Documentary Arts, Inc.

Documentary Arts^® Audio Recordings

Documentary Arts has produced hundreds of recordings of folk and traditional artists across the United States. The recordings have been featured in regional and nationally broadcast radio series and some are now available in our audio releases.

Lonesome Blues
Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording
Lonesome Blues is the celebration of the legendary bluesman Blind Lemon Jefferson: born blind, but ultimately able to express his deepest emotions through music. This recording of the original Off-Broadway cast stars Akin Babatundé and with David Weiss on guitar.
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Texas in Paris
Original Off-Broadway Cast Recording
Based on true events, Texas in Paris is the musical journey of a man and a woman - one white, one black - invited to France to perform at the Maison des Cultures du Monde. This recording of the original Off-Broadway cast features Tony Award winner Lillias White and Scott Wakefield.
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Osceola Mays
Spirituals and Poems
The spirituals and poems of Osceola Mays are remarkable indeed. In them, the past is recounted with a reverent intensity that expresses the deeply felt emotions of three generations of black Texans. The harsh realities of segregation and discrimination are juxtaposed with the importance of family and community life in these spirituals and poems learned by Osceola Mays from her mother.
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John Burrus
Cowboy Songs and Country Hymns
John Burrus started singing when he was twenty-three years old. He was a rodeo cowboy, who, while the other cowboys went into town, stayed back at camp to practice his guitar. He learned a few basic chords, G, D, C and A, and then tried singing along as he played.
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Clyde Langford
Paper Plate Blues
Lightnin’ Hopkins’ older brother, Joel, taught me when I was 13 years old. He was a guitar picker, and he was sweet on my grandmother that lived with us. And he found out some kind of way that I was interested in learning to play a guitar. And that was a sure way he could get a chance to be around her. Over there, he’d show me how to play a guitar in the evening time, and after I’d get out of school. Joel was part of my mama’s daddy’s people. Not really close cousin, but maybe a fourth cousin, something like that.
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The Hoddu & Xalam of Senegal
Griot Roots of American Banjo
Along the coast of West Africa and throughout the Senegambia region of the savannah grasslands, are modern griots – traditional songsters who accompany themselves on plucked lutes. Each of the ethnic groups they represent has its own name for the music they perform.
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Guitars of the Americas
Enríc Madriguera and Felix Casteverde
Historically Spain has shown a close relation between the art music and the music of Spanish folklore. The pieces by Luys Narvdez, vihuelist - a predecessor to the guitar - and composer, display this combination of folklore and high art. Canción del emperador/Song of the Emperor was dedicated to king Charles V, who was also the Holy Roman Emperor of Europe.
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