The Ballad of Alan Lomax; A Man and His Tape Recorder, Immersed in the Sounds of America's Backwaters

From: The Washington Post | Date: June 29, 1997| Author: | Copyright information

Walt Whitman heard America singing.

Alan Lomax taped it.

Over the course of seven decades, Lomax -- writer, folklorist, ethnomusicologist -- has single-mindedly pursued the notion that folk culture can be a picture window into the soul of a nation, but that unless someone opens the blinds, elemental truths and ancient histories will disappear and die in the darkness. Lomax, born in Texas in 1915, began his journey as a teenager traveling the South and Southwest with his father, John A. Lomax, collecting the songs of cowboys and convicts on a 350-pound recording machine built into the ...

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