How much is the Hope Diamond worth? Ask Smithsonian.

Our inquisitive readers are rising to the challenge we gave them last month. The questions are pouring in and we’re ready for more. Do you have any questions for our curators? Submit your questions here.

How much is the Hope Diamond worth? — Marjorie Mathews, Silver Spring, Maryland

That’s the most popular question we get, but we don’t really satisfy people by giving them a number. There are a number of answers, but the best one is that we honestly don’t know. It’s a little bit like Liz Taylor’s jewels being sold in December—all kinds of people guessed at what they would sell for, but everybody I know was way off. Only when those pieces were opened up to bidding at a public auction could you find out what their values were. When they were sold, then at least for that day and that night you could say, well, they were worth that much. The Hope Diamond is kind of the same way, but more so. There’s simply nothing else like it. So how do you put a value on the history, on the fact it’s been here on display for over 50 years and a few hundred million people have seen it, and on that fact it’s a rare blue diamond on top of everything else? You don’t. – Jeffrey E. Post, mineralogist, National Museum of Natural History

What’s the worst impact of ocean acidification so far?- Nancy Schaefer, Virginia Beach, Virginia

The impacts of ocean acidification are really just starting to be felt, but two big reports that came out in 2011 show that it could have very serious effects on coral reefs. These studies did not measure the warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but rather its effect of making the ocean more acidic when it dissolves in the ocean. Places where large amounts of carbon dioxide seep into the water from the sea floor provide a natural experiment and show us how ocean waters might look, say, 50 or 100 years from now. Both studies showed branching, lacy, delicate coral forms are likely to disappear, and with them that kind of three-dimensional complexity so many species depend on. Also, other species that build a stony skeleton or shell, such as oysters or mussels, are likely to be affected. This happens because acidification makes carbonate ions, which these species need for their skeletons, less abundant.

Nancy Knowlton, marine biologist
National Museum of Natural History

Art and artifacts from ancient South Pacific and Pacific Northwest tribes have similarities in form and function. Is it possible that early Hawaiians caught part of the Kuroshio Current of the North Pacific Gyre to end up along the northwest coast of America from northern California to Alaska? — April Croan, Maple Valley, Washington

Those similarities have given rise to various theories, including trans-Pacific navigation, independent drifts of floating artifacts, inadvertent crossings by ships that have lost their rudders or rigging, or whales harpooned in one area that died or were captured in a distant place. Some connections are well-known, like feather garment fragments found in an archaeological site in Southeast Alaska that appear to have been brought there by whaling ships that had stopped in the Hawaiian Islands, a regular route for 19th-century whalers. Before the period of European contact, the greatest similarities are with the southwest Pacific, not Hawaii. The Kushiro current would have facilitated Asian coastal contacts with northwestern North America, but would not have helped Hawaiians. The problem of identification is one of context, form and dating. Most of the reported similarities are either out of their original context (which can’t be reconstructed), or their form is not specific enough to relate to another area’s style, or the date of creation cannot be established. To date there is no acceptable proof for South Pacific-Northwest Coast historical connections that predates the European whaling era, except for links that follow the coastal region of the North Pacific into Alaska.

William Fitzhugh, archeologist
Natural History Museum

Former Grateful Dead percussionist Mickey Hart on the drum kit. Courtesy Smithsonian Folkways

Mickey Hart, the former percussionist for the legendary San Francisco jam band Grateful Dead has never met a world beat he didn’t like. And that’s reflected in the new Smithsonian Folkways world music series that he’s curating, “The Mickey Hart Collection,” that will be released October 11.

Comprised of 25 albums, the series includes music from regions that span the globe, including Sudan, Nigeria, Tibet, Indonesia, Latvia and Brazil. Listen to the albums in this series and no doubt you’ll come away having heard genres and instruments you’ve never heard before, like the ngoma, oud, bouzouki, darabukka, or the dungchen. The album series includes Hart’s solo projects, plus other artists’ productions, as well as re-releases of out-of-print titles.

But how did the drummer for a counter-culture jam band become entranced with rhythms from around the globe? It turns out he’s been worldly for some time. “I was entranced as a young boy by the rhythms of West Africa by way of Cuba, Haiti,” Hart told Smithsonian Folkways in a recent interview. “They all were the rhythms that spawned the music of American music, because they were everywhere and you could dance to them. They were polyrhythmic. They were dance music. And I loved the music that made you dance.”

While living in the Bay Area during the late 1960s, Hart recorded exotic musicians like sitarist Ravi Shankar and sarodist Ali Akbar Khan. Though the musicians weren’t household names in the United States at the time, Hart respected their virtuosity.

“I treated each recording as if it would sell a million copies,” Hart recalled to Smithsonian Folkways. “I always recorded it at the highest resolution and had it mastered at the same place I was mastering Grateful Dead material.”

Listen to audio samples from “The Mickey Hart Collection.”

