`The Harry Smith' Of Left Vinyl Records--Conclusion

An interview with `An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels' Author Josh MacPhee

In a recent email interview for Protest Folk Magazine readers, New York City-based designer, artist and archivist Josh MacPhee responded to some questions related to the third edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, that he authored. MacPhee is also a founding member of both the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative and Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements.

Why do you think most of the vinyl records produced by the labels you describe in your encyclopedia have never received much airplay on U.S. radio stations, either historically or currently?

JOSH MACPHEE: First, a significant portion of the labels in the book released music in languages other than English, which almost immediately means no radio play outside of a small number of small stations like college and community radio.

Second, many of the records were released for specific political purposes, and don't make a lot of sense outside of their original context. For instance, a 7" released by the Italian Communist Party to get a specific politician elected in 1969 is not going to make much sense in the U.S. at that time, never mind twenty years later. Often the goal is not so much "timeless good music" but sounds that mobilize specific people in specific places during specific periods of time.

And finally, a large portion of music that is politically charged also takes challenging sonic qualities. A huge amount of jazz music in the 1960s and 70s by players like Archie Shepp, Max Roach, and dozens and dozens more was never played on the radio, even though it was released by major corporate labels.

One thing that's interesting about the third edition of your encyclopedia is that you chose to, as you write, be "ecumenical" and include labels that were self-defined as either anarchists, socialists, communists and anti-imperialist revolutionary left nationalists--rather than just describing labels that only self-defined themselves as anarchists, for example. Why did you decide to be so "ecumenical"?

JOSH MACPHEE: I'm interested in how music is used and distributed through social movements, and very few movements have a unified ideological position. This is part of why I wanted to focus on the apparatus around music, rather than its sonic qualities.

While many musicians are highly politicized, few are political organizers, so often it is the structure around them that provides political context as much as the music itself. Hugh Masekela, the South African trumpet player, was a huge advocate for the African National Congress, but I have no doubt that his music was popular with supporters of other factions of the anti-apartheid movement, and likely even with white South Africans who supported apartheid.

Why did you decide to focus on smaller, independent labels (like Paredon, etc.) and not include major corporate labels in your encyclopedia?

JOSH MACPHEE: As said above, the structure around the music is as interesting to me as the music itself, and I was really interested in how large groups of mobilized people—movements—were engaging with, producing, and distributing vinyl records.

While there is no question that Bob Dylan's records were very important to many politicized people in the U.S. and beyond, it would be a stretch to say they were organizing tools. This is in clear contrast to someone like Victor Jara in Chile, who not only played concerts for Salvador Allende's socialist election campaign, but recorded the election theme song, and worked with a group of like-minded musicians to create the DICAP (Discoteca Del Cantar Popular) record label, which was started by communist youth at the end of the 1960s, and by the fascist coup in 1973, had become one of Chile's most popular labels.

How can U.S. working-class music fans and U.S. university libraries and U.S. public libraries who wish to obtain a copy of the third edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels purchase a copy of your great, groundbreaking reference book? And how can they go about obtaining copies of some of the vinyl records mentioned in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels?

JOSH MACPHEE: The book is available from my publisher Common Notions (https://www.commonnotions.org/encyclopedia-of-political-record-labels), or should be easy for any local bookstore to order. As for the records, that can be a little more challenging.

Political records pressed by U.S. labels like Folkways, Rounder, and Paredon can often be found in used bins in shops across the country, but much of the international stuff is much harder to find. Online, Discogs.com is a great resource, sort of like mixing eBay with Wikipedia, but with only music content. Many international shops and record sellers are on there, and many are more than happy to make deals for clutches of political records that aren't that popular in their shops. While there are some really amazing political gems that are bursting with both musical and contextual richness, there is also plenty of political vinyl that is much more interesting as an object of a moment than as free-standing music. (end of article).

`The Harry Smith' Of Left Vinyl Records—Part 1

An interview with `An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels' Author Josh MacPhee

 In a recent email interview for Protest Folk Magazine readers, New York City-based designer, artist and archivist Josh MacPhee responded to some questions related to the third edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, that he authored. MacPhee is also a founding member of both the Justseeds Artists' Cooperative and Interference Archive, a public collection of cultural materials produced by social movements.

In the handbook that Harry Smith edited, which was included in the Folkways label's 1952-released Anthology of American Folk Music, Harry Smith provided listeners with "information on issues," "notes on recordings" and "discographical references", for each of the 87 folk song tracks he included in his anthology. In what ways do you think An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels might be considered similar to or different from the American Folk Music handbook which was included in Folkways's classic Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music mid-20th-century release?

