The viola thing is actually a strange descendednt of a Portugese guitar

JOSE DE LA LUZ "Samba (Moda de Viola)"
SEBASTIAO ALVES FEITOSA & JOSE ALVES DA SILVA "Tamanquero Eu Quero Um Pa"

Whatever happened to the Endangered Music Project, the collaborative release project between Mickey Hart, Alan Jabbour, the Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, and Rykodisc? Is it totally dead or what? (And on a related note, how come there are no more new Secret Museum of Mankind releases?! -- And will someone please make podcasts of their WFMU shows? That would rule.)

This song is taken from a CD called The Discoteca Collection: Missão de Pesquisas Folclóricas. It collects Brazilian 78s made in 1938 in Brazil by a WPA-style folk/ ethnographic initiative there. Some of the digital transfers are a bit overzealous in the way they "clean up" the sound (while erasing some of the actual music) but that's something one has to deal with when listening to collections like this from the early to mid 1990s. When a technology is first introduced in the arts it often gets overused (i.e. Beatles-style stereo separation versus what people do now). Um, but you knew that already.

I am absolutely in love with these two short songs.