Folkways collection comes alive

Most research agreements aren't celebrated on a really grand scale, but the connection between the University of Alberta and Smithsonian Folkways is no ordinary research project. So the deal will be launched with an Oct. 5 concert at the Winspear Centre for Music, featuring performances by Mike Seeger, the Mahotella Queens and Quartette.

The event celebrates a unique partnership between the Asch family, the record label it founded, the University of Alberta and the Smithsonian Institute.

The Moses and Frances Asch Collection, one of two complete collections of recordings made by the Folkways music label, was donated to the U of A by Folkways founder Moses Asch. The collection includes everything from the earliest works of activist-musician Pete Seeger, to speeches and religious ceremonies. Asch, during visits with his son Michael, now a professor emeritus with the U of A Department of Anthropology, was so impressed by the university and the city's music scene that he donated the entire Folkways catalogue to the U of A. The Smithsonian Institute holds the copyright on the Folkways recordings.

Now, under an agreement between the U of A and Smithsonian Folkways, the university will build on Smithsonian's digital library of the recordings, adding liner notes, documents and text related to the label and its recordings, in order to establish and study an elaborate research database.

Mike Seeger, son of Folkways artist Pete Seeger, headlines the concert. He doesn't consider the academic study of folk music as a driving force that props up the genre. Speaking from his home in Virginia, Seeger said academic research of the genre and the Folkways label is a natural occurrence that has taken place alongside a renewed interest in acoustic, 'roots' music.

"In this country, I would say there has been a revival of interest in traditional music," he said. "And those people come from all kinds of backgrounds. They are as likely to come from the city because, well, most people come from the city these days. But, in the South, it's as likely to be working-class people as well as university-educated people. Because people are more likely to be educated now then they were 50 or 75 years ago. That is, in the academic sense," he chuckles. "Everybody's educated now."

Folk music, he says, is the music "of every day kinds of people; the music of the fiddle, the Jew's harp, and the voice, of course." And it's not intended to be an occupation.

"It's supposed to be something that's part time. And some of the best musicians that I know, in old time music, are as good as any musician anywhere, but they work doing other kinds of things. Civil engineering, or in a university, or editing papers, or working as computer programmers. Some of the best musicians I know do blue collar work. That's the kind of work I did before I started playing music for a living. Because I'm barely a high school graduate - went to technical school briefly."

He was certainly bound for a musical life. His parents were formally trained musicians: mother Ruth was a prominent modernist composer, father Charles was a musicologist and composer. Both took an interest in authentic American music, and passed this love on to Mike, sister Peggy, and half-brother Pete, all future folk titans.

For his part, Seeger helped form the seminal New Lost City Ramblers, a band devoted to playing old-time music, and was instrumental in starting the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s by rediscovering such artists as banjo player Dock Boggs. It wasn't just a musical revival. The Seegers, along with fellow travelers Moses Asch and Harry Smith, saw the old songs as inseparable from social and political issues around them.

"There were quite a few people, especially around New York, but also in the other major cities, who looked on folk music as a means of helping the broader political scene," says Seeger. "So it did become used as part of the left wing or progressive political scene . . . I sing those songs, and I feel like they still have a great deal of meaning, because all those issues are still alive now."

Seeger says that his career, like the popularity of the music, has had highs and lows.

"What I do is so specialized that it's very much open to people's attitudes and knowledge at the time. People are really looking around for alternatives. And there's huge amounts of old time sounds to build your music on."

And that's thanks to people like Seeger and Moses Asch, who kept much of the old time music in print. Seeger characterizes the Folkways recordings as an important cultural record.

"People really value those recordings. It's a little bit like having a library. I just think it's important to keep them alive so that we know what's gone before, and also . . . it's as rich as having a little bit of Shakespeare around. A little different then Shakespeare," he wryly allows, "but the same idea; that there is this great craftsmanship and art in these old songs."

Tickets for the Folkways concert, with master of ceremonies Tommy Banks, are available at the Winspear box office (428 - 1414).