Smithsonian Folkways

Watch the music video for Michael Hurley’s “The Werewolf Song,” animated by Drew Christie: https://youtu.be/pMqmTvITwP4

Hurley first recorded “The Werewolf Song” for his 1964 debut album, ‘First Songs,’ released on Folkways Records. The haunting tune would go on to become one of Hurley’s most popular, one that he would revisit on subsequent albums, and one that other musicians—The Holy Modal Rounders, Cat Power, and Myriam Gendron among them—would cover. A new vinyl reissue of ‘First Songs’ arrives November 6 on Smithsonian Folkways.

“When I first heard ‘The Werewolf Song,’ it inspired so many visual ideas in me,” Christie says. “I would just drive in my car listening to it on repeat, letting ideas and images flow to me through the music. At the time, I was working mainly in charcoal, and I liked how immediate and raw the material was and how it didn’t allow you to get bogged down in details. Michael’s music is much the same way: very raw and direct and honest and not worried about perfection and precision. I animated the song quickly, frame by frame, on newsprint on an old door table with glass in the center. A lamp was under the glass part of the door, and I shot the film with the lamp illuminating it from below.”

“When I finished the animation, I showed it to Michael down in Astoria, and he loved it right away. He said, ‘That’s always how I pictured him moving and stepping! You got it!’ He loved it so much he started showing it to everyone he would meet for a while.”

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3 weeks ago | [YT] | 35

Smithsonian Folkways

Announcing the vinyl reissue of Michael Hurley’s debut album ‘First Songs,’ out November 6 via Smithsonian Folkways.

Originally released on Folkways Records in 1964, ‘First Songs’ is a raw and unhurried album of original folk and country blues, unedited but with a maturity and confidence that belie Hurley’s 22 years. Its songs are foundational in the development of the Snock mythos, forecasting his life as a rambling songster and introducing themes and characters that he’d revisit with delight across his dozens of albums: his werewolf persona in “The Werewolf Song,” the gentle “Blue Mountain,” the pleasures of imbibing in “The Tea Song” and “I Like My Wine,” and of rambling in “Just a Bum.”

This LP reissue has been newly remastered by Mike Monseur from the original tapes in our Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections and is presented in the classic Folkways-style black tip-on jackets with a reproduction of the original liner notes.

Preorder your copy now: orcd.co/michael-hurley-first-songs

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1 month ago (edited) | [YT] | 23

Smithsonian Folkways

We’re excited to announce the release of ‘Making American Music: The Smithsonian Sessions,’ the new album by Dom Flemons, “The American Songster,” arriving January 22 on CD, digital formats, and as a double LP vinyl set via Smithsonian Folkways. Co-produced by Flemons and John Troutman, Curator of Music and Musical Instruments at the National Museum of American History, with Associate Producer Vania Kinard, it is the first album of roots music to be recorded using historic instruments from the museum’s collection, presenting an extraordinary history of two centuries of American music-making and music makers.

Performing solo, with his new all-star Black string band The Traveling Wildfires (Brian “B.E.” Farrow, Dante’ Pope, Tray Wellington), and alongside Smithsonian staff, Flemons breathes new life into guitars played by Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt, a banjo owned by Lew Snowden, quills made by Joe Patterson, and other treasures. The album features original compositions and traditional repertoire spanning a range of American roots genres, including early jazz, country blues, 19th-century banjo breakdowns, Hawaiian steel guitar, and more.

A GRAMMY Award-winner, American Banjo Hall of Fame inductee, music scholar, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist, Flemons has spent nearly three decades bringing significant value to America’s musical heritage through his solo career and as a co-founder of the groundbreaking Carolina Chocolate Drops. ‘Making American Music’ is the culmination of a lifetime of music-making and historical study and marks Flemons’ third album on Folkways, following his releases ‘Black Cowboys’ (2018) and ‘Traveling Wildfire’ (2023).

“Dom Flemons’s interest in the museum’s historical instruments was borne by decades of study, both as an instrumentalist and a music scholar,” Troutman writes in the liner notes. “By the time he held the museum’s banjos and guitars in his hands, he had been long familiar with playing historical instruments, and in fact had commissioned several luthiers to build instruments for him based upon the specifications of 19th-century instruments held privately or in museums. He knew how to handle them, he was familiar with their idiosyncrasies, and he could expertly play repertoire that would have been familiar to the makers and early players of those original instruments.”

Today you can hear the album’s first single “Shultz’s Dream,” Flemons’ original tribute to the Black fiddler and guitarist Arnold Shultz, a key figure in the development of bluegrass music. Stream on your preferred platform and preorder the album through the link here: orcd.co/dom-flemons-making-american-music

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1 month ago | [YT] | 19

Smithsonian Folkways

Charlie Parr has shared “(what’s so funny about) Universal Healthcare?,” the second single from his upcoming album ‘Rooming House,’ a conceptual folk opera out October 16.