"Honeyboy" Edwards' album with Smithsonian Folkways, "Mississippi Delta Bluesman"

David “Honeyboy” Edwards was born in the farm community of Shaw, Mississippi, on June 28, 1915. Yesterday, he passed away as one of America’s pioneering blues guitarists and vocalists at the age of 96.

“He’s what we would think of as a tradition bearer,” says Barry Lee Pearson, a folklorist and professor at the University of Maryland. “I would consider him to be the epitome of a walking musician—a walking jukebox. He was a musician, first and foremost.” As perhaps the oldest surviving original veteran of the Delta blues style, Edwards leaves behind a legacy as an influential bond between the acoustic blues from the deep south and the electric Chicago style that would lay the roots for modern rock and roll.

Pearson wrote the liner notes for Edwards’ 2001 Smithsonian Folkways album, “Mississippi Delta Bluesman.”

Growing up in Shaw, Edwards quickly showed he had an aptitude for music. “He picked up a little guitar as a youngster, but really learned when [Delta blues guitarist] Big Joe Williams came through. Big Joe noticed he could play a little bit, and asked his father if he could take him along with him as a road musician,” Pearson says. After traveling with Williams, Edwards split off on his own and continued to develop his craft. “By the time he got back home, he surprised everybody with how good he could play,” says Pearson.

Over the next several decades, Edwards toured the South from Memphis to Oklahoma, performing virtually anywhere he’d be welcomed and traveling by hitchhiking, hopping on rail cars, or by foot. He lived at a time when simply being a musician was dangerous, says Pearson. “He always claimed the authority figures down south, especially the farmers, did not like musicians at all.”

“Usually his strategy was that he stayed in all day, so nobody would see him, and then after 6 o’clock he’d go out,” Pearson says. “That’s because if they saw you during the daytime, they’d put you in jail or put you out on the farm somewhere.” Once, he was arrested for riding the rails without a ticket, and had to befriend a guard to get released.

Eventually, Edwards hitchhiked up to Chicago with Little Walter, the Louisiana harmonica player whose legacy is legendary in blues and blues rock traditions, and over the next several years switched to electric blues, his career tracing the evolution of the genre from a rural Southern entertainment to an urban nightclub phenomenon. Although he never made a chart-topping record, Pearson says Edwards “always claimed that he wasn’t at the right place at the right time to do recording, that he was always on the move.” But Edwards recorded a number of albums and played with all the major blues musicians of the era, Pearson says.

Edwards’ relationship with the renowned guitarist Robert Johnson, who died in 1938 at the age of 27 after sipping a bottle of whiskey laced with strychnine, is a particularly interesting footnote. “They played together in Greenwood for a couple of months or so, until Robert Johnson was killed,” Pearson says. “Honeyboy was with Johnson the night he was poisoned, and has one of the more trustworthy descriptions of that entire event, because he was also supposed to play at the same juke joint that Robert Johnson was poisoned at.”

Having long played in relative obscurity, Edwards enjoyed a resurgence in popularity over the second half of the century, as the influence of blues on modern music genres became more well known. He continued touring into his 90s, retiring only in 2008. Among other honors, he was named 2002 National Heritage Fellow and was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Grammy in 2010.

“I always found him to be a very friendly, charismatic, warm-hearted, really a nice guy,” says Pearson, who has conducted several interviews with the late musician. “But I think there was a side of him, especially when he was younger, when you would say ‘tough guy,’ which you had to be in those days. I had great respect for him, and I still do.”

Listen to a sample of Edwards’ music from his Folkways album.

Smithsonian Folkways has released a collection of Civil War Naval songs. Cover art courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways.

In timing with the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, Smithsonian Folkways has released a new collection, Civil War Naval Songs: Period Ballads from the Union and Confederate Navies, and the Home Front. The album consists of 13 lively 19th-century tunes that sailors sung on ships or, when docked in port, or belted out in taverns, as well as a few songs their families listened to in their absence—all performed by an all-star group of folk musicians. To hear more about the songs and their origins, I recently caught up with the collection’s producer Dan Milner, a folk song collector and researcher and singer of traditional Irish songs who has teamed up with Folkways before (Irish Pirate Ballads and Other Songs of the Sea).

Download a free mp3 copy of “Monitor & Merrimac” courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways

How would you describe the style of the songs?

There are four main types of songs on the recording: firsthand reports from combatants, songs from ballad sheets, songs from urban variety theatres and concert saloons, and parlor songs.

The firsthand reports are blow-by-blow descriptions and are about victories. The losers had other priorities as you can imagine. “The Fight of the Hatteras and Alabama” and “The Brooklyn, Sloop-of-War” are examples.

