Newsletter : October 2007

The Importance of Recordings
"Only through recordings is it possible to learn of those developments that have been so characteristic of American music but which are unknowable through written transcriptions alone. Records...played a large part in stimulating these historic changes by making easily accessible to each other the rhythmically and verbally specialized music of groups living in mutually social and cultural isolation."
— Harry Smith, from the Introduction to the Anthology of American Folk Music, 1952

Carrying on the Tradition of Documenting America's Music
In 1956, four years after Smith produced his groundbreaking anthology, Art Rosenbaum found himself in the Hawkhead General Store in Michigan recording Epifanio Sanchez and his friends playing acoustic guitars and singing the revolutionary song, "Carabina Treinta-Treinta." Later that same year, he visited with Southern white farm workers in the same area, hearing and recording string band and fiddle tunes, as well as seven-year-old Ray Rhodes singing "Frankie and Johnnie," "Black Jack Davy," and a modern bad man ballad, "Fred Adams." 51 years later Art is still making recordings of traditional musicians — traveling down backroads and into the country side, following leads from acquaintances and news stories, and documenting the music he loves.

Art of Field Recording Volume I: 50 Years of Traditional American Music Documented by Art Rosenbaum
DTD-08 / Four CDs / 96 Page Book
Release Date: November 6, 2007
Over the past year and a half my wife April and I have traveled north on Highway 316 to Athens many times. We have gone on field recording trips with Art and have gained a great appreciation for the work he has done. Unlike many people recording in the field who limit their focus to a specific genre and/or region, Art remains committed to documenting a wide range of genres from various regions. During the time we have spent with Art and his wife Margo, I have come to regard them as pioneers of a unique approach to folklife preservation. Art's paintings, drawings, writing and musical performance are complimented by Margo's photographs, participation and support. We have been honored to produce this set with the Rosenbaums and showcase their work to the world. Without the performers there would be no music, but without people like the Rosenbaums there would be no documentation.

We released the sampler CD for this set last year thinking that the final result would be a five disc set, but after spending a long time with Art pondering the vast quantity of material he has amassed over the years, we decided to extend the release into multiple box sets with Volume I coming out this year and Volume II planned for 2008. If all goes well, there will be a third and final installment in 2009. Volume I is a four disc set with a 96 page book that contains essays and annotations by Art and over 100 illustrations and photographs by Art and Margo. Art took a similar approach to Harry Smith in assembling the music: the discs are divided into Blues, Instrumental and Dance, Sacred, and a Survey disc that has a little bit of everything.
(Click here to read more about this release.)


The Most Wonderful Thing That I Have Ever Experienced
"Dear Mr. Edison, if my friend Edmund Yates has been a little incoherent it is in consequence of the excellent dinner and good wines that he has drunk. Therefore, I think you will excuse him. He has his lucid intervals. For myself, I can only say that I am astonished and somewhat terrified at the result of this evening's experiments: astonished at the wonderful power you have developed, and terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music may be put on record forever. But all the same I think it is the most wonderful thing that I have ever experienced, and I congratulate you with all my heart on this wonderful discovery." — Arthur Sullivan to Thomas Edison, 1888

Ethnic Music on Compact Disc
It is not necessary to scour rural America in order to find compelling and passion-filled music. These next three releases crisscross four continents, yet the music they contain comes from secondary sources via stacks of old records. What excites me so much is how each release is approached in such a unique manner, yet put together they fit like puzzle pieces to show how music from foreign lands can be just as "rhythmically and verbally specialized" as the American music we know and love.

Melodii Tuvi: Throat Songs and Folk Tunes from Tuva
DTD-09 / One CD / 24 Page Booklet
Release Date: November 20, 2007
Similar in size to the state of Florida, the Republic of Tuva lies between Russia and Mongolia in the Altai Mountains, at the geographical center of Asia. The 16 recordings on Melodii Tuvi were recorded in 1969 and issued in the Soviet Union to capitalize on a new interest in Tuvan music brought about by folk festivals. The liner notes, penned by noted world music scholar Dr. Pekka Gronow, offer insight into Tuva's musical and political history, with an additional essay on its unique style of throat-singing.

