The song is obviously old. The acoustic guitar fades in, its strings bleating and chugging like a train against the sounds of vinyl pops. Then the harmonica adds some wah-wah-ing like a steam whistle. The chorus comes moments later, a call-and-response melody common to the African American folk tradition: “In the morning, we shall be free/ I done told you, we shall be free/ I done said it, we shall be free/ When the good lord says we’ll be!” 

The verses follow, an improvisational patty-cake between two American music icons: Woody Guthrie, singing about roosters sneezing and slacking off work, and Lead Belly, singing about hogs running and preachers preaching. At the end of each verse, in comes the chorus once again, complete with backup singers and Guthrie hooting away. The lyrics are half-decipherable, the tempo is off-kilter, and the harmonica comes and goes as it pleases, but you can hear joy in every Guthrie howl. With its comedic sensibilities, inborn history, and legendary singers, 1944’s “We Shall Be Free” might be a perfect introductory recording for anybody interested in folk music. All too appropriate, then, that it traces its recording roots directly to Smithsonian Folkways Recordings. 

Having just celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2023, the Smithsonian Folkways record label has been dedicated to defining and redefining folk music since its inception. Initially founded by Moses Asch in 1948 as the New York City-based Folkways Records, the label has been steadily acquiring, accumulating, and preserving world and folk music for the better part of a century. Guthrie and Lead Belly recorded their version of “We Shall Be Free” in Asch’s Manhattan studio in May 1944, just one recording among thousands in the Folkways archive. The Folkways record collection goes far beyond American folk, however. It includes everything from Cuban “cult music” to Chinese Classical and spoken-word recordings of the Bhagavad Gita read in the original Sanskrit. Folkways has done everything in its power to preserve and teach folk legacies from the U.S. and abroad. Better yet, every single one of its recordings can be found right here in D.C. 

“People come to the folk genre with a preconceived notion of what the ‘folk’ is, but I would broaden that definition somewhat,” says Maureen Loughran, who became director and curator of Folkways in March 2023. “What we have on record is music of people … musics [that] tell stories of who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going. That was something that Mo Asch really championed, from the very beginning.” 

Folkways, a nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian, has made a mission out of preserving cultural diversity through the recording, storage, and circulation of various cultural folk music forms. In Asch’s own words, Folkways began as “a depository of the sounds and music of the world,” a place to document and record music that might otherwise go unheard by the majority of America. The label sought to be a place of education and preservation as much as entertainment—a stark contrast from many other U.S. record labels at the time, which gave little thought to world music, cultural tradition, and preservation, says Loughran. 

“At that time,” Loughran continues, “the industry would say, ‘if it’s a Glenn Miller record, oh yeah, let’s do it! … But if it’s not going to hit a certain threshold of sales, why bother with it?’ Folkways became the alternative, a way to ensure that these community expressions continue to have a place in this world.” 

In the climate of profit-over-art, the original Folkways was like a voice in the wilderness, fighting to expand the musical awareness of listeners rather than placate it. Whether it’s “Hobo’s Lullaby,” a Dust Bowl ballad decrying police corruption, or “Stickman,” a charming Caribbean tune about a preacher robbing a highway stickup man, Folkways fought to make different voices, stories, and musical traditions known. By Asch’s death in 1986—38 years after the label debuted—Folkways Records had already amassed 2,168 albums, each with copious liner notes explaining the cultural context and heritage of each song. Every album released to the label told a story about the culture from which it originated, something that today’s senior archivist and curator Jeff Place calls a “narrative of release.” 

“Education was and is the absolute key thing [with Folkways]. Mo Asch would sell these records to universities, libraries, things like that, and even now, the whole point of releasing any record on this label is to tell a story. We have booklets that are released with every album, and we have them online for free. That’s really our mission, to get that stuff out and teach people, as opposed to being just a normal record company.”

With such an emphasis on education and preservation, it seems only natural that the Smithsonian would eventually take interest in Folkways. In 1987, shortly after Asch’s death, the Smithsonian officially incorporated Folkways into its larger Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, based here in D.C. The incorporation, however, came with a caveat: The Smithsonian had to ensure that the record label’s recordings were properly preserved, as well as circulated in libraries and universities. This led to the creation of the Ralph Rinzler Archive, founded in part by Place. 

“Towards the end of ’87, Tony Seeger [nephew of Pete Seeger] and I started really picking up where Mo Asch left off,” says Place. “I actually created the archive just by walking into a room full of boxes, organizing, cataloging, and digitizing them.” Place credits Ralph Rinzler, who helped plan the inaugural Smithsonian Folklife Festival in 1967 and by the mid-’80s became the institution’s assistant secretary for public service, for bringing Folkways to the Smithsonian. Rinzler was also Place’s boss. “The whole point of the archive which was created at the same time [as the label incorporation], was outreach,” says Place. “It was supposed to be working with the label to bring in collections, catalog them, and make them available to the public. We didn’t want these recordings just stuck away in an archive—we wanted them available.” 

True to their word, Smithsonian’s Folkways have ensured that the spirit of Asch’s educational mission remains intact in the 21st century. A quick glance at the Folkways online archive reveals what they offer: tens of thousands of recordings, each one with educational liner notes provided—all of which are free to download. In an attempt to modernize, as well as a funding strategy, Folkways has also recently incorporated its “Friends of Folkways” program, a subscription that starts at $5 per month and allows unlimited online access to every album in the collection, including the original liner notes. 

“It’s a brand-new program,” says Loughran. “We just started it last November [2023], and it really lets listeners reconnect with the material. You can listen, you can see the artwork, you can read the liner notes, it’s all just in one place.”

