A decade after the death of renowned folklorist Alan Lomax, his vision of a "global jukebox" is being realized: his vast archive — some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of it tucked away in forgotten or inaccessible corners — is being digitized so that the collection can be accessed online. About 17,000 music tracks will be available for free streaming by the end of February. NYT article
here.
posted by flapjax at midnite
on Jan 30, 2012 -
39 comments
A decade on, the Coen brothers' woefully underrated
O Brother, Where Art Thou? [alt] is remembered for
a lot of things: its sun-drenched, sepia-rich
cinematography (a pioneer of
digital color grading), its
whimsical humor,
fluid vernacular, and
many subtle references to Homer's
Odyssey. But one part of its legacy truly stands out:
the music.
Assembled by
T-Bone Burnett, the soundtrack is a cornucopia of American folk music, exhibiting everything from
cheery ballads and
angelic hymns to
wistful blues and
chain-gang anthems. Woven into the plot of the film through radio and live performances, the songs lent the story a
heartfelt, homespun feel that echoed its cultural heritage,
a paean and uchronia of the Old South.
Though the multiplatinum album was recently
reissued, the movie's medley is best heard via famed documentarian
D. A. Pennebaker's
Down from the Mountain, an
extraordinary yet
intimate concert film focused on a night of live music by the soundtrack's stars (among them
Gillian Welch,
Emmylou Harris,
Chris Thomas King, bluegrass legend
Dr. Ralph Stanley) and wryly hosted by
John Hartford, an accomplished
fiddler,
riverboat captain, and
raconteur whose struggle with terminal cancer made this his last major performance. The film is free in its entirety on
Hulu and
YouTube -- click inside for individual clips, song links, and breakdowns of
the set list's fascinating history.
[more inside]
posted by Rhaomi
on Dec 22, 2011 -
107 comments
Twenty-Five Semi-Obscure Traditional Christmas Songs as Performed by Famous and Non-Famous People:
1.
The Coventry Carol. Celebrate the end of Christmas with this cheerful song about infants being murdered by a paranoid monarch. Actually quite beautiful. As performed by
Sting,
Joan Baez,
John Denver,
Nox Arcana,
Loreena McKennitt,
Manheim Steamroller,
Alison Moyet,
Annie Lennox and the African Children's Choir,
Sufjan Stevens,
Hayley Westenra,
The Mediaeval Baebes,
Dinah Shore, and t
he Westminster Cathedral Choir.
[more inside]
posted by kittenmarlowe
on Dec 11, 2011 -
29 comments
Quincy Jones sat in the Tenafly, New Jersey den of 16-year-old vocal student Lesley Gore,
playing demo after demo, looking for the right song to cut for her first record. Out of over 200 tapes, Jones and Gore had moved only one to the "maybe" pile, and so that song,
It's My Party, was recorded on March 30, 1963 in a Manhattan studio. After the session Mercury president Irving Green warned Gore not to get her hopes up, but Gore gratefully told him that it had been a great experience anyway, and it was okay if he didn't want to release it. However, later that evening Jones learned that
Phil Spector had just recorded "It's My Party" for
The Crystals, so Jones rushed back to the studio to press 100 test copies of the single and immediately mailed them to key radio stations across the country.
[more inside]
posted by swift
on Sep 13, 2011 -
69 comments
New from the Library of Congress,
National Jukebox, where you can listen to 10,000 rare historic sound recordings. (Streaming only, requires flash and javascript.)
posted by fings
on May 10, 2011 -
22 comments
"A ballet dancer needs a mirror to perfect her style, her technique. A singer needs the same -- an aural mirror."
In 1950 and '51, Japan’s first reel-to-reel tape recorders, the "
G-Type"
(for gov't use) and the "
H-1"
(for home use) were released by a company named Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo. Music student Norio Ohga was unimpressed by the wobbly sound of "
Talking Paper," so he wrote a note complaining to the firm's founders, who hired him. Mr. Ohga never achieved his original dream of becoming a baritone opera singer, but the future President of TTK, (later renamed Sony,) would still make an indelible, global impact on the world of music -- including the development and introduction of the compact disc. Mr. Ohga
died on April 24, 2011.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on May 4, 2011 -
3 comments
19th-century newspaper ads for patented stomach cures and digestive aids [...] foregrounded mince pie as the K2 of digestive summits. But for every published warning on the dangers of mince, the newspapers published a poem, essay, or editorial praising it as a great symbol of American cultural heritage or a nostalgic reminder of mother love and better times bygone—or even, as the State of Columbia, South Carolina, asserted in 1901, a beneficial Darwinian instrument that had "thinned out the weak ones" among the pioneering generations.
So wrote Cliff Doerksen in his wonderful, James Beard award-winning article
Mince Pie: The Real American Pie. Doerksen not only gives the history of this once most American of foods, he also makes two mince pies from 19th Century recipes to see if they are indeed all that. This is but one of many great articles Doerksen wrote for The Chicago Reader in recent years (links to a selection below the cut). Sadly, Cliff Doerksen
passed at the age of 47 just before Christmas.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 29, 2010 -
73 comments
The idea behind Whatever Happened To Alternative Nation? is to look back at an era that’s both incredibly important and yet mysteriously absent from my life as a music fan. Part 1: 1990: “Once upon a time, I could love you”.
Part 2: 1991: “What’s so civil about war anyway?”