Ballad sheets are a printed song format that doesn’t exist any longer. They were the first mechanically reproduced song medium. Essentially, they are the words of one song printed on one side of a sheet of paper—importantly with no musical notation—but frequently with a commonly known tune indicated as appropriate for singing. Many of these were sold on busy street corners but many were sent by mail to rural places. They are predecessors of both the modern newspaper and modern sheet music and were occasionally written by hacks working from early, sometimes sketchy, reports. They vary in tone and can be alternately rousing, sad, political, full of praise, damning, etc. “A Yankee Man-of-War” and “The Old Virginia Lowlands, Low” are examples.

Music from early variety (pre-vaudeville) theatres appears mostly in songsters: portable, paper covered booklets of perhaps 40 pages. You can liken ballad sheets to singles and songsters to albums. They’re frequently upbeat—“The Monitor & Merrimac” is an example—and some were used for recruiting purposes. Comic singers were the royalty of Civil War music halls. Our recording is very compelling because everyone is very loose and the arrangement works so well. Gabe Donohue thumps beautifully on the piano. Kate Bowerman’s piccolo and clarinet work is hilarious. The chorus is really alive. If Spike Jonze’s Jones’ grandfather had been a bandleader during the Civil War, his music would have sounded like this.

Parlor songs were printed on sheet music as we undertand the term today and meant primarily for performance in middle- and upper-class homes, where popular theatres were frowned upon. Parlor songs (“The Alabama,” for example) were usually more musically complex and textually refined than the other types.

How did you go about finding the tunes you included?

There are some obvious places to look, starting with archives that hold 19th century song material. The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and the Lester Levy Collection of Sheet Music at Johns Hopkins University are two such important places and they have extensive collections viewable online. But I went to a number of research libraries as well, the Watkinson Library of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, for example. “The Blockade Runner” came from the Bodleian Library of Oxford University.

Singers are always looking for good, interesting songs, and that was the first criteria in selection. But I also wanted the CD to be equally representative of Northerners, Southerners and Immigrants. I desperately wanted African-Americans in that mix too—18,000 African-Americans served in the Union Navy—but, try as hard as I could—I was not able to find any Civil War maritime songs that were identifiably the product of Black Americans, though I’m still looking. The answer to this apparent riddle is that real folk song passes from mouth to ear. Only occasionally are the words set down on paper. African-American songs were composed, they just weren’t recorded on paper and archived. Generally speaking, I bet for every one good Civil War naval song that was preserved another 99 were lost. The CD is nearly 53-minutes long and carries a tremendous amount of variety from song to song.

What can be learned about the Civil War era by listening to this collection?

Without question, people had a lot fewer diversions to occupy their time. One result of that was they probably sang a lot more. The Civil War period came towards the close of the end of the Second Great Awakening in America. During that period, the idea of duty was second only to religious commitment. I believe the ideas of service, patriotic fervor and fighting the “good fight” are strongly embedded in these songs.

(For more information on the battles and soldiers described in the song’s lyrics, download the liner notes.)

What did you enjoy most about the recording process?

Making recordings is fun but it’s also hard work. I immensely enjoyed working with Jeff Davis, David Coffin, Deirdre Murtha, Bonnie Milner and the other fine singers and musicians who took part. They are an extraordinarily talented crew. All were very generous with their time and contributed mightily to the CD. For all of us, hearing moments of musical genius emerge was tremendously uplifting. For sheer fun, personally, I really enjoyed the entry of the double fiddles on “The Brooklyn, Sloop-of-War.” I jumped in the air when I heard the playback.

It’s fitting that legendary jazz songstress-extraordinaire Billie Holiday’s (1915-1959) birthday today falls during Smithsonian’s Jazz Appreciation Month (JAM). “Lady Day,” as she was known, made songs her own, lazily wrapping her emotive voice like wisps of smoke around passages with distinctive horn-like phrasing. Her trademark songs like “God Bless the Child,” which went on to sell over a million copies, and the haunting tale of lynching, “Strange Fruit” still resonate today. Unfortunately for Holiday, the rock star lifestyle was not a recent invention. Drug abuse and drinking took its toll on her voice, and her limited legal ability to collect royalties left her with $.70 in the bank at the time of her death from cirrhosis at age 44 in 1959. To learn more about the life and times of Lady Day, Smithsonian‘s Ryan Reed corresponded with John Edward Hasse, the American History Museum’s curator of American music and a founder of Jazz Appreciation Month.

Portrait of Billie Holiday, Down Beat, New York City, circa Feb. 1947 (Library of Congress)

Who gave Holiday the nickname “Lady Day?”

The great tenor saxophonist Lester Young, who was a musical soulmate of Holiday’s. She, in turn, gave him the nickname “Pres,” short for “President.”

April is Jazz Appreciation Month.  How did Holiday influence the genre?

Like Louis Armstrong, she influenced other singers to take familiar songs and make them their own, changing the melodies and rhythms to match the singer’s artistic sensibilities.

What made Holiday unique?