"The human vocal tract can generate much more than brute grunts. It renders operatic arias of great beauty and frequency range. The vocal tract can do even more than that; it can carry two musical lines simultaneously. This skill is called 'throat-singing' or 'overtone singing.' The best known throat-singers live in the Tuva region of southern Siberia. The semi-nomadic herders of this wild region were evidently inspired to develop throat-singing so that they could better mimic the sounds they heard in nature: the singing of birds, the wind and the sounds of insects." — from the Liner Notes

Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics
DTD-10 / One CD / 24 Page Booklet
Release Date: November 20, 2007
The Black Mirror is a compilation of 24 recordings made between 1918-1955 assembled and annotated by Baltimore record shop owner and musician Ian Nagoski. Nagoski's introduction explores the necessity for recorded sound and the galaxies of beauty contained on vintage shellac records.

"Playing any of the innumerable discs that were made, there is the sound of a believable, recognizable person making music in your room, when, if your eyes can be believed, no one is there. The sound invisibly occupies the space, and your ears understand who is playing. It is a moment of communion with an unseen force. The pleasures in that act of listening emerge from a web of memories — the wishes and nostalgia of the listener combined with the actuality of the playback-memory taken from the lives of the performers, moments from their individual trajectories and places in history, a part of their selves and a manifestation of their own creative impulses. The music comes from an elsewhere, another place and time, and from within another person, remembered by the black stone's spiral, and then takes place in an unknown elsewhere inside the body and self of the listener. It's subtle and glorious stuff." — from the Liner Notes

Victrola Favorites: Artifacts from Bygone Days
DTD-11 / Two CDs / 144 Page Book
Release Date: December 2007
Finally, there is Victrola Favorites, which is a deluxe 144 page clothbound, full-color book with two CDs featuring music from all over the place — both from a stylistic standpoint as well as a regional one. Compiled by Rob Millis and Jeffery Taylor of the Seattle band Climax Golden Twins from their collections of rare 78rpm records and design ephemera, Victrola Favorites marks the first CD release of their 78 collection which appeared on homemade cassettes in the 1990s. The full-color book displays their successful adaptation to the new medium, and the historic images they have put together are unlike any you have ever seen.

"Victrola Favorites began as a series of cassettes on the Fire Breathing Turtle record label. Rob Millis and Jeffery Taylor, both musicians and sound collectors, created volumes of Japanese songs, hillbilly music, Chinese Opera, jazz and more. They recorded whatever they could find forgotten and beat up in antique and junk stores. That these brittle old objects had survived at all seemed to be a miracle; each one was a discovery and many were hard won: a Vogue picture disc bought from a yammering dealer with an ear infection who specialized in collectible Beatle shoes; a rare hokum blues side found in a flea market box that had just been gone through by an 'artist' who melted old records into bowls and lampshades; a Burmese antique dealer arriving at Rob's hotel with a stack of fantastic traditional Burmese 78s casually tied with ancient string to the back of his motorbike. With Victrola Favorites, they hoped to document both the records and somehow the experience of listening. The Victrola resonated, clunked and hummed, smelled of wood and varnish, and looked exactly as you would expect a machine that talks to look; and the old records held secrets: the designs on the sleeves and labels, the scars of their age, the stories of forgotten music and musicians..." — from the Liner Notes

New Sites and Sounds
The Dust-to-Digital website received an overhaul a few months ago. Our goal is for the new design to make the content more accessible and easier to navigate. In addition to the change in layout, the home page now sports a jukebox, so feel free to check out a few tunes from each of our releases. We have also added a blog to our online presence, to which we will be posting excerpts from our new releases in the coming days and weeks in anticipation of the November release dates.

Release Dates and Release Parties
The release date for Art of Field Recording Volume I is November 6 with a release party on November 24 at the Melting Point in Athens. The release date for Melodii Tuvi and Black Mirror is November 24 with Nagoski planning a small tour of record playing and discussion of Black Mirror in November. Victrola Favorites will be available in early December. I'll be sending another email in a couple of weeks with details on the availability of the new releases, the release party, and what is in store for next year.