Alan Lomax

1933－1995年60年間，Alan Lomax足跡遍佈美國南方，巴哈馬，海地，東加勒比海等地區，收集了成千上萬的音樂作品，出版了不計其數的田野錄音唱片。好不誇張地説，沒有ALAN LOMAX，就沒有完整的現代美國傳統音樂史，也沒有FIELD RECORDING的最初雛形。他對於民俗音樂學，音樂人類學乃至音樂史作出了極其偉大的貢獻。

通過Alan Lomax的錄音裏面走出去的明星也層出不窮，包括有“黑人布魯斯之父”之稱的Son House，以及他的弟子，後來以諢名“Muddy Waters”在芝加哥成名的McKinley Morganfield。Alan Lomax使來自俄克拉荷馬州的農民歌手伍迪·格思裏（Woody Guthrie）成為傳奇（他譜寫的“This Land is Your Land”被稱為美國第二國歌），而被譽為“現代美國民歌之父”的皮特·西格（Pete Seeger）當年就是Alan Lomax手下的圖書管理員，他是在Alan Lomax的影響下才開始創作的。

1915

出生於得克薩斯州AUSTIN

1933

協助父親JOHN AVERY LOMAX,進行了他為國會圖書館所做的第一次田野錄音旅程。

1933-1942

跟隨父親，遊歷於美國南方及海地，巴哈馬地區，錄製了大量田野錄音作品。包括幫助Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Aunt Mollie Jackson, and Muddy Waters等人錄製他們的最早的聲音。

1934

與父親一起，出版《American Ballads and Folksongs美國民歌和民俗音樂》稍後出版了《Negro Folk Songs as Sung 》（1936）,《 牛仔之歌Cowboy Songs 》（1937）,《Our Singing Country （ 1938）》, 《美國民俗歌曲Folk Song: USA 》（1946）.

1936

在完成了得克薩斯大學哲學學位之後， ALAN LOMAX和她的妻子Elizabeth Lyttleton Harold花了數月在海地進行田野考察與錄音。

1937

被任命為美國民歌檔案館館長助理。

1938

Alan Lomax錄製了Jelly Roll Morton超過八小時的錄音和談話資料，並依此為基礎出版了《Mister Jelly Roll》（1950）

1939

攻讀哥倫比亞大學人類學專業，同年製做了一系列CBS國際廣播電台節目（American Folk Songs and Wellsprings of Music），獲得大量喜歡民俗音樂的聽眾。並出版了一系列的音樂書籍，策劃了眾多民俗音樂表演。

1939-1949

LOMAX錄製並出版了大量的民俗音樂作品，其中包括被譽為“黑人布魯斯之父”的SON HOUSE,後來以“Muddy Waters”出名的McKinley Morganfield，Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson等等。

1939-1940

錄製了Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy等人的作品，探討布魯斯音樂的起源，收錄在以後發表的《Blues in the Mississippi Night》裏面。

1947-1948

經歷千辛萬苦，來到臭名昭著的密西西比監獄錄製犯人演唱（演奏）的音樂，稍後出版了《Negro Prison Songs》

1948

製做了《On Top of Old Smokey》系列。

1950-1958

居住在英國。期間廣泛錄製了英格蘭，蘇格蘭，愛爾蘭民間音樂。並在BBC錄製了大量廣播及電視節目。並説服BBC聘請了Seamus Ennis and Peter Kennedy等人座位田野錄音工作人員，採集大量民間歌謠。1961年在Caedmon廠牌出版了以這些錄音為基礎製做的《Folksongs of Great Britain》（10張一套）

1950

Alan Lomax將視野超越了美國本土以及加勒比海，以倫敦為基地，指導他的合作者們記錄歐洲早期民俗音樂，包括英國，愛爾蘭，意大利，西班牙，並通過BBC將這些聲音傳送給他的大量聽眾。在此期間，Alan Lomax還編輯了18張一套的“anthologizing world folk music”，由哥倫比亞唱片公司（Columbia Records）出版，開一時之先河。在多年以後，才出現了類似的音樂出版，如聯合國教科文世界音樂遺產系列（UNESCO world music series）

1953-1955

Alan Lomax錄製了大量西班牙意大利民俗音樂的田野錄音，在Westminster出版11卷的《The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music》（民俗及原始音樂）