“At this point in the story we learn that our hero isn’t just suffering from food poisoning after eating out-of-date coleslaw,” Parr says. “Apparently there’s something serious going on and he’s in a great deal of pain and with no money and no insurance he turns to his friends for advice and participates in home remedies, internet shenanigans, daydreaming and eventually hatches a plan to rob a bank and get medical care from a prison doctor.”

Set in the Upper Midwest and drawing from Parr’s own years living in Minneapolis rooming houses, the album paints an intimate portrait of people navigating poverty, illness, loneliness, and the search for dignity in circumstances often beyond their control. Brought to life through Parr’s raw, blues-rooted guitar playing and deeply narrative songwriting, ‘Rooming House’ refuses to look away from struggle while celebrating the resilience found in everyday lives and the communities built when there is nowhere else to turn.

Listen to the new track now: https://youtu.be/PIoqdLMhNVs

📸 Photo by Shelly Mosman

1 month ago | [YT] | 16

Smithsonian Folkways

Announcing Charlie Parr’s new album ‘Rooming House,’ out October 16 on CD, LP, and digital formats via Smithsonian Folkways.

“These folks here, in this record, have no idea what’s wrong. Or how to help. They are sick with the longing to make everything better. And they can’t. Tiny things are important. This house could be anywhere. These things could happen to anyone.” With this reflection, Charlie Parr introduces the characters of ‘Rooming House,’ a conceptual folk opera that chronicles the lives of Upper Midwesterners through his quietly raucous, deeply rooted, and empathetic blues. These are songs of lost memories and hardship, but also of the improvised acts of kindness that help neighbors make do.

Joined by celebrated drummer and fellow Minnesotan Dave King (The Bad Plus, Happy Apple), Parr cements his role as one of the great troubadours of our time with an album that becomes its own small yet profound offering of care. Today you can hear the cinematic title track, out now alongside a music video animated by Drew Christie.

Preorder & Stream: orcd.co/charlie-parr-rooming-house

Watch the “Rooming House” music video: https://youtu.be/iy-V401LEqo

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3 months ago | [YT] | 232

Smithsonian Folkways

Today we’re sharing “The Three Jimmies” from ‘Orcas’ Greatest Hits,’ Jim Nollman’s first album on Smithsonian Folkways since the 1982 classic ‘Playing Music with Animals.’ In this second preview of the new album, “Jimmy” Nollman introduces the orcas to the signature “chicken scratch” riffs of James Brown’s guitarist Jimmy Nolen.

A lifelong innovator in the practice of interspecies communication, Nollman recorded “The Three Jimmies” in 1988 at a cove along British Columbia’s Johnstone Strait, where he established an artistic residency and community space called “Orcananda.” There, he and his collaborators built a mobile recording studio inside an anchored fishing vessel, which allowed the orcas to approach and interact with the music when interested. As Nollman recalls, when the whales did draw close, they almost always vocalized.

“Their responses often suggested that they were not simply listening to our music, but joining in with it, interacting with our phrasing, harmonies, and rhythms,” he writes in the album’s liner notes, describing these interactions vividly. “Most nights the whales would eventually arrive. From far away, their whistles resounded through the speakers like a pod of bee-bop saxophones. Certain calls rose high above this fray, slithering, soaring, dive-bombing as if Jimi Hendrix himself had been reincarnated as ‘Orcinus orca.’ Other calls folded in upon themselves like a flower closing its petals.”

‘Orcas’ Greatest Hits,’ out August 14 on CD, LP, and digitally, collects hydrophone recordings drawn from over sixty hours of interspecies collaboration between humans and orcas, made between 1985 and 2002. Listen to “The Three Jimmies” now: https://youtu.be/6y2bpheZaZw?si=bDdXS...

Preorder the album and build your own ‘Orcas’ Greatest Hits’ merch bundle here: folkways.si.edu/jim-nollman/orcas-greatest-hits

📸 “Orca from Below” by Jim Nollman. Jim Nollman playing guitar with orcas from the bow of a boat / Photo by Jim O’Donnell.

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3 months ago | [YT] | 10

Smithsonian Folkways

Announcing ‘Orcas’ Greatest Hits,’ a new album of interspecies collaboration between humans and orca whales by Jim Nollman, out August 14 on CD, LP, and digital formats.

Jim Nollman is a sound artist, naturalist, and author who has dedicated his practice to playing music with non-human individuals. Following his 1982 album on Folkways, ‘Playing Music with Animals,’ Nollman established an artistic residency and community space at a cove in British Columbia, dubbed Orcananda after the orca residents that have dwelled in its deep waters for centuries. Nollman and his cohort took a considered approach to developing sonic relationships with the orcas and other animals they encountered, always keeping a respectful distance as they found one another with their ears.

‘Orcas’ Greatest Hits’ collects hydrophone recordings drawn from over 60 hours of interspecies collaboration recorded between 1985 and 2002, showing the playful ways in which Nollman engaged the orcas from the portable studio floating above their home. What we hear is the focused listening by the cetaceans and humans as they search out sonic space among one another, finding in that dialogue potential common ground for deeper understanding. Extensive liner notes by Nollman accompany the release.

