Alan Lomax’s Massive Archive Goes Online

Alan Lomax (right) with musician Wade Ward during the Southern Journey recordings, 1959-1960.
Shirley Collins/Courtesy of Alan Lomax Archive

Folklorist Alan Lomax spent his career documenting folk music traditions from around the world. Now thousands of the songs and interviews he recorded are available for free online, many for the first time. It’s part of what Lomax envisioned for the collection — long before the age of the Internet.

Lomax recorded a staggering amount of folk music. He worked from the 1930s to the ’90s, and traveled from the Deep South to the mountains of West Virginia, all the way to Europe, the Caribbean and Asia. When it came time to bring all of those hours of sound into the digital era, the people in charge of the Lomax archive weren’t quite sure how to tackle the problem…….

read full article by Joel Rose for NPR Music: HERE

The Sound Recordings catalog comprises over 17,400 digital audio files, beginning with Lomax’s first recordings onto (newly invented) tape in 1946 and tracing his career into the 1990s. can be found here at: Cultural Equity

Alan Lomax editing with Ampex open-reel tape decks. Association for Cultural Equity offices, New York City. Ca. 1980. AFC Alan Lomax Collection (AFC 2004/004), courtesy of the Alan Lomax Archive. These decks helped Alan compare performance styles of different world musics, part of the project he called “cantometrics.” Photographer unknown.