Old, Weird America

Harry Smith was a strange man.

He arrived in New York City in 1950. Hailing from Oregon, Harry Smith was a cosmologically-aware (Peyote) anthropologist and experimental filmmaker. He was an obsessive collector: quilts, paper airplanes, and Ukrainian Easter eggs (He had nearly 30,000 in his collection!).

Harry also collected phonograph records, specifically rare 78's.

In 1952, Moe Asch, owner of Folkways Records, agreed to release a three-volume collection of songs, most from the 1920's and 30's, coming right from Harry's personal collection: the Anthology of American Folk Music.

Arguably more interesting than the music itself was the presentation of the collection.

Amanda Petrusich describes the cover art in great detail in It Still Moves:

Each of the three volumes boasted the same cover art--an etching by Theodore de Bry, plucked from a compendium on mysticism by the British physicist, astrologer, and mystic Robert Fludd. The picture, a sketched globe, anchored by a one-stringed instrument, with a hand bursting forth from the clouds to twist its lone tuning peg, was of something Smith called the Celestial Monochord, a protean instrument invented by Pythagoras in 400 B.C. (200)

Each record was color-coded and elementally themed. The red album dealt with fire; the blue air; and the green water.

* * *

Latin lettering, Greek imagery, elemental themes, and banjos?

Archetypes form really fast.

I'm reminded of Milton's Paradise Lost. The epic poem, written in the 17th century, created an archetypal miscommunication that still resonates today: the sinful apple. In the Old Testament, Eve eats of the Fruit of Knowledge; not an apple. However, most people today believe that the fruit she ate was an apple. I'd hazard to say that most people today are blissfully unaware of the source of this confusion: a 400 year old epic poem.

Smith accomplished a similar feat and in much less time. Folk music, early country, blues, and gospel is believed to be invested of a timeless and universal quality. By the time I become an avid of the genre, Smith's Anthology was barely fifty years old. However, I had fallen for his self-mythologizing despite being unaware of the collection. I had only heard Harry Smith's name.

I legitimately believed that American musicians in the 1920's, 30's, and 40's had somehow tapped into the nation's unconscious, creating art resonating with the entire ancestry of human artistry. Yes, I am including the Greeks and the Romans.

Was I disillusioned when I discovered that this mysticism stemmed from a peyote-smoking, obsessive compulsive, cosmological collector?

Not really.

Sure, Harry Smith was an eccentric. However, he was onto something.

Music about life, death, struggle, God, suffering, murder, and general hardship is both universal and timeless.

A friend of mine once wisely said that "human suffering is universal."

Thanks to Harry Smith, I'm no longer an outsider.

Sure, I didn't grow up picking cotton, wandering the woods of Alabama drinking a mixture of iced tea and whiskey, but I am a human being.

Everyone's invited.

Three cheers for the eccentric.

In 1991, Harry Smith won a grammy for his contribution to popular music.