1959－1960

Alan Lomax回到美國，在南方進行了一次專業而詳細的田野採集工作，足跡遍佈, Virginia ，Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia Sea Islands，出版7卷《The Southern Heritage Series》，以及極具國際聲望的《Southern Journey》

1962

在加勒比海的西印度羣島進行了六個月的田野工作，錄製加勒比海地區的英，法，西班牙語民俗音樂（包括特立尼達和多巴哥羣島的印度社區）

出版《Hard-Hit People.》。

出版《Folk Song Style and Culture》

1978-1985

深入密西西比，路易斯安那，喬治亞，新墨西哥，弗吉尼亞等州，為BBC錄製了大量電視節目。

1993

憑藉《Land Where the Blues Began》一書獲得國家圖書大獎。

2002

逝世

電影（FILMS）:

To Hear My Banjo Play Script; Willard Van Dyke, director, Office of War Information, 1945.

Oss, Oss Wee Oss Script and direction with Peter Kennedy and George Pickow, English Folk Dance Society, 1951.

Dance and Human History Script, direction and production, with Forrestine Paulay, University of California Extension Media Center, Berkeley, 1976.

Step Style Script, direction and production, with Forrestine Paulay, 1979.

Palm Play Script, direction and production, with Forrestine Paulay, 1979.

The Longest Trail Script, direction and production, with Forrestine Paulay 1979.

The Land Where the Blues Began Script, direction and production, 1985. Winner of the Blue Ribbon in the American Film Festival, 1985.

電視（TELEVISION）:

Folk Music of Britain Writer, researcher, host; David Attenborough, director, BBC, 1952.

Dirty Old Town Script and direction, Granada TV, 1956.

American Patchwork Writer, director, narrator, producer of five-hour series aired on Public Television, 1979-1990.

錄音出版物（RECORDED PUBLICATIONS）:

Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music 18 vols., Columbia Records, 1955. First recorded overview of world music.

Southern Journey 12 vols., edited and produced recordings of the White and Black South, Prestige Recording Company, 1959.

Southern Folk Heritage 7 vols., the first stereo field recordings of American folk music. Atlantic Records, 1960.

Music and Interviews with Jelly Roll Morton 12 vols., the first recorded biography of a jazz musician. The Library of Congress, 1941.

Folk Songs of Spain 11 vols., the recordings of a field survey made in 1953.

Folk Songs of Great Britain 11 vols., with Peter Kennedy, field survey of the British Isles, 1950-59, Caedmon.

Negro Sinful Songs Performed by Leadbelly, the first commercial album of American folk songs. Producer. Musicraft, 1939.

Dustbowl Ballads Performed by Woody Guthrie. Co-Producer. Victor, 1940.

The Midnight Special Songs of Texas prisons, performed by Leadbelly and the Golden Gate Quartet. Victor, 1940.

Folk Songs of the United States 5 vols., a survey of the field recordings in the Archive of American Folk Songs, including traditional southern, northern, and western Anglo-American songs and ballads, African-American songs of every type from the United States and Bahamas, Mexican American songs and ballads, a variety of songs and tunes from the Cajun country, produced and edited with notes. This was the first time in history a country had every published a full, field-recorded picture of its folk traditions. It had a world-wide impact.

Negro Prison Songs Field recordings from Mississippi, 1947, using the first tape machine. Tradition, 1959.

Heather and Glen Field recordings made in Scotland in 1950-51, that led to the founding of the Scottish folk song archive. Tradition, 1959.

The Gospel Ship: Baptist Hymns and White Spirituals from the Southern Mountains Producer, programmer. New World Records, 1977.

Sounds of the South Field recordings of the American South, including reissues of Southern Journey and Southern Folk Heritage. Atlantic, 1993.

廣播（RADIO）:

American Folk Songs Written and directed by A. Lomax, a 26 week survey on the American School of the Air (1939-40) defining all types of English language folk songs, featuring Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, the Golden Gate Quartet, Burl Ives, Aunt Molly Jackson, and field pickups of square dancing, French-Canadian and lumberjack songs.

Well Springs of Music (a continuation of the American Folk Songs series) Written and directed by A. Lomax, also ran for 26 weeks on the CBS radio network. One of its programs, co-authored with Woody Guthrie, won an award as the best Music Education Program of its years, and the two series led directly to MENC adopting American folk songs as a main emphasis in its public school teaching materials. CBS then decided on a prime-time network show featuring folk songs.

