photo by Antoine Marchand
courtesy of the Alan Lomax Collection
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Alan Lomax
Alan Lomax was a towering figure in American folk music history and one of the first
recipients of a Folk Alliance Lifetime Achievement Award. His efforts as an anthropologist,
radio presenter, scholar, and researcher contributed greatly to folk music research in
the U.S. for the better part of the twentieth century and laid the intellectual groundwork
for the folk revivals of the 1960s in both the U.S. and Europe. He served as director of
the Archive of Folk Song (now Folk Culture) at the Library of Congress; produced radio
and television programs; made thousands of recordings across the U.S., in Europe, and in
the Caribbean; wrote countless books; and, with colleagues at Hunter College, developed
scholarly systems for analyzing music (cantometrics), speech (parlametrics), and dance
(choreometrics) across cultures. Among the figures he helped to introduce to the world
at large are such seminal artists as Leadbelly,
Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters,
The Golden Gate Quartet, and Pete Seeger, as well as thousands
of artists from
California to Catalonia who carried precious local musical styles within themselves.
Mr. Lomax's actions and scholarship were driven by the idea of "cultural equity
" - a concept in which local cultures all over the world are ensured media forums
to display their arts and values. He sought to democratize media communication, and to
provide these local cultures with a voice in the increasingly homogenized world of mass
communication. From his first few radio series for CBS ("American Folk Songs", "Wellsprings
of Music", and the prime-time series "Back Where I Come From") to his final project, the
interactive "Global Jukebox", Mr. Lomax dedicated his efforts to putting unheard voices in
front of the world (and in his role as musical consultant to the spacecraft Voyager
project, beyond).
Alan Lomax was born in Texas in 1915 and by his late teens was accompanying his father,
legendary folklorist John Lomax, on collecting trips in the South and Midwest. Graduating
from the University of Texas in 1936, he was appointed Director of the Archive of American
Folksong at the Library of Congress the next year where he remained until 1942. He spent
the 1940s collecting music across the U.S., producing radio programs for CBS and publishing
his two most famous works, Mister Jelly Roll (an oral biography of jazz great jelly Roll
Morton) and Blues in the Mississippi Night, a collection of music and interviews with
African American blues men including Big Bill Broonzy and Sonny Boy Williamson. In the
1950s Mr. Lomax traveled to Europe making recording trips in England, Ireland, Scotland,
Spain, and Italy. His efforts in England and Ireland laid the groundwork for Folk revivals
in both countries during the 1960s.
Returning to the U.S. in the late 1950s Mr. Lomax continued to record traditional artists
in the South, releasing several of his recordings from that period on the Prestige and
Atlantic record labels. While working at Columbia University during the 1960s, he and his
colleagues developed the Cantometrics, Choreometrics, and Parlametrics systems leading to
the 1968 collection Folk Song Style and Culture. He continued to produce books, recordings,
and films, including the PBS series American Patchwork, which aired in 1990. In 1986 he
received the National Medal of Arts from the National Endowment for the Arts, and in 1993
he received the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction for his book The Land
Where the Blues Began, his memoirs of working with African American artists in the Jim
Crow South. Working at Hunter College in the early 1990s, Mr. Lomax began compiling the
Global Jukebox, a database containing thousands of songs and dances from his collecting
work. Before retiring, he founded the Association for Cultural Equity to continue his
life's work in providing a voice to marginalized communities around the world.
Pete Seeger
For over six decades Pete Seeger has been at the forefront of American folk music. A
performer, teacher, songwriter, song leader, and man of conscience, Seeger, through his
goal of bringing folk music to a mass audience, largely laid the artistic groundwork for
the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s. He is known, loved, and honored all over the
world and was the first artist to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Folk
Alliance.
Born in 1919 in New York, Seeger grew up surrounded by music and progressive politics.
After a childhood spent at New England prep schools and a couple of unhappy years at
Harvard, Seeger dropped out and began his real education; developing his skills as a
musician while travelling around the country hearing legendary traditional artists like
Aunt Molly Jackson, Sarah Baumgardner, and Bascom Lamar Lunsford. During these early
years, Pete worked briefly for Alan Lomax as a volunteer at the Archive of Folk
Culture at the Library of Congress.
