NEA Honors the First Lady of Children's Music Ella Jenkins with National Heritage Fellowship

The National Endowment for Arts (NEA) has presented National Heritage Fellowships to celebrate and honor master artists working in the folk and traditional arts.  The NEA recently announced this year's recipients, including Ella Jenkins.

Jenkins, The First Lady of Children's Music, celebrates 60 years as a Smithsonian Folkways artist. She has wanted to record camp songs for more than 15 years and assembled a group of children, parents, and teachers from the Old Town School of Folk Music in Chicago, along with Tony and Kate Seeger from Camp Killooleet, to sing these rounds, nonsense songs and campfire sing-alongs. The 25-track collection includes familiar camp songs "Michael Row the Boat Ashore," "Kumbaya" and "This Land Is Your Land."

Many of the tunes on Camp Songs with Ella Jenkins and Friends have been sung by generations of campers, including many of the 14 million children and adults who attend camp every year in the United States. The album has its roots in the songs Jenkins' brother brought home with him from Boy Scout camp when she was a child, and begins with a chorus of children singing the familiar round "Row, Row, Row Your Boat." But these selections come from a variety of traditions, among them African-American spirituals, European folk songs, and Jewish summer camps where Jenkins has performed. "Everybody Loves Saturday Night" has lines in a dozen languages, including Mandarin, Hindi, Serbian and Nigerian. The album's final five numbers, which include "Sloop John B." and "Goodnight Irene," are sequenced to resemble a campfire sing-along.

GRAMMY-Nominated Musician & Researcher Stephen Wade to Release 'Across the Amerikee'

Stephen Wade has spent nearly his entire life playing and studying American folk music, a rich history he mines on 'Across the Amerikee: Showpieces from Coal Camp to Cattle Trail,' out June 30 on Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. Wade's first entirely solo endeavor, 'Across the Amerikee' presents "solo and display music"--performances that are created for listening rather than to accompany working or dancing, and that are often designed to display instrumental prowess or imitate life sounds such as fox chases and steam locomotives. Pre-order the album thru B&T, today

Listen to selections from 'Across the Amerikee' via bit.ly/2rp4pSH

Grassroots singers and players throughout the United States have long cultivated their own varieties of recital music. A simple dance tune transforms into a concert masterpiece; a personal plaint becomes emblematic of an era. With the banjo and guitar, Wade deftly explores this music made for music's sake. His selections draw from Southern sources as well as Northern interpreters, centering on lyric folksongs and old-time instrumentals transmitted (as one of its older players memorably said) across the Amerikee.

Roll Columbia: Woody Guthrie's 26 Northwest Songs Album Out Now!

Smithsonian Folkways is proud to present their new release, the two-disc Roll Columbia: Woody

Guthrie’s 26 Northwest Songs, which marks the latest chapter in Smithsonian Folkways’ rich history with the iconic songwriter.  Roll Columbia: Woody Guthrie’s 26 Northwest Songs is a trove of new discoveries, and a celebration of Guthrie’s genius and lasting contributions to both the history and musical traditions of the Pacific Northwest. 75 years after Woody’s stint with the Bonneville Power Administration, present-day Pacific Northwest artists influenced by this fruitful time in Guthrie’s career have gathered together to record their own interpretations. Roll Columbia is the first and only complete collection of these 26 songs, including nine that had never before been recorded.  R.E.M. members and the Decemberists included!

Roll Columbia: Woody Guthrie’s 26 Northwest Songs is available now from Baker & Taylor.

 

The Seattle Times recently spotlighted the “rootsy, sometimes gritty” performances on Roll Columbia.

'Roll Columbia: Woody Guthrie's 26 Northwest Songs' Gets Jan. 27 Release

Woody Guthrie traveled to Portland, OR, in the spring of 1941 to write songs for the Bonneville

Power Administration (BPA). Although this phase of his career is not as familiar as others, it was a prolific one, and the 26 songs he penned over 30 days included some of his best-known work: "Pastures of Plenty," "Hard Travelin'," and "Roll On, Columbia, Roll On," which later became the state folk song of Washington.

Now, 75 years later, a group of musicians celebrate this period in the iconic songwriter's life on 'Roll Columbia: Woody Guthrie's 26 Northwest Songs.' The two-disc album, out January 27, 2017 (out via Smithsonian Folkways Recordings) features members of R.E.M., Black Prairie, and The Decemberists; folk veterans like Michael Hurley and David Grisman; and younger players from the Pacific Northwest folk scene. 'Roll Columbia' is the first album to include all of Guthrie's BPA songs, including nine that have never previously been recorded.

The Bonneville Power Administration, a New Deal-era public works agency created in 1937, commissioned Guthrie to write the series of songs to help promote the benefits of dams being constructed along the Columbia River. Renowned ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax had recommended Guthrie for the project, and Guthrie moved from California to Portland, being paid little more than $10 a song for his month's work.

