Alan Lomax, Assistant in Charge: The Library of Congress Letters, 1935–1945 ed. by Ronald D. Cohen (review)

As controversial a figure as Alan Lomax (1915–2002) was and is within the fields of American ethnomusicology and folklore studies, he was still a serious scholar and an altogether compelling figure, as the plethora of new publications documenting his life and work have demonstrated. Collections of his writings (Ronald Cohen, ed., Alan Lomax: Selected Writings, 1934–1997 [New York: Routledge, 2003]), CD reissues of his field recordings (Alan Lomax in Haiti, Harte Recordings, 2009), a digital library devoted to his work (http://www.culturalequity.org/), and a full-fledged, comprehensive biography by a major commercial press (John Szwed, Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World [New York: Viking, 2010]) are recent examples of this attention.

Ronald Cohen’s newly published edition of Lomax’s letters during his years working for the federal government provides the reader access to the daily work, trials, tribulations, methodologies, and innermost thoughts of a dedicated, some might even say compulsive, fieldworker of American folk music, one whose range (during the time period covered) encompassed the American south, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Vermont, Washington, DC, the Bahamas, and Haiti. Cohen’s stated purpose is to provide “a way of understanding his fascinating life, both public and private” at least “until a full biography . . . appears” (xiv). This statement is a bit confusing since he does acknowledge Szwed’s new biography in the front matter of the volume.

The letters, culled from fifteen major manuscript collections, cover the years Lomax worked at the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress (1936–42) through his tenure at the Office of War Information (1942–43). There is an additional letter from 1935 detailing a long fieldtrip he made with Zora Neale Hurston and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle, as well as one describing a trip taken with a group from 1945 during his stint in the US Army. Unfortunately, Cohen was unable to secure permission to reprint letters from the Lomax Papers at the University of Texas—a real disappointment because of the light they might have shed on the tempestuous relationship Lomax had with his father, John. Cohen structures the book in three sections—“Letters, 1943–1938”; “Letters, 1939–1940”; “Letters, 1941–1945”—but to what end, I am unable to discern.

True insights are found throughout the text. There are genuine moments of commiseration that can be appreciated by all who have done fieldwork. During his time in Leslie County, Kentucky, in 1937, Lomax writes: “The trouble is in covering this sort of country that one has to make friends of the people everywhere one goes and that takes time. They simply won’t sing for you until they feel that you are friendly or that you are friends of friends of theirs” (54). At the same time, he brags about the two United Mine Workers of America ballads he collected, illuminating both his own politics and the potential dangers to his life in executing such a coup: “It seems that I am very nearly ready to lay down my life for the Library, if not to defend the capitalist constitution, for one evening I was very nearly stabbed by the most religious man in Clay County” (55).

Many of the best and most useful letters are written to other scholars and academics such as Charles Seeger and George Herzog. They contain intriguing details, documenting moments of analytical acumen and providing significant insight to Lomax as a scholar in his own right. They prove that Lomax was very smart and that he could work at a high intellectual level, but they also demonstrate that his relationship with the academy was ambivalent at best, and often strained. In reference to a 1938 visit by George Herzog, a distinguished anthropologist and ethnomusicologist, he wrote: “Last week the Reverend Herzog descended from the academic heights...