Director: Chris Simon, Maureen Gosling
U.S., 2013

Visiting Artist — As a teenager in 1947, Chris Strachwitz migrated from Germany to the United States, where he saw a film that would change his life forever: NEW ORLEANS, starring Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong. Since then, his life has been a relentless quest to track down and record the best of American folk music roots — New Orleans jazz, down home blues, Creole, Cajun, zydeco, Tex-Mex, norteño, and more. A true detective of sounds, Strachwitz is the legendary record producer and founder of Arhoolie Records, the label that brought rural American music out of the shadows and into the limelight. In the process, he changed music in the US forever.

Ry Cooder, Taj Mahal, Bonnie Raitt, Michael Doucet, The Pine Leaf Boys, Flaco Jiménez, and CJ Chenier join in this rich Strachwitz-guided tour of the sounds and rhythms of rural America. (92 mins.)