Department Chair

Andrew D. Nicholls, Ph.D.

Date of Award

2024

Access Control

Open Access

Advisor

Dr. Andrew D. Nicholls

First Reader

Dr. Andrew D. Nicholls

Second Reader

Dr. Peter J. Ramos

Abstract

The Anthology of American Folk Music is a collection of eight-four selections of southern vernacular recordings made for commercial record labels in the 1920s and 1930s and assembled into a unified collage by Harry Smith. Smith was an experimental filmmaker, painter, and self-taught anthropologist with a deep interest in renaissance hermeticism and mysticism who worked with Moe Asch in 1952 to release the six-record set and accompanying handbook on Folkways Records. The release was heralded by musicians and critics as an essential piece of influence on the folk music revival. Despite this, the Anthology sold poorly and quickly faced legal troubles for its unique interpretation of copyright law, making its ascent into a position of canonical significance puzzling. The work at hand establishes a partial biography of Smith as it relates to the assemblage and creation of the Anthology with particular attention to the visual and textual influences Smith brought to bear on his musical and cultural collage. Embedded in various avant-garde, literary, and occult circles alongside a deep study of mysticism and anthropology, Harry Smith wove together a patchwork of intellectual pursuits in his reimagining of the folk music tradition that was the Anthology. This work seeks to situate Smith within numerous currents while linking them to aspects of collage, particularly the renaissance cover art, detailed thematic index of correspondences within the handbook, and references to occult philosophers, renaissance alchemists, and founders of modern anthropology.

Download

Share

COinS