Alan Lomax

Cross Cultural Factors in Phonological Change.

Analysis of the vowel/consonant patterns in a world sample of folk songs indicates that some speech sounds vary regularly with certain aspects of social structure. Consonant frequencies shift in relation to technological level: mid stops, fricatives and laterals increase in relative frequency along a scale of productive range. Alteration in the vowel map, on the other hand, seems to be related to cross-cultural differences in sex role. Thus changes in phonology, familiar to the linguist, may be symbolic of and explained by familiar societal phenomena. These suppositions are, it is true, based on the analysis of sung languages and remain to be confirmed for speech. However, the power of expressive style as a general diagnostic of the layout of culture implies that they will be so confirmed, since expressive patterns often turn out to be a sort of heightened and extra-redundant version of everyday behavior. Moreover, collections of recorded song performances provide a world-wide resource of ‘unselfconscious’ and culturally validated language data that is simply unavailable for other kinds of speech activity. (Phonology; variation; expressive (stylistic) function; song style; mode of production and se role; cross-cultural sample.)

Mister Jelly Roll

This is a biography of the New Orleans jazz pianist, based on recordings which the author made at the Library of Congress Archive of America, with Jelly Roll Morton playing the piano and talking about himself.

Alan Lomax : Selected Writings, 1934-1997

Following the death of Alan Lomax in 2002, an onslaught of literature has scrutinized his life’s work with the fervor of an IRS auditor (Gordon 2002; Work et al. 2005). Rather than engage in the politics of defense or critique, Ronald D. Cohen’s collection of Lomax’s shorter writings offers an eclectic portrait of one of America’s most controversial—albeit most venerable—folk music scholars, fieldworkers, and advocates. The sixty-three year span of writings offers a grand context that stretches from Roosevelt’s New Deal, McCarthy-era blacklisting, the Civil Rights movement, and emerging multimedia technologies. What is most striking is our opportunity to follow Lomax’s passionate, articulate writing about music, unwavering in its insight and intensity from his teenage years through his developing and ever-changing career. For ethnomusicologists wary of an association with the ill-fated Cantometrics project (a multi-disciplinary, comparative research program that Lomax initiated in 1961 correlating folksong styles and social values), this collection offers a selection more fair to Lomax’s prolific contribution to our understanding of music.

Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Lead Belly

Each man had a distinct combination of privilege and disprivilege, and, as a result, his own effect on Ledbetters representation within Negro Folk Songs. The representation of Ledbetter in Negro Folk Songs aligns strongly with pre-existing cultural stereotypes about African American men. Based on extensive research of the working papers to Negro Folk Songs at the Library of Congress, in this thesis I argue that the Lomaxes shift Ledbetters representation from his initial interviews through erasure, addition, censorship, and framing, and that Ledbetter resists this representation by Signifyin(g).

The Good and the Beautiful in Folksong

Since a folksong is transmitted orally by all or most members of a culture, generation after generation, it represents an extremely high consensus about patterns of meaning and behavior of cultural rather than individual significance. In this discussion of the good and the beautiful, the fit of song performance behavior and cultural norms will be examined transculturally, and the terms of the argument, therefore, must be extremely general. In order to begin on somewhat familiar ground, it will first be suggested that there is not only a fit between performance behavior and culture pattern, but between these two and the emotional set embedded in them.

A stylistic analysis of speaking

Stylistic analysis takes account of the dynamic continuities in communication behavior. It is concerned with how people talk or sing or move in relation to each other, rather than what it is they say or sing or do to or with each other. The presence of these styling qualities can, we discover, be reliably assessed; and, as they cluster together, giving each cultural tradition its distinctive performance models, they have remarkable stability through time. However, these patterns of style are not inflexible: they are models comprising a stable set of ranges within which performers can adjust their behavior to the demands of a genre, of a familiar situation, of sex, age or status roles, and to the unexpected. The comparison of these performance models, cross-culturally, reveals factors that tie communication to social structure on the one hand and to cultural traditions on the other.

Dreams and Songs of the Noble Old

Alan Lomaxs examination of the talents and wisdom of elderly musicians, singers, and story-tellers, who perform not for fame or fortune but to preserve and share their culture.

Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads

What keeps the herd from running, Stampeding far and wide? The cowboys long, low whistle, And singing by their side.