Tomb of the Unknown Artist

There are around 3000 tracks on Spotify attributed to "Unspecified," a placeholder for when the artist is unknown. This blog explores the world folk and documentary audio contained therein.

[worldfolk]

The single most popular "Unspecified" track on Spotify is "Ninna Ninna - Lullaby" with 330k plays, due to being featured at the end of the Soprano's third to last episode, "The Second Coming."

The scene has Tony visiting his son in the psyche ward after a suicide attempt. The song is about the son of a bandit being better off dead rather than follow in his father's footsteps, though you wouldn't know it if you didn't speak Italian. Language barrier aside, the tones sync up perfectly. That's the magic of folk, what's old is new, and what's new is old.

This song, and most Unspecified tracks, come from Folkways Records, owned by the Smithsonian Institution. Wonderfully, they have all the liner notes online. In the age of mysterious songs, where media is aplenty but metadata is scarce or scrambled, every bit of context is golden.

[worldfolk]

Possibly the greatest song about the paying of taxes ever made

[worldfolk]

Re-upping this since I'm working on taxes today.

[worldfolk]

This 20 minute beast of a track is one of those bits of audio that's so intense and striking that I can't tell whether or not I've heard it before. I remember the first time I heard Gwen Stefani's Sweet Escape, I was convinced Akon's "wee-oohs" were a sample from some 60s Beach Boys-type rock group. Similarly, this Indonesian Monkey Chant feels straight out of a 2000s party anthem, you can almost hear Pitbull yelling "Mr. Worldwide!" Sometimes a song just hits you square on and blows past quaint notions like memory, history, time, space.

Listening to this in the car, my daughter asked what instrument they were using. It's vocals! The alpha and omega of instruments.

[zef-zef]

Mbuti Pygmies Of The Ituri Rainforest - Bachelor duet with Lukembi Mbuti Pygmies Of The Ituri Rainforest - Pygmy Dance In Bantu Village from Mbuti Pygmies Of The Rainforest (Folkways, 1958)(Ethnic Folkways Library / Folkways FE 4457) Recorded By Colin Turnbull And Francis S. Chapman

also Mbuti Pygmies Of The Rainforest (Smithsonian Folkways, 1992)

****************************************************************************************

Mbuti Pygmies of the Ituri Rainforest captures the variety and tonal quality of the solo and choral traditions present in Mbuti vocal music.  Songs are primarily concerned with Mbuti’s nomadic life and the forest, from which their lives and those of the animal kingdom are sustained.

[worldfolk]

"Bachelor Duet with Lukembi" is a great track, filled with Migos-like overlapping vocals and of course the funky melodic chiming.

For their recent promo single, Avalanche, Migos tried out a 50s throwback style which was, to be honest, pretty tired. Instead of retreading Americana for the umpteenth time, artists oughta take a trip to the rainforest. I can see it now, "Migos and the Mbuti Pygmies," winning Oscars for Best Documentary and Best Original Song.

[worldfolk]

Of all the world folk songs I've listened to, this is the one that feels the closest to pop music. You'd need some percussion, bass, and lyrics, but as a looping chorus it's exactly the kind of thing you might hear turning on the radio. It's right there in the title, this is a wedding playlist banger, circa 1961 in the Ituri rainforest.

[worldfolk]

Killer Mike feat. T.I.'s 'Ready Set Go' - Discover the Sample Source

"Ready Set Go" by Killer Mike feat. T.I. contains a sample of another track. Listen to both tracks on WhoSampled, the ultimate database of s

Here's a great example of remixing these old folk tunes, where a Lithuanian lullaby (!!!) holds its own against Killer Mike's beat slaughtering tendencies. You can just imagine producer No I.D., hanging out with Kanye West (as former president of West's G.O.O.D. Music), listening to dusty old Smithsonian Folkways records.

[worldfolk]

It's a good time to listen to Ukrainian folk music! Not because of world events, it's just never not a good time to listen to Ukrainian folk music. Maybe also because of world events.

There's so many wonderful things about this song. The call and response, the fellow hitting the high notes, the name, "One Half of the Garden Blossoms," what does it mean? The music of Ukraine has survived many an invasion. An occupation is a kind of audience itself, you may think you're there to assert your ways, but no, the culture asserts itself right back. Even if Putin has his way, the invading Russians will end up more Ukrainian than the Ukrainians will end up Russian.

[worldfolk]

This is one of the most popular songs attributed to "Unspecified," with a "massive" 40,000 plays. Liner notes:

SIDE III, BAND 2 : ARIA NOVA ("Aria of the Bride"). Recorded in the region of Nicastro, Calabria. Two singers from Nicastro, with organetto accompaniment. An old love song, the words of which appear to be a mixture of old Greek, Italian, and some Turkish.

At first I thought this was yodeling in the Alps, but nope, it's from southern Italy.

What stands out to me is how, when a singer really hits a note and is belting it out, the sound distorts around it, giving it this warm glow. My brother (who has some sound engineer experience) says they're hitting the limits of the recording equipment's range, so the sound becomes literally compressed.

The equipment wasn't just bad because this was recorded decades ago, but also this is an academic project with a limited budget, and it was more important to be mobile than have high fidelity, since they had to haul it out to various and sundry country sides. But it works to its advantage! Long live lo fi.

[worldfolk]

What makes this so good and original, besides the intense vocals and clapping, is the idea of an entire village entertaining themselves by coming together and bursting into song every day, the way the rest of us turn on the TV We look to musical prodigies, but often talent flows from community, rather than vice versa A lot of these African folk recordings show how they got musical loops down to a science, ages before recording tech and equipment caught up

[worldfolk]

I like listening to songs in languages I don't understand, partly for the mystery. This song, which sounds great, also sounded incredibly sad, and it was a whole thing to track down a translation.

It's a story of border crossings, missing documents, incarceration, broken families. Timeless, maybe.

[worldfolk]

Listening to world folk you realize how much modern pop is just rediscovering little tricks and devices that have been used for hundreds (thousands?) of years. There's isn't much distance between the "hey!" chant in this track and the one that's been a staple of trap hits for the last decade.

[worldfolk]

This track begins with a howitzer artillery cannon firing that, try as I might, I can only hear as the filthiest bass drop ever recorded

[worldfolk]

This should be played on a constant loop at every graveyard

[jamcatula]

Zafer Dilek - Kolbasti Oyun Havasi

[worldfolk]

Possibly the greatest song about the paying of taxes ever made