One of the most important, in both the United States and the British Isles, was Alan Lomax. Born on January 31, 1915, in Texas, for seven decades he contributed to the collection, academic study, understanding, and promotion of folk music. As a teenager he accompanied his father, John A. Lomax, on his southern collecting trips. He published his first article in 1934, and within a few years, in collaboration with his father, he published four influential folksong books, including American Ballads and Folk Songs, Negro Folk Songs As Sung by Lead Belly, and Our Singing Country. In 1937, the young Lomax was appointed director of the Archive of American Folk-Song at the Library of Congress, a position he held into the early 1940s. He led numerous field trips throughout the country, focusing on the South. Simultaneously, he had two CBS national radio shows, featuring Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, the Golden Gate Quartet, Pete Seeger, and other developing folk performers.
Moving back and forth between Washington, D.C. and New York City, Lomax kept busy into the early 1940s with numerous recording, publishing, and radio projects. He had a particular knack for recording and promoting influential performers, including Lead Belly, Burl Ives, Josh White, Muddy Waters, Son House, and the jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton; his interviews with Morton later appeared in a ground-breaking oral history book, Mister Jelly Roll (1950). Lomax’s commitment to left-wing politics was early apparent, as he assisted the activist Almanac Singers. He continued to work for the government during World War II, now in the Army producing shows for the Armed Forces Radio Service. At the war’s end in 1945 he returned to producing folk records for Decca Records, wrote articles for popular magazines, such as Vogue and The New York Times Magazine, conducted a radio show on the Mutual network, and produced numerous concerts, all designed to promote folk music to a wide audience. He also connected with People’s Songs, a national organization designed to link folk music with progressive politics, including promoting labor unions, international peace, and civil rights.
In 1950, motivated by his desire to avoid the escalating political repression in the United States and also to expand his collecting across the Atlantic, Lomax moved to England. He soon began field recording in Ireland, Scotland, and England, then moved on to Spain and Italy. He compiled a wealth of recordings from traditional singers, which became part of the influential seventeen volume Columbia (Records) World Library of Folk and Primitive Music. Simultaneously, he worked closely with numerous British collectors and performers, including A. L. Lloyd, Ewan MacColl, Hamish Henderson, Peter Kennedy, and Seamus Ennis. He continued with his radio work, now for the BBC’s Third Programme, introducing the audience to American folk music as well as his European field recordings. While not know as a performer, Lomax was part of a skiffle group, the Ramblers, along with Peggy Seeger, MacColl, and Shirley Collins, and he recorded a few albums in both England and the United States. Indeed, Lomax played a vital role in stimulating a folk revival in England before his return to the United States in 1958. Back in New York City he plunged into the developing folk scene. He published the vital collection The Folk Songs of North America (1960) and served on the board of the Newport Folk Festival, although not without controversy due to his dominant personality and musical feelings. He also strongly supported the civil rights movement.
By the late 1960s, Lomax had become increasingly involved in formulating a complex and controversial interpretation of the world’s folk music (called Cantrometrics) and dance (called Choreometrics), and he published extensively on these topics. His goal was a multimedia, cross-cultural computer database, which he named the Global Jukebox Project, uncompleted at his death on July 19, 2002. Following his death, as during much of his life, Lomax was recognized as a major influence on the development of folk music in the United States, the British Isles, even worldwide. Rounder Records has projected 150 CDs in its comprehensive Alan Lomax Collection. Through his numerous books and articles (anthologized as Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1934–1997, Cohen 2003), radio shows in the United States and England, collecting trips, concerts, recordings, and so much else, Alan Lomax remained a vital influence on developing and shaping a broad audience for folk and popular music for more than six decades.
Chalangari: Traditional Iron Tools
