Abstract
If you know an American folksong, chances are pretty good that it was collected by Alan Lomax (1915–2002), a song collector extraordinaire who worked for the Library of Congress from 1933 to 1942. “House of the Rising Sun,” “Rock Island Line,” “Free at Last,” “Midnight Special,” and “Sloop John B” are just a few of the thousands of songs collected and brought to national attention by Lomax. This year marks the centennial of his birth.
By song collector, folklorists mean someone who documents traditional songs and tunes being played and passed down in various communities. Early song collectors (“fieldworkers”) documented their findings by writing out song lyrics and transcribing tunes in standard musical notation. However, because many folksongs use tunings, harmonic intervals, and ornaments that are difficult to accurately convey using standard Western notation, song collectors were among the first to seek out and use the very latest and most innovative recording technology.
Alan Lomax was the son of another important song collector, John A. Lomax. Either alone, with his father, or with other collaborators, Alan spent more than seven decades traveling through America, Europe, and the Caribbean recording the performances of folk musicians. The first time he accompanied his father on a collecting trip in 1933, they were still recording on wax cylinders. Later that year, the Library supplied Lomax with the first in a series of Presto recorders and blank 78-rpm disks. The Presto recorder was large and cumbersome, and Alan traveled with the machine in the back of his car. (Some folklorists used converted ambulances for their equipment.) Where there was no electricity, Alan used his car battery, which was attached to a transformer, which was attached to an amplifier, which was attached to the Presto machine.
Early Presto disks were made of solid aluminum. Shallow grooves were etched directly into the metal by the recording needle. By the mid-1930s, Lomax upgraded to lacquer-coated disks that allowed for deeper grooves and better sound quality. Although the field recording process was still difficult, Presto disks could be played back immediately—a great novelty for many of the performers recorded who had never heard themselves. Lomax used the Presto recorders on many of his signature field trips to document traditional music in Louisiana (including Cajun music), Michigan and the Midwest (including music of numerous European ethnic communities), and the American South (including ballads and fiddle tunes of the Appalachian Mountains and blues from the Mississippi Delta).
By the late 1940s, Prestos were replaced by the first portable tape machines. Lomax used a state-of-the art Magnecord tape recorder for his European fieldwork in the 1950s. Although not as bulky as the disk recorder, the Magnecord still required two cases—one for the recorder and one for the amplifier. And if there was no local electricity, the machine also needed bulky batteries.
In 1977, Lomax helped take recorded folksongs across the solar system. Early that year, the astronomer Carl Sagan invited him to recommend musical selections for phonograph records that would be carried by the two Voyager space probes. These records were intended to represent the diversity of the Earth’s music and serve as a message about human civilization to anyone who discovered them. More than a dozen of Lomax’s suggested tracks were included on the final records, and it is due to his advocacy that recordings of panpipes from Peru, Senegalese percussion, and jazz by Louis Armstrong are today journeying through interstellar space, waiting for a listener.
Lomax pioneered the use of folk music in classroom education, and for more than seventy years, his recordings have formed the basis of influential books, song collections, recordings, and radio programs that profoundly shaped America’s musical landscape. Today, when excellent field recordings can be made with palm-sized cell phones, it is worth remembering and celebrating the challenges faced by earlier song collectors. Happy birthday, Alan!
Related Student Explorations
The letter from Carl Sagan to Alan Lomax about the Voyager Golden Records might pique student curiosity about the nature of song collection and selection. It might also lead to a lively discussion of which recordings students would choose to send into space as a message to other civilizations: http://www.loc.gov/item/cosmos000113/. (From the Alan Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Used courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity.)
Links to Resources
For a list of 100 iconic songs collected by Alan Lomax: www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/lomaxiconicsonglist.html
For a biography of Alan Lomax: www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/alanlomaxbio.html
For an overview of Lomax collections at the American Folklife Center and Lomax centennial projects around the country: www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/lomaxcentennial.html
Students might enjoy the very early field recording “Mr. Phonography,” in which song collector Jesse Walter Fewkes demonstrates a state-of-the-art Edison wax cylinder recording machine to a Passamaquoddy visitor from Maine in 1890: www.loc.gov/folklife/guide/audio/5-MrPhonograph.mp3