Part 3: 1992: Pearl Jam, the perils of fame, and the trouble with avoiding it
posted by Joe Beese
on Nov 3, 2010 -
60 comments
"
Imagine, amid the grey serge of wartime France, a tribe of youngsters with all the colourful decadence of punks or teddy boys. Wearing zoot suits cut off at the knee (the better to show off their brightly coloured socks), with hair sculpted into grand quiffs, and shoes with triple-height soles - looking like glam-rock footwear 30 years early - these were the kids who would lay the foundations of nightclubbing. Ladies and gentlemen,
les Zazous."
[more inside]
posted by Paragon
on Feb 8, 2010 -
15 comments
A decade of digital music Vaguely styled as a timeline, this end-of-the-decade blog post (from UK digital music news source
Music Ally) could prove valuable to anyone studying the music business or the intersection between entertainment and technology. The piece links to ten years of stories on digital music - from Napster through to Spotify - allowing us to look back on the issues without the 20/20 vision of hindsight. Gems include the
Bluematter scheme from Universal Records in 2000, which comprised 60 non-transferrable, non-burnable tracks for $1.99 each.
posted by skylar
on Jan 2, 2010 -
4 comments
There was a historic music festival in the summer of 1969. But it's not the one that took place in Bethel, NY. The
Harlem Cultural Festival ran from
June 29 to August 24 that summer, presenting a concert every Sunday afternoon in
Mount Morris Park (known today as Marcus Garvey Park).
Three hundred thousand people turned out for the
six free concerts, hearing acts like
Nina Simone , Sly & the Family Stone (the only act to play both Woodstock and the "black Woodstock"), Stevie Wonder, Mahalia Jackson, The 5th Dimension, Moms Mabley and. Speakers included Jesse Jackson and "blue-eyed soul brother" Mayor John Lindsay. Security was courtesy of the
Black Panthers, since the NYC police refused to provide it. Filmmaker Hal Tulchin recorded
over 50 hours of concert footage, which has remained unreleased.
Historic Films seems to hold the footage; it was supposed to be made into a movie to
premiere at Sundance 2007, but its
release seems to be continually delayed for reasons unclear.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Aug 20, 2009 -
19 comments
Michael Jackson penned and recorded
lots of songs, many of which
remain unreleased. Perhaps the most infamous, and rarest recording, is his version of
Behind the Mask. Legend has it that upon hearing
Yellow Magic Orchestra's original track, somewhen around 1979, Quincy Jones fell in love with the track, and he and Michael worked together on their own version. Jackson wrote
new lyrics for it - adding to those of
Ryuichi Sakamoto and
Chris Mosdell - and eventually recorded it during his
Off The Wall sessions. For unknown reasons the track never made the final cut of, arguably, Jones' and Jackson's greatest work. Not long afterwards
Greg Phillinganes, Jackson's keyboard player, released his
own version of the song, which was later taken up and
re-recorded by Eric Clapton for his 1986, Phil Collins produced album,
August. The track has since been recorded/remixed by
Human League,
Senor Coconut,
Orbital and
others. Does an original Jones/Jackson recording of the song
even exist? Perhaps, as the world
continues to mourn the star's
sad death, someone
will finally allow us a listen.
posted by 0bvious
on Jul 1, 2009 -
31 comments
Stan Hugill, often known as "
The Last Shantyman," authored a
book called
Shanties From the Seven Seas, based on his own work experiences in the last days of sail. Influential in the folk revival, the book is one of the most important written sources for music sung aboard ships in the 19th and early 20th century,
the "Bible" of sea music. Decades of chanteying in pubs and at festivals have kept many of the songs alive, but in most cases they've strayed stylistically from the verses and versions Hugill collected, or dropped out of popularity entirely. Now,
one musician is returning to the source and creating a new audio archive for the original versions of the songs as written, by
singing through the more than 400 songs in the book, one song each week, and posting the songs on YouTube, with commentary.
[more inside]
posted by Miko
on Jun 15, 2009 -
28 comments
NEA Jazz in the Schools takes a step-by-step journey through the history of jazz, integrating that story with the sweep of American social, economic, and political developments. This multi-media curriculum is designed to be as useful to high school history and social studies teachers as it is to music teachers. Start with the
introductory video to get a feel for the place. The education outline contains
five lessons. If you just want to listen, all the
music samples are on one page. Perhaps you're more interested in individual
artist biographies, or a jazz history
timeline.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on May 21, 2009 -
11 comments
The Folkways Collection is a downloadable, 24-part podcast series that "explores the remarkable collection of music, spoken word, and sound recordings that make up Folkways Records (now at the Smithsonian as Smithsonian Folkways Recordings)."
posted by Miko
on Feb 16, 2009 -
27 comments
Top Events USA lists their top 20 events across the USA, the top 10 events and festivals for each of the United States, and lists of the best annual events and festivals by category or theme.
[more inside]
posted by netbros
on Jan 10, 2009 -
7 comments
Clips from the BBC documentary, The African Rock n' Roll Years -
Part 1 l
Part 2 l
Part 3 l
Part 4 l
Part 5 l
Part 6 - a six-part series mixing interviews with key artists, concert footage and news archives, the series examines and explains the "styles that make up the continent's music, and the political and social pressures that led to their development."
BBC documentary details. Found in YouTube member,
Duncanzibar's, good collection of mostly African music videos.
[more inside]
posted by nickyskye
on Dec 30, 2008 -
9 comments