Smithsonian Folkways Releases "Spirituals & Shout Songs from the Georgia Coast"

Acclaimed stewards of the ring shout, the McIntosh County Shouters keep alive the faith, form,fervor of "the oldest surviving African-American performance tradition of any kind" (New York Times).  Smithsonian Folkways will release its second recording of the McIntosh County Shouters, 'Spirituals & Shout Songs from the Georgia Coast,' on January 20. This 17-track, 61-minute album is accompanied by a 40-page book chronicling the history of the group and the heritage of this transcendent ritual. The collection will be released as part of the African American Legacy series, co-produced by Smithsonian Folkways and the newly opened Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The McIntosh County Shouters originally formed in the 1980s in Coastal Georgia and consisted of family members -- related by blood and marriage -- all belonging to the third generation out of slavery. They released 'Slave Shout Songs from the Coast of Georgia' through Folkways in 1983, and now, almost 35 years later, the next generation carries the ring shout tradition into a new day.

The group is led by "energized charismatic songsters" (Atlanta Journal Constitution) Freddie Palmer, Brenton Jordan, Venus McIver and Carletha Sullivan, with other members including Carla Johnson, Carolyn Palmer, Alberta Allin, and L.C. Scott (basers, clappers, and shouters) plus Brenton Jordan (stick-man and tambourine). In traditional ring shout, the "songsters" will "set" or begin a song, slowly accelerating to an appropriate tempo. Their lines are answered in a call-and-response pattern by the "basers," who deliberately step and shuffle, adding to the rhythm with hand-clapping and foot-patting. Seated next to the songster would be the "stick-man," who beats a simple rhythm with a broom or wooden stick. This marriage of singing, percussion and movement endures in the current generation of Shouters.

El Alma de Puerto Rico by Ecos de Borinquen CD Released by Smithsonian Folkways

With El Alma de Puerto Rico (the soul of Puerto Rico), the Grammy, and Latin Grammy-nominated ensemble Ecos de Borinquen offers up its second Smithsonian Folkways album that is overflowing with pride in the island’s jíbaro creole folk traditions. The soulful, signature sounds of Miguel Santiago Diaz’s sung poetry in the ten-line décima verse form are cradled in the progressive instrumental arrangements by Ramón Vásquez Lamboy for two cuatro guitars, six-stringed guitar, güiro rasp, and bongo. The crystal-clear voice of Yezenia Cruz, Santiago’s disciple, adds sonoral dimension to this timeless yet contemporary rendition of deep Puerto Rican tradition. 59 minutes, 40-page booklet with bilingual notes.

The album is the 46th in the Smithsonian Folkways Tradiciones/Traditions Series of Latino music albums, produced with support from the Smithsonian Latino Center.

Classic Folk Songs for Kids from Smithsonian Folkways

In Classic Folk Songs for Kids, curator Jeff Place culls a cross-section of 26 classics from the

Smithsonian Folkways vaults to tell an intriguing story of American signature sing-alongs.  The songs’ origins are as fascinating as the songs are fun: centuries-old European ballads, an American Revolutionary tune, 19th-century American folksongs, African-derived game songs, a sea chantey, a railroad jingle, camp songs, and even an opera song! And the singers themselves are a who’s who of American folk music artistry—Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Cisco Houston, Suni Paz, Tom Glazer, Lord Invader, and many more. 56 minutes, 40-page booklet with lyrics.
This is the 25th release in the Smithsonian Folkways Classic Series.
Release date- 7/15/16
Record Label Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
CD SLP: $11.98
Source Archive Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage
Copyright 2016 Smithsonian Folkways RecordingsGenre(s) American Folk; Children's
Download Liner Notes 

Classic American Ballads Presents Songs Of True Tales And Tragedies By Guthrie, Seeger, Lead Belly + More

In the days before YouTube, Twitter, and “Serial” podcasts, newsworthy events “went viral” in the form of song. Certain tragedies and grisly crimes captivated the American imagination, and entrepreneurial ballad writers penned songs catering to the thirst for details. On March 24, Smithsonian Folkways will release Classic American Ballads, featuring Doc Watson, Bill Monroe, Pink Anderson, and Sis Cunningham, among many others performing American topical songs that may draw from the British ballad tradition but are distinctly native to the United States.

The 25 tracks on Classic American Ballads, written between 1836 and 1947, chronicle tragic and significant events such as the sinking of the Titanic, the wreck of the “Old 97” train in Danville, Virginia, and the murder of a young girl along the Ohio River. Woody Guthrie’s “Billy the Kid” narrates the exploits of the notorious 19th-century outlaw, while Pete Seeger’s “Young Charlotte” tells the tale of the young Maine woman who froze to death on New Year’s Eve, 1840. Lead Belly’s version of the popular folk song “Duncan and Brady” is based on the notorious story of James Brady, a St. Louis policeman who was fatally shot by bartender Harry Duncan in 1890.