Smithsonian.com

Carey Mulligan as Daisy. Photo by Courtesy of Warner Bros. Picture – © 2013 Bazmark Film III Pty Limited

The drinks were freer, the music brassier and the times, well, Gatsby-er. At least, that’s the picture F. Scott Fitzgerald creates with his tales of high society run wild in his 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby. Now set for yet another screen adaptation, this time thanks to the energetic hands of Baz Luhrmann, the novel continues to resonate today.

Its appeal is a dark but undeniable one, enough to let you weep alongside Daisy as she marvels inside Gatsby’s closet at his exquisite shirts. The clothes, the alcohol, the music–we get it, it’s a heady and seductive mix. So go ahead and throw your Gatsby-themed party (skipping the murder and suicide–oops, spoiler alert) and let the experts at Folkways supply the playlist.

Thanks to David Horgan and Corey Blake of Smithsonian Folkways for the inspired lineup that includes three tracks referenced in the novel itself, including “Three O’clock in the Morning,” which narrator Nick Carraway calls a “neat, sad little waltz.” The novel also mentions “The Sheik of Araby” and “A Love Nest,” which, in some versions, includes the poignant lyric:

Ever comes the question old,
“Shall we build for pride? Or,
Shall brick and mortar hold
worth and love inside?”

A new release shows not only the riches of Moses Asch’s Celtic music recordings but some of the classics from the genre. Courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways

Beyond “Danny Boy” Celtic music, says Richard Carlin, a record producer who has long specialized in the genre, “runs far, far deeper than something like Riverdance.” For the just-released Classic Celtic Music, he combed the Smithsonian Folkways vaults for 23 choice tracks, recorded between 1945 and 1986, that would brighten anybody’s St. Patrick’s Day: a jig by fiddler Michael Gorman and banjoist Margaret Barry, an air with Billy Pigg on Northumbrian smallpipes, a song by the Irish vocalist Sorcha Ní Ghuairim in the lilting, haunting style known as sean-nós. Dancing encouraged but not required.

Listen:

D-tigeas Ó Deabhasa (Children’s Game Song) by Sorcha Ní Ghuairim

Carlin, who play the concertina, has been interested in Celtic music for decades, even recording his own album with Folkways in 1977, “In Come A Bumblebee.” Around the Mall spoke with Carlin by telephone.

You’ve worked with Folkways and know its catalog of offerings well?

I worked for Folkways in the mid-70s and did some production of Irish albums for them at that time when it was still an independent company. And then some years later, I wrote a history of the label and in writing that history, thought, you know there are lots of different aspects of the catalog that haven’t been, that aren’t as well known, as explored. And a lot of people weren’t aware that as early as the mid-40s, Moses Asch, the man who owned Folkways, was already recording traditional Irish music. So, that was where the idea came from, to draw on the catalog, to highlight—because there’s over, I don’t know, 2,200 albums that were released during his lifetime and so it’s a massive catalog and everybody knows about Pete Seeger and Lead Belly and what not, but not many people, I think, were aware of some of the other things he did.

Celidh Band from town of Keady, County Armagh. Photo by George Pickow, courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways

What makes Celtic music unique, what defines it?

Celtic music is sort of a catch-all term that really wasn’t used by the musicians themselves even when I played with those musicians. They didn’t call themselves Celtic musicians. That wasn’t even at that time really a genre that people talked about. It started out with the Celtic Twilight School at the turn of the century where there was a revival of all things Irish, Gaelic, people like Yeats and John Millington Synge. It was a literary movement. Then there was the formation of Irish cultural organizations that were formed to promote traditional dance and traditional music. In general, the term is used to refer to traditional musics of the British Isles and the related cultures, there’s Celtic cultures in France, in Canada, in Brittany, in various different areas, but it’s become sort of a catch-all phrase, mostly applied to Irish traditional music or Scottish.

People like to say, “This music has been known for thousands of years, since the dawn of time.” But not so much. Polka for example was an Eastern European tradition that became very popular in the mid-19th century and spread to Ireland, so now it’s considered traditional Irish dance music but it certainly isn’t that old in the grand scheme of things and really was sort of like saying 100 years ago, disco might be considered traditional music, because polka was very much the same way that disco was, a European, fad music.

How did it change when it came to America?

When musicians play the music they like—and again this is often to the embarrassment of folklorists—you know, you go to record a traditional ballad singer, and they’ll start singing Elvis Presley, and in the past, you wouldn’t put that on the record. You’d only put on the record, the traditional ballads they sang, which was, in a way, somewhat misrepresentative, but it’s because we were only interested in hearing the “true” folk music. These musicians played the music they like and therefore, like any immigrant group, when the Irish came to America they were very influenced. The Irish dance bands of the 20s and 30s played for dancing, so they not only played Irish dance music, they played, popular swing music, and they incorporated similar instruments like saxophones.

How did you get interested in the type of music, I know when you went to Oberlin College you found a thriving Irish music scene in Cleveland, what drew you in?

I was playing the music myself and just wanted to play music and had no idea that there was this large traditional community there and so it really just started out as myself and a few friends of mine visiting with these others musicians in the basements of their homes, which is mostly where they played and it was just out of a love of playing the music and wanting to play more and that kind of thing than the idea that, oh, I’m going to record an album or anything like that.

Astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss is in the house on Monday to explain why our understanding of physics in the past 50 years has been based on a particle whose existence we couldn’t prove. Photo by Crouchy69, courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons.

Monday, January 14: The Higgs Boson Particle: Why It Matters

The Higgs Boson is a particle so small that it took scientists 50 years to find it. Headlines exploded last year when the so-called “God particle” was detected, but can something so small really be so important? Renowned theoretical astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss spends the evening explaining why without this elusive mini-particle, our entire understanding of physics would unravel. Bring along or pick up a copy of Krauss’s latest book, A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing, if you would like an autograph. $28-$40 (student discounts available), tickets here. 6:45 p.m. to 8:45 p.m. Natural History Museum.

*BONUS*: Grammy-winning Smithsonian Folkways artists Los Texmaniacs are in town tonight for the first time since the release of their latest album, Texas Towns & Tex-Mex Sounds. The Texan quartet plays jams rooted in conjunto polka music (with instruments like the 12-string banjo sexto and the button accordion), but also draws from classic rock, blues and Chicano dance sounds. Polka the night away! $15, tickets here. 7:30 p.m. The Hamilton.

Tuesday, January 15: See the President up “Close”

Here’s your chance to get up close and personal with Barack Obama. Sure, the president himself is busy preparing for his second inauguration, but a huge portrait of him by famed artist Chuck Close is on display today in the National Portrait Gallery. Stop by to congratulate Mr. President on his reelection or to air your political grievances to him — just be sure not to disturb the other visitors. (Close, by the way, also has captured Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, and was appointed in 2010 to the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.) Free. On display until March 2013 on the second floor of the South Rotunda at the National Portrait Gallery.

Wednesday, January 16: Between the Folds

There is a lot more to origami than making cute cranes. The 17th century Japanese art of paper folding is still seriously practiced today by artists who devote their entire lives to learning its intricate and often deeply mathematical techniques. Between the Folds, a documentary, profiles a group of artists and scientists who hope to push the art to its next level. One of the group’s artists, Erik Demaine, will present the film, as well as answer questions and demonstrate folds. Free. Noon. Renwick Gallery.

Thursday, January 17: Peacock Room Shutters Open

Want a taste of luxury? The Freer Gallery’s Peacock Room, once an opulent British dining room, now hosts more than 250 ceramics from Egypt, Iran, Japan, China and Korea that museum founder Charles Lang Freer collected on his travels. At noon, the museum opens the room’s shutters to bathe the collection in sunlight, and the room glows blue, green and gold. The shimmering colors won’t fade any time soon, either; special filtering film on the room’s windows prevents the sun’s effects on the ceramics. Free. Noon to 5:30 p.m. Freer Gallery.

Also check out our specially created Visitors Guide App. Get the most out of your trip to Washington, D.C. and the National Mall with this selection of custom-built tours, based on your available time and passions. From the editors of Smithsonian magazine, the app is also packed with handy navigational tools, maps, museum floor plans and museum information including ‘Greatest Hits’ for each Smithsonian museum.

Elizabeth Mitchell‘s ode to Woody Guthrie, Little Seed, received a Grammy nomination for Best Children’s Album. Covering some of her favorite Guthrie classics, Mitchell released her album in June 2012 and quickly followed up with another, Blue Clouds. Playing with her husband Daniel Littleton and 11-year-old daughter Storey, Mitchell returned to her roots as co-founder of, along with her husband, the indie-rock band Ida by covering songs by greats like David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix and Van Morrison. We talked with Mitchell back in August about how her band is evolving and why she likes making music all ages can appreciate.

Listen to tracks from Blue Clouds here.

What music do you listen to in your home?

My husband and I are voracious music listeners, we’re listening all the time. Increasingly, in the last few years since Storey came along, we listen to everything differently. Now everything is sort of filtered through this different lens of parenthood and family and so all these unexpected threads can emerge. A song like “Kooks” is obviously directly a song about parenthood which is so thrilling to hear someone like David Bowie’s take on things. A song like “May This Be Love” [by Jimi Hendrix] is just such a comforting song. It really has a beautiful, really reassuring narrative which is a beautiful thing to impart to a child. You might not be thinking that way when you first hear the song but then when you’re thinking of it as a parent, everything takes on a whole new meaning and that’s what draws us to a song.

And your daughter not only consumes this music, she helps make it, too?

She’s been on all our Folkways records but now she’s really stepping up, she’s singing harmony with us which is really exciting…She’s become more of an instrumentalist in the band, which is great because she’s 11 now and she can play instruments and it’s really wonderful to let her skill level increase and bring that role to bear. Although it’s funny, so many kids come to the show expecting her to be three years old, she’s frozen in time, which in a way she is for me too. Sometimes I look at her and I cant believe the little preteen I’ve got standing next to me. We share shoes now, it’s dizzying.

How is Blue Cloud different for you?

I think it’s our most exuberant record. There’s a real wide range of different sounds on this record, more so than before. It’s really diverse, eclectic and adventurous. It just feels good. . .with each record that we make as she grows we continue to grow and to step out into the world more.

