Alan Lomax

Author: John Szwed
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101190345
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 581

Book Description
The remarkable life and times of the man who popularized American folk music and created the science of song Folklorist, archivist, anthropologist, singer, political activist, talent scout, ethnomusicologist, filmmaker, concert and record producer, Alan Lomax is best remembered as the man who introduced folk music to the masses. Lomax began his career making field recordings of rural music for the Library of Congress and by the late 1930s brought his discoveries to radio, including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Burl Ives. By the 1940s he was producing concerts that brought white and black performers together, and in the 1950s he set out to record the whole world. Lomax was also a controversial figure. When he worked for the U. S. government he was tracked by the FBI, and when he worked in Britain, MI5 continued the surveillance. In his last years he turned to digital media and developed technology that anticipated today's breakthroughs. Featuring a cast of characters including Eleanor Roosevelt, Leadbelly, Carl Sandburg, Carl Sagan, Jelly Roll Morton, Muddy Waters, and Bob Dylan, Szwed's fascinating biography memorably captures Lomax and provides a definitive account of an era as seen through the life of one extraordinary man.

The Land where the Blues Began

Author: Alan Lomax
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780385312851
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Winner of the 1993 National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction, this mususical and cultural exploration of the rich, sorrow-laden birth of the blues is an intimate and respectful look at an integral part of African American culture--a master work that has been 60 years in the making. Photos.

Folk Song Style and Culture

Author: Alan Lomax
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351519662
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 390

Book Description
Song and dance style--viewed as nonverbal communications about culture--are here related to social structure and cultural history. Patterns of performance, theme, text and movement are analyzed in large samples of films an recordings from the whole range of human culture, according to the methods explained in this volume. Cantometrics, which means song as a measure of man, finds that traditions of singing trace the main historic distributions of human culture and that specific traits of performance are communications about identifiable aspects of society. The predictable and universal relations between expressive communication and social organization, here established for the first time, open up the possibility of a scientific aesthetics, useful to planners.

Alan Lomax, Assistant in Charge

Author: Ronald D. Cohen
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1626742227
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 682

Book Description
Alan Lomax (1915-2002) began working for the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in 1936, first as a special and temporary assistant, then as the permanent Assistant in Charge, starting in June 1937, until he left in late 1942. He recorded such important musicians as Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters, Aunt Molly Jackson, and Jelly Roll Morton. A reading and examination of his letters from 1935 to 1945 reveal someone who led an extremely complex, fascinating, and creative life, mostly as a public employee. While Lomax is noted for his field recordings, these collected letters, many signed "Alan Lomax, Assistant in Charge," are a trove of information until now available only at the Library of Congress. They make it clear that Lomax was very interested in the commercial hillbilly, race, and even popular recordings of the 1920s and after. These letters serve as a way of understanding Lomax's public and private life during some of his most productive and significant years. Lomax was one of the most stimulating and influential cultural workers of the twentieth century. Here he speaks for himself through his voluminous correspondence.

American Ballads and Folk Songs

Author: John A. Lomax
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 048631992X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 719

Book Description
Music and lyrics for over 200 songs. John Henry, Goin' Home, Little Brown Jug, Alabama-Bound, Black Betty, The Hammer Song, Jesse James, Down in the Valley, The Ballad of Davy Crockett, and many more.

Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People

Author: Alan Lomax
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0803244754
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Twenty-seven years in the making (1940–67), this tapestry of nearly two hundred American popular and protest songs was created by three giants of performance and musical research: Alan Lomax, indefatigable collector and preserver; Woody Guthrie, performer and prolific balladeer; and Pete Seeger, entertainer and educator who has introduced three generations of Americans to their musical heritage. In his afterword, Pete Seeger recounts the long history of collecting and publishing this anthology of Depression-era, union-hopeful, and New Deal melodies. With characteristic modesty, he tells us what’s missing and what’s wrong with the collection. But more important, he tells us what’s right and why it still matters, noting songs that have become famous the world over: “Union Maid,” “Which Side Are You On?,” “Worried Man Blues,” “Midnight Special,” and “Tom Joad.” “Now, at the turn of the century, the millennium, what’s the future of these songs?” he asks. “Music is one of the things that will save us. Future songwriters can learn from the honesty, the courage, the simplicity, and the frankness of these hard-hitting songs. And not just songwriters. We can all learn.” In addition to 123 photographs and 195 songs, this edition features an introductory note by Nora Guthrie, the daughter of Woody Guthrie and overseer of the Woody Guthrie Foundation.