Billie Holiday ranks close to Louis Armstrong among the greatest jazz singers. Acknowledging great inspiration from him, she practiced an instrumental approach to singing as she ranged freely over the beat, flattened out the melodic contours of tunes, and, in effect, re-composed songs to suit her range, style and artistic sensibilities.  Her voice was physically limited, but she achieved shadings, nuances, color and variety by sliding along the thin line separating speech and song.

Smithsonian Folkways has the recording “Mean to Me.” What can you tell us about this particular song?

This recording marks an early stage of a remarkable partnership, one that Holiday forged with tenor saxophonist Lester Young.

In contrast to Coleman Hawkins’ big sax sound of the time, Young took a new approach. Young’s sound was a feathery, almost vibrato-less, lightly swinging style that moved improvisation away from the underlying harmonic sequence to focus more on the possibilities of melody.  He personified ‘cool’ and influenced the bebop, cool jazz, and rhythm and blues that were to come.

The elegant pianist Teddy Wilson introduces Mean to Me, Young takes the three eight-bar A sections, with trumpeter Buck Clayton taking the B section or bridge.  Holiday sings the second chorus, and then the band returns to play the second half of the chorus—Wilson solos on the bridge and Clayton on the final eight bars.

Holiday recomposes the melody of the A section, flattening out parts of it.  In the bridge, she largely sings the original melody but makes the rhythms and phrasing her own.  For her, such rhythmic conventions as eighth notes, quarter notes, and bar lines were merely guideposts, not fences.  Holiday leans on the beat, then catches up, demonstrating her impeccable sense of rhythm.  She makes a then-familiar hit song into something personal and fresh.

What made you choose an image of Holiday for the poster of the 2nd annual, national Jazz Appreciation Month in 2003?

I wanted a major figure who was widely considered one of the greatest on her instrument (the voice) and felt it was important to represent women, who have often been undersung in the annals of jazz.

Is there an artist today that reminds you of Holiday?

Holiday has influenced generations of singers, but one in particular has captured some of her style uncannily, and that is Madeline Peyroux.

What is your favorite song by Holiday and why?

“Mean to Me,” because it well represents Holiday as well as Lester Young and Teddy Wilson.

–Additional reporting by Ryan Reed

"Jazz is an art form that was born and nurtured and develop in the U.S. but was quickly adopted by people in countries around the world," says John Hasse. Image courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways

For the past three decades, when historians, critics and educators asked, “What is Jazz?” they turned to the 1973 Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz, the landmark album by the late critic and Smithsonian historian Martin Williams. That six vinyl LP—an unprecedented collage of the “genre that revolutionized American music”— became so popular, it went double platinum.

The album became the standard for music educators across the country—college students used the set along with textbooks, or in some cases, in lieu of them.

But the collection went out of production in 1999, a huge loss to a community that had relied on its knowledge and breadth, says John Edward Hasse, curator of American music at the National Museum of American History.

Hasse, who says he grew up with the album and once critiqued it in an essay for the Annual Review of Jazz Studies, “knew first hand how valuable it was,” and began dreaming of a way to update and revive it. So did Richard James Burgess, the marketing director of Smithsonian Folkways, who came to the record label in 2001 with a similar vision.

“We wanted to continue to help the country better preserve, understand and appreciate these extraordinary parts of our musical heritage,” Hasse says.

Today, seven years after Hasse and Burgess first began the project and nearly 40 years since the release of the original album, the label releases Jazz: The Smithsonian Collection, a 6-CD, 111 track box set that chronicles jazz from its beginnings a century ago through the early 2000s.

But unlike its predecessor, which was compiled largely on Williams’ tastes and preferences alone, the new album takes a more democratic approach, Hasse says. This set has three producers (Hasse, Burgess and Folkways Director Daniel Sheehy), an executive selection committee (David Baker, Jose Bowen, Dan Morgenstern, Alyn Shipton and Haase) and the tracks were chosen with input from a international panel of 42 jazz critics, historians and musicians.

“How do you take something like three-quarters of a million jazz recordings and boil it down to 111 tracks?” Hasse says. “Going in, my desire was to have this not be the work of one person but to make it broader and more inclusive.”

The result is an album that touches more on Latin jazz, Afro fusion and other international genres, featuring tracks from Tito Puente, French-Vietnamese guitarist Nguyên Lê, and Machito and his Afro–Cuban Orchestra. It includes those like Dave Brubeck, George Shearing and Mary Lou Williams who were left off the old album, Hasse says.

It still features those household names: Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington and Ella Fitzgerald. But where they may have had five or six tracks on the original album, they each only have two or three on its successor—an attempt to include as many artists as possible, Hasse says.

“This album wasn’t about greatest hits: the recordings weren’t based on which were most popular, but on which had the most influence, or were the best representation of major artists, classics whose luster will be undimmed in 10, 30, 50 years,” Hasse says. “Aiming this primarily at students, I argued that we should try to expose student to as many different musicians and approaches as we could rather than doing something that would give a history of any one artist. This wasn’t a place to give a capsule history of anybody, but rather to expose them to as many different recordings, styles and musicians as we could.”