Do you consider your albums to be only for  children?

They are really for everyone, but they are for children first. When we make a record we want everyone to enjoy that. . .I think music like that can speak to children, I don’t think you need to change it really at all. . .That’s what’s important about folk music, it’s this thread through time, it’s for everyone, it’s not changed at all for children.”

Guest blogger and Portrait Gallery historian Amy Henderson

This post is part of our ongoing series in which ATM invites guest bloggers from among the Smithsonian Institution’s scientists, curators, researchers and historians to write for us. The National Portrait Gallery’s cultural historian Amy Henderson last wrote about the real-life stories of American socialites who married into British nobility.

Recently, I gave a talk called “Going Gaga: Media and the Rise of Celebrity Culture,” in which I began with George Washington and ended with Lady Gaga. Outrageous? Yes, but early American culture embraced role models who evoked “character,” while later the emergence of a mass media culture shifted our focus to “personality.”

When I give talks like this, people often ask me what characterizes a role model in today’s celebrity culture? Not the notorious figures of tabloid headlines, but iconic figures people want to emulate and who somehow encapsulate “stardom”—movie stars like Gable or Hepburn, dancers like Baryshnikov, rockers like Springsteen. It is a difficult thing to explain, except that we know it when we see it. Last week, for example, I saw the New York City Ballet dance a Gershwin medley with choreography by George Balanchine, and I was transported. Gershwin’s wonderful music and Balanchine’s magical movements transmitted sheer, heart-thumping genius. No other music, nor any other choreography, could have combined to create this unique sense of something extraordinary.

Similarly, when I was growing up my parents played a lot of Louis Armstrong LPs, and even as a child, I understood that Armstrong was “special.” I certainly didn’t know about his role as a pioneering jazz figure then, but I knew I liked the sound of the ebullient personality that came through in his gravelly voice and, of course, in his astonishing trumpet-playing. They would have been overjoyed at the news of a fresh Armstrong recording being discovered and released this spring!

On January 29, 1971, Louis Armstrong played his trumpet in public for what is believed to be his last recorded performance. The occasion was the inauguration of a fellow-Louisianan, Vernon Louviere, as president of the National Press Club. Keeping with a Louisiana theme, Louviere was sworn in holding a bottle of Tabasco sauce instead of a Bible, and the dinner in the Ballroom featured such New Orleans specialties (and Armstrong favorites) as red beans and rice, and seafood gumbo. The evening’s emcee was the witty British television journalist David Frost, newly-knighted by the Queen and popular on both sides of the Atlantic for his high-on-the-radar interview programs.

Louis Armstrong embodied stardom in jazz. Photo courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery; gift of Mr. and Mrs. Bob Willoughby © Bob Willoughby

Armstrong’s performance at the black-tie gala was recorded on a limited edition LP of 300 copies. The original liner notes by Ralph de Toledano explained that the 69-year-old jazz legend had been in such poor health that his doctors warned him not to play for more than ten minutes, but the crowd’s warmth and cheers stretched his performance to half an hour. De Toledano reported, “He played, he sang, he scatted.” Joined by longtime band-mates Tyree Glenn and Tommy Gwaltney, he showed no frailty as he rollicked through such favorites as “Rockin’ Chair,” “Hello, Dolly,” “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” “Mack the Knife,” and a never before recorded “Boy from New Orleans,” a musical autobiography that he sang to the tune of “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Today, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings made this historic performance widely available. Listen to his rendition of “Hello Dolly” here.

Released as part of the Smithsonian’s 11th annual celebration of Jazz Appreciation Month, “Satchmo at the National Press Club: Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours” is the culmination of a multi-year collaboration involving the Press Club, Folkways, and the Louis Armstrong Foundation. Press Club executive director William McCarren explained that although his organization is known worldwide for news and history, it is also “a venue for music and the arts and a forum for entertainers of all kinds.”  That “one of the world’s great entertainers found his way to our stage. . . is a pleasure to tell,” and the Club was happy to help make this “great gift to the world” available to all.

The album’s subtitle refers to how Armstrong often signed his letters—“Red Beans and Rice-ly Yours.” Nearly three dozen of his favorite Louisiana recipes are included in the recording’s liner notes, as they were in the original pressing. Now, you too can feast on such Armstrong favorites as shrimp mousse, Louisiana caviar, or Walter McIlhenny’s “Frogs a la Creole.”  Where else will you find Armstrong’s version of “Pat O’Brien’s Hurricane Punch” or his real-deal “Sazerac Cocktail”?

Armstrong died five months after his Press Club appearance. This newly-released 58-minute recording includes not only his historic performance, but tracks from a tribute concert that Tyree Glenn and his band performed at the Press Club shortly after Armstrong’s death, featuring such classics as “Mood Indigo” and “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.”

The recording will be released on CD and digital download via Folkways as well as through such retailers as iTunes and Amazon.  According to D.A. Sonneborn Armstrong, the associate director of Folkways, the recording has “a wonderful live quality. Armstrong was in fine form that evening. We all wish we could’ve been there, and now we can!”