Music and dance ethnographer, community organizer, photographer and islander Martin Koenig has spent a lifetime working with immigrant ethnic populations in North America and traditional communities in Macedonia to save an endangered species — the fading, forgotten and now often extinct traditional dance and music of these people and their cultures.
Smithsonian Folkways Recording recently published an album of field recordings that Koenig collected in Macedonia between 1968 and 1973. CD release parties are planned from coast-to-coast, with one slated for 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 22, at the Vashon Land Trust.
“Playing ‘Til Your Soul Comes Out!” is the title of the new CD that showcases three styles of traditional Macedonian music and the ethnic, religious and linguistic diversity that Koenig first experienced when he visited the southeastern European region in 1959.
“They were in transition, going the way of the West, adapting our forms,” Koenig said. “So I did a lot of work beginning in 1966.”
That work included trips to the Balkans to learn the traditional folk dances and then teaching them to students at Barnard and Sarah Lawrence College. His research revealed that the cultures were finite and needed preservation, so he started filming the dances and celebrations. His work was noticed by anthropologist Margaret Mead, who helped him secure grants for the project.
“She supported me all the time. She was fabulous,” Koenig said. “She just thought I could do it, and I did.”
Several years and some 60,000 feet of 16 mm film plus sound recordings later, Koenig had what a press release called a “sonic time capsule.” Koenig had captured the only known recordings of the region’s traditional musicians before the popularized music or newly composed folk music had obliterated the old.
In 1968, Nonesuch Records, a subsidiary label of Elektra Records, gave Koenig an advance to make four recordings.
“Two recordings were of Bulgarian songs, and one went up on the Voyager (one of NASA’s outer-planet probes),” Koenig said.
Having finished three recordings, Koenig returned the advance monies for the fourth, as he found himself too busy working as an ethnographer collecting traditional dances and curating the Smithsonian’s Folklife Festival.
Now, Koenig said, after 47 years, the fourth recording has finally been published.
“I will host the release party, show photographs and tell the story of this long-deferred recording,” Koenig said. “And then we’ll have wine and Macedonian delicacies like feta cheese, olives and spinach pies.”
