easy to classify. Where previous collections of
folk music, both printed and recorded, had privileged field
recordings and oral transmission, Smith purposefully shaped his
collection from previously released commercial records, pointedly
blurring established racial boundaries in his selection and
organisation of performances. Indeed, more than just a
ground-breaking collection of old recordings, the Anthology was
itself a kind of performance on the part of its creator. Over the
six decades of its existence, however, it has continued to exert
considerable influence on generations of musicians, artists, and
writers. It has been credited with inspiring the North American
folk revival-"The Anthology was our bible", asserted Dave Van Ronk
in 1991, "We all knew every word of every song on it"-and with
profoundly influencing Bob Dylan. After its 1997 release on CD by
Smithsonian Folkways, it came to be closely associated with the
so-called Americana and Alt-Country movements of the late 1990s and
early 2000s. Following its sixtieth birthday, and now available as
a digital download and rereleased on vinyl, it is once again a
prominent icon in numerous musical currents and popular culture
more generally. This is the first book devoted to such a vital
piece of the large and complex story of American music and its
enduring value in American life. Reflecting the intrinsic
interdisciplinarity of Smith's original project, this collection
contains a variety of new perspectives on all aspects of the
Anthology.
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