The Lomax Legacy:
Folklore in a Globalizing Century
A Symposium Presented by The American Folklife Center
and The Association for Cultural Equity, New York
January 18-20, 2006
Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Just Added
Concert/Lecture: "Mister Jelly Roll, Mister Lomax and the Invention
of Jazz"
Join a celebration of the life and music of Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton
and the release of the comprehensive CD box set, Jelly
Roll Morton - The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, recorded
by Alan Lomax (Rounder Records, 2005). The set chonicles a milestone recording
session at the Library of Congress
which both captured the repertoire of a pioneer jazz musician
and constituted the first oral history of jazz. Writer and jazz scholar
John Szwed and pianist Dave Burrell explore this unique legacy right where
it was created - on the stage of the Coolidge Auditorium. The box set has been nominated for two
Grammy Awards for 2005--one of them for Szwed's liner notes. Visit our
concert page for more information: http://www.loc.gov/rr/perform/concert/2005-2006schedule.html.
About the Symposium
The American Folklife Center (AFC) at the Library of Congress will host
a symposium, The Lomax Legacy: Folklore In
A Globalizing Century, from
January 18-20, 2006. A diverse
group of scholars, cultural workers, and media producers will gather
to reflect on the life work
of preeminent song collector, musical anthropologist, and cultural
activist, Alan Lomax (1915-2002). The symposium will consist of two
days of panel
presentations, film screenings, an afternoon concert/lecture, and
an evening concert. Participants will discuss their own research, publications,
productions,
and advocacy
work in light of Lomax's pioneering initiatives in these same areas.
The gathering
highlights the AFC's 2004 acquisition of the Alan Lomax Collection,
his legacy of recordings, research, and writing - a multimedia archive
of musical performances from around the world. Sometimes
referred to as "The Father of the American Folksong Revival," Lomax's
career began at the Library's Archive of American Folk Song (the
American Folklife Center's precursor) in 1933. Visit http://www.loc.gov/folklife/lomax/ for
additional details on the collection.
The preliminary program is also available for
review here: Lomax Symposium Program. The
symposium is an initiative of the American Folklife Center and the
Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), New York. ACE was founded
by Alan Lomax and is currently directed by his daughter, Anna Lomax
Wood.
About Alan Lomax
 |
Alan Lomax recording in La Plaine, Dominica, July 26, 1962
Photo courtesy of ACE. |
|
 |
Between 1933 and 1942, Alan Lomax and his father, the folklorist
John A. Lomax, developed the Library of Congress' Archive of
American Folksong into a major repository of traditional music.
Many of the early
recordings
in the Center are the products of their celebrated field trips
to document folk music and oral history across much of the United
States and the
Caribbean. Legendary performers such as Lead Belly, Aunt Molly
Jackson, Muddy Waters, and Woody
Guthrie made their first recordings with Lomax.
Over the course of the next six decades, Alan Lomax expanded
the scope of his work to include ethnomusicological and anthropological
research
and teaching, book publishing for scholarly and popular audiences,
and commercial record, radio and film production. Woody Guthrie,
Lead Belly,
Burl Ives, and Pete Seeger were first heard by national audiences
on Lomax's
radio programs in the '30s and '40s. His classic "singing" biography
of New Orleans jazz pioneer Jelly Roll Morton, recorded in
1938 at the Library of Congress, formed the basis for his book
Mister Jelly Roll (New
York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1949). American Patchwork,
his prize-winning five-hour television series on American regional
cultures, aired on PBS
in 1990. In the late 1980's and early 1990's, he
began work on a multimedia, interactive database called "The
Global Jukebox," which
surveys the relationship between dance, song, and human history.
Alan Lomax was awarded the National Medal of the Arts in 1986,
a Library of Congress Living Legend award in 2000, an honorary
doctorate
of philosophy from Tulane in 2001, and a Grammy in 2002 for
his life-long contributions to music.
To the end of his life, Alan Lomax continued to advocate and
practice the principle of "cultural equity," in order
to make a place in the media and in schools for the expressive
arts and
aesthetic values
of local
cultures worldwide. To learn how ACE, the Alan Lomax Database
and the Alan Lomax Archive carry on his work today visit http://www.alan-lomax.com/.
Attending the symposium
Admission to the symposium and related events is free, but seating
is limited. Reservations for attendance will be accepted on a
first-come,
first-served
basis.
Limit: two seats per person.
Registration for the panel discussions is now closed. |
Our guests may find the following link to information about
accommodations, area restaurants, and other amenities helpful
in planning their
visit to the Library: http://www.loc.gov/loc/visit/travel.html
Related Links
|
The Library
of Congress >> Research Centers
& The
Alan Lomax Archive, New York
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