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31-545: The Folkways Records & Service Co. , and its music publishing subsidiary Folkways Music Publishers, Inc. , were founded by Moses Asch and Marian Distler in 1948 in New York City . Harold Courlander was editor of the Folkways Ethnic Library at the time and is credited with coming up with the name "Folkways" for the label. Asch sought to record and document sounds and music from everywhere in

62-478: A Lloydminster station). As of February 29, 1996, CKUA became the first radio station in Canada to stream their broadcast online, and now has upgraded the service to carry an unlimited number of streams. The station currently has more than 250,000 weekly listeners. Because of CKUA's extensive coverage, the station was one of only a handful of broadcasters (another being CTV Two Alberta , formerly Access) to carry

93-664: A number of radio series based on Folkways collections. "The Folkways Collection" and "Sounds to Grow On" are co-produced with CKUA radio; "Tapestry of the Times" was co-produced by WYPR radio; and "Sound Sessions" was produced by the Smithsonian and broadcast on WAMU radio. "Sounds to Grow On" is hosted by Michael Asch, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Alberta and the son of Moses Asch. Moses Asch Moses Asch (December 2, 1905 – October 19, 1986)

124-582: A research center and sponsoring student research scholarships and an annual concert series. Since acquiring Folkways, the Smithsonian has expanded Asch's collection by adding several other record labels, including Cook , Monitor , Fast Folk , Dyer-Bennet , and Paredon Records . They have released over 300 new recordings. Smithsonian Folkways states that their mission "is the legacy of Moses Asch, who founded Folkways Records in 1948 to document 'people's music.'" They "are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through

155-622: A significant recording relationship with James P. Johnson , described as the Father of Stride Piano. Johnson made a significant series of recordings for several labels controlled by Asch, including Asch, Stinson, Disc, and Folkways. On the Stinson album, New York Jazz, Johnson recorded five numbers which he stated could be heard in New York in the 1910s, in addition to the first recorded piano solo of Scott Joplin 's, Euphonic Sounds. This established

186-741: The Smithsonian Institution , and Asch stipulated in his will that no titles were to be deleted, and that unreleased master tapes in the Folkways archive should be explored. The Smithsonian acquisition of the Folkways archive was, in part, funded by the release of the album A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly , which featured contributions by Pete Seeger , Bob Dylan , Bruce Springsteen , U2 and other artists. Folk Singer Dave Van Ronk said: "Moe Asch could be an exasperating man, and he would never pay you ten cents if he could get away with five, but he really loved

217-731: The accompanying album to The Country Blues by Samuel Charters . Folkways was one of the earliest companies to release albums of world music , including the Music of the World's Peoples collection edited by Henry Cowell . It also released many spoken word albums, and other unusual repertoire. The albums came with a pull-out leaflet containing extensive liner notes . The Smithsonian Institution Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage in Washington, D.C. acquired Asch's Folkways recordings and business files after his death in 1986. This acquisition

248-450: The 1930s an early radio drama series, CKUA Players , was produced out of the station and broadcast throughout Western Canada by a network of stations. CKUA schedules different programs throughout the week and thus can offer many different genres including blues , bluegrass , R&B , Celtic , country , classical , jazz , reggae , folk , hip hop , dance , funk , rock , roots, and world . CKUA's music library boasts one of

279-480: The 1940s, including a rare pre- Holocaust liturgy from Moshe Koussevitzky . In 1952, filmmaker and ethnomusicologist Harry Smith compiled for Asch the Anthology of American Folk Music , a collection of indigenous southern and mid-western US folk songs, which was the first record to conscientiously not differentiate between black and white folk singers upon Smith's request. Smith said of Asch in an interview on

310-579: The Alberta Emergency Public Warning System . The provincial government-funded programme provided the station with 12% of its annual income until the contract was lost to an Ottawa firm, Black Coral Inc., in January 2010. CKUA announced plans to shut down its legacy 580 AM signal, the longest continuously-used AM frequency in Canada, in the spring of 2013. It would have needed to invest as much as $ 5 million to upgrade

341-464: The Folkways recordings was also donated to the University of Alberta where Michael Asch, Moses Asch's son, was an anthropology professor. FolkwaysAlive , a joint initiative between the university and the Smithsonian founded in 2004 by Regula Qureshi and Michael Frishkopf, with support from VP Research Gary Kachanoski, is involved in digitization and archiving of the collection as well as maintaining

