Smithsonian Folkways Recordings have today announced the release of a new 4 CD Boxset titled The Social Power of Music. Music is a universal element of human life. It’s a tie that binds us together, a force that breaks down walls and carries us forward, a refuge where we turn for hope, and a channel for our despair. On February 22nd, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings will release The Social Power of Music, a new box set that examines these roles of music in our lives from many angles and through many voices. Over four CDs, 80+ tracks, and an illustrated 124-page booklet, The Social Power of Music presents some of the most powerful moments in Smithsonian Folkways’ vast and ever-expanding catalog, putting them in conversation with each other to highlight the ways song has shaped the societies we live in.
The Social Power of Music looks at this music through four different perspectives. Disc 1: Songs of Struggle channels the visceral power of the fight for civil rights, featuring household names from Folkways’ archives including Woody Guthrie, The Freedom Singers, and Pete Seeger, and songs that defined a generation. Disc 2: Sacred Sounds presents music from many religions and spiritual practices, in some cases drawing from rarely heard or known ceremonies. Disc 3: Social Songs and Gatherings shows how we use music to come together, often in celebration. Disc 4: Global Movements looks to the use of roots music in key political movements around the world, tapping into anti-fascist verses, odes to the working class, and polemics against governmental corruption and violence.
The box set, and the idea of music’s centrality to the way people connect to one another, inspired the upcoming Smithsonian Year of Music, which presents music and sound events in Washington, DC and around the country every day throughout 2019. The series will kick off with a listening party for the compilation on January 2, 2019 at Songbyrd Record Café and Music House in Washington DC. “The Social Power of Music” will also be the animating theme of the 2019 Smithsonian Folklife Festival, which takes place annually on the National Mall.
The massive scope and virtuosic assembling of this box set may reflect the original vision of Smithsonian Folkways to record and document the entire world, but the sound of history echoes in our present. Songs that rang true in the 1960s, railing against the plight of women, minorities, and human rights, are just as poignant over fifty years later, as the world has begun to roll back much of what was gained by the global civil rights movements. There’s a visceral power, a frisson, in hearing how the lyrics in The Social Power of Music reverberate across generations and cultures. With authoritarianism on the rise globally, the Italian anti-fascist anthem “Bella Ciao” has new meaning. As women step forward to testify their experiences in the #metoo movement, the brutal folk song “Reclaim the Night” could have been written today. With the American border rife with conflict, Woody Guthrie’s classic protest song “Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos),” speaks still to the plight of migrant workers. The hope for the artists making this music at the time, for us listening now, and for those writing new songs inspired by this music, is the same as it ever was: to show us the paths to make a better world.
THE SOCIAL POWER OF MUSIC – February 22, 2019
Pre-Order via Smithsonian Folkways.