After the initial polls of experts around the world, Hasse and the rest of the executive selection committee began the painful process of deciding what would make the cut. They spent two years working from multiple cities, Hasse says, and twice convened for marathon sessions in New York, working at some points until 2 a.m. to revise the list.

It took several more years to get rights to all the songs, and quite a while longer to solicit the world’s best jazz writers for the accompanying 200-page album notes (really, a small book that’s worth the price of the album alone).

“We wanted to bring the album much more up to date, into the 21st century. Forty more years of music needed to be considered. We wanted to give more coverage to women, besides singers, and more Latin jazz musicians. This couldn’t be an anthology of world jazz but we could be more inclusive of it,” says Hasse.

Hasse hopes that like its predecessor, the album will open the doors for students and music lovers to explore a genre so symbolic of American culture. For those asking what jazz is – or what this album says about it – it provides a new answer, he says.

“Jazz is a global genre. Jazz is an art form that was born and nurtured and develop in the U.S. but was quickly adopted by people in countries around the world. It is today an international lingua franca, one that sounds very different in Cuba than it does in Africa or Norway. It’s an ever-changing river that has been fed by many tributaries, streams, that is constantly moving. It’s a river  so powerful and refreshing that people have been drawn to drink from its waters. I suspect as long as people are listening to Beethoven and Bach they’ll be listening to Armstrong and Ellington. The best of jazz will go on as long as anything produced. It’s for the ages.”

Test your knowledge with some Folkways-sponsored Jazz quizzes. There is  a 25-song version and the full 111-song ultimate challenge both of which test how many songs on the new album you know.

Today, singer and songwriter Ella Jenkins, the “First Lady of Children’s Music,” releases her 29th Smithsonian Folkways album, A Life in Song. Music is life for Jenkins, who turned 86 last August and has been playing and performing for more than 50 years. Introduced to the blues by her brother and various relatives, Jenkins was born in St. Louis and raised in Chicago. She graduated from San Francisco State University in 1951 and first began writing songs for children while working at the local recreation center and while working as a camp group song leader. In 1956, Jenkins brought a demo to Folkways Records founder Moses Asch, and her first album, Call-And-Response, was released on the label the following year.

But performance is only a part of her story. As a veteran traveler (she’s performed on all seven continents) and educator, her message to children is one that speaks to universal love and respect across cultures.

“Music can’t be forced on children. The important thing is to expose them to all kinds of music, and see what they are drawn to,” Jenkins told the Parents’ Choice Foundation. Known for her call-and-response style, Jenkins, with her ukulele and harmonica, masterfully engineers a boisterous audience participation from not only the kids, but any nearby listeners. She has many influences, including vaudeville, gospel, camp songs, and world music.

Jenkins isn’t lacking in critical acclaim either, having received Grammy nominations, as well as a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways

The octogenarian, who has been entertaining children for two generations is still going strong, and with today’s release of the new 21-track A Life in Song, an eclectic mix of blues, folk songs, and traditionals, she’s out to teach and sing to yet another. Go here to download the track, “He’s Got the Whole World In His Hands,” from the Ella Jenkins’ new release.

These bottles are made from all-natural materials. Photo courtesy of Francois Azambourg and the Design Blog

Test Your Jazz Chops: Smithsonian Folkways just announced their forthcoming Jazz: The Smithsonian Anthology, which will be available beginning March 29. The collection features 111 songs on six CD’s that chronicle the history of jazz music, focusing on its most notable innovators and styles, from bebop to free jazz. Folkways is offering a quiz through Sporcle.com, where you can listen to samples of tracks and attempt to identify songs on the anthology. There is a shorter, 25-song version available, but in order to guess the full song list of all six discs, take the longer, 111-song quiz.

Crafty Cards: A few days ago, local artist Thalia Doukas facilitated a holiday card-making workshop at the Postal Museum. If you weren’t able to attend, Pushing the Envelope has posted some of her most salient tips on how to make some very worldly, one of a kind cards for the holidays using stamps as a primary decoration. There are also photos to get the imagination flowing.

Peanut Butter and Jellyfish: In Smithsonian’s 40th anniversary issue this past August, our colleague Abigail Tucker wrote about the proliferation of jellyfish in the earth’s oceans. The Ocean Portal blog recently explained why jellyfish populations are exploding, citing overfishing as a primary cause. Over 120 species of fish and over 30 other ocean-bound species feed on jellyfish, and if those populations are overfished, the jellyfish can get out of control. The blog suggests that if fish become a scarcity, we may indeed be stuck eating jellyfish instead.