Indeed, sampling the online collection shows the value in the educational work done by Folkways. In some instances, such as the Guthrie and Lead Belly recording of “We Shall Be Free,” the liner notes merely foreground certain details around the song, such as this history of its composition. In these cases, the liner notes are just a bit of fun for the curious folk enthusiast. For other albums and recordings, however, these notes are educational, imbuing the songs and their lyrics with entirely new meanings.

“Ninna Ninna,” off of the 1955 collection Italian Folk Songs and Dances, is one such example. The song, a mournful, minor-key lullaby sung in Sardinian, is moving enough without translation, but the liner notes reveal the song’s incredible depth: “The mother sings to her little boy. His father, a brigand, escaped into the mountains and is being followed,” the notes say before translating the lyrics. “She sings ‘Antoneddu, little Anton, I would rather see you dead than a bandit in the mountains.’ In the third stanza, the ghostlike voice of the father is heard: ‘Sing, o beautiful, all around me it’s quiet and I only hear you singing.’” The added context turns this haunting tune into an audible piece of Sardinian history—a lullaby from a time when fathers had to steal to put food on their tables, a time of poverty, suffering, and disonori for the little Mediterranean island. 

The very existence of the recorded tracks “Ninna Ninna” and “We Shall Be Free” are living proof that Folkways has accomplished its mission of cultural preservation. The former even appeared as an emotional bookend to an episode of HBO’s The Sopranos.

“The guy who recorded  [‘Ninna Ninna’] ended up getting 50 grand for that Sopranos episode,” Place says, laughing. “Just an old guy living in a rent-controlled apartment in New York. It’s just ethical that he got paid—we always make sure 50 percent of our total revenue goes back to the artist. We make a point of that.”

In addition to cataloging past recordings, Folkways also has many modern-day artists signed to their label, all of whom continue to expand upon a folk musical tradition. Ella Jenkins (who turns 100 in August), regarded as the “First Lady of Children’s Music,” has used Folkways to compile and maintain her massive catalog of sing-alongs and call-and-response albums (inspired by similar motifs in West African music) since releasing her first album on the label in 1957. According to Folkways, her 1966 track “You’ll Sing a Song and I’ll Sing a Song” remains the label’s bestselling title.

No–No Boy, a music project from Dr. Julian Saporiti, uses a blend of traditional American and Asian instruments as a backdrop for exploring the relationship between various Asian cultures and the U.S., including stories of Japanese internment camp survivors starting Oregon onion farms, and Vietnamese soldiers discovering American rock ’n’ roll through the U.S. troops that they were fighting. These musicians represent only a fraction of the currently active artists signed to the label, and each one represents a vestige of a global folk tradition in their own distinct ways. According to Loughran, this aspect of maintaining and adding to folk tradition is quintessential to signing any new artist. 

“By having current day artists who align with the expression of Folkways, we’re really bringing past connections forward into today,” Loughran explains. “I think these new artists really show how culture is dynamic and evolving, while also containing the past. I’m glad that we have artists like Jake [Blount], who really show the collection as a living, breathing organism.”

Blount, a D.C. native currently based out of Providence, Rhode Island, creates what he describes as “Afrofuturist folklore” through his music. Rather than write original songs, Blount uses old string-band tunes and Black traditional songs to reflect contemporary issues, including on his most recent album, The New Faith, released in 2022. The album’s third track, “Didn’t It Rain,” is ostensibly a cover of an old folk spiritual about the Biblical flood, which killed all life on earth save for the animals aboard Noah’s Ark. But Blount’s recomposition brings climate change anxieties to the forefront of the listener’s mind, even without a change in the lyrics. The discordance of the fiddle strings, the frantic rhythm, and the dour vocal harmonies mingle with the apocalyptic imagery of the lyrics to create a radically new listening experience. 

Many of these sounds (and similarly, many of these climate concerns) wouldn’t have entered the mind of the many folk singers who sang the song before Blount, but as he tells City Paper, “All the songs that I put out are old folk tunes, none of them are original compositions. It’s all a rearrangement of something old.”

Blount cites a New York-based band, the Horseflies, as a thematic precursor to some of the work. According to Blount, “They would take these old fiddle songs and go ‘okay, but we live in the 1980s, why should we pretend like we’re living in the 1940s.’ That’s kind of what I’m after, adding new sounds to enhance what’s already there, rather than obscuring it.” 

The New Faith is Blount’s first release as a Folkways artist, and as both a D.C.-native folk musician and an ethnomusicologist at Brown University, Blount is a natural fit for the label. It only took Blount hosting an album release party in Takoma Park for him to make contact with the Folkways, and from here the partnership grew naturally. 

Blount is only one example of the many artists currently working with Folkways to help to carry the torch of folk music into newer generations. But it’s not about keeping folk music alive, he says, noting his ongoing objection to such phrasing: “People are always making folk music,” he insists.

“Growing up, I certainly didn’t see people playing on fiddles and banjos very much, unless I was at the fair, but there was music everywhere,” he says. “Hip-hop music, rock music, and of course, the go-go that was constantly outside of the Chinatown Metro.” Blount acknowledges that looking back is “vital to understanding what’s happening now.” But continues, “The types of music being made by communities today are just as valuable as music made 100 years ago, and that is folk music. People aren’t going to stop making this music until we stop as a species.” 

If the Folkways record collection is anything to go by, Blount is right. Folk music is not just acoustic guitars, murder ballads, Sardinian lullabies, stomps, hoots, or hollers. It doesn’t need harmonica whistles, call-and-response, and it doesn’t even need to be old. Any music can be folk music. There’s only one prerequisite: It needs to be of, by, and for the people. 

The Smithsonian Folkways Archives is available to visit upon request at 600 Maryland Ave. SW, Suite 2001. folkways.si.edu.