Alan Lomax (1915-2002)

Let us mourn the death of Alan Lomax, on July 19, 2002, in Sarasota, Florida. He was eighty-seven years old. Lomax was the person most responsible for the great explosion of interest in American folksong throughout the mid-twentieth century. His importance in the daily work of our profession cannot be adequately eulogized, so powerful and various were his efforts in bringing musicians to public notice. His work—first in partnership with his father, the great John Avery Lomax, and then by himself—brought the very idea of American diversity and creativity to phonograph recordings, to television, and to stage, screen, and radio. His work provided the model of how collections should be carried out and made publicly available.

Lomax's writings and recordings brought such figures as Leadbelly, Jelly Roll Morton, and Muddy Waters to national notice. His prodigious energy and enthusiasm carried over into his work at the many folk festivals that emerged during the folksong revival, which he guided as a conceptualizer, presenter, and more than occasional performer. Wherever he appeared, his eloquence on the stage was as powerful as his writings had been.

With the cold war years of the 1940s and 1950s, during which all deeply held sentiment that ran against the stream was under suspicion by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Lomax retreated to England. As an expansive intellectual, he broadened and deepened his interests in expressive culture. Not only did he produce the great Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music series, but he also began to develop the cantometrics and choreometics project as a systematic means of understanding and analyzing the expressive diversity of musical styles around the world. His last productive years were spent producing teaching materials relating to this world-encompassing project and to the idea of the global jukebox by which this diversity of styles might be preserved.

Perhaps the best way of memorializing Lomax would be to read again his works, from the American Folksong volumes, the Leadbelly book, and the Jelly Roll opus to the superb book, The Land Where the Blues Began (1993). Or one could listen once more to the recordings and shows he produced from the late thirties through the rest of the twentieth century. Happily, they are still emerging as all of his collectanea is being issued and newly edited, using the most up-to-date production techniques. Lomax's long suit was to recognize the best of the old and to make it public by using the newest broadcast technology.

Lomax lived to the fullness of his days. As he became increasingly infirm in his later years, his beloved daughter, Anna Chairatakis, took mighty good care of him.