User:Rlevitow/sandbox/Folklore Productions

== Folklore Productions is a booking agency, management and song publishing firm representing Americana and international roots and traditional musicians including key artists in the American Folk Music Revival. ==

Folklore Productions was founded in 1957 by Manny Greenhill, a manager and presenter of folk singers and publisher of their songs. He founded Folklore Productions in Boston in 1957, initially to present concerts in Boston and the American Northeast. Starting in the Fall of 1957, Greenhill presented the inaugural Folklore Concert Series at Boston's Jordan Hall featuring Pete Seeger and Josh White. The success of the series brought concerts by Odetta, Theo Bikel, and Mahalia Jackson. In 1960 Joan Baez became Folklore Production's first client with Greenhill serving as her personal manager and booking agent. Soon many of the era's leading folk artists joined, among them Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Dave Van Ronk, and Doc Watson. Foiklore represented several important exponents of African-American musical traditions, among them Jesse Fuller and Rev. Gary Davis, and with a song publishing arm to protect artists from the common practice of song appropriation. The Folklore umbrella covered musical syncretists such as American primitive guitar pioneer John Fahey and English 'folk baroque' guitarists-singers John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. Folklore Productions also represented pioneers of what came to called world music, among them Nubian oud player Hamza El Din and Tejano accordionist-singer Santiago Jiménez Jr. At age 55 Greenhill left Boston, moving Folklore to Santa Monica, CA in 1971. The company continued to represent and present eclectic artists, including Argentine singer Mercedes Sosa, singer-guitarist Geoff Muldaur, and the Georgia Sea Island Singers. The 1980s-90s saw Folklore continue to shepherd the careers of many of its core artists from the 1960s while presenting and representing an increasingly diverse and international artist roster (Beausoleil, Alan Stivell, Keola Beamer, Battlefield Band, The Campbell Brothers, Toumani Diabate, Taj Mahal). Folklore founder Greenhill remained active booking artists and overseeing song publishing until diagnosed with leukemia in 1996. Greenhill's significant role in the American urban folk music revival was honored posthumously in 2007 at the national conference of the Folk Alliance organization with The Elaine Weissman Lifetime Achievement Award. Following Greenhill’s death, his son Mitch Greenhill continued to run Folklore Productions and was joined the following year by Manny’s grandson Matt Greenhill. Folklore Productions operates today as FLi Artists.