JOSH MACPHEE: While I think my intentions follow in Smith's footsteps, my process is really different. I rarely focus on individual songs, and instead have used the record label as a way to try to peel back and look at the political context in which music is recorded and released into the world. Through looking at the origins and motivations of specific labels, their catalogs, and also how they operated, we can learn a lot about how music was connected (or not) to social movements and larger events in the world.

In addition, Smith's project was produced at the very advent of the vinyl record, while mine is about the parallel arcs of vinyl production and international political movements through the second half of the twentieth century. The U.S. Civil Rights Movement rises to prominence in the late 1950s just as the vinyl record becomes the dominant form for music distribution—and uses vinyl to great agit prop effect—through the use of recorded music during the anti-apartheid movement in Southern Africa at the close of the century and end of vinyl's dominance.

Prior to Moe Asch's Folkways label producing and releasing its Anthology of American Folk Music records in 1952, Harry Smith apparently had personally collected thousands of 78 rpm recordings before selling around half of them to Moe Asch (for 35 cents per disc) and half of his collection to the NY Public Library (where the records were later apparently stored in the stacks of its Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center, on the Upper West Side). Before writing the third edition of An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, did you collect many of the vinyl records, yourself, of the labels your encyclopedia mentions? And, if so, how were you able to find out about and locate the vinyl records produced by the labels you reference in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels?

JOSH MACPHEE: Absolutely. I spent a number of years collecting political records, and still do so.

Initial forays into record collecting were directed by friends and political acquaintances and happened at local record shops, but quickly jumped to online searches, and the Discogs website in particular. Discogs is an interesting and unique resource, sort like if you bred Wikipedia and eBay, merging the database of the former with the decentralized sales platform of the latter.

Once I started to get a sense of what was out there, I would reach out to record sellers in other parts of the world, let them know I was really interested in political records, and because many of these are not in high demand, they would sell me large collections of them relatively cheaply. At this point, I've amassed over 2,000 explicitly political records, released by about half as many labels and organizations, from at least two dozen countries and every continent (except Antarctica).

Around ten years ago (to obtain some money to purchase a new cheap acoustic guitar), I sold the vinyl albums I had collected from the post-1950's era of U.S. folk music history to some stores that sold used vinyl records to their customers. And, ironically, I found that the used vinyl record store merchants were more interested in purchasing and paying more money for the used vinyl records produced by Paredon and some of the other labels described in your encyclopedia, than they were in purchasing and paying money for the used vinyl records that had originally been purchased by many more music fans after the 1950's. Do you think there's a possibility that some of the vinyl records produced by some of the labels you describe (that received less U.S. distribution network access or corporate radio, foundation-sponsored radio or state-funded radio airplay, generally, in the USA than what the vinyl records produced by the music industry subsidiaries of the U.S. and UK corporate media conglomerates received) are now considered more valuable by collectors these days?

JOSH MACPHEE: "Value" is a strange thing in our society, especially when being defined by collectors. Often the more rare something is, the more valuable it us seen to be, regardless of its actually impact on the world. For instance, early pressings of popular records with misprints on the covers regularly are sold for a lot more than more common versions, even though the music is identical.

Paredon records that were produced in smaller numbers, or for some reason are harder to find, are definitely more expensive than ones that might have been much more popular when they were released. For instance, an album Paredon released by political Thai band Caravan is almost impossible to find and sells for $500-$1000 to U.S. collectors, while records by Bernice Reagon released around the same time sell for $5 or less.

Reagon was a central musical figure in the Civil Rights Movement as a member of the Freedom Singers and went on to form the immensely popular Sweet Honey in the Rock, and undoubtedly made a much more important impact on the U.S. and music more broadly than Caravan--who are great, but pretty marginal outside of Thailand. (end of part 1. To be continued).

Politically Left Vinyl Record Labels Revisited

 

If you lived on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s and wanted to listen to vinyl records that reflected the anti-racist, anti-war, anti-imperialist revolutionary left politics of the 1968 student rebellion on Columbia University's Upper West Side campus (but were not produced by the record company subsidiaries of corporate media conglomerates), you generally could not hear tracks from these vinyl records played on the airwaves of the Big Apple's FM radio stations.

So you had to successfully hunt for such vinyl records, in small vinyl record shops in the Village or around Times Square, in larger stores (like Sam Goody's, in Korvette's vinyl records department or at the Tower Records store on the Upper West Side) or in one of the few leftist party-run bookstores in Manhattan, and purchase them yourself. Or else hope that you could find copies of such vinyl records (at either the Donnell Public Library branch in Midtown Manhattan or in the New York Public Library at Lincoln Center branch on the Upper West Side) to borrow for free--to be able to listen to them.

