This two-disc set consists of 49 reissued songs and tunes taken from old 78s and chosen by the respected ethnodiscographer Dick Spottswood. The first CD carries the relatively more familiar material, from Southern (and, more rarely, Southwestern) white and black folk musicians, the styles covering the bases: dance tunes and hoedowns, blues, comic and novelty pieces, lyric songs.

The second features less often encountered sounds, of the sort now often called -- vaguely enough -- "world music." Then it was just "foreign" to English-speaking Americans of the 1920s, when the bulk of these recordings were waxed. Here that means fiddle tunes and songs from Albania, Greece, Syria, Martinique, Trinidad, Scotland, Ireland, Cajun Louisiana, French Canada, Portugal, Poland, Sweden, Finland, Norway, Germany, the Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary, and Bulgaria -- and sometimes fusions, where two countries bordered one another and cultures meshed. Most are performed by immigrants to America -- thus not actually "foreign" in anything but relatively recent arrival -- who brought the old-country traditions, today largely vanished, with them.

Be assured, however, that everything here can be listened to with pleasure, and furthermore, you don't have to be a violin player to appreciate it, though of course violinists will be picking up all kinds of things passing by the ears of those of us who aren't. No matter; this is not just outstanding music, but accessible and entertaining, too. Spottswood obviously wants listeners, whoever they are and wherever they come from, to enjoy themselves. We do.

Even on the first disc he is not driving the usual warhorses, old recordings that have been revived and reissued to the point of exhaustion. Maybe half of the Southern material is known to me as a longtime listener of source recordings, and the other still sounds fresh enough not to have outworn welcomes. I can't imagine that anyone could ever object to renewed acquaintance with, for example, the Carter Brothers & Son's magnificently unhinged "Give the Fiddler a Dram" or the Bang Brothers' cheerfully lascivious "When Lulu's Gone."

Disc two has delights flavored with surprises, with only the Cajun, Quebec and Celtic music likely not to sound -- well, adjectives like "exotic" or "unusual" or "strange" only betray the listener's ignorance and ethnocentrism. Let's put it this way: Unless you grew up in a culture where these particular styles of fiddling and singing were a part of your life (or you happen to be an ethnomusicologist), you will be hearing something you've had little to no exposure to before. If you're like me, you'll be making a point to hear more. There are lots of good old-time reissues on the market, but none quite like this one.

- Rambles
written by Jerome Clark
published 23 April 2005