In March of 1940 Seeger, recently moved to New York, met Woody Guthrie at a
benefit for migrant farm workers. The two legendary artists began performing together
and soon fell in with a number of artists sharing their love of both traditional music
and left-wing politics. With several of these artists, including Millard Lampell, Lee
Hays, Sis Cunningham, and Bess Lomax, Seeger and Guthrie formed the Almanac Singers, a
loosely-knit performing group who memorably claimed they only rehearsed on stage. The
Almanac Singers blending of traditional folk melodies with topical pro-union, anti-war,
and anti-fascist songs had two effects: creating a new style of "folk" songwriting and
performance, and attracting the attention of the decidedly anti-Communist FBI. The
Almanacs made several recordings and achieved some commercial success. The group
withered away after several of the members, including Seeger, were drafted in 1942.
Following the war, Seeger and several of his friends from the Almanacs formed People's
Songs, an organization dedicated to bringing folk songs, union songs and topical songs
to a wider audience through performances and the magazine People's Songs. Though originally
successful, People's Songs, faced with mounting debts and an increasingly anti-Communist
atmosphere in the USA (Seeger and several other artists were attacked by a mob in Peekskill,
New York in 1949) went bankrupt in 1949. However, from the ashes of People's Songs, sprang
a new organization, People's Artists, and a new magazine with a title drawn form Seeger
and Lee Hays' Hammer Song. Sing Out! Magazine debuted in 1950 and has been one of
the leading voices for folk music in the U.S. for the past 50 years. Seeger has remained
closely tied to the magazine, contributing financially and editorially throughout the
magazine's five decades.
In 1948 Seeger toured the country as part of the presidential campaign of Progressive
party Candidate Henry Wallace. Although Wallace's candidacy was an electoral failure
(he failed to carry any states and drew only 2% of the vote), Seeger used the long
travel time to write his book How To Play the Five String Banjo. This influential manual
has taught thousands to play the banjo and has remained in print ever since.
In 1947 Seeger, with Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman and Ronnie Gilbert organized a new group,
modeled on the Almanacs but with better musical and personal organization. Called The
Weavers, the group struggled until late 1949 when they were booked into the Village
Vanguard, a New York jazz club. Their refreshing enthusiasm and honesty drew large crowds
to the club and led to a recording contract with Decca records and an association with
New York promoter Harold Leventhal. Their recordings of the Jewish folksong
"Tzena Tzena Tzena" and Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" were both commercially
successful and the group toured nationwide during 1950. Their success, however, drew
the attention of anti-Communist periodicals and the group soon found performance
opportunities disappearing. Though they continued to tour and sell records until the
middle of 1952, the increasing pressures on the group caused them to disband late in
that year.
Seeger was subpoenaed by the House un-American Activities Committee in 1955 and refused
to testify before the committee. Seeger cited the First (Freedom of speech and
association), rather than the Fifth (freedom from self-incrimination) Amendment to the
United States Constitution in his refusal to testify and was subsequently indicted for
contempt of Congress. Seeger was convicted and sentenced to prison in 1961, however the
conviction was overturned on appeal the following year.
Although Seeger was a commercial pariah during the early 1950s, he kept performing as a
solo artist wherever he could find work; at leftist summer camps, on college campuses
and performing children's music at schools. He was also helped by Moe Asch of Folkways
records who released several recordings of Seeger during this period. Ironically, it was
during this time that Seeger's music was possibly its most artistically influential as
future artists like Joan Baez, Dave Guard of the Kingston Trio, and Mary Travers all heard
Seeger and were impressed by the man and his music.
In 1955, Harold Leventhal attempted to book a reunion concert for the Weavers. After
being turned down by New York's Town Hall, Leventhal booked the group into Carnegie Hall
where they sold out. Leventhal subsequently sold tapes of the concert to Vanguard Records,
a tiny classical label, and the Weavers' careers were reborn as the worst excesses of the
blacklist began to recede. Seeger continued to perform with the