Fragments of a Faith Forgotten: The Art of Harry Smith

The highly influential multivolume Anthology of American Folk Music, first released by Folkways Records in 1952, marks Smith’s unparalleled efforts to preserve American song as both art and artifact. As Smith would later reflect: “The whole anthology was a collage. I thought of it as an art object.” 

As a recent arrival in New York and in need of money, Smith tried to sell Moses Asch, the owner of Folkways Records, part of his extensive record collection. Asch instead encouraged him to produce a compilation, which resulted in the Anthology of American Folk Music. Smith divided the work into three sets of two LPs—“Ballads,” “Social Music,” and “Songs”— and accompanied each with an illustrated booklet of notes. In these notes, Smith used language that was common at the time, describing songs for the African American market as “race music” and as “hillbilly” or “old-time” for the Southern white listeners and Northerners with roots in the South. 

The eighty-four songs on the anthology were made between 1927, when electric recordings made accurate music reproduction possible, and 1932, when the Great Depression halted folk music sales. Smith included songs that displayed distinct regional qualities, both rhythmic and verbal, and were originally intended for local rather than national audiences. 

A pivotal influence during the folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, Smith’s anthology inspired Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, and Pete Seeger, among others. In 1991, Smith received a lifetime achievement award at the Grammys for his preservation and promotion of folk music. After receiving the award, Smith noted: “My dreams came true. I saw America changed through music.”