Twenty-First Century Soda Bottle? Recently on the Cooper-Hewitt’s Design Blog, an unlikely combination of ingredients is being tested in an attempt to make a new, eco-friendly soda bottle. French designer Francois Azambourg is teaming up with Harvard professor of bioengineering Donald Ingber to test a mixture of sea fungus and sodium chloride bath as a possible substitute to the plastic that is accumulating in our oceans in piles like the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. The duo is using a sausage-making contraption to shape the bottles into a teardrop shape. Word is that the bottles are even healthy enough to eat—whether or not they’re tasty is, of course, another story.

Freedom Songs: Selma, Alabama (1965). Image courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways.

On the night of February 18, 1965, 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson attended a civil rights rally at Zion’s Chapel Methodist Church in Marion, Alabama. But when the peaceful protesters exited the church, they were met with hostile reactions from the state and local police. Jimmie and his family tried to escape by decking into a nearby café, but the troopers followed them in and Jimmie Lee was shot in the stomach and died from his injuries eight days later. Although his death was officially investigated at the time, charges were never brought forward. The case was later reopened and earlier this week, 77-year-old former state trooper James Bonard Fowler was sentenced to six months in prison for pulling the trigger.

Jackson’s death was hardly a footnote in civil rights history. Rather, it was a driving force for the Selma to Montgomery civil rights marches, the most famous being the “Bloody Sunday” march that took place on March 7, 1965 where some 600 people were attacked by local police with billy clubs and tear gas.

In remembrance of Jackson, and for those of you wanting to experience the sounds of personal empowerment, Folkways has two recordings that capture this moment in civil rights history. Music was a core element to these protests and Freedom Songs: Selma Alabama was recorded in 1965 and WNEW’s Story of Selma helps to paint a sonic picture of the times. You can sample these items using our music player below and you can also purchase them from the Smithsonian Folkways.

Alan Shephard's Apollo 14 space suit was X-Rayed and is now featured in NASM's new book. By Roland H. Cunningham and Mark Avino, courtesy of AirSpace

Inner Workings of the Space Suit: This week, the AirSpace blog exposes one of their spacesuits from the inside out using X-Ray imaging. Until now, the only way to glimpse the inside of these high-tech uniforms was to shine a flashlight down the wrist or neck of the outfit. But recently, Mark Avino, chief of photographic services at the Air and Space museum undertook the challenge of doing a complete X-Ray of Alan Shephard’s Apollo 14 spacesuit. The result is now featured in the book, Spacesuits: The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum Collection.

Thanksgiving in the Smithsonian: Mary Henry (1834-1903) was the daughter of Joseph Henry, the very first Smithsonian Institution secretary. Her diary provides a firsthand account of a pivotal period in the history of the United States, spanning the years of the Civil War and early Reconstruction. One personal anecdote, quoted in a post this week on The Bigger Picture, describes Henry’s Thanksgiving day in the Smithsonian Castle, where she lived.

Up Where He Belongs: The American Indian Museum’s Current exhibit, “Up Where They Belong: Native Americans in Popular Music” tells the stories of Native Americans in every genre of music, from rock to hip-hop to jazz (see my article on the exhibit in the October issue). The NMAI blog has posted an interview with one of the most well-known musicians in the exhibit, Robbie Robertson, who is perhaps best known as a member of The Band and for writing the song “Up on Cripple Creek.” Robertson talks about his favorite artists and what he’s learned in his long career as a Native musician.

Freer/Sackler Annual Auction: The Freer and Sackler Galleries opens its annual auction today in conjunction with their benefit gala, “Dancing Dragon, Roaring Tiger,” this evening. The gala celebrates the opening of the museum’s Chinese jades and bronzes exhibit.  The auction features four works by the renowned Asian artists Mei-Ling Hom, Sun Xun, Hai Bo and Cai Guo-Quiang. View the works and short biographies of the artists. Bids must be emailed to  fsgala@si.edu before midnight tonight.

World Folk Music Map: Smithsonian Folkways Records has contributed folkloric music from around the world to an interactive map posted on the “Preserving Intangible Culture” section on America.gov. Click on any country or region, from Mongolia to Norway to Sierra Leone, and listen to a Folkways music sample from there.

Don't get burned the next time you try to quit smoking—give End the Cigarette Habit Through Self-Hypnosis a listen! Image courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Records.

We’ve all seen those public service announcements on television advising you to stop smoking—and some are quite compelling, such as this 1985 ad with stage and screen actor Yul Brynner whose life was drastically cut short by lung cancer. Smoking is the most common cause of cancer death in this country, which is why it’s important to turn your attention to preserving a healthy respiratory system during Lung Cancer Awareness Month this November.

Even if you don’t partake of tobacco products, you can still develop lung cancer by way of second-hand smoke. According to the National Cancer Institute, approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year occurs among nonsmokers. So paying attention to the air quality of your surroundings is an easy way to avoid health problems down the road.

Mining the archives here at the Smithsonian often turns up curious gems from the past, including this recent find from Smithsonian Folkways.  End the Cigarette Habit Through Self-Hypnosis from 1964 offers a mind-over-matter approach to saying “see-ya” to the cigs.

