The Folkways Collection, Episode 5

Beyond a small exception (one section of this episode), I felt that episodes 4 and 5 were in a lot of ways presenting the same ideas. While the anthology may have (and was) been a very significant collection of music done by a very unique and interesting person in Harry Smith, it was kind of this same concept over and over again for two hours.

One passage in particular that I really liked was the interview with the member of the Grateful Dead (not the later part about Garcia) as he explained the impact that Smith's Anthology had on his own music. "This is where we all started," he recalled. "Then we went beyond that music," he said, giving a very real connection between the anthology (where the musicians and genres seem far away) and music as "we" know it.

Another fact that I found interesting was Smith's undying commitment to bring the music to the masses, especially the fact that the anthology was put together without permission, technically making the first edition a bootleg........