An american original: best known for his pioneering "Anthology of American Folk Music," artist and mystic polymath Harry Smith was the subject of a recent two-day symposium at the Getty Institute - Report From Los Angeles

Art in America, Nov, 2001 by Michael Duncan

(5.) Although the films were screened to the Gillespie soundtrack at the Getty, copyright disputes prohibit the live Gillespie recordings from being used on the video compilation of Smith's films currently distributed by the Iota Center, Los Angeles. Oddly, the video version of the films is set to the first Beatles album "Meet the Beatles," following a flip decision made by Smith in his later years.

(6.) Common to many cultures, string figures are representations of mythic narratives or symbols that are made by looping string around one's fingers, cat's-cradle style. For more information, see the Web site of the International String Figure Association at www.isfa.org.

(7.) For a full report on Smith's Lummi recordings, which were given to the University of Washington, see Darrin Daniel, Harry Smith: Fragments of a Northwest Life, Seattle, Elbow Press, 2000, pp. 14-19.

(8.) Greil Marcus, Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes, New York, Henry Holt, 1997, p. 93.

(9.) Ibid., p. 96.

"Harry Smith: The Avant-Garde in the American Vernacular," an interdisciplinary, multimedia symposium, was organized by the Getty Research Institute and held at the Getty Center, Los Angeles, Apr. 20 and 21. The related concert, "Hal Willner's Harry Smith Project," was presented Apr. 25 and 26 at UCLA's Royce Hall.

Michael Duncan is a freelance writer living in Los Angeles.