Sheet Music

Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1934-1997

Routledge Press, 384 pp., $30

Born and raised in Austin, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915-2002) helped introduce the world to Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Aunt Molly Jackson, and countless other folk artists in America and points beyond. Building on the work of his father, John, Lomax recorded everything from Texas prison work songs to Genoese tralaeros, preserving a rich tapestry of folklore against the threat of cultural "gray-out." The best way to appreciate Lomax's tremendous contribution to music is to listen to his immense library of field recordings, now available on Rounder in a series that will eventually span 150 albums. Reading through this hodgepodge collection of academic and general-interest articles by Lomax gradually outlines the progressive ideals and tenacious methods that underpinned his work. While not a biography, each of the five sections focuses on a part of Lomax's professional life, each illuminating a new element in his passion for the world's music. The early articles invite enthusiasm by making his subjects and settings palpable. A 1938 account of a fevered collecting trip to Haiti almost makes one long for a mosquito net. In 1947's "America Sings the Saga of America," Lomax gives America's democratic folk tradition partial credit for the defeat of international fascism. Lomax himself combated fascism head-on when recording in Spain during the Fifties, but the interference of Franco's secret police only heightened his resolve to capture the people's voice. A soaring Galician grape-trampling song, included on the accompanying CD, offers stark contrast to Lomax's description of the poverty in which the singers lived. Not content to just document the music, Lomax began examining music as a form of behavior and developed theories about its relation to social structure. While his flawed Cantometrics system was given a tepid academic reception, his ideas about "cultural equity" remain especially salient amid today's atmosphere of compulsory patriotism. In casting a wide net around his many pursuits, Selected Writings is a full-bodied illustration of how Lomax became the pre-eminent scholar in his field.