Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax
Alan Lomaxwas an American field collector of folk music of the 20th century. He was also a folklorist, ethnomusicologist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John A. Lomax, and later alone and with others,...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth31 January 1915
CountryUnited States of America
ballads concert form front games helped lead repertory round sang songs work
We went over Lead Belly's repertory with him. And we helped him round it off into concert form so that when he got up in front of his audience, he sang ballads and work songs and lullabies and children's games and square-dance tunes, the whole thing.
belly black came certainly father found lead looking met roots
My father and I met Lead Belly in the Angola Penitentiary in 1933. We came there looking for the roots of American black song, and we certainly found them with Lead Belly.
against benefit dirty fighting fights-and-fighting great heard nights remember song spanish stepped tiny voice woody
We were doing a benefit for this Spanish cause, the Spanish Loyalists who were fighting against Franco, and Woody was on the show. It was one of the first nights he was in New York. He stepped out on the stage, this little tiny guy, big bushy hair, with this great voice and his guitar, and just electrified us all. I remember the first song I heard him sing: "Mention Dirty to My Heart.
song book village
I knew Bobby Dylan back in the days when he lived in the village. He used to come and see me and sing songs for me, saying they ought to go into my next collected book on American folk music.
running art real
And the thing that I always tried to do with important singers when I met them was to sit down and record everything they knew, give them a first real run-through of their art.
singing maps music-is
Folk Music is the map of singing.
song land people
People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile.
gadgets computer wonderful
The modern computer with all its various gadgets and wonderful electronic facilities now makes it possible to preserve and reinvigorate all the cultural richness of mankind.
dream lying hero
The essence of America lies not in the headlined heroes...but in the everyday folks who live and die unknown, yet leave their dreams as legacies
justice freedom-of-speech liberty
The dimension of cultural equity needs to be added to the humane continuum of liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and social justice.
crush powerful space
We now have cultural machines so powerful that one singer can reach everybody in the world, and make all the other singers feel inferior because they're not like him. Once that gets started, he gets backed by so much cash and so much power that he becomes a monstrous invader from outer space, crushing the life out of all the other human possibilities. My life has been devoted to opposing that tendency.
america fifty folk future maybe music sit time
Well I think that, really, when I look back on fifty years of working on folk music in America and elsewhere, I think maybe the most important contribution I made to the future was the time that I put in with these two people. I was very young and I could really sit at their feet.
believe belly decided early guitar home lead musical parties picking population sit ten time until woody york
Back in the early 30s, Woody and Lead Belly were musical cronies. At all the New York folk-song parties of that day - and the guitar picking population of New York at that time consisted of about ten people, if you can believe it - Lead Belly and Woody were the stars. And usually after all of us had decided to go to bed, Woody would go home with Lead Belly and they'd sit up and play until morning.
ballads became british commentary form human main musical
The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.