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372-717: The LPs Religious Folk Music of India , Sounds and Dances of Haiti , Folk Music of Ethiopia , The Old Folksongs of Vermont , and The Folk Music of France . Asch also issued Negro slave spirituals, such as the Negro Folk Music of Alabama , originally collected in 1952 by Harold Courlander who was an associate of Asch, and Negro Folk Songs redone by the Folk Masters, an African American band in 1952, as well Mormon Folk Songs and Yiddish, Ladino, and Hebrew-Aramaic, Cantorial synagogue music from

403-679: The WBAI radio's "The Sing Out! Radio Show", and repeated the story in an interview with John Cohen in Sing Out! magazine, that he had shipped the most precious records in his collection from San Francisco to Asch in New York. Asch initially refused to pay the COD charges for the package. Only after days of cajoling, did Asch pay the COD charges. As it turned out, the Anthology became "the most important collection of its type", according to Asch. Asch had

434-593: The campus of the University of Alberta in Edmonton (hence the UA of the call letters), it was the first public broadcaster in Canada when it began broadcasting in 1927. It now broadcasts from studios in downtown Edmonton , and as of fall 2016 has added a studio in Calgary 's National Music Centre . CKUA's primary station is CKUA-FM , located on 94.9 FM in Edmonton, and the station operates fifteen rebroadcasters to serve

465-427: The documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound", and that "musical and cultural diversity contributes to the vitality and quality of life throughout the world." By making these recordings available, they intend to "strengthen people's engagement with their own cultural heritage and to enhance their awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of others." Smithsonian Folkways has produced or co-produced

496-567: The largest and most diverse music collections in Canada, with more than 250,000 CDs and LPs , including 10,000 78 rpm records, as well as a few aluminium transcription discs , 45s , and other various media formats. CKUA was headquartered in the Alberta Block building on Jasper Avenue in Edmonton starting in 1955. In October 2012, CKUA moved into its current location in the Alberta Hotel building, with its first broadcast from

527-410: The link between the stride piano of Johnson, and the ragtime of Joplin, from which stride is descended. One principle behind Asch's direction of the Folkways label was that he never deleted a single title from the Folkways catalogue. Asch said, "Just because the letter J is less popular than the letter S, you don't take it out of the dictionary." After his death, the Folkways recordings were acquired by

558-610: The music." Neil Alan Marks wrote in The New York Times in 1980: "Folkways Records was for folklorists and musicians the talmudic source for much primary material. Its founder, Moses Asch, may have more to do with the preservation of folk music than any single person in this country." Anthropologist Michael Asch is his son. CKUA Radio Network CKUA Radio is a Canadian donor-funded community radio station based in Edmonton , Alberta . Originally located on

589-623: The new location on October 15, 2012. The station's original transmitter was located at 580 kHz in Edmonton. It operated at 10,000 watts. Due to its location near the bottom of the AM dial, as well as its transmitter power, it was powerful enough to cover nearly all of Alberta's densely populated area. It added an FM simulcast on June 28, 1948. Starting in the 1970s, CKUA built a network of 16 FM repeaters across Alberta. CKUA also broadcasts in western Canada on select cable and satellite providers (such as SaskTel , who carries CKUA across Saskatchewan as

620-425: The remainder of the province. As of February 28, 2021, CKUA is the 13th-most-listened-to radio station in the Edmonton market according to a PPM data report released by Numeris . CKUA was founded on November 21, 1927 through a provincial grant which allowed the University of Alberta's Extension Department to purchase the licence of CFCK, which had been on the air since 1922, sharing a frequency with CJCA . CKUA

651-464: The station in 1974. In 1994, Access sold the CKUA network to the non-profit CKUA Radio Foundation for $ 10. The same year the station won an Alberta Recording Industry Award of Excellence. On March 20, 1997, the station went off the air for five weeks due to political squabbles, poor financial management, and attempts at privatization. The station restarted broadcasting on April 25, 1997, after control

