Press release re. the Alan Lomax Archive which, as of this post, was temporarily unavailable.
The Alan Lomax Archive is pleased to announce the
culmination of its seven-year effort to preserve and
disseminate the work of one of the 20th century's
foremost folklorists and musicologists, Alan Lomax.
Alan Lomax believed it was imperative to return
traditions to their home sources and artists, a
strategy he called cultural feedback." In that
spirit, on April 22, 2005 The Alan Lomax Database will
go online; also, over the next ten months, the
Association for Cultural Equity, which administers
the Alan Lomax Archive, will send digital copies of
audio and video recordings and photographs by Alan
Lomax to a number of libraries and archives in the
U.S., the Caribbean, and Europe so that they will be
available locally to people in or from the regions in
which they were originally made.
The Alan Lomax Database,
www.lomaxarchive.com, is a
free service. This multimedia catalog of the audio and
video recordings and photographs made by
Alan Lomax from 1946 - 1994 is designed to be an
inclusive record of Lomax's recordings of music and
the spoken word; it thus documents all recordings,
including interrupted tracks and false starts. It can
be searched by performer, song title, geography,
culture, genre, subject, instrument, collection,
session, and recording date. Users can print out
single-page reports of their search results.
Photographs taken by Lomax during the field
trips are linked to the appropriate sessions and also
available in a separate searchable catalog. Every
audio recording in the catalog can be heard in samples
of forty seconds (music, spoken word) to two minutes
(radio shows, discussions, lectures).
The first six collections to go on line are: Texas
Gladden & Hobart Smith 1946; Calypso Concert 1946;
Mississippi Prison Recordings 1947 and 1948; Big
Bill Broonzy 1952; Southern Journey US 1959 and 1960;
and Central Park Concert 1965. These will be followed
by the remainder of Lomax's fieldtrips, each to go
on-line as they are completed.? It will also
ultimately include some of the older collections of
audio recordings made by Lomax on behalf of the
Library of Congress in the 1930's and 1940's.
The Alan Lomax Archive is also in the process of
donating digital copies of selected collections to
some 20 libraries and archives in the U.S. and abroad,
largely in the regions in which the recordings were
made. Donation agreements have been signed with
fifteen of these institutions. By the end of 2005, a
total of 4,500 hours of audio recordings and 2,014
hours of video recordings will have been disseminated.
For more information and materials on the Alan Lomax
Archives contact:
Howard?
Howlin' Wuelf Media
527 Barclay Ave.
Morrisville, PA 19067
215-428-9119
http://howlinwuelf.com/
