Alan Lomax
Encyclopedia
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist
and ethnomusicologist
. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music
of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.
In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of Cantometrics
, the sampling and statistical analysis of folk music, with the help of collaborators Victor Grauer and Roswell Rudd
.
, Louisiana
, and Mississippi
. Because of frail health he was mostly home schooled, but attended The Choate School
(now Choate Rosemary Hall) for a year, graduating in 1930 at age 15. He enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin
in 1930 and the following year studied philosophy at Harvard
but upon his mother's death interrupted his education to console his father and join him on his folk song collecting field trips. He subsequently earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Texas and later did graduate studies with Melville J. Herskovits
at Columbia University
and with Ray Birdwhistell
at the University of Pennsylvania
.
From 1937 to 1942, Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress
to which he and his father and numerous collaborators contributed more than ten thousand field recordings. During his lifetime, he collected folk music from the United States, Haiti, the Caribbean, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy, assembling a treasure trove of American and international culture.
A pioneering oral historian, he also recorded substantial interviews with many legendary folk musicians, including Woody Guthrie
, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters
, Jelly Roll Morton
, Irish singer Margaret Barry
, Scots
ballad singer Jeannie Robertson
, and Harry Cox
of Norfolk, England, among many others. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor he took his recording machine into the streets to capture the reactions of everyday citizens. While serving in the army in World War II he made numerous radio programs in connection with the war effort. The 1944 "ballad opera", The Martins and the Coys, broadcast in Britain (but not the USA) by the BBC
, featuring Burl Ives
, Woody Guthrie
, Will Geer
, Sonny Terry
, Pete Seeger
, and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith
, among others, was released on Rounder Records in 2000.
He also produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows, in the U.S and in England, which played an important role in both the American
and British folk revival
s of the 1940s, '50s and early '60s. In the late 1940s, he produced a highly regarded series of folk music albums for Decca records and organized a series of concerts at New York's Town Hall and Carnegie Hall, featuring blues, Calypso, and Flamenco music. He also hosted a radio show, Your Ballad Man, from 1945-49 that was broadcast nationwide on the Mutual Radio Network and featured a highly eclectic program, from gamelan
music, to Django Reinhardt
, to Klezmer
music, to Sidney Bechet
and Wild Bill Davison
, to jazzy pop songs by Maxine Sullivan
and Jo Stafford
, to readings of the poetry of Carl Sandburg
, to hillbilly music with electric guitars, to Finnish brass bands – to name a few.
, Scots poet Hamish Henderson
, and with Séamus Ennis
in Ireland, where they recorded Irish traditional musicians, including some of the songs in English and Irish of Elizabeth Cronin
in 1951. He also hosted a folk music show on BBC's home service and organized a skiffle
group, Alan Lomax and the Ramblers (who included Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger
, and Shirley Collins
, among others) which appeared on British television. His ballad opera Big Rock Candy Mountain premiered December 1955 at Joan Littlewood
's Theater Workshop and featured Ramblin' Jack Elliot. In Scotland he is credited with being an inspiration for the School of Scottish Studies
, founded in 1951, the year of his first visit there.
Lomax and Diego Carpitella
's survey of Italian folk music
for the Columbia World Library, conducted in 1953 and 1954, with the cooperation of the BBC and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, helped capture a snapshot of a multitude of important traditional folk styles shortly before they disappeared. The pair amassed one of the most representative folk song collections of any culture. From Lomax's Spanish and Italian recordings emerged one of the first theories explaining the types of folk singing that predominate in particular areas, a theory that incorporates work style, the environment, and the degrees of social and sexual freedom.
Upon his return to New York in 1959, Lomax produced a concert, Folksong '59
", in Carnegie Hall
, featuring Arkansas singer Jimmy Driftwood
; the Selah Jubilee Singers
and Drexel Singers (gospel groups); Muddy Waters
and Memphis Slim
(blues); Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys (bluegrass); Pete Seeger
, Mike Seeger
(urban folk revival); and The Cadillacs
(a rock and roll group). The occasion marked the first time rock and roll and bluegrass were performed on the Carnegie Hall Stage. "The time has come for Americans not to be ashamed of what we go for, musically, from primitive ballads to rock 'n' roll songs", Lomax told the audience. According to Izzy Young
, the audience booed when he told them to lay down their prejudices and listen to rock 'n' roll. In Young's opinion, "Lomax put on what is probably the turning point in American folk music . . . . At that concert, the point he was trying to make was that Negro and white music were mixing, and rock and roll was that thing."
Alan Lomax married Elizabeth Lyttleton Harold in February 1937. They were married for 12 years and had a daughter, Anne (later known as Anna). Elizabeth assisted him in recording in Haiti, Alabama, Appalachia, and Mississippi, and wrote radio scripts of folk operas featuring American music that were broadcast over the BBC home service as part of the war effort, as well as conducting lengthy interviews with folk music personalities including Reverend Gary Davis
. He also did important field work with Elizabeth Barnicle and Zora Neale Hurston
in Florida and the Bahamas (1936); with John Work and Lewis Jones in Mississippi (1941 and 42); with folksingers Robin Roberts and Jean Ritchie
in Ireland (1950); with his second wife Antoinette Marchand in the Caribbean (1961); with Joan Halifax in Morocco; and with his daughter. All those who assisted and worked with him were accurately credited on the resultant Library of Congress and other recordings, as well as in his many books and publications.
Alan Lomax met 20-year-old English folk singer Shirley Collins
while living in London. The two were romantically involved and lived together for some years. When Lomax obtained a contract from Atlantic Records
to re-record some of the American musicians first recorded in the 1940s, using improved equipment, Collins accompanied him. Their folk song collecting trip to the Southern states lasted from July to November 1959 and resulted in many hours of recordings, featuring performers such as Almeda Riddle
, Hobart Smith
, Wade Ward
, Charlie Higgins
and Bessie Jones
and culminated in the discovery of Mississippi Fred McDowell
. Recordings from this trip were issued under the title Sounds of the South and some were also featured in the Coen brothers’ film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. Lomax wished to marry Collins but when the recording trip was over, she returned to England and married Austin John Marshall. In an interview in The Guardian newspaper, Collins expressed irritation that Alan Lomax's 1993 account of the journey, The Land Where The Blues Began, barely mentioned her. "All it said was, 'Shirley Collins was along for the trip'. It made me hopping mad. I wasn't just 'along for the trip'. I was part of the recording process, I made notes, I drafted contracts, I was involved in every part". Collins addressed the perceived omission in her memoir, America Over the Water, published in 2004.
