You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
In 1933, John A. Lomax and his son Alan set out as emissaries for the Library of Congress to record the folksong of the “American Negro” in several southern African-American prisons. Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of African American Folksong in the 1930s asks how the Lomaxes’ field recordings—including their prison recordings and a long-form oral history of jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton—contributed to a new mythology of Americana for a nation in the midst of financial, social, and identity crises. Jonathan W. Stone argues that folksongs communicate complex historical experiences in a seemingly simple package, and can thus be a key element—a sonic rhetoric...
How often have I overheard alluring snatches of song, only to be baffled by denial when I asked for more. Kindly black faces smile indulgently as at the vagaries of an imaginative child, when I persist in pleading for the rest. "Nawm, honey, I wa and n and t singing nothing — nothing a-tall! " How often have I been tricked into enthusiasm over the promise of folk-songs, only to hear age-worn phonograph records, — but perhaps so changed and worked upon by usage that they could possibly claim to be folk-songs after all! — or Broadway echoes, or conventional songs by white authors! Yet cajolements might be in vain, even though all the time I knew, by the uncanny instinct of folk-lorists, ...
Originally published in 1867, this book is a collection of songs of African-American slaves. A few of the songs were written after the emancipation, but all were inspired by slavery. The wild, sad strains tell, as the sufferers themselves could, of crushed hopes, keen sorrow, and a dull, daily misery, which covered them as hopelessly as the fog from the rice swamps. On the other hand, the words breathe a trusting faith in the life after, to which their eyes seem constantly turned.
Originally published in 1994. Filling a gap in the sound recordings of traditional Anglo-American folk music this volume covers both vocal and instrumental material from the 1920s to the 1990s. The listings have also been limited to performers native to the tradition rather than "revival" performers. The album selection is grouped into field recordings and commercial (pre-1942) recordings, with subdivisions into individual recordings or anthologies. The discography not only reflects its author’s in-depth knowledge of Anglo-American folk music’s historical development but charts a valuable step forward in the evaluation, as well as select lissting, of available sound recordings.