Musician; producer of concerts, recordings, and documentary films; a scholar, patron of
traditional crafts, and the founding director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Festival of
American Folklife. Rinzler also founded the Office of Folklife programs and served as an
assistant secretary at the Smithsonian.
Rinzler came to the Smithsonian to develop his plan for a living cultural presentation
of folk and working-class community-based culture under then Secretary S.Dillon Ripley
and James Morris. The Festival of American Folklife on the National Mall was largely
Rinzler’s creation in 1967, and its immediate success established a national commitment
to the public presentation of folk cultural traditions. The popular festival grew to become
the centerpiece of the 1976 U.S. Bicentennial and continues into the present. Rinzler’s
work on the festival involved hundreds of scholars, community artists, and cultural
exemplars of every background from across the nation and the globe and inspired many
to research and present their cultures in public settings. Alan Lomax, Bess Lomax Hawes,
Roger D.Abrahams, Bernice Reagon, Henry Glassie, and Archie Green were some of the
many activist, academic, and artistic colleagues in this effort.
As the Smithsonian’s assistant secretary for public service from 1983 to 1990, Rinzler
encouraged the cultural diversification of the Smithsonian in staffing, collections,
exhibits, and programs. He established the Cultural Education Committee and the
Committee for a Wider Audience, and he continued to bring into the Smithsonian many
professionals from minority communities. Rinzler was also an innovator in the use of
sophisticated technology to disseminate information firom the Smithsonian collections.
He founded the National Demonstration Laboratory and encouraged the development of
digital media products that could reach a broad public.
Rinzler first explored the study of culture at Swarthmore College and later at the
Sorbonne in Paris. His interest in folk music grew from exposure to Library of Congress
recordings and the work of the Lomaxes, Charles Seeger, and Albert Lloyd. Rinzler
traveled to many university folk festivals and mastered folk styles on several stringed
instruments, including the mandolin. He was a member of the Greenbrier Boys, a
bluegrass group of the folk revival with whom he toured and recorded. Rinzler was one
of many musician-scholars at the time who were attracted to Woody Guthrie, and who
worked on Folkways Records. He worked closely with Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, and Mary
Travers in a variety of roles. As he became more knowledgeable about the roots of folk
music, he recorded and then for some time managed the careers of Arthel “Doc” Watson
and Bill Monroe. During the 1960s, he did considerable fieldwork on traditional folk
music, traversing the country, recording numerous musicians, including Cajun fiddler
Dewey Balfa, and bringing them to the Newport Folk Festival. It was during this time
that Rinzler developed the model of a research-based presentation of culture and saw the
positive effect of exposing traditional music to broader audiences. Though he himself
stopped performing professionally once he was at the Smithsonian, Rinzler played the
mandolin and banjo at home or at his beloved Naushon, Massachusetts, island retreat with Pete Seeger, Charlie Sayles, Mike Seeger, Hazel Dickens, David Grisman, Johnny
Hartford, and numerous others.
Rinzler led the Smithsonian to acquire Folkways Records from Moses Asch in 1987, a
move that enabled not only the preservation of the collection, but also the continued
production of new recordings. The viability of Smithsonian/Folkways and a dynamic
approach to the distribution of a museum collection was assured with the financial and
critical success of Folkways: A Vision Shared, an album for which Rinzler won a
Grammy Award in 1988 as coproducer. He also performed with Taj Mahal on the album
and in a video of the same name which was nominated for an Ace Award in 1989.
Rinzler produced several other recordings on the new Smithsonian/Folkways label,
including the Grammy-nominated Roots of Rhythm and Blues (jointly with Columbia
Records) that was based on a program he cocurated at die 1991 Festival of American
Folklife with Worth Long. Other releases included a documentary compact disc (CD) on
the Watson family, two CDs of his 1956–1969 recordings of Bill Monroe, and a twovolume CD that expands the Folkways release of recordings he made at the home of oldtime musician Clarence Ashley. The latter includes the first recordings made of Doc
Watson. At his death, Rinzler was working on a three-volume expansion of Harry
Smith’s seminal Anthology of American Folk Music, first published in 1952. Rinzler also
produced a five-part series of Folkways instructional videos on folk music taught by
master traditional musicians.
Rinzler’s interest in contemporary traditional crafts led him to a long-term association
with American potters in the Southeast. Through scholarship, museum exhibition, and
other forms of support, he strove to help them continue to practice their craft. He led
efforts to make Raised in Clay a successful Smithsonian Institution exhibition that toured
the United States. With Nancy Sweezy and John Kenneth Galbraith, he helped revitalize
the Jugtown pottery in Seagrove, North Carolina, which was still in production in 1995.
He produced a film titled The Meaders Family, North Georgia Potters, and, in
collaboration with Robert Sayers, he wrote a monograph of the same title. The same
collaboration produced a monograph and Cine Golden Award-winning film on The
Korean Onggi Potter.
Rinzler was a member of several professional societies, a lifelong member and a
Fellow of the American Folklore Society. He also served on the White House Task Force
for Music in Education. He was an active member (1976–1981) and vice chair of the U.S.
National Commission to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural
Organization). Rinzler maintained collegial relationships with scholars, administrators,
and cultural activists in many parts of the world, and he was a longtime board member of
many organizations, including the Highlander Center.
Rinzler won many awards, including Washingtonian of the Year. He was awarded the
Smithsonian Secretary’s Gold Medal in 1993 for developing the Festival of American
Folklife as a paradigm of modern museum practice, which combines humanistic
scholarship, community service, grass-roots arts advocacy, and high-quality public
education.
Richard Kurin