Lomax married Antoinette Marchand on August 26, 1961.
In 1962, Lomax and singer and Civil Rights Activist Guy Carawan
, music director at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, produced the album, Freedom in the Air: Albany Georgia, 1961-62, on Vanguard Records for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
Lomax was a consultant to Carl Sagan
for the Voyager Golden Record
sent into space on the 1977 Voyager Spacecraft to represent the music of the earth. Music he helped choose included the blues, jazz, and rock 'n' roll of Blind Willie Johnson
, Louis Armstrong
, and Chuck Berry
; Andean panpipes and Navajo chants; a Sicilian sulfur miner's lament; polyphonic vocal music from the Mbuti
Pygmies of Zaire, and the Georgians of the Caucasus; and a shepherdess song from Bulgaria by Valya Balkanska
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng62EsjTK9U; in addition to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, and more.
wrote of Lomax's later recording career in his notes to accompany an anthology of Lomax's world recordings:
and People's Songs in the 1940s, Alan Lomax promoted what was then known as "One World" and today is called multiculturalism. In the late forties he produced a series of concerts at Town Hall and Carnegie Hall that presented Flamenco guitar and Calypso, along with country blues, Appalachian music
, Andean music, and jazz. His radio shows of the 40s and 50s explored musics of all the world's peoples.
Lomax recognized that folklore (like all forms of creativity) occurs at the local and not the national level and flourishes not in isolation but in fruitful interplay with other cultures. He was dismayed that mass communications appeared to be crushing local cultural expressions and languages. In 1950 he echoed anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942), who believed the role of the ethnologist should be that of advocate for primitive man (as indigenous people were then called), when he urged folklorists to similarly advocate for the folk. Some, such as Richard Dorson
, objected that scholars shouldn't act as cultural arbiters, but Lomax believed it would be unethical to stand idly by as the magnificent variety of the world's cultures and languages was "grayed out" by centralized commercial entertainment and educational systems. Although he acknowledged potential problems with intervention, he urged that folklorists with their special training actively assist communities in safeguarding and revitalizing their own local traditions.
Similar ideas had been put into practice by Benjamin Botkin, Harold W. Thompson, and Louis C. Jones, who believed that folklore studied by folklorists should be returned to its home communities to enable it to thrive anew. They have been realized in the annual (since 1967) Smithsonian Folk Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C. (for which Lomax served as a consultant), in national and regional initiatives by public folklorists and local activists in helping communities gain recognition for their oral traditions and lifeways both in their home communities and in the world at large; and in the National Heritage Awards, concerts, and fellowships given by the NEA and various State governments to master folk and traditional artists.
In 2001, in the wake of the attacks in New York and Washington of September 11, UNESCO's Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity declared the safeguarding of languages and intangible culture on a par with protection of individual human rights and as essential for human survival as biodiversity is for nature, ideas first articulated by Alan Lomax.
uncovered and published extracts from Alan Lomax's 800-page FBI files. The investigation appears to have started when an anonymous informant reported overhearing Lomax's father telling guests in 1941 about what he considered his son's Communist sympathies. Looking for leads, the FBI seized on the fact that, as a teenager in the 1930s, Lomax had transferred from Harvard to the University of Texas after being arrested in Boston in connection with a political demonstration. In 1942 the FBI sent agents to interview students at Harvard's freshman dorm about Lomax's participation in a demonstration that had occurred at Harvard in 1932 in support of the immigration rights of one Edith Berkman, a Jewish woman, dubbed the "red flame" for her labor organizing activities among the textile workers of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and threatened with deportation as an alleged "Communist agitator". Lomax had been charged with disturbing the peace and fined $25.00. Miss Berkman, however, had been cleared of all accusations against her and was not deported. Nor had Lomax's Harvard academic record been affected in any way by his activities in her defense. Nevertheless, the bureau continued trying vainly to show that in 1932 Lomax had either distributed Communist literature or made public speeches in support of the Communist Party.
According to Ted Gioia:
Lomax left Harvard in 1932 after a year of study there, because his father lost his job and all his money during the depression and could no longer afford to pay his tuition, and not for any political or academic reasons. He probably also had wanted to be close to his newly bereaved father, now a widower, and his 10-year old sister, Bess
, who was now motherless.
In June 1942 the FBI approached the Librarian of Congress, Archibald McLeish, in an attempt to have Lomax fired as Assistant in Charge of the Library's Archive of American Folk Song. At the time, Lomax was preparing for a field trip to the Mississippi Delta on behalf of the Library, where he would make landmark recordings of Muddy Waters, Son House, and David "Honeyboy" Edwards, among others. McLeish wrote to Hoover defending Lomax: "I have studied the findings of these reports very carefully. I do not find positive evidence that Mr. Lomax has been engaged in subversive activities and I am therefore taking no disciplinary action toward him." Nevertheless, according to Gioia:
Lomax, who was a founding member of People's Songs, was in charge of campaign music for Henry A. Wallace's 1948 Presidential run on the Progressive Party ticket on a platform opposing the arms race and supporting civil rights for Jews and African Americans. Subsequently, Lomax was one of the performers listed in the publication Red Channels
as a possible Communist sympathizer and was consequently blacklisted from working in US entertainment industries.
A 2007 BBC news article revealed that in the early '50s, the British MI5
placed Alan Lomax under surveillance as a suspected Communist. Its report concluded that although Lomax undoubtedly held "left wing" views, there was no evidence he was a Communist. Released September 4, 2007 (File ref KV 2/2701), a summary of his MI5 file reads as follows:
The FBI again investigated Lomax in 1956 and sent a 68 page report to the CIA and the Attorney General's office. However, William Tompkins, assistant attorney general, wrote to Hoover that the investigation had failed to disclose sufficient evidence to warrant prosecution or the suspension of Lomax's passport.