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682-436: The vacancy and devaluation of the Alberta Hotel building, which it owns and rents out, for its financial struggles. The station's practice of supporting local, independent, and non-commercial artists has helped launch the careers of musicians such as k.d. lang , Jann Arden , and Bruce Cockburn . In addition, CKUA has contributed to the careers of Arthur Hiller , Robert Goulet , and Tommy Banks , among others. Throughout

713-640: The war, Asch studied electronics at a technical Hochschule in Koblenz , Germany. He returned to New York to commence work as an audio engineer. In 1938, his father's employer, The Jewish Daily Forward , commissioned the firm where Asch worked to build a transmitter for its Yiddish-language radio station, WEVD . Asch thereafter explored the market for recorded Yiddish music, both sacred and secular. In 1940, Asch established Asch Recordings, and concentrated on publishing and selling phonograph records. Asch overextended his operations and went bankrupt in 1948. Asch

744-488: The world. From 1948 until Asch's death in 1986, Folkways Records released 2,168 albums. In December 1950, Folkways Music Publishers, Inc. was acquired by Howard S. Richmond . In 1964, Asch helped MGM Records start Verve Folkways Records which evolved in 1967 into Verve Forecast Records . The Folkways catalog includes traditional and contemporary music from around the world as well as poetry, spoken word, language instruction, and field recordings of people and nature. Folkways

775-648: Was able to resurrect his recording career in 1948 by having his secretary, Marian Distler, initiate a new record company, Folkways Records, in her name. Harold Courlander worked for Asch as editor at the time and is credited with coming up with the name "Folkways" for the label. Although in theory a "consultant" to Folkways in its early years, Asch ran the company from its formation until his death. He recorded and published LP records by such famous folk and blues singers as Woody Guthrie , Lead Belly , Pete Seeger , Cisco Houston , and Ella Jenkins . Asch published American, African, Asian and European folk music, such as

806-538: Was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution , and released as Smithsonian Folkways Records . Moses Asch was born in Warsaw , Poland, the son of Yiddish language novelist and dramatist Sholem Asch , and the younger brother of novelist Nathan Asch . In 1912, the Asch family left Poland, on account of antisemitism , and settled in a suburb of Paris. In 1915, as war engulfed France, the family emigrated to New York. After

837-467: Was also the first radio station to offer educational radio programming, including music concerts, poetry readings, and university lectures. From 1930 to 1931 the station was an affiliate of the CNR Radio network. From 1945 to 1974 CKUA was operated by Alberta Government Telephones . The crown corporation , Alberta Educational Communications Corporation (later known as Access), assumed ownership of

868-696: Was an American recording engineer and record executive. He founded Asch Records, which then changed its name to Folkways Records when the label transitioned from 78 RPM recordings to LP records . Asch ran the Folkways label from 1948 until his death in 1986. Folkways was very influential in bringing folk music into the American cultural mainstream. Some of America's greatest folk songs were originally recorded for Asch, including " This Land Is Your Land " by Woody Guthrie and " Goodnight Irene " by Lead Belly . Asch sold many commercial recordings to Verve Records ; after his death, Asch's archive of ethnic recordings

899-492: Was an early supporter of Woody Guthrie , Pete Seeger , and Lead Belly , who formed the center of the American folk music revival . Folkways influenced a generation of folk singers by releasing old-time music from the 1920s and 1930s, such as Dock Boggs , Clarence Ashley , and contemporary performers like the New Lost City Ramblers . The Anthology of American Folk Music appeared on Folkways, as did

930-457: Was given to the public from directors appointed by the provincial government. As of 2005, more than two-thirds of the station's funding came from its listeners in the form of donations. In April 2024, CKUA announced that it needed to raise $ 3 million in donations by September 30, 2024, to avoid closure. Despite rising audience numbers and steady revenue, the station cited factors including the recent inflation surge , limited government funding, and

961-655: Was initiated by Ralph Rinzler of the Smithsonian before Asch's death and completed by the Asch Family to ensure that the sounds and artists would be preserved for future generations. As a result, it was agreed to continue Asch's policy that all of the 2,168 titles would stay in print indefinitely regardless of market sales. The Smithsonian Folkways website uses the internet to make the recordings available as streaming samples, DRM -free digital downloads in MP3 and lossless FLAC format, and on CDs via mail order. A complete set of

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