Alan Lomax (English)

Featuring introductions, speeches, and album liner notes by the noted musicologist and folklorist Alan Lomax, as well as descriptions of the numerous artists he recorded in over five decades of musical exploration, many of the essays anthologized here reflect the changes taking place in American folk music as its popularity and commercial potential grew during the 1950s. Others illustrate Lomax's view of the songs he made it his lifetime's work to collect as cementing an idea of international brotherhood. But the most riveting pieces reveal his early attempts to capture the music of reluctant performers, both black and white, who were often downright suspicious of his motives, as well as the exhilaration he conveys on finding an artist like Leadbelly, who not only provided him with a rich vein of new material but later became a star in his own right. minimize