Then, as late as 1979, an FBI report suggested that Lomax had recently impersonated an FBI agent. The report appears to have been based on mistaken identity. The person who reported the incident to the FBI said that the man in question was around 43, about 5 feet 9 inches and 190 pounds. The FBI file notes that Lomax stood 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, weighed 240 pounds and was 64 at the time:
from President Reagan in 1986, a Library of Congress Living Legend Award http://www.loc.gov/about/awards/legends/ in 2000, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from Tulane University in 2001 http://www.nea.gov/honors/medals/medalists_year.html. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award
and the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award in 1993 for his book The Land Where the Blues Began, connecting the story of the origins of blues music with the prevalence of forced labor in the pre-World War II South (especially on the Mississippi levees). Lomax also received a posthumous Grammy Trustees Award
for his lifetime achievements in 2003.
Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax (Rounder Records, 8 CDs boxed set) won in two categories at the 48th annual Grammy Awards ceremony held on Feb 8, 2006 http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0603/roll.html. The box set Alan Lomax In Haiti: Recordings For The Library Of Congress, 1936–1937, on Harte Records, featuring 10 CDs of recorded music and film footage (shot by Elizabeth Lomax), a bound book of Lomax's letters and field journals, and notes by musicologist Gage Avrill, was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2011.
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and ethnomusicologist
Ethnomusicology
Ethnomusicology is defined as "the study of social and cultural aspects of music and dance in local and global contexts."Coined by the musician Jaap Kunst from the Greek words ἔθνος ethnos and μουσική mousike , it is often considered the anthropology or ethnography of music...
. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music
Folk music
Folk music is an English term encompassing both traditional folk music and contemporary folk music. The term originated in the 19th century. Traditional folk music has been defined in several ways: as music transmitted by mouth, as music of the lower classes, and as music with unknown composers....
of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain.
In his later career, Lomax advanced his theories of Cantometrics
Cantometrics
Cantometrics is a method for relating the statistical analysis of sonic elements of traditional vocal music to the statistical analysis of sociological traits, largely as those traits are defined and organized via the Human Relations Area Files...
, the sampling and statistical analysis of folk music, with the help of collaborators Victor Grauer and Roswell Rudd
Roswell Rudd
Roswell Rudd is a Grammy Award-nominated American jazz trombonist and composer....
.
Early life
Lomax was the son of pioneering folklorist and author John A. Lomax, with whom he started his career by recording songs sung by sharecroppers and prisoners in TexasTexas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
, Louisiana
Louisiana
Louisiana is a state located in the southern region of the United States of America. Its capital is Baton Rouge and largest city is New Orleans. Louisiana is the only state in the U.S. with political subdivisions termed parishes, which are local governments equivalent to counties...
, and Mississippi
Mississippi
Mississippi is a U.S. state located in the Southern United States. Jackson is the state capital and largest city. The name of the state derives from the Mississippi River, which flows along its western boundary, whose name comes from the Ojibwe word misi-ziibi...
. Because of frail health he was mostly home schooled, but attended The Choate School
Choate Rosemary Hall
Choate Rosemary Hall is a private, college-preparatory, coeducational boarding school located in Wallingford, Connecticut...
(now Choate Rosemary Hall) for a year, graduating in 1930 at age 15. He enrolled at the University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin is a state research university located in Austin, Texas, USA, and is the flagship institution of the The University of Texas System. Founded in 1883, its campus is located approximately from the Texas State Capitol in Austin...
in 1930 and the following year studied philosophy at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
but upon his mother's death interrupted his education to console his father and join him on his folk song collecting field trips. He subsequently earned a degree in philosophy from the University of Texas and later did graduate studies with Melville J. Herskovits
Melville J. Herskovits
Melville Jean Herskovits was an American anthropologist who firmly established African and African American studies in American academia. The son of Jewish immigrants, he obtained a Bachelor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago in 1923 and obtained his Master's and Ph.D...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
and with Ray Birdwhistell
Ray Birdwhistell
Ray Birdwhistell was an American anthropologist who founded kinesics as a field of inquiry and research. The term kinesics was originally coined by Birdwhistell, and he also proposed the term kineme....
at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
.
From 1937 to 1942, Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress
Library of Congress
The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...
to which he and his father and numerous collaborators contributed more than ten thousand field recordings. During his lifetime, he collected folk music from the United States, Haiti, the Caribbean, Ireland, Great Britain, Spain, and Italy, assembling a treasure trove of American and international culture.
A pioneering oral historian, he also recorded substantial interviews with many legendary folk musicians, including Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
, Jelly Roll Morton
Jelly Roll Morton
Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe , known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer....
, Irish singer Margaret Barry
Margaret Barry
Margaret Barry was a traditional Irish singer and banjo player.Born in Cork into a family of Travellers and street singers, she taught herself how to play the zither banjo and the fiddle at a young age. At the age of sixteen, after a family disagreement, Margaret left home and started performing...
, Scots
Scottish people
The Scottish people , or Scots, are a nation and ethnic group native to Scotland. Historically they emerged from an amalgamation of the Picts and Gaels, incorporating neighbouring Britons to the south as well as invading Germanic peoples such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Norse.In modern use,...
ballad singer Jeannie Robertson
Jeannie Robertson
Jeannie Robertson was a Scottish folk singer.-Hamish Henderson and Alan Lomax:It is not known where Jeannie Robertson was born but she did live at 90, Hilton Street in Aberdeen, where a plaque now commemorates her. Like many of the Scottish Travellers from Aberdeen, Glasgow and Ayrshire, she went...
, and Harry Cox
Harry Cox
Harry Fred Cox , was a Norfolk farmworker and one of the most important singers of traditional English music of the twentieth century, on account of his large repertoire and fine singing style....
of Norfolk, England, among many others. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor he took his recording machine into the streets to capture the reactions of everyday citizens. While serving in the army in World War II he made numerous radio programs in connection with the war effort. The 1944 "ballad opera", The Martins and the Coys, broadcast in Britain (but not the USA) by the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
, featuring Burl Ives
Burl Ives
Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives was an American actor, writer and folk music singer. As an actor, Ives's work included comedies, dramas, and voice work in theater, television, and motion pictures. Music critic John Rockwell said, "Ives's voice .....
