Mike Seeger

The Banjo Project is a cross-media cultural odyssey: a major television documentary, a live stage/multi-media performance, and a website that chronicle the journey of America’s quintessential instrument—the banjo—from its African roots to the 21st century. It’s a collaboration between Emmy-winning writer-producer Marc Fields and banjo virtuoso Tony Trischka (the Project’s Music Director), one of the most acclaimed acoustic musicians of his generation.

55 years ago Pete Seeger didn't name names at the McCarthy hearings and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. Out on appeal, blacklisted, watched by the FBI, he buys an old camera. With his wife Toshi, they start filming their musician friends. After several years of making small films, they decide to take the family around-the-world to film musicians in the most remote corners of the earth. The historic 16mm footage is intercut with modern day interviews of the family as they lend insight into a time & place that doesn't exist today. Part travelogue, part musical odyssey, part ethnocentric dream, "Pete and Toshi Get a Camera" will take you places you would never have imagined.

A film by Yasha Aginsky This hour-long documentary celebrates fifty years of the New Lost City Ramblers (Mike Seeger, John Cohen, Tracy Schwarz and Tom Paley.) Among the first urban musicians to seriously pursue the old-time music traditions of the American South, the New Lost City Ramblers became stars of the 1960s folk revival, appearing at Newport Folk Festival and touring widely in the U.S. and Europe. They inspired generations of younger musicians to explore America’s traditional music, from elder statesman Bob Dylan to banjo virtuoso Bela Fleck to the contemporary African-American string band the Carolina Chocolate Drops, all of whom participated in the film. ALWAYS BEEN A RAMBLER reveals the Ramblers as musicologists as well as expert musicians, showing them side-by-side with traditional musicians including Dock Boggs, Maybelle Carter, and Doc Watson.

The story of the American music dynasty, the Carters and Cashes, and their decades-long influence on popular music.

A biographical documentary about the life Hazel Dickens profiling a modern woman dealing with contemporary issues from a feminist perspective that is the product of her experiences being Appalachian, being displaced physically and culturally, being poor and working class, being a woman artist in a man’s world, and being a bearer of tradition.

In 2009, filmmaker Yasha Aginsky accompanied the great old-time musician Mike Seeger and his wife Alexia on recording trips through the Southeastern United States, documented by Yasha and his assistant, Slava Basovich. A tireless collector, performer and advocate of old-time music and musicians, Mike was on a mission to record a survey of contemporary traditional-style banjo playing.