This 5-CD set is teeming with African-American, Austrian, Belgian, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French Canadian, German, Ho-Chunk, Icelandic, Lithuanian, Irish, Italian, Luxemburger, Norwegian, Ojibwe, Oneida, Polish, Scots Gaelic, Serbian, Swedish, Swiss, and Welsh performers.

Bonus DVD includes the new documentary film The Most Fertile Source: Alan Lomax Goes North with never-before-seen footage shot in Michigan in 1938. The accompanying book includes extensive liner notes, lyric transcriptions and translations by James P. Leary, co-founder of the Center for the Study 
of Upper Midwestern Cultures at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Armed with bulky microphones, blank disks, spare needles, and cumbersome disk-cutting machines, several folklorists had the foresight to document and preserve a significant but overlooked part of the nation’s musical heritage, made by immigrant, Native American, rural and working-class performers. Almost all of these dance tunes, ballads, lyric songs, hymns, laments, versified taunts, political anthems, street cries, and recitations are being issued for the very first time.

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