Alan Lomax

Author: Alan Lomax
Publisher: Psychology Press
ISBN: 9780415938549
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 363

Book Description
Accompany CD has excerpts from a speech given by Alan Lomax on March 7, 1989, at the New York Public Library plus seven tracks of folk songs recorded by Alan Lomax.

Songs of Earth

Author: Anna L. Wood
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1496840364
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 469

Book Description
Based upon Cantometrics: An Approach to the Anthropology of Music (1976), by Alan Lomax, Songs of Earth: Aesthetic and Social Codes in Music is a contemporary guide to understanding and exploring Cantometrics, the system developed by Lomax and Victor Grauer for analyzing the formal elements of music related to human geography and sociocultural patterning. This carefully constructed cross-cultural study of world music revealed deep-rooted performance patterns and aesthetic preferences and their links with environmental factors and ancient socioeconomic practices. This new and updated edition is for anyone wishing to understand and more deeply appreciate the forms and sociocultural contexts of the musics of the world’s peoples, and it is designed to be used by both scholars and laypeople. Part One of the book consists of a practical guide to using the Cantometrics system, a course with musical examples to test one’s understanding of the material, a theoretical framework to put the methodology in context, and an illustration of the method used to explore the roots of popular music. Part Two includes guides to four other analytical systems that Lomax developed, which focus on orchestration, phrasing and breath management, vowel articulation, instrumentation, and American popular music. Part Three provides resources for educators who wish to use the Cantometrics system in their classrooms, a summary of the findings and hypotheses of Lomax’s original research, and a discussion of Cantometrics’ criticisms, applications, and new approaches, and it includes excerpts of Lomax’s original writings about world song style and cultural equity.

Depression Folk

Author: Ronald D. Cohen
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469628821
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 219

Book Description
While music lovers and music historians alike understand that folk music played an increasingly pivotal role in American labor and politics during the economic and social tumult of the Great Depression, how did this relationship come to be? Ronald D. Cohen sheds new light on the complex cultural history of folk music in America, detailing the musicians, government agencies, and record companies that had a lasting impact during the 1930s and beyond. Covering myriad musical styles and performers, Cohen narrates a singular history that begins in nineteenth-century labor politics and popular music culture, following the rise of unions and Communism to the subsequent Red Scare and increasing power of the Conservative movement in American politics--with American folk and vernacular music centered throughout. Detailing the influence and achievements of such notable musicians as Pete Seeger, Big Bill Broonzy, and Woody Guthrie, Cohen explores the intersections of politics, economics, and race, using the roots of American folk music to explore one of the United States' most troubled times. Becoming entangled with the ascending American left wing, folk music became synonymous with protest and sharing the troubles of real people through song.

World Music: Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacific

Author: Simon Broughton
Publisher: Rough Guides
ISBN: 9781858286365
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 708

Book Description
The Rough Guide to World Musicwas published for the first time in 1994 and became the definitive reference. Six years on, the subject has become too big for one book- hence this new two-volume edition. World Music 2- Latin and North America, Caribbean, India, Asia and Pacifichas full coverage of everything from salsa and merengue to qawwali and gamelan, and biographies of artists from Juan Luis Guerra to The Klezmatics to Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Features include more than 80 articles from expert contributors, focusing on the popular and roots music to be seen and heard, both live and on disc, and extensive discographies for each country, with biography-notes on nearly 2000 musicians and reviews of their best available CDs. It includes photos and album cover illustrations which have been gathered from contemporary and archive sources, many of them unique to this book, and directories of World Music labels, specialist stores around the world and on the internet.