Harry Smith is probably best known as the man behind the American Anthology of Folk Music. A documentation of American heritage that practically started the folk movement in the East Village, the Harry Smith Anthology is essential listening for anyone who wishes to truly understand the way music in America has developed.
However Harry Smith has accomplishments beyond that. Smith was an artist, a filmmaker, a magician (yes, a magician) and a counterculture philosopher. He was an eccentric enigma whose hobbies included partaking in Native American Peyote rituals, collecting Ukrainian Easter Eggs and studying parapsychology. It's hard to imagine a moment with this guy getting boring.
One of Smiths greatest accomplishments was producing the first Fugs album.
A collection of satirical and irreverent humor mixed with the energy of rock'n'roll music and the production values of early folk recordings, The Fugs first album is arguably the first underground rock album, predating recordings by The Velvet Underground and The Doors. Smith's production helps give the album it's primitive and spontaneous qualities.
The occult was one of Smith's greatest interest. He was a follow of the philosophy of Thelema, which was based around Aleister Crowley's infamous creed "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law". He even made claims that Crowley was his real father. Other spiritual movements that Smith took interest in were Voodoo and Gnostic Christianity, as well as native American Spirituality.
(while Aleister Crowley was a bit of a nut job, his championing of individualistic freedom in a spiritual system was very radical, especially in his time)
Smith also was a filmmaker, and a very hallucinatory one at that. His works in this field were essentially animated abstract art. Here's an example of one of his films, 'Heaven and Earth Magic':
Smith's films were very unique and ahead of their time. He was also a painter, creating equally abstract and surreal works like the one below.
Manteca, painted in 1950, almost looks like something you'd buy at a headshop, a product of the psychedelic generation. The painting is supposed to be a transcription of a Dizzy Gillespie piece, with every individual stroke inspired by the trumpet players notes.
Harry Smith is clearly one of the most important figures in the history of American underground. His contributions of the world of underground film, left-field music, and the beat scene are clearly of great cultural importance. Even the mainstream culture has found it impossible to acknowledge his legacy, as marked by the Grammy he earned in 1991, the ceremony shown in the video below:
so there ya go! This is just a brief sampler of who Harry Smith was, designed to inspire further exploration of his works and his mind. Dig it!