Back Where I Come From Written and co-produced with Nicholas Ray, on a coast-to-coast network

Alan Lomax去世後，CNN報道的消息中稱他為“你不認識的最有價值的音樂人”。

Few figures deserve greater credit for the preservation of Americas folk music traditions than Alan Lomax. Scouring the backroads, honky tonks and work camps of the Deep South, he unearthed a treasure trove of songs and singers, documenting the music of the common man for future generations to discover; through Lomaxs pioneering efforts, cultural traditions ranging from the Delta blues to Appalachian folk to field hollers continue to live on, with his invaluable recordings offering a compelling portrait of times and cultures otherwise long gone. The son of noted folklorist John A. Lomax, the nations preeminent collector of cowboy songs, he was born January 15, 1915 in Austin, Texas; from childhood on he followed in his fathers footsteps, assisting in song-gathering missions whenever possible. In 1932, John was contracted to assemble a book of folk songs, and soon he and Alan set out with a crude recording machine paid for by the Library of Congress; covering some 16,000 miles of the southeastern U.S. in just four months, they collected a wealth of African-American work songs, many of them recorded at various penitentiaries.

Among the musicians the Lomaxes encountered during their travels that summer was a Louisiana prisoner named Huddie Ledbetter; they helped obtain his release, employing him as a chauffeur and making his first recordings. Ledbetter went on to fame under the name Leadbelly, and remains one of the true legends of American folk and blues. Beginning in 1933 and lasting through to 1942, Alan — working alone as well as in conjunction with his father, writer Zora Neale Hurston, musicologist John Work and others — recorded folk and traditional music for the Library of Congress throughout the Deep South, as well as in New England, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Ohio. He also recorded in Haiti and the Bahamas, pioneering the archival study of world music which increased in the decades to follow, and in the field made the first-ever recordings of Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters and Aunt Molly Jackson. Concurrently, the Lomaxes teamed on a number of books, including 1934s American Ballads and Folksongs, 1936s Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly, 1937s Cowboy Songs and 1938s Our Singing Country.

In 1938, Lomax turned to jazz, recording more than eight hours of vocals, instrumentals and spoken recollections from one of the founders of the form, Jelly Roll Morton. A year later, he premiered American Folk Songs, a 26-week historical overview broadcast as part of the CBS radio series American School of the Air; Lomax also continued to write and direct special broadcasts promoting the war effort in the months ahead. In 1946, he sat down with Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Big Bill Broonzy to explore the origins and philosophy of the blues, issuing the sessions in 1959 as Blues in the Mississippi Night; he spent the remainder of the decade recording prison songs in the Mississippi area, and in 1948 became host and writer of the Mutual Broadcasting Network series On Top of Old Smokey. In 1950, Lomax relocated to England, where he remained for much of the decade; there he documented the traditional music of the British Isles, with his recordings becoming the basis of the ten-disc 1961 series Folksongs of Great Britain. During the same period, he also made extensive field recordings in Spain and Italy.

Lomax returned to the States in 1959, and immediately made another expedition into the South, where he discovered, among others, bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell. A year later, he published the book Folk Songs of North America; a six-month field trip to the West Indies followed in 1962, and there he recorded traditional musics from the English, French and Spanish-speaking people of the Caribbean, as well as the Hindu culture of Trinidad. In 1967, Lomax teamed with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger for the book Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People; Folk Song Style and Culture, the product of his years of world music study, followed in 1968. The advent of new technologies opened up new worlds for Lomax, and in the 1970s and 1980s he made a series of journeys back to the South to videotape traditional musical performances for the PBS series American Patchwork, completed and broadcast in 1990. At the same time he continued work on the Global Jukebox — an intelligent museum interactive software project — and put the finishing touches on 1993s The Land Where the Blues Began, which won a National Book Award. Throughout the 90s and into the twenty-first century, Rounder records steadily worked toward reissuing a 100-CD series showcasing Lomax most legendary field recordings, generating a newfound audience for his scholarly efforts in ethnomusicology. Alan Lomax continued his work lecturing, writing, and working with the Association for Cultural Equity until his death at the age of 87 on the morning of July 19, 2002. Fortunately for archivists and music lovers everywhere, his painstaking documentation of the music and cultures of the world will be educating and enriching the lives of curious listeners for centuries to come.

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