, Woody Guthrie
Woody Guthrie
Woodrow Wilson "Woody" Guthrie is best known as an American singer-songwriter and folk musician, whose musical legacy includes hundreds of political, traditional and children's songs, ballads and improvised works. He frequently performed with the slogan This Machine Kills Fascists displayed on his...
, Will Geer
Will Geer
Will Geer was an American actor and social activist. His original name was William Aughe Ghere. He is remembered for his portrayal of Grandpa Zebulon Tyler Walton in the 1970s TV series, The Waltons....
, Sonny Terry
Sonny Terry
Saunders Terrell, better known as Sonny Terry was a blind American Piedmont blues musician. He was widely known for his energetic blues harmonica style, which frequently included vocal whoops and hollers, and imitations of trains and fox hunts.-Career:Terry was born in Greensboro, Georgia...
, Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
, and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith
Fiddlin' Arthur Smith
Fiddlin' Arthur Smith was an American old time fiddler and a big influence on the old time and bluegrass music genres.-Biography:...
, among others, was released on Rounder Records in 2000.
He also produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows, in the U.S and in England, which played an important role in both the American
American folk music revival
The American folk music revival was a phenomenon in the United States that began during the 1940s and peaked in popularity in the mid-1960s. Its roots went earlier, and performers like Josh White, Burl Ives, Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Richard Dyer-Bennett, Oscar Brand, Jean Ritchie, John Jacob...
and British folk revival
British folk revival
The British folk revival incorporates a number of movements for the collection, preservation and performance of traditional music in the United Kingdom and related territories and countries, which had origins as early as the 18th century...
s of the 1940s, '50s and early '60s. In the late 1940s, he produced a highly regarded series of folk music albums for Decca records and organized a series of concerts at New York's Town Hall and Carnegie Hall, featuring blues, Calypso, and Flamenco music. He also hosted a radio show, Your Ballad Man, from 1945-49 that was broadcast nationwide on the Mutual Radio Network and featured a highly eclectic program, from gamelan
Gamelan
A gamelan is a musical ensemble from Indonesia, typically from the islands of Bali or Java, featuring a variety of instruments such as metallophones, xylophones, drums and gongs; bamboo flutes, bowed and plucked strings. Vocalists may also be included....
music, to Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt
Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...
, to Klezmer
Klezmer
Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
music, to Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet
Sidney Bechet was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer.He was one of the first important soloists in jazz , and was perhaps the first notable jazz saxophonist...
and Wild Bill Davison
Wild Bill Davison
Wild' Bill Davison was a fiery jazz cornet player who emerged in the 1920s, but did not achieve recognition until the 1940s...
, to jazzy pop songs by Maxine Sullivan
Maxine Sullivan
Maxine Sullivan , born Marietta Williams, was an American blues and jazz singer.She was born in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and married jazz musician John Kirby in 1938 , and stride pianist Cliff Jackson in 1956...
and Jo Stafford
Jo Stafford
Jo Elizabeth Stafford was an American singer of traditional pop music and jazz standards and occasional actress whose career ran from the late 1930s to the early 1960s...
, to readings of the poetry of Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
, to hillbilly music with electric guitars, to Finnish brass bands – to name a few.
Move to Europe and later life
Lomax spent the 1950s based in London, from where he edited the 18-volume Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music, an anthology issued on newly-invented LP records. For the British and Irish volumes, he worked with the BBC and folklorists Peter Douglas KennedyPeter Douglas Kennedy
Peter Douglas Kennedy was an English collector of folk songs in the 1950s. Peter's father, Douglas, was EFDSS director after Cecil Sharp....
, Scots poet Hamish Henderson
Hamish Henderson
Hamish Scott Henderson, was a Scottish poet, songwriter, soldier, and intellectual....
, and with Séamus Ennis
Séamus Ennis
Séamus Ennis was an Irish piper, singer and folk-song collector.- Early years :In 1908 James Ennis, Séamus's father, was in a pawn-shop in London. Ennis bought a bag of small pieces of Uilleann pipes. They were made in the early nineteenth century by Coyne of Thomas Street in Dublin. James worked...
in Ireland, where they recorded Irish traditional musicians, including some of the songs in English and Irish of Elizabeth Cronin
Elizabeth Cronin
Elizabeth "Bess" Cronin was an Irish singer who specialized in traditional music.Born in West Cork, the daughter of Seán Ó hIarlaithe, a schoolteacher, she lived in the Baile Bhuirne area all her life. She spent her teenage years on her uncle's farm nearby. She married Seán Ó Croinin and they...
in 1951. He also hosted a folk music show on BBC's home service and organized a skiffle
Skiffle
Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments. Originating as a term in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century, it became popular again in the UK in the 1950s, where it was mainly...
group, Alan Lomax and the Ramblers (who included Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger
Peggy Seeger
Margaret "Peggy" Seeger is an American folksinger. She is also well known in Britain, where she lived for more than 30 years with her husband, singer and songwriter Ewan MacColl.- The first American period :...
, and Shirley Collins
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is a British folksinger who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s...
, among others) which appeared on British television. His ballad opera Big Rock Candy Mountain premiered December 1955 at Joan Littlewood
Joan Littlewood
Joan Maud Littlewood was a British theatre director, noted for her work in developing the left-wing Theatre Workshop...
's Theater Workshop and featured Ramblin' Jack Elliot. In Scotland he is credited with being an inspiration for the School of Scottish Studies
School of Scottish Studies
The School of Scottish Studies was founded in 1951, and is affiliated to the University of Edinburgh. It holds an archive of over 9000 field recordings of traditional music, song and other lore, housed in George Square, Edinburgh...
, founded in 1951, the year of his first visit there.
Lomax and Diego Carpitella
Diego Carpitella
Diego Carpitella Italian professor of ethnomusicology at La Sapienza University in Rome. He is considered one of the greatest scholars of Italian folk music. Published extensively between 1949 and 1989. He collaborated with the Centro Nazionale Studi di Musica Popolare from 1952-58, collecting...
's survey of Italian folk music
Italian folk music
Italian folk music has a deep and complex history. National unification came quite late to the Italian peninsula, so its many hundreds of separate cultures remained un-homogenized until quite recently compared to many other European countries...
for the Columbia World Library, conducted in 1953 and 1954, with the cooperation of the BBC and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, helped capture a snapshot of a multitude of important traditional folk styles shortly before they disappeared. The pair amassed one of the most representative folk song collections of any culture. From Lomax's Spanish and Italian recordings emerged one of the first theories explaining the types of folk singing that predominate in particular areas, a theory that incorporates work style, the environment, and the degrees of social and sexual freedom.