Today you can stream “The 47 Whale Raga,” featuring Nollman improvising on electric guitar around the Hindustani classical raga “Jhinjhoti” and capturing the attention of three orca pods. As MAGNET Magazine writes in its premiere of the track, the result is “a stunning exchange that blurs the line between composition and communication.”

Listen & Preorder:
https://youtu.be/1OKusBfV1I8?si=G8Uxi...
orcd.co/jim-nollman

Alongside the release, new merchandise is now available for preorder, including tote bags, T-shirts, and bumper stickers inspired by ‘Orcas’ Greatest Hits’ and Nollman’s decades-long exploration of interspecies music: folkways.si.edu/news-and-press/jim-nollman-shares-…

📸 Cover design by Visual Dialogue/Photo by Jim O’Donnell. Photos of Orcananda by Sandra Wilson. Merch designs by Darryl Norsen. “Orca Pod” artwork by Jim Nollman. Photo of Jim Nollman by David Rothenberg.

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4 months ago (edited) | [YT] | 5

Smithsonian Folkways

On June 12, the album ‘Classic Blues from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings’ will be reissued on vinyl for the first time as a double LP.

This 26-track compilation, first released in 2003 as part of the Smithsonian Folkways Classic CD series, spans half a century and features Delta, St. Louis, Southwest, Piedmont, and Chicago styles performed by revered musicians Son House, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Memphis Slim, Willie Dixon, Elizabeth Cotten, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry, and Brownie McGhee, among other foundational blues figures.

Produced by musician and scholar Dr. Barry Lee Pearson, the album also serves as a pathway into Smithsonian Folkways’ vast catalog of blues recordings and traces how Folkways Records became a hub for blues music in the mid-20th century. The vinyl reissue comes with Pearson’s original liner notes, which chronicle the history behind each song and artist.

Preorder your copy today: orcd.co/classic-blues

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5 months ago | [YT] | 39

Smithsonian Folkways

Today Joy Harjo shares “My Guy,” a jazz-inflected love song featuring Harjo on alto sax, vocals by esperanza spalding, and Matthew Stevens on guitar, as the second single from her upcoming album ‘Insomnia and Seven Steps to Grace.’

Written by Harjo’s mother in the 1950s or ’60s and recently uncovered by Harjo’s sister, “My Guy” honors both familial history and the album’s broader themes of inheritance and artistic continuity. “The initial inspiration for me to put music and poetry together was my mother, who wrote songs on her Underwood typewriter, which had its home on the kitchen table,” Harjo reflects in the album’s liner notes.

“She carried a gift that she never fulfilled because she had to raise four children, essentially alone. My mother would be so honored and thrilled to hear how esperanza makes vocal art of her songwriting art. What a pairing!”

Throughout ‘Insomnia and Seven Steps to Grace,’ sound itself becomes a guide, insisting that art is not an escape from hard times, but a way through them. “Because of what keeps us up at night,” Harjo writes, “the bad dreams, the good ones, the tenderness, the beauty, the sweetest love, the heartache, the struggle: this album.”

Listen to the new track and preorder the album, arriving April 24 on CD, LP, and digital formats: https://youtu.be/wsqInE78dq0?si

📸 Cover art painting by Joy Harjo / Original typewritten lyrics / Photo by Melissa Lukenbaugh

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7 months ago | [YT] | 15

Smithsonian Folkways

Today Kronos Quartet shares their recording of the gospel masterwork “God Shall Wipe All Tears Away,” the third single from their upcoming album ‘Glorious Mahalia,’ a tribute to the life and legacy of gospel singer and civil rights activist Mahalia Jackson.

“While researching the work of Mahalia Jackson, I was inspired by a late 1930s recording of Mahalia singing Antonio Haskell’s ‘God Shall Wipe All Tears Away,’ which featured the sound of the organ, a vintage sound that I loved and wanted to bring into Kronos concerts,” writes David Harrington, Kronos Quartet founder and violinist.

Originally composed by Antonio Haskell in 1935 and recorded by Jackson in 1937, the song is based on Revelation 21:4 in the King James Bible: “And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.”

In this new interpretation, Kronos reimagines the piece through an arrangement by multi-instrumentalist and composer Jacob Garchik, guided by Jackson’s powerful recording. “It became like a score, really,” Harrington says. “Hank [Dutt] in particular studied Mahalia’s vocal vocabulary. The biggest challenge was getting the emotional message of the voice.”

‘Glorious Mahalia’ arrives next Friday, April 3. You can listen to “God Shall Wipe All Tears Away” here: https://youtu.be/Sk-t6YEwwmI?si

📸 Mahalia Jackson during a photo shoot at her home in 1960. Photo by William Lanier. Johnson Publishing Company Archive. Courtesy J. Paul Getty Trust and Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.

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