Arhoolie Records Down Home Music

Joel Selvin is an award-winning journalist and the bestselling author of more than twenty books on pop music. He was pop music critic for the San Francisco Chronicle for thirty-six years, first interviewing Chris Strachwitz as one of his earliest articles for the paper.
 
Chris Strachwitz is the founder of Arhoolie Records and the Arhoolie Foundation. Through his long and storied career as a record producer, record collector, filmmaker, and documentarian, Strachwitz worked to celebrate and promote what he termed “down-home” music: the tradition-based, regional styles of the U.S. and its borderlands, including blues, Cajun, Zydeco, Tejano/Norteño, mariachi, gospel, bluegrass, old-time, polka, and more. Smithsonian Folkways, the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, describes Arhoolie Records as “the most important roots record label of the last sixty years.” As one of the most celebrated documentarians of American roots music over the past half-century, Strachwitz brought his tape recorder and camera into dancehalls, churches, garages, boucheries (pig roasts), and homes, where generations of musicians have kept the region’s music alive. The images Strachwitz captured, many of which graced Arhoolie album covers, are an enduring testament to American vernacular music.