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Harry Everett Smith (May 29, 1923, Portland, Oregon – November 27, 1991, New York City) was a visual artist, experimental filmmaker, record collector, bohemian, mystic, and largely self-taught student of anthropology. Smith was an important figure in the Beat Generation scene in New York City, and his activities, such as his use of mind-altering substances and interest in esoteric spirituality, anticipated aspects of the Hippie movement. Besides his films, Smith is widely known for his influential ''Anthology of American Folk Music'', drawn from his extensive collection of out-of-print commercial 78 rpm recordings. Throughout his life Smith was an inveterate collector. In addition to records, artifacts he collected included string figures,〔A brochure accompanying an exhibit of Harry Smith's string figures stated: "First described in Western anthropological literature by Franz Boas in 1888, these patterns – made by looping or weaving lengths of string into geometric forms or shapes that often evoke familiar objects – have been produced throughout history, both as a secular pastime and as a spiritual practice. When he died, Smith left an unfinished thousand-page manuscript on string figures, along with an extensive collection of figures that he had created", ("Harry Smith: String Figures", Cabinet Gallery, Brooklyn, N.Y. (September 19 through November 3, 2012) )〕 paper airplanes, Seminole textiles, and Ukrainian Easter eggs. ==Biography== Harry Smith was born in Portland, Oregon, and spent his earliest years in Washington state in the area between Seattle and Bellingham. As child he lived for a time with his family in Anacortes, Washington, a town on Fidalgo Island, where the Swinomish Indian reservation is located.〔Ed Sanders, biographical essay in Liner Notes to ''Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume 4'', Revenant RVM 211 (2000), pp. 4–5.〕 He attended high school in nearby Bellingham. Smith's parents were Theosophists with Pantheistic tendencies (involving the belief in an immanent God who is identical with the Universe or nature), and both were fond of folk music. His mother, Mary Louise, originally from Sioux City, Iowa, came from a long line of school teachers and herself taught for a time on the Lummi Indian reservation near Bellingham. His father, Robert James Smith, a fisherman, worked as a watchman for the Pacific American Fishery, a salmon canning company. Smith's paternal great-grandfather John Corson Smith (d. 1910) had been a Union colonel in the American Civil War, brevetted Brigadier General just as the war ended and had served from 1885-89 as Lieutenant Governor of the state of Illinois. He had also been a prominent Freemason and had authored several books about the history of the order.〔("Meet the Generals: John Corson Smith" ), Galena () History (December, 2011).〕 Smith's parents, who didn't get along, lived in separate houses, meeting only at dinner time. Although poor, they gave their son an artistic education, including 10 years of drawing and painting lessons. For a time, it is said, they even ran an art school in their house. Smith was also a voracious reader and he recalled his father bringing him a copy of Carl Sandburg's folksong anthology, ''American Songbag''. "We were considered some kind of 'low' family", Smith once said, "despite my mother's feeling that she was (incarnation of ) the Czarina of Russia".〔Ed Sanders, Liner Notes (2000), pp. 4–5.〕 Friends recall that in high school Smith carried around a camera and in his high school yearbook said that he wanted to compose symphonic music. Physically, Smith was undersized and had a curvature of the spine, which kept him from being drafted (a circumstance that later would disqualify him from benefitting from the G.I. Bill). During World War II he took a job as a mechanic working nights on the construction of the tight, hard-to-reach interior of Boeing bomber planes, for which his short stature suited him.〔John Cohen wrote: "Moe () first told me about Harry Smith, the man: that Smith was a little oddball guy – something of a hunchback – who had amassed his collection of 78 rpm records on the West Coast, and paid for it with his job working in the tight parts of World War II bombers." John Cohen in Liner Notes to ''Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, Volume 4'', Revenant RVM 211 (2000), pp. 32–33.〕 Smith used the money he made from his job to buy blues records. It also enabled him to formally study anthropology at the University of Washington in Seattle for five semesters between 1942 and the fall of 1944. He focused on American Indian tribes concentrated in the Pacific Northwest making numerous field trips to document the music and customs of the Lummi, whom he had gotten know through his mother's work with them.〔Sanders, Liner Notes (2000) pp. 8–9.〕 When the war ended Smith, now 22, moved to the Bay Area of San Francisco, then home to a lively bohemian folk music and jazz scene. As a collector of blues records he had already been corresponding with the noted blues record aficionado James McKune, He now also began seriously collecting old hillbilly music records from junk dealers and stores which were going out of business and even appeared as a guest on a folk music radio show hosted by poet Jack Spicer.〔Sanders, Liner Notes (2000), p. 9.〕 In 1948, his mother succumbed to cancer.〔Sanders, Liner Notes (2000), p. 14.〕 Immediately after her funeral, Smith, who was estranged from his father, left Berkeley for a room above a well-known after hours jazz club in the Fillmore district of San Francisco. Smith was especially drawn to bebop, a new jazz form which had originated during impromptu jam sessions before and after paid performances; and San Francisco abounded in night spots and after hours clubs where Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker could be heard. At this time he painted several ambitious jazz-inspired abstract paintings (since destroyed) and began making animated avant garde films featuring patterns that he painted directly on the film stock and which were intended to be shown to the accompaniment of bebop music.〔Sanders, Liner Notes (2000), p. 10.〕 In 1950 Smith received a Guggenheim grant to complete an abstract film, which enabled him first to visit and later move to New York City.〔(Biography of Harry Smith on Harry Smith Archives website ).〕 He arranged for his collections, including his records, to be shipped to the East Coast. He said that "one reason he moved to New York was to study the Cabala. And, 'I wanted to hear Thelonious Monk play'."〔quoted in Sanders, Liner Notes (2000), p. 11.〕 When his grant money ran out, he brought what he termed "the cream of the crop"〔 of his record collection to Moe Asch, president of Folkways Records, with the idea of selling it. Instead, Asch proposed that the 27-year-old Smith use the material to edit a multi-volume anthology of American folk music in long playing format – then a newly developed, cutting edge medium – and he provided space and equipment in his office for Smith to work in. The recording engineer on the project was Péter Bartók, son of the renowned composer and folklorist. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Harry Everett Smith」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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