ELI SMITH Musician, writer, promoter of folk music. Sings and plays various American folk music on banjo, guitar, fiddle and some other instruments and writes songs as well. He has toured the United States and Eastern Europe with the jug band Jug Free America. He is currently playing solo, in vaious ad-hoc combinations and with the Brotherhood of the Jugband Blues. Eli is currently promoting the African origins of the banjo. The Akonting is an African lute from the Jola tribe of Senegambia and is the most direct African predecessor of the American banjo. He lives in Brooklyn, NY.
HENRIETTA YURCHENCO Prof. Emerita Ethnomusicologist, City College of New York. Executive Board of Pan American Music Arts Research. Extensive field work among native people's of Mexico and Sephardic Jews of Morocco as well as in Ireland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Appalachia and John’s Island, South Carolina. Author of the first biography of Woody Guthrie, "A Mighty Hard Road," among other books such as "!Hablamos! Puerto Ricans Speak" and her own recent autobiography, "Around the World in 80 Years." Radio producer and host of many shows including the first ever folk and world music radio show back in 1940 on WNYC featuring the first radio appearances of artists such as Leadbelly, Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.
DAVID WEISSMAN David Weissman is the Executive Producer for Down Home Radio. He handles all booking, advertising and publicity for the show. David is also the featured co-host for Down Home’s series of programs on how folk music relates to hip-hop. At the young age of twenty-five he has already begun to make a name for himself as a producer. David has worked as both a producer and media consultant in the world of television, journalism and radio. David got his start as a script reader and researcher for the company Content Film. Following his work at Content Film, David was hired to work as a freelance producer and media consultant for "Now the News", a progressive news television show created by Rick Gell and Todd Pavlin. Since then David has been hired on a freelance basis by the Daily WIP, an all women’s online magazine soon to launch at the end of July. Aside from his work as a producer David is also a professional musician. For the past two years he has been performing as a professional Beatboxer in the greater New York area. His Beatboxing was recently featured on ESE’s new album entitled “ESE SIDE 2.”which was released by Embedded Records in June of 2006.
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