![]() ![]() While many of his recordings were simply too esoteric to interest more commercially minded labels, others were by creators who were actively persecuted. “So long as you don’t believe in the profit motive.” Asch marketed to educators rather than to individual consumers, which he found to be reliable if not particularly profitable.Īsch also made Folkways a home for the expression of the marginalized. “Capitalism is a wonderful, wonderful system,” Michael quotes his father as having said. Having previously founded several other labels that failed amid ever-shifting public taste, the anti-mogul figured that if he steered clear of the peaks, he could dodge the valleys, too. “Every time he got close to a hit, he found someone who could buy the masters from him, and they could the hit. “He vowed never to try a hit record,” the exec’s son Michael Asch tells Peabody. With the notable exception of any song Asch sensed was in danger of accidentally becoming… popular. He was committed to keeping the music (and poetry, and zoological sounds, and “ Maine humor,” just to give a sense of the sheer variety on offer) that he documented in print and available to curious listeners. Asch was out to make a living, not make a killing. “No-hit wonder” is how Sidedoor host Lizzie Peabody sums up his break-even approach. (Folkways Records, née Asch Records, was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, the year after Asch’s death at the age of 80.)Īsch’s unusual ambition was paired with a business strategy that would strike most music executives as naive if not downright self-destructive. The June 7 episode of the Smithsonian podcast Sidedoor, “Recording the World,” celebrates the 75th anniversary of the label that grew out of recording engineer-turned-record executive Moses “Moe” Asch’s quest to document the sounds of the world, of which music is only one category. Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is one of the most eclectic labels in the world, having released everything from the utterly foundational 84-track Anthology of American Folk Music to the perhaps less influential Sounds of North American Frogs.
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