Performing Arts
Elizabeth Mitchell Teaches the Kids to Sing
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 h...
October 05, 2010 |
By Jeff Campagna
Dinosaur Drive-In: When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth
If paleontologists have said it once, they have said it a hundred times: non-avian dinosaurs and humans never coexisted. Most people who insist otherwise are creationist cranks who believe that evidence of a living dinosaur would somehow undermine evolutionary theory, but I understand that Hollywoo...
September 21, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Debating on Television: Then and Now
Kennedy and Nixon squared off in the first televised presidential debate 50 years ago and politics have never been the same
September 14, 2010 |
By W. Barksdale Maynard
"The Rivals" Premieres on the Smithsonian Channel
Kids are back to school. Cravings for homemade chili and freshly picked apples kick in. And across the country, football season officially begins. (If you haven't seen high school and college players, strengthened by arduous two-a-days, suiting up for their season openers, you've surely witnessed o...
September 10, 2010 |
By Megan Gambino
The Smithsonian's Ambassador of Jazz
Music curator John Edward Hasse travels the globe teaching the genre that revolutionized American music
September 2010 |
By Erica R. Hendry
Dinosaur Drive-In: The Crater Lake Monster
Ah, The Crater Lake Monster, a film that repeatedly made me wonder, "why the heck am I still watching this movie?"Like the last Dinosaur Drive-In film featured here, Crater Lake Monster contains no actual dinosaurs (no matter how many times the scientists in the film call it one). Instead our mons...
August 25, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Wednesday Roundup: Spam, Apps and Anthropologists
The Secret Life of Anthropologists—Along with the entomologists, oceanographers, biologists, physicists and other scientists in the Natural History Museum are the anthropologists, who work furiously to research, curate and put order to the vast collections at the Smithsonian museums. Right now...
August 18, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
Rio’s Music is Alive and Well
Brazil’s music scene may be known for beats such as bossa nova, but newer sounds are making waves on the streets of Rio
August 18, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
Summertime for George Gershwin
Porgy and Bess debuted 75 years ago this fall, but a visit to South Carolina the year before gave life to Gershwin's masterpiece.
August 09, 2010 |
By David Zax
Wednesday Roundup-Shark Week, More Facial Hair and a Show in the Sky
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 Folkway...
August 04, 2010 |
By Jess Righthand
Get a Lift From Folkways' Songs About Elevators
Being stuck in an elevator is never fun, but by and large when riding in one that's the biggest inconvenience you can expect.However, there was a time when these contraptions lacked the safety features we take for granted and were much deadlier. And let's face it, the notion of meeting your mortal ...
August 03, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Dinosaur Drive-In: Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds
When you get right down to it, most dinosaur movies are missing something. "Good special effects" might be one answer, and "a plot" is an even better one, but if "a trippy jazz-disco musical score" was your reply, then 1977's Japanese monster flick Legend of Dinosaurs and Monster Birds may be just ...
August 03, 2010 |
By Brian Switek
Tod Machover on Composing Music by Computer
The inventor and MIT professor talks about where music and technology will intersect over the course of the next 40 years
August 2010 |
By Erica R. Hendry
James Cameron on the Future of Cinema
The director of Avatar and Terminator talks about future sequels, 3-D television and Hollywood in 2050
August 2010 |
By Lorenza Muñoz
Laurie Anderson on the Sounds of the Future
The multi-faceted artist sees a future in which artists change our auditory experiences
August 2010 |
By Jamie Katz
Spice Up Your Home Movies with Smithsonian Folkways!
If you couldn't tell from the heat (and the accompanying humidity), we're smack in the middle of summer, which means it's prime time for people to go on vacation. And who doesn't want to take along the video camera and capture those vacation memories for posterity? Given the advent of home video ed...
July 20, 2010 |
By Jesse Rhodes
Orphan Films - Recapturing Lost Snippets of History
Buffs gather from around the world to watch newly uncovered films by the likes of Orson Welles, Henri Cartier-Bresson and others
July 15, 2010 |
By Daniel Eagan
Live Aid: 25 Years Later
Twenty-five years ago today, on July 13, 1985, more than 170,000 music fans descended on Wembley Stadium in the UK, and the John F. Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, PA., to experience Live Aid - a 16 hour-long, multi-venue concert, organized to raise money for relief of the 1984-1985 famine in Ethi...
July 13, 2010 |
By Katherine Purvis
Norman Rockwell’s Storytelling Lessons
George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg found inspiration for their films in the work of one of America’s most cherished illustrators
July 07, 2010 |
By Owen Edwards
2,168 Albums Later: The Legacy of Moses Asch
When Moses Asch (1905-1986) founded a tiny record label called Folkways with Marian Distler (1919-1964) in 1948, he wanted to be a resource for musicians to document the "entire world of sound."And by that, he really did mean the entire world. Between the label's founding and Asch's death in 1986,...
July 03, 2010 |
By Erica R. Hendry
