Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Moses Asch, Documentor

1987; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 5; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/3051738

1945-2349

Gene Bluestein,

Diverse Musicological Studies

Even people not very familiar with the name Folkways Records have the vague recollection that it has something to do with the sound of frogs, railroad trains, or the recordings of Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie. The story of how Folkways was organized has become a kind of folktale for which a number of variants exist, all of them involving a meeting with Albert Einstein. Folksong collector and author Samuel Charters gives one version: thought I had a large concept of documentation, but in Moses Asch I met a man whose concept was large enough to contain mine and all others. Folkways Records was actually planned at an evening conversation with Moe Asch, his father, and Albert Einstein, who was a friend of Moe's father. Moe commented that he would like to have a record company 'to describe the human race, the sound it makes, what it creates.' Moe was very young. And Einstein said, 'I think that's a good idea.' I asked Moe Asch what he remembered about the circumstances.