It’s Bandcamp Friday!

Today is Bandcamp Friday! All digital sales from our Bandcamp page made today will be going directly to artists, so buy up lots of digital downloads from Lula Wiles, Ella Jenkins, Kaia Kater, Mariachi Los Camperos, Rahim Alhaj, and more. This is a great way to support artists, and we are thrilled to be able to participate in this effort with other artists and labels who rely on digital sales, especially when touring dates and live performances have been curtailed. We appreciate it!

And now, another exciting announcement: join Folkways on Facebook and YouTube on September 10 for a livestream conversation between drummers and composers John Santos and Sunny Jain moderated by Ken Kimery of the National Museum of American History. With our recent releases Art of the Descarga by The John Santos Sextet, and Sunny Jain’s acclaimed Wild Wild East, Folkways is proud to host this discussion, delving into the evolution of traditional rhythms as musical symptoms of colonialism and mass migration. RSVP here.

At Folkways, they’ve been doing a lot of thinking about rhythms, shifting times, the call and the response, and the piercing speed of sound. Scroll down to watch a fascinating and inspiring lesson from John Santos himself about a fundamental instrument of Cuban and Afro-Caribbean music, the claves. The claves isn’t just an instrument, though: it’s also a rhythm, a concept, and a signal, and a statement. Incorporate this rhythm into your bones with historic and contemporary perspective delivered straight to your ears by one of Latin Jazz’s most innovative and wide-reaching artists. Watch here.