Alan Lomax, 1915-2002

Volume 28
Fall-Winter
2002

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The Association for Cultural Equity at the Voorhees Campus of Hunter College houses the Alan Lomax Archive, which contains thousands of audio and videotapes, rare vinyl recordings, 16-mm film, photographs, and papers documenting folk music and dance from the United States and abroad, as well as a large body of research. A 150-CD collection of folk music and narrative drawn from Lomax’s recordings is available through Rounder Records.

New York Folklore Society
P.O. Box 764
Schenectady, NY 12301
518/346-7008
Fax 518/346-6617
nyfs@nyfolklore.org

Alan Lomax 1915-2002 with photo of Alan Lomax recording in La Plaine, Dominica, June 25, 1962

Ethnomusicologist, record and concert producer, radio host, author, filmmaker: Alan Lomax was one of the preeminent folk song scholars of our century. Called the Father of the American Folksong Revival, he first presented Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, and others to a national audience, influencing a generation of young pop-rock and folk revival musicians. His seminal article "Appeal for Cultural Equity," excerpts of which appear below, speaks of the passion and urgency he marshalled to preserve and make flourish traditional music around the world.

During most of man’s history contact between peoples did not usually mean that one culture swallowed up or destroyed another. Even in the days of classical empire, vassal states were generally permitted to continue in their own lifestyle, so long as they paid tribute to the imperial center. The total destruction of cultures is a largely modern phenomenon, the con-sequence of laissez-faire mercantilism insatiably seeking to market all its products, to blanket the world not only with its manufacture, but with its religion, its literature and music, its educational and communication systems.

Non-European peoples have been made to feel that they have to buy "the whole package" if they are to keep face before the world. Westerners have imposed their lifestyles on their fellow humans in the name of spreading civilization or, more lately, as an essential concomitant of the benefits of industry. We must reject this cannibalistic view of civilization, just as we must now find ways of curbing a runaway industrial system which is polluting the whole planet. Indeed, industrial and cultural pollution are two aspects to the same negative tendency.

Above: Alan Lomax at the typewriter, c.1940. Photographer unknown, courtesy of The Lomax Archive.

Top: Alan Lomax recording in La Plaine, Dominica, June 25, 1962. Photo by Antoinette Marchand, courtesy of The Lomax Archive.

...When country folk or tribal peoples hear or view their own traditions in the big media projected with the authority generally reserved for the output of large urban centers, and when they hear their traditions taught to their own children, something magical occurs. They see that their ex-pressive style is as good as that of others, and, if they have equal communicational facilities, they will continue it. On my last field trip to the West Indies, I took along two huge stereo loudspeakers and, in every village where I worked, I put on a thunderous three-dimensional concert of the music I had recorded. The audiences were simply transported with pleasure. In one island, the principal yearly people’s festival, discontinued for a decade, was revived the next year in all its richness.

...It seems reasonable, therefore, that if the human race is to have a rich and varied musical future, we must encourage the development of as many local musics as possible. This means money, time on the air, and time in the classrooms.

From "Appeal for Cultural Equity," Journal of Communication," Spring 1977.

"Alan Lomax, 1915-2002," was published in Voices Vol. 28, Fall-Winter, 2002. Voices is the membership magazine of the New York Folklore Society. To become a subscriber, join the New York Folklore Society now.