Dom Flemons - Making American Music: The Smithsonian Sessions Dom Flemons

GRAMMY Award-winning musician, multi-instrumentalist, and music scholar Dom Flemons, known as "The American Songster," has played a central role in bringing Black American roots music into contemporary consciousness.

Following his two touchstone releases on Smithsonian Folkways, Flemons returns with Making American Music: The Smithsonian Sessions, the first album of roots music to be recorded on historic instruments from the collection of the National Museum of American History. Performing solo and with his new all- star Black string band The Traveling Wildfires, as well as longtime Smithsonian staff, Flemons breathes new life into guitars played by Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt, quills made by Joe Patterson, and more, through his original compositions and traditional songs written over two centuries. Liner notes by Flemons and Smithsonian curator and co-producer John Troutman illuminate the instruments, repertoire, and creative process behind this extraordinary convergence of American songcraft, musicianship, and sound.

The first ever folk music album made using instruments entirely from the Smithsonian Institute collection, including guitars played by Elizabeth Cotten and Mississippi John Hurt.

Dom Flemons -- the multi- instrumentalist, scholar, GRAMMY Award- winner, EMMY Award- nominee, and "leader in 21st- century folk music" (NPR) -- guides listeners through an entertaining and enlightening 21- track history of vernacular musics, encompassing folk, early jazz, blues, bluegrass, sacred, Hawaiian steel guitar, and beyond.

Features songs from the repertoires of legends like Ramblin' Jack Elliott, The Monroe Brothers, Doc Watson, The Stanley Brothers, Billy Strings, Mississippi John Hurt, Lightnin' Hopkins, Washington Phillips, and Elizabeth Cotten.

Includes detailed liner notes on the project by Dom and Smithsonian curator and co-producer John Troutman, on the album, the songs, and the instruments.