Nov 04 2007
How Alan Lomax Inspired this Project
One of the most important ways we can change history is by remembering it. Few things remember quite as well as audio recordings.Alan Lomax is a prime example of how simply recording music that doesn’t normally get recorded can change history. If your not familiar with Alan Lomax, here’s a quick excerpt about him from Wikipedia:
“Lomax was the son of pioneering musicologist and folklorist John Lomax, with whom he started his career by recording songs sung by prisoners in Texas,Louisiana, and Mississippi. He attended The Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut and then went on to earn a degree in philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin. He later worked on the oral history project for the Library of Congress. To some, he is best known for his theory of cantometrics.
Lomax worked with his father on the Archive of Folk Culture, a collection of more than ten thousand recordings for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. He spent his whole life collecting folk music from around the world, particularly from the American South and assembled a highly regarded treasure trove of American and international culture.
He recorded substantial interviews with many legendary folk musicians, including Woody Guthrie, Lead Belly, Muddy Waters, Jelly Roll Morton, Irish uilleann piper Seamus Ennis, and Scottish ballad singer Jeannie Robertson. He also produced radio shows, a regular television series, and also played an important role in both the American folk music revival and British folk revival of the 1950s. Continue Reading »