Upon his return to New York in 1959, Lomax produced a concert, Folksong '59
Folksong '59
Upon his return to New York in 1959 after a nearly a decade spent based in London, UK, Alan Lomax produced a concert, Folksong '59, in New York City's Carnegie Hall, featuring Arkansas singer Jimmy Driftwood; the Selah Jubilee Singers and Drexel Singers ; Muddy Waters and Memphis Slim ; Earl Taylor...
", in Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall
Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....
, featuring Arkansas singer Jimmy Driftwood
Jimmy Driftwood
James Corbitt Morris , known professionally as Jimmy Driftwood or Jimmie Driftwood, was a prolific American folk music songwriter and musician, most famous for his songs "The Battle of New Orleans" and "Tennessee Stud"...
; the Selah Jubilee Singers
Selah Jubilee Singers
The Selah Jubilee Singers was an American gospel vocal quartet, who appeared in public as a gospel group but who also had a successful recording career as a secular group in the 1930s & 1940s.-History:...
and Drexel Singers (gospel groups); Muddy Waters
Muddy Waters
McKinley Morganfield , known as Muddy Waters, was an American blues musician, generally considered the "father of modern Chicago blues"...
and Memphis Slim
Memphis Slim
Memphis Slim was an American blues pianist, singer, and composer. He led a series of bands that, reflecting the popular appeal of jump blues, included saxophones, bass, drums, and piano. A song he first cut in 1947, "Every Day I Have the Blues", has become a blues standard, recorded by many other...
(blues); Earl Taylor and the Stoney Mountain Boys (bluegrass); Pete Seeger
Pete Seeger
Peter "Pete" Seeger is an American folk singer and was an iconic figure in the mid-twentieth century American folk music revival. A fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s, he also had a string of hit records during the early 1950s as a member of The Weavers, most notably their recording of Lead...
, Mike Seeger
Mike Seeger
Mike Seeger was an American folk musician and folklorist. He was a distinctive singer and an accomplished musician who played autoharp, banjo, fiddle, dulcimer, guitar, mouth harp, mandolin, dobro, jaw harp, and pan pipes. Seeger, a half-brother of Pete Seeger, produced more than 30 documentary...
(urban folk revival); and The Cadillacs
The Cadillacs
The Cadillacs were an American rock and roll and doo-wop group from Harlem, New York; active from 1953 to 1962. The group was noted for their 1955 hit "Speedoo", which was instrumental in attracting White audiences to Black rock and roll performers.-History:...
(a rock and roll group). The occasion marked the first time rock and roll and bluegrass were performed on the Carnegie Hall Stage. "The time has come for Americans not to be ashamed of what we go for, musically, from primitive ballads to rock 'n' roll songs", Lomax told the audience. According to Izzy Young
Izzy Young
Israel Goodman Young or Izzy Young is a noted figure in the world of folk music, both in America and Sweden.He is the former owner of the Folklore Center in Greenwich Village, New York, and since 1973, he has owned and operated the Folklore Centrum store in Stockholm.- Biography :In 1957, on...
, the audience booed when he told them to lay down their prejudices and listen to rock 'n' roll. In Young's opinion, "Lomax put on what is probably the turning point in American folk music . . . . At that concert, the point he was trying to make was that Negro and white music were mixing, and rock and roll was that thing."
Alan Lomax married Elizabeth Lyttleton Harold in February 1937. They were married for 12 years and had a daughter, Anne (later known as Anna). Elizabeth assisted him in recording in Haiti, Alabama, Appalachia, and Mississippi, and wrote radio scripts of folk operas featuring American music that were broadcast over the BBC home service as part of the war effort, as well as conducting lengthy interviews with folk music personalities including Reverend Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis
Reverend Gary Davis, also Blind Gary Davis, was an American blues and gospel singer and guitarist, who was also proficient on the banjo and harmonica...
. He also did important field work with Elizabeth Barnicle and Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
in Florida and the Bahamas (1936); with John Work and Lewis Jones in Mississippi (1941 and 42); with folksingers Robin Roberts and Jean Ritchie
Jean Ritchie
Jean Ritchie is an American folk singer, songwriter, and Appalachian dulcimer player.- Out of Kentucky :Abigail and Balis Ritchie of Viper, Kentucky had 14 children, and Jean was the youngest...
in Ireland (1950); with his second wife Antoinette Marchand in the Caribbean (1961); with Joan Halifax in Morocco; and with his daughter. All those who assisted and worked with him were accurately credited on the resultant Library of Congress and other recordings, as well as in his many books and publications.
Alan Lomax met 20-year-old English folk singer Shirley Collins
Shirley Collins
Shirley Elizabeth Collins MBE is a British folksinger who was a significant contributor to the English Folk Revival of the 1960s and 1970s...
while living in London. The two were romantically involved and lived together for some years. When Lomax obtained a contract from Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records
Atlantic Records is an American record label best known for its many recordings of rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and jazz...
to re-record some of the American musicians first recorded in the 1940s, using improved equipment, Collins accompanied him. Their folk song collecting trip to the Southern states lasted from July to November 1959 and resulted in many hours of recordings, featuring performers such as Almeda Riddle
Almeda Riddle
Almeda Riddle was an American folk singer.Born and raised in Cleburne County, Arkansas, she learned music from her father, a fiddler and singing teacher. She collected and sang traditional ballads throughout her life, usually unaccompanied...
, Hobart Smith
Hobart Smith
Hobart Smith was an American old-time musician. He was most notable for his appearance with his sister, Texas Gladden, on a series of Library of Congress recordings in the 1940s and his later appearances at various festivals during the folk music revival of the 1960s...
, Wade Ward
Wade Ward
-External links:...