What Josh MacPhee's ground-breaking, great book, An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, reveals, however, is that only a small percentage of the politically left-motivated vinyl records produced between 1970 and 1990, by record labels that weren't subsidiaries of U.S. corporate media conglomerates and which received little FM radio station airplay, could generally be found in Manhattan record stores, department store record departments and leftist party-run bookstores or on the vinyl record circulation stacks of the Donnell or Lincoln Center public libraries.  

In the third edition of his An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels, which Brooklyn's Common Notions publishing house published in 2019, Josh MacPhee provides readers with one-paragraph capsule histories and the visual label logos of around 795 record labels that attempted to use music as a tool for revolutionary left democratic social change between 1970 and 1990, by producing many vinyl records.

Most fans of protest folk music and Movement-related music of the 1960 to 1990 era of U.S. history (especially Upper West Side residents who may have subscribed to Sing Out! magazine in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s or to the Upper West Side-based Broadside magazine in the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s) would probably be familiar with some of the political record labels that are briefly described in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels. For in this book--which reminded me, somewhat, of the American Folk Music handbook that was contained in Folkways Records's early 1950s Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music vinyl record album set--capsule histories and descriptions of record labels like Folkways, Broadside, Paredon, Topic, Rounder Records, Flying Fish and Blackthorne, for example, are included. 

But most fans of protest folk music and Movement-related music who lived in the USA between 1950 and 1990 would likely not be familiar with most political record labels described in this book or with most of the vinyl records produced by these same political record labels.

Of the around 795 political record labels described in this book, around 365 were North American and European labels that produced and distributed politically left folk music vinyl records. And 320 of the labels that produced politically left-motivated vinyl records between 1970 and 1990 of all types of musical styles, mentioned in this book, were based in either the United States, the UK, Canada or Ireland; while 343 of the labels described were based in Southern Europe, Scandinavia or on the continent in Western Europe.

But, in addition, An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels also contains entries for 59 label which were based in Latin America and the Caribbean, 43 labels which were based in sub-Saharan Africa, 15 labels which were based in Asia and Australia, 13 labels which were based in the Middle East and North America and 12 labels which were based in Eastern Europe--that all, also, produced and distributed politically left-motivated vinyl records between 1970 and 1990.

Of the around 795 political record labels mentioned in this book, 147 were labels of leftist political parties, politically left Movement organizations or of leftist state organizations that produced and distributed vinyl records between 1970 and 1990; and 65 were the labels of international solidarity organizations that produced and distributed vinyl records between 1970 and 1990. In addition, 53 record labels which were union or labor movement-related that produced politically left-motivated vinyl records between 1970 and 1990 are described in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels.

MacPhee, a long-time New York City artist, curator, designer and activist, who previously edited the Feminist Press's 2010 Celebrate People's History: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution book and co-edited the book Signs of Change: Social Movement Culture, "grew up enmeshed in the do-it-yourself punk music scene of the late eighties and early nineties," according to his Introduction in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels.

But in 2014, MacPhee became interested in folk music and, in the summer of 2015, he organized an exhibition at the Interference Archive in Brooklyn related to political folk music. As a result, MacPhee writes in his introduction, "the exhibition launched me into a...collecting spree of political albums and singles released around the world;" and "this interest in socially conscious music has reengaged all the record-collecting switches in my head."

Although MacPhee chose to be "ecumenical" and non-politically sectarian in deciding which of the most active politically left record labels that produced vinyl records between 1970 and 1990 merited entries in An Encyclopedia of Political Records, he also chose to just focus on including entries for smaller, independent labels and omit entries or descriptions of the major corporate record labels that may have marketed or profited from the release of some vinyl albums which politically left music fans may have purchased.

Because MacPhee's book focuses only on labels that produced vinyl records, descriptions of labels that just produced politically left-motivated cds in the post-1990 period, following the end of the heyday of vinyl records, are not included in An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels.

In the 21st-century, as MacPhee notes in his book, "sales of vinyl records," ironically, have again now continued "to rise" in recent years; "with 16.8 million" vinyl "LPs sold in the US in 2018...up 94.6 percent compared to 2006." But, as the An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels author reminds current vinyl record U.S. music fans, "while vinyl has returned, it feels strangely hollow without a connection to movements, unions, community groups, and music acts that privilege content over stardom."

An Encyclopedia of Political Record Labels — Josh Macphee