The album was released on the heels of a landmark 1964 report from the Office of the Surgeon General that analyzed four decades’ worth of data and formally linked tobacco use to increased risk of cancer. The news ushered in a major paradigm shift for Americans: a 1958 Gallup poll indicated that only 58% of Americans thought there was a link between smoking and cancer; a 1968 poll saw that number climb to 78%. Although the report was assertive in linking tobacco’s detrimental effects on one’s health, it didn’t offer remedies to the problem. Beginning in 1965, the federal government began requiring tobacco companies to print warnings on all cigarette packages. But in an age before nicotine patches and gums to aid in kicking the habit, one’s options to stop smoking were somewhat limited. Options included going cold turkey, gradually cutting back and consulting self-help books—methods that totally relied on the willpower of the individual and could still leave visions of rolled tobacco products dancing in one’s head. And then there’s self-hypnosis.

How effective is it? Considering that this blogger doesn’t have any medical credentials—or background in smoking—I’m definitely the last person to ask. (I gave the album a listen out of sheer novelty value.) You could always ask your regular physician and ask for an expert opinion. Or you can listen to parts of the album, and purchase it if you find yourself getting *ahem* hooked on what you hear.

For more information on lung cancer, visit the American Lung Association’s Web site.

The sun, as photographed by Erin Braswell, Smithsonian Public Observatory Project on Sept. 8, 2010

Just Close Enough To The Sun—This week, the folks at the “AirSpace” blog treat us to a few photos of that fiery red giant near and dear to our hearts, the sun. Using a telescope from the Public Observatory Project made especially for looking into the sun’s harsh light, solar imaging expert Greg Piepol instructed blogger Erin Braswell on how to account for turbulence in the earth’s atmosphere that often obscures photographs of the sun. The resulting pictures show a crisp outline of the star, including sunspots and a “prominence,” or protrusion of hot matter coming from the sun’s surface.

Piano Podcast—Michael Asch, son of Folkways Records founder Moses “Moe” Asch, hosts Smithsonian Folkways: Sounds To Grow On, a 26-part radio program of music from the label’s original collection. Interspersed throughout the show is the story of Asch’s father, who started his own record company in 1948, the products of which were later donated to the Smithsonian. Episode 23, Piano, features a variety of jazz and blues piano music from the 1930s, 40s and 50s. Download the podcast from Folkways, along with the your pick of the 22 preceding installments.

Warhol Meets Jackson—In 1984, pop artist Andy Warhol did a portrait of Michael Jackson, which was published as the cover of Time magazine in March of that year. “Face to Face” has entries from Warhol’s diary of those days, which provide a window into the mind of one of the 20th century’s most famous artists. After reading the story behind the work, you may just be enticed to head on over to the Portrait Gallery to see the actual silkscreened portrait, which is hanging in the “20th Century Americans” exhibit.

Archives Fair—In conjunction with the month-long blogathon for American Archives Month, this Friday the American Archives will be hosting an archives fair, (free and open to the public) from 10 to 5 at the S. Dillon Ripley Center. The event will include lectures from the archivists about preserving, cataloging and ensuring accessibility to the precious collections at the Smithsonian. Today, “SIRIS” has posted interviews with Anne Van Camp, Director of the Smithsonian Archives; Wendy Shay, curator at American History, Archives Center; and Freer/Sackler archivist Rachael Christine Woody.

One of Nababiep's cubs gets its first physical exam. Photo by Mehgan Murphy, National Zoo.

Name That Kiwi—On June 15, the National Zoo hatched a female brown kiwi, the second kiwi born this year. To pay homage to New Zealand, the flightless bird’s motherland, they have decided to name the chick after the Maori, the indigenous people of the islands. They have chosen three Maori names, and have opened up an online polling station for the public to decide. Polling will last until noon on October 15, so cast a vote anytime in the next ten days!

Archive Vids—Blogs and museums from around the Smithsonian are already starting to contribute to American Archives Month, which we announced in last week’s Wednesday Roundup. The Freer and Sackler Galleries have posted a video tour of their archives, guided by archivist Rachel Cristine Woody. The Bigger Picture blog also has a post this week, “Just What Is An Archives, Anyway?,” which is a great starting point.

Make Your Own Hula Hoop—Smithsonian Folkways artist Elizabeth Mitchell’s much anticipated children’s album, “Sunny Day,” drops this week (check out yesterday’s post). Folkways has posted a video of Mitchell’s daughter, Storey, that describes how she makes her own hula hoops. The video follows her to the hardware store, shows her measuring pipe and her father cutting it (pipe cutters are not for kids) and demonstrates how to create colorful tape designs to finish the hula hoop off. The video’s soundtrack previews several of the songs on Mitchell’s album, a folky, feel-good collection of tunes.

