Alan Lomax and his Contribution to Folk Music

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Alan’s folk music convictions
Analysis
Conclusion
Works Cited

Introduction

Alan Lomax collected and preserved folk music related to different cultures. He got his inspiration from his father- John Lomax who was also a folklorist. He carried out this work for six decades; traveling widely in the United States, Spain, the Caribbean, Great Britain, Italy, and Ireland. His contribution to the Archive of American Folk Song was great placing it among the best music resources in the world. His collection included recordings of storytellers, singers and instrumentalists. Lomax’s love for ethnomusicology was also revealed in his books on music, radio shows hosted in both CBS and the BBC and his New York concert series, The Midnight Special. He has incredibly contributed to the preservation of music, especially classic folk, and introduced a couple of artists to the music industry. His materials, in the custody of Archive of American Folk Song, are deemed one of the best cultural music collections in the whole world (Mahar 1).

Alan’s folk music convictions

Lomax believed that human continuity and adaptation were a result of cultural and folklore existence. Due to this end, he was determined to advocate for the use, enjoyment as well as scientific study of culture through folklore preservation. He thus established a platform for the same in the Association for Cultural Equity (ACE) that is presently under the leadership of his daughter in New York. In addition to these convictions, Alan was of the idea that folk music is a mystery outside its production context and that folk music is dynamic in order to accommodate cultural and social changes of its background (Wadey 1).

Analysis

A closer look at the accomplishments made by Lomax makes one doubt his conviction that music folk music is only applicable and understandable within the context of its background. If his conviction is true, then preservation does not make sense. His music was collected from several backgrounds and cultures and thus if folk music can only be understood in its cultural background, most of his collections are somehow useless. With this argument, either his convictions were deceiving or he was just being involved in folklore taxidermy. That is a collection of folklore works of art that are not as useful as they seem to be. Still, he believed that folk music is dynamic with changes that exhibit cultural and social changes in society. If this is the case, doesn’t his collection have the risk of becoming archaic with time? What was the point of collecting these works if they are changing constantly? Thus his method of collecting folklore from all over the world is deeply in conflict with his beliefs. In a nutshell, his beliefs were correct and his method and results of collecting folklore were amazingly significant but his convictions were slightly ambiguous (“The American Folklife Center” 1).

Conclusion

Although Alan Lomax’s convictions conflicted with his approach to the collection of these works of art, his collections have been and still are of great importance to the music industry and the study of ethnomusicology. His collection acts as a platform for the creation of folk music and gives reference materials for the study of ethnomusicology. His study also gave him a lot of opportunities. He had a chance to study different cultures, learn various folklore styles, interact with different people, and interact with the media. It is this wide musical experience that enabled him to write several music books.

Works Cited

Mahar, Meghan. “The Preservation of Folk and Documenting Change”, Block Magazine, 2006. Web.

The American Folk life Center. “Alan Lomax Collection”, The Library of Congress, 2006. Web.

Wadey, Paul. “Alan Lomax”. The Independent, 2002. Web.

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Alan Lomax and his Contribution to Folk Music

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