Abstract

Republic Opinion
Alterman, Eric | June 29, 1998 issue

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"Americans do not care about preserving their culture," Albert Einstein told Moses Asch more than 50 years ago. Asch, the immigrant son of novelist Sholem Asch and a lifelong devotee of socialism and multiculturalism, after the former and before the latter was fashionable, founded Folkways Records on May Day, 1948. He had told Einstein he wanted to forge a company that would "describe the human race, the sound it makes, what it creates." Together with vagrant, drug-addled, bohemian record collector Harry Smith, he released the now legendary "Anthology of American Folk Music," filled with backwoods bluegrass and country blues. Both Asch and Smith were obsessed with the political possibilities of cultural syncretism.

See Also:

ASCH, Moses; SMITHSONIAN Institution (Washington, D.C.); SMITH, Harry; ANTHOLOGY of American Folk Music (Music); SOUND recordings; CULTURE; UNITED States
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