A New Game at the Postal Museum—The newly developed game, Post-Haste, is now available at the Postal Museum. Located in the Binding the Nation exhibit of transportation objects, the game is played on a “surface table,” a Microsoft computer that works just like an oversized iPad. According to a post on Pushing the Envelope this week, the game takes participants back to 1859 to help a family that is trying to send mail across the country. Gamers have to decide how to get the mail safely from one coast to the other so that the mail arrives all in one piece.

This Just In From the National Zoo: The second litter of African lions born this fall was pronounced in good health today after the three lions had their first physical exam. Although it is difficult to tell at only two weeks of age, it appears that two of the cubs are male and one is female. There are tons of precious pictures of these furry little things available on the Zoo’s Flickr site.

Think of children’s music, and costumed freaks might come to mind. Barney. The Wiggles. But songstress Elizabeth Mitchell is unassuming in appearance, and her voice is warm and inviting.

Mitchell’s new album, Sunny Day, drops today on the Smithsonian Folkways Recordings label (go to their Web site here for a free MP3 of “Oh, John the Rabbit”), and she’s put together a collection of delicately crafted songs arranged with an Americana touch.

It’s a grab bag mix of covers from different genres that range from a lovely version of the traditional “Keep on the Sunny Side,” to Chuck Berry’s “School Days” (with daughter Storey joining on vocals), to a jaunty version of the Japanese nursery rhyme “Under the Big Chestnut Tree.” But there’s a method to her madness.

Courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways Recordings

“The songs on Sunny Day follow the arc of the day,” Mitchell told Folkways Recordings. “The first few are about waking up and embracing a new morning. What follow are nourishing songs, as we share knowledge, and learn together, sing about animals and feelings, learn different languages and contemplate the magical world we live in. By late afternoon, kids need to get their crazies out, so we turn up the tempo with some real rock and roll. The next songs are quieter lullabies.”

As usual, Mitchell received the help of some fine musicians, like Levon Helm (of The Band), Jon Langford (Mekons), and Grammy-winner Dan Zanes to make things happen, along with her musical partner and hubby, Daniel Littleton.

Mitchell has been recording children’s music since she made an album intended for friends and family back in 1998. And her previous release, You Are My Little Bird, was voted Best Children’s album of 2006 by Amazon.com. But she also rocks the grown-ups, too; she and Littleton have been members of the New York indie-pop group Ida since the early 90s. And that was Mitchell and Littleton singing those nicely layered back-up vocals on the bespectacled Lisa Loeb’s 1994 chart-topping acousta-smash “Stay (I Missed You)” from the Reality Bites soundtrack.

You can catch Elizabeth Mitchell live October 9 and 10 on the Austin Kiddie Limits Stage at the Austin City Limits Music Festival.

Folkways is reissuing the music of bluegrass singer Ola Belle Reed. Photo courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways.

Music Makeover: Smithsonian Folkways is offering free music downloads from three upcoming releases or reissues. One track each from Elizabeth Mitchell’s new kid-friendly album Sunny Day and a reissue of bluegrass singer Ola Belle Reed’s music called Rising Sun Melodies are available on the Folkways Web site. Two old-time versions of the song “We Shall Walk Through the Streets of the City” are also available from the forthcoming Classic Sounds of New Orleans, the 19th release in the Smithsonian Folkways Classics series.

Shark Week: Shark bites, shark tracking, shark waters, great white sharks, reef sharks, hammerhead sharks … all of these and much more are a part of the Discovery Channel’s popular Shark Week, which began on Sunday and runs through this week. The Ocean Portal blog has posted links to a few resources you can use to educate yourself on these intriguing creatures before diving into all the Discovery Channel has in store.

If You’ve Never Seen an Aurora… This may be your chance. On August 1, the sun blasted tons of plasma into space. It looks as though that plasma is headed our way, and when it enters Earth’s magnetic field—today and possibly Thursday—it has the potential to create a visually stunning light show. The Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has posted the expected schedule of possible aurora-viewing opportunities, and they will have updates as the plasma moves closer.

North Pole Cancellation Stamps: 52 years ago yesterday, the U.S.S. Nautilus—the first United States nuclear-powered submarine—made the first-ever journey to the geographic North Pole by traversing the Arctic Ocean and navigating the harrowing polar ice cap. This trip, which left out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was the second attempt by the Nautilus after a failed attempt earlier that year. In anticipation of their success, members of the crew made their own cancellation stamp and cachet stamp depicting the planting of a flag in the North Pole. The Pushing the Envelope blog features images of these stamps and the crew members who fashioned them.

Beards of Note: I like a great beard just as much as the next person. Jennifer Snyder at the Archives of American Art continues to blog about extraordinary examples of facial hair through history. This week’s “beard of note” belongs to painter William Morris Hunt, renowned for his 19th century landscapes and portraits. The post also links to previous beards—and mustaches—of note so you can check out all the facial hair you’ve been missing.