Harry Everett Smith (1923-1991), Harry Smith was born on this day.
Here‘s the footage of Harry accepting his Grammy, it’s a touching moment. Here‘s more typical Harry – “Boy, Am I In Trouble! “. Here are some of the masterpieces he’s justly famous for – Mirror Animations 1957 (from Early Abstractions 1946-57) and this excerpt from his Heaven and Earth Magic. Heck, why not watch the whole thing (and his remarkable Late Superimpositions too) over here on the extraordinary Ubuweb site.
Ubuweb also hosts this 1965 interview with P. Adams Sitney
Here‘s Allen interviewed about Harry (in June 1993 by Hal Willner) and again (in September 1995 by Paola Igliori).
Think of the Self Thinking is worth picking up.
ditto here’s some samples from Harry’s 1973 Kiowa Peyote recording
Lionel Ziprin sets the stage for another extraordinary Harry project, the recordings of Rabbi Abulafia.
The Internet Archive has a number of Harry’s freewheeling NAROPA lectures (from his time there as resident shaman). He lectures on “the rationality of namelessness”, he lectures on “the Native American cosmos“.
And for the real fetishist, come here, come underground.
Wow, I want to see all those movies in Jonas' vault. How about a Kickstarter movement to raise the cash so they can all be posted (with permissions of course) on YouTube?
[…] one night I sat in Allen Ginsberg’s East 12th Street apartment with Allen and Harry Smith, the eminent ethnomusicologist and folklorist. We were looking at a new batch of photographic […]