, Charlie Higgins
Charlie Higgins
Charlie Higgins was an American old time fiddle player from Galax, Virginia. Higgins said that he was influenced by other old-time fiddlers including Emmett Lundy and Fiddlin' Arthur Smith. His style of playing was said to be very innovative and creative. Higgins played regularly with Wade Ward,...
and Bessie Jones
Bessie Jones
Bessie Jones , gospel singer from Smithville, GA. She learned her songs from her grandfather, a former slave born in Africa. She was a founding member of the Georgia Sea Island Singers. Alan Lomax first encountered Bessie Jones on a southern trip in 1959...
and culminated in the discovery of Mississippi Fred McDowell
Fred McDowell
Fred McDowell known by his stage name; Mississippi Fred McDowell, was an American Hill country blues singer and guitar player.-Career:...
. Recordings from this trip were issued under the title Sounds of the South and some were also featured in the Coen brothers’ film Oh Brother, Where Art Thou. Lomax wished to marry Collins but when the recording trip was over, she returned to England and married Austin John Marshall. In an interview in The Guardian newspaper, Collins expressed irritation that Alan Lomax's 1993 account of the journey, The Land Where The Blues Began, barely mentioned her. "All it said was, 'Shirley Collins was along for the trip'. It made me hopping mad. I wasn't just 'along for the trip'. I was part of the recording process, I made notes, I drafted contracts, I was involved in every part". Collins addressed the perceived omission in her memoir, America Over the Water, published in 2004.
Lomax married Antoinette Marchand on August 26, 1961.
In 1962, Lomax and singer and Civil Rights Activist Guy Carawan
Guy Carawan
Guy Carawan is an American folk musician and musicologist. He serves as music director and song leader for the Highlander Research and Education Center in New Market, Tennessee....
, music director at the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, produced the album, Freedom in the Air: Albany Georgia, 1961-62, on Vanguard Records for the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee.
Lomax was a consultant to Carl Sagan
Carl Sagan
Carl Edward Sagan was an American astronomer, astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, science popularizer and science communicator in astronomy and natural sciences. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books...
for the Voyager Golden Record
Voyager Golden Record
The Voyager Golden Records are phonograph records which were included aboard both Voyager spacecraft, which were launched in 1977. They contain sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth, and are intended for any intelligent extraterrestrial life form, or for...
sent into space on the 1977 Voyager Spacecraft to represent the music of the earth. Music he helped choose included the blues, jazz, and rock 'n' roll of Blind Willie Johnson
Blind Willie Johnson
"Blind" Willie Johnson was an American singer and guitarist, whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals....
, Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....
, and Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
; Andean panpipes and Navajo chants; a Sicilian sulfur miner's lament; polyphonic vocal music from the Mbuti
Mbuti
Mbuti or Bambuti are one of several indigenous pygmy groups in the Congo region of Africa. Their languages belong to the Central Sudanic and also to Bantu languages.-Overview:...
Pygmies of Zaire, and the Georgians of the Caucasus; and a shepherdess song from Bulgaria by Valya Balkanska
Valya Balkanska
Valya Mladenova Balkanska is a Bulgarian folk music singer from the Rhodope Mountains known locally for her wide repertoire of Balkan folksong, but in the West mainly for singing the song "Izlel e Delyu Haydutin", part of the Voyager Golden Record selection of music included in the two Voyager...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ng62EsjTK9U; in addition to Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, and more.
International music
Brian EnoBrian Eno
Brian Peter George St. John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno , commonly known as Brian Eno or simply as Eno , is an English musician, composer, record producer, singer and visual artist, known as one of the principal innovators of ambient music.Eno studied at Colchester Institute art school in Essex,...
wrote of Lomax's later recording career in his notes to accompany an anthology of Lomax's world recordings:
[He later] turned his intelligent attentions to music from many other parts of the world, securing for them a dignity and status they had not previously been accorded. The "World MusicWorld musicWorld music is a term with widely varying definitions, often encompassing music which is primarily identified as another genre. This is evidenced by world music definitions such as "all of the music in the world" or "somebody else's local music"...
" phenomenon arose partly from those efforts, as did his great book, Folk Song Style and Culture. I believe this is one of the most important books ever written about music, in my all time top ten. It is one of the very rare attempts to put cultural criticism onto a serious, comprehensible, and rational footing by someone who had the experience and breadth of vision to be able to do it."
Cultural equity
As a member of the Popular FrontPopular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
and People's Songs in the 1940s, Alan Lomax promoted what was then known as "One World" and today is called multiculturalism. In the late forties he produced a series of concerts at Town Hall and Carnegie Hall that presented Flamenco guitar and Calypso, along with country blues, Appalachian music
Appalachian music
Appalachian music is the traditional music of the region of Appalachia in the Eastern United States. It is derived from various European and African influences, including English ballads, Irish and Scottish traditional music , religious hymns, and African-American blues...
, Andean music, and jazz. His radio shows of the 40s and 50s explored musics of all the world's peoples.
Lomax recognized that folklore (like all forms of creativity) occurs at the local and not the national level and flourishes not in isolation but in fruitful interplay with other cultures. He was dismayed that mass communications appeared to be crushing local cultural expressions and languages. In 1950 he echoed anthropologist Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942), who believed the role of the ethnologist should be that of advocate for primitive man (as indigenous people were then called), when he urged folklorists to similarly advocate for the folk. Some, such as Richard Dorson
Richard Dorson
Richard Mercer Dorson was an American folklorist, author, professor, and director of the Folklore Institute at Indiana University.Dorson was born in New York City. He studied at the Phillips Exeter Academy from 1929 to 1933....
, objected that scholars shouldn't act as cultural arbiters, but Lomax believed it would be unethical to stand idly by as the magnificent variety of the world's cultures and languages was "grayed out" by centralized commercial entertainment and educational systems. Although he acknowledged potential problems with intervention, he urged that folklorists with their special training actively assist communities in safeguarding and revitalizing their own local traditions.
Similar ideas had been put into practice by Benjamin Botkin, Harold W. Thompson, and Louis C. Jones, who believed that folklore studied by folklorists should be returned to its home communities to enable it to thrive anew. They have been realized in the annual (since 1967) Smithsonian Folk Festival on the Mall in Washington, D.C. (for which Lomax served as a consultant), in national and regional initiatives by public folklorists and local activists in helping communities gain recognition for their oral traditions and lifeways both in their home communities and in the world at large; and in the National Heritage Awards, concerts, and fellowships given by the NEA and various State governments to master folk and traditional artists.
