Sonic Encyclopedia

Music has changed the world, and in the last century some of that music originated outside the big corporations on independent labels. Perhaps the most celebrated was Sun Records, where Elvis began, but the Memphis label was neither the first nor the last word in indies. Little labels operating at the margins of the entertainment industry helped shape the sound of blues and jazz, rock 'n' roll and rhythm 'n' blues, punk and grunge. A few indies grew into major labels, such as Atlantic and Motown, and eventually lost their identity.

One little label, Folkways, became part of the federal government. The record company founded by Moses Asch in 1948 passed to the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 after his death. Now called Smithsonian Folkways, it has title to a vast archive, the source of CD reissues and digital downloads through Smithsonian Global Sound, and continues to release new recordings.

The Institution's mission to administer and continue Asch's legacy is admirable. But the early maverick years form the most interesting part of the story told by Worlds of Sound: The Story of Smithsonian Folkways (Smithsonian Books/Collins). Author Richard Carlin, a one-time producer for Folkways, has assembled a colorful, slightly disorganized, entertaining and informative history that mirrors the man behind the record company.

Most of the entrepreneurs who founded independent labels had one or two particular sounds on their agenda. Apparently Moses Asch, a Jewish immigrant, wanted to document the sound of the entire world. He recorded the roar of New York subways and the bluegrass of Bill Monroe, the poetry of Langston Hughes and the children's songs of France, Haitian drumming and Canadian folk songs, the croaking of tree frogs and the early electronica of John Cage. Like a character from a lost story by Jorge Luis Borges, Asch wanted to preserve every possible sonic vibration for posterity in an aural library of inconceivable scale.

Folkways changed the world, not by documenting tree frogs and steam engines but through fostering the folk-blues revival that inspired Bob Dylan and shaped the direction of Americana. Asch exposed much of the world to the music of the weird old America that once flourished in the nation's back alleys and byways. It was Asch who brought Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and Lead Belly to wide attention, recording hundreds of their songs. Folkways released album after album of Southern blues and Appalachian folk, often accompanied by scholarly booklets and hand-drawn covers.

Possibly the most influential project Asch undertook was the Anthology of American Folk Music, a series of albums culled from the collection of amateur anthropologist and avant-garde artist Harry Smith. Rummaging through junk shops and yard sales, Smith amassed a storehouse of 78 RPM discs from the 1920s and '30s, many of them preserving the roots of what came to be known as blues and country. Smith organized the collection according to occult principles and penned enigmatic liner notes, suggesting that American roots music was a world hidden in plain sight, rich in lore and meaning. The Anthology tantalized a generation of musicians who embraced folk music and its influence continues today.

During the McCarthy era the FBI occasionally placed Folkways under surveillance and compiled a few dossiers, but, according to Carlin, the label received surprisingly slight scrutiny from J. Edgar Hoover, even after Pete Seeger was cited for contempt of Congress. Asch's explanation that he was merely a small businessman and a "documenter" seems a little disingenuous. Carlin suspects that "Asch's own beliefs remained elusive" and that by keeping leftist groups at a distance (even as he recorded leftist songsters), he was able to operate without repercussion. Asch was influenced by the cultural values of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and might have been happy that his life's work has been preserved by an arm of the federal government during a time when federal support for the arts and humanities has receded.