Cuba in Washington and Puerto Rico in Washington recorded at the 1989 Festival

By the summer of 1989, the new Smithsonian Folkways record label was in full operation. It became the second major program of the Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage (then called the Smithsonian Office of Folklife Programs), joining the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. That year’s Festival included a program on the Caribbean region. It made sense to try to tie the label and Festival together.

Audio engineer Pete Reiniger was tasked to record segments of the Caribbean program on analog tape, and we brought on Latin music scholar René López to produce albums from the concerts. The results yielded two albums: Puerto Rico in Washington (1996) and Cuba in Washington (1997), samples from which can be found under the “Related” tab on the right. The Puerto Rican segment included two wonderful plena groups, Cuerdas de Borínquen and Marcial Reyes y sus Pleneros de Bayamón. The second recorded the Cuban performers in a significant set of concerts: Grupo Afrocuba de Matanzas, Grupo Changüí de Guantánamo, and Cuarteto Patria featuring Compay Segundo. It had been many years since any of these performers were allowed to perform in the United States. Segundo became known worldwide in the 1990s because of his involvement with the Buena Vista Social Club.

Alas, recording albums at the Festival proved too problematic to maintain for long. The summer heat made stringed instruments go out of tune. Passing buses and planes became part of the recordings. The setting was too uncontrolled. Smithsonian Folkways curator Tony Seeger also felt that recordings of international music were best made in the context of their home communities rather than in front of an outsider audience.

Folkways continues to have a presence at the Festival—in the Marketplace. Each year a selection of recordings relating to the themes and countries highlighted is pulled from our vast catalog, and visitors have come to enjoy acquiring the hard-to-find sounds.