In 2001, in the wake of the attacks in New York and Washington of September 11, UNESCO's Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity declared the safeguarding of languages and intangible culture on a par with protection of individual human rights and as essential for human survival as biodiversity is for nature, ideas first articulated by Alan Lomax.
FBI investigations
From 1942 to 1979 Lomax was repeatedly investigated and interviewed by the FBI, although nothing incriminating was ever discovered and the investigation was eventually abandoned. Scholar and jazz pianist Ted GioiaTed Gioia
Ted Gioia is a noted jazz critic and music historian, best known for his books The History of Jazz and Delta Blues, both selected as notable books of the year by The New York Times. He is one of the editors in chief of the Encyclopedia of Jazz Musicians. He is also a jazz musician and one of the...
uncovered and published extracts from Alan Lomax's 800-page FBI files. The investigation appears to have started when an anonymous informant reported overhearing Lomax's father telling guests in 1941 about what he considered his son's Communist sympathies. Looking for leads, the FBI seized on the fact that, as a teenager in the 1930s, Lomax had transferred from Harvard to the University of Texas after being arrested in Boston in connection with a political demonstration. In 1942 the FBI sent agents to interview students at Harvard's freshman dorm about Lomax's participation in a demonstration that had occurred at Harvard in 1932 in support of the immigration rights of one Edith Berkman, a Jewish woman, dubbed the "red flame" for her labor organizing activities among the textile workers of Lawrence, Massachusetts, and threatened with deportation as an alleged "Communist agitator". Lomax had been charged with disturbing the peace and fined $25.00. Miss Berkman, however, had been cleared of all accusations against her and was not deported. Nor had Lomax's Harvard academic record been affected in any way by his activities in her defense. Nevertheless, the bureau continued trying vainly to show that in 1932 Lomax had either distributed Communist literature or made public speeches in support of the Communist Party.
According to Ted Gioia:
Lomax must have felt it necessary to address the suspicions. He gave a sworn statement to an FBI agent on April 3, 1942, denying both of these charges. He also explained his arrest while at Harvard as the result of police overreaction. He was, he claimed, 15 at the time – he was actually 17 and a college student – and he said he had intended to participate in a peaceful demonstration. Lomax said he and his colleagues agreed to stop their protest when police asked them to, but that he was grabbed by a couple of policemen as he was walking away. "That is pretty much the story there, except that it distressed my father very, very much", Lomax told the FBI. "'I had to defend my righteous position, and he couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand him. It has made a lot of unhappiness for the two of us because he loved Harvard and wanted me to be a great success there.' Lomax transferred to the University of Texas the following year".
Lomax left Harvard in 1932 after a year of study there, because his father lost his job and all his money during the depression and could no longer afford to pay his tuition, and not for any political or academic reasons. He probably also had wanted to be close to his newly bereaved father, now a widower, and his 10-year old sister, Bess
Bess Lomax Hawes
Bess Lomax Hawes was an American folk musician, folklorist, and researcher. She was the daughter of John Avery Lomax and Bess Bauman-Brown Lomax, and the sister of Alan Lomax.-Early life and education:...
, who was now motherless.
In June 1942 the FBI approached the Librarian of Congress, Archibald McLeish, in an attempt to have Lomax fired as Assistant in Charge of the Library's Archive of American Folk Song. At the time, Lomax was preparing for a field trip to the Mississippi Delta on behalf of the Library, where he would make landmark recordings of Muddy Waters, Son House, and David "Honeyboy" Edwards, among others. McLeish wrote to Hoover defending Lomax: "I have studied the findings of these reports very carefully. I do not find positive evidence that Mr. Lomax has been engaged in subversive activities and I am therefore taking no disciplinary action toward him." Nevertheless, according to Gioia:
Yet what the probe failed to find in terms of prosecutable evidence, it made up for in speculation about his character. An FBI report dated July 23, 1943, describes Lomax as possessing "an erratic, artistic temperament" and a "bohemian attitude." It says: "He has a tendency to neglect his work over a period of time and then just before a deadline he produces excellent results." The file quotes one informant who said that "Lomax was a very peculiar individual, that he seemed to be very absent-minded and that he paid practically no attention to his personal appearance." This same source adds that he suspected Lomax's peculiarity and poor grooming habits came from associating with the hillbillies who provided him with folk tunes".
Lomax, who was a founding member of People's Songs, was in charge of campaign music for Henry A. Wallace's 1948 Presidential run on the Progressive Party ticket on a platform opposing the arms race and supporting civil rights for Jews and African Americans. Subsequently, Lomax was one of the performers listed in the publication Red Channels
Red Channels
Red Channels: The Report of Communist Influence in Radio and Television is an anti-Communist tract published in the United States at the height of the Red Scare...
as a possible Communist sympathizer and was consequently blacklisted from working in US entertainment industries.
A 2007 BBC news article revealed that in the early '50s, the British MI5
MI5
The Security Service, commonly known as MI5 , is the United Kingdom's internal counter-intelligence and security agency and is part of its core intelligence machinery alongside the Secret Intelligence Service focused on foreign threats, Government Communications Headquarters and the Defence...
placed Alan Lomax under surveillance as a suspected Communist. Its report concluded that although Lomax undoubtedly held "left wing" views, there was no evidence he was a Communist. Released September 4, 2007 (File ref KV 2/2701), a summary of his MI5 file reads as follows:
Noted American folk music archivist and collector Alan Lomax first attracted the attention of the Security Service when it was noted that he had made contact with the Romanian press attaché in London while he was working on a series of folk music broadcasts for the BBC in 1952. Correspondence ensued with the American authorities as to Lomax' suspected membership of the Communist Party, though no positive proof is found on this file. The Service took the view that Lomax' work compiling his collections of world folk music gave him a legitimate reason to contact the attaché, and that while his views (as demonstrated by his choice of songs and singers) were undoubtedly left wing, there was no need for any specific action against him.
The file contains a partial record of Lomax' movements, contacts and activities while in Britain, and includes for example a police report of the "Songs of the Iron Road" concert at St Pancras in December 1953. His association with [blacklisted American] film director Joseph LoseyJoseph LoseyJoseph Walton Losey was an American theater and film director. After studying in Germany with Bertolt Brecht, Losey returned to the United States, eventually making his way to Hollywood...
is also mentioned (serial 30a).
The FBI again investigated Lomax in 1956 and sent a 68 page report to the CIA and the Attorney General's office. However, William Tompkins, assistant attorney general, wrote to Hoover that the investigation had failed to disclose sufficient evidence to warrant prosecution or the suspension of Lomax's passport.
Then, as late as 1979, an FBI report suggested that Lomax had recently impersonated an FBI agent. The report appears to have been based on mistaken identity. The person who reported the incident to the FBI said that the man in question was around 43, about 5 feet 9 inches and 190 pounds. The FBI file notes that Lomax stood 6 feet (1.8 m) tall, weighed 240 pounds and was 64 at the time:
Lomax resisted the FBI's attempts to interview him about the impersonation charges, but he finally met with agents at his home in November 1979. He denied that he’d been involved in the matter but did note that he’d been in New Hampshire in July 1979, visiting a film editor about a documentary. The FBI's report concluded that "Lomax made no secret of the fact that he disliked the FBI and disliked being interviewed by the FBI. Lomax was extremely nervous throughout the interview".The FBI investigation was concluded the following year, shortly after Lomax's 65th birthday.
Awards
Alan Lomax received the National Medal of ArtsNational Medal of Arts
The National Medal of Arts is an award and title created by the United States Congress in 1984, for the purpose of honoring artists and patrons of the arts. It is the highest honor conferred to an individual artist on behalf of the people. Honorees are selected by the National Endowment for the...
from President Reagan in 1986, a Library of Congress Living Legend Award http://www.loc.gov/about/awards/legends/ in 2000, and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Philosophy from Tulane University in 2001 http://www.nea.gov/honors/medals/medalists_year.html. He won the National Book Critics Circle Award
National Book Critics Circle Award
The National Book Critics Circle Award is an annual award given by the National Book Critics Circle to promote the finest books and reviews published in English....
and the Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award in 1993 for his book The Land Where the Blues Began, connecting the story of the origins of blues music with the prevalence of forced labor in the pre-World War II South (especially on the Mississippi levees). Lomax also received a posthumous Grammy Trustees Award
Grammy Trustees Award
The Grammy Trustees Award is awarded by the Recording Academy to "individuals who, during their careers in music, have made significant contributions, other than performance, to the field of recording". Through 1983, performers could also receive this award...
for his lifetime achievements in 2003.
Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings by Alan Lomax (Rounder Records, 8 CDs boxed set) won in two categories at the 48th annual Grammy Awards ceremony held on Feb 8, 2006 http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/0603/roll.html. The box set Alan Lomax In Haiti: Recordings For The Library Of Congress, 1936–1937, on Harte Records, featuring 10 CDs of recorded music and film footage (shot by Elizabeth Lomax), a bound book of Lomax's letters and field journals, and notes by musicologist Gage Avrill, was nominated for two Grammy Awards in 2011.
DVDs
- Lomax the SonghunterLomax the SonghunterLomax the Songhunter is a 2004 documentary film about Alan Lomax, a man who, after World War II, was determined to record folk music from United States and all over the world before it was blown away by mass consumer culture...
, documentary directed by Rogier Kappers, 2004 (issued on DVD 2007). - American Patchwork television series, 1990 (five DVDs).
- Oss Oss Wee Oss 1951 (on a DVD with other films related to the Padstow May Day).
- Rhythms of Earth. Four films (Dance & Human History, Step Style, Palm Play, and The Longest Trail) made by Lomax (1974–1984) about his Choreometric cross-cultural analysis of dance and movement style. Two-and-a-half hours, plus one-and-a-half hours of interviews and 177 pages of text.
- The Land Where The Blues Began, expanded, thirtieth-anniversary edition of the 1979 documentary by Alan Lomax and ethnomusicologist and civil rights activist Worth Long, with 3.5 hours of additional music and video.
Further reading
- Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World . John Szwed., New York: Viking Press, 2010 (438 pp.: ISBN 978-0-670-02199-4) / London : William Heinemann, 2010 (438 pp.;ISBN 978-0-434-01232-9).
External links
- "The Saga of a Folksong Hunter: A Twenty-year Odyssey with Cylinder, Disc, and Tape". HiFi Stereo Review, May 1960." 1960.
- Alan Lomax Collection, The American Folklife Center, Library of Congress
- Lomax Collection images, Library of Congress
- Association for Cultural Equity (ACE) - Alan Lomax pages
- "Remembrances of Alan Lomax, 2002" by Guy Carawan
- Alan Lomax: Citizen Activist, by Ron Cohen
- Archived version of "Remembering Alan Lomax" by Bruce Jackson
- Interview of Shirley Collins reminiscing about Alan Lomax on Perfect Sound Forever.
- Alan Lomax's Multimedia Dream by Michael Naimark
- Alan Lomax on Impressum (in German)
- Alan Lomax films for viewing online - Appalachian Journey, Cajun Country, Dreams and Songs of the Noble Old, Jazz Parades: Feet Don't Fail Me Now, The Land Where the Blues Began
- Lomax: the songhunter from P.O.V.P.O.V.POV is a Public Broadcasting Service Public television series which features independent nonfiction films. POV is a cinema term for "point of view"....
August 22, 2006. Discussion guide, streaming radio sampler, discussion board. - Scene taken from Lomax the songhunter, a musical documentary that travels the world to meet people whom Lomax recorded, and portrays his life through interviews with relatives.
- To Hear Your Banjo Play (1947), documentary film written by Alan Lomax, narrated by Pete Seeger, with Texas Gladden, Woody Guthrie, Baldwin Hawes, Cisco Houston, Brownie McGhee, Sonny Terry, and the Margot Mayo Square Dancers (The American Square Dance Group) on Google video
- Oss Oss Wee Oss by Alan Lomax and Peter Kennedy, a filmed documentary of the Padstow May Day Ceremony (1951) at Documentary Educational Resources.
- Radio interview with Alan Lomax talking about Leadbelly
- Leadbelly and Lomax Together at the American Music Festival on WNYC
- The Man Who Recorded the World - New Biography by John Szwed | Folk Radio UK
- Alan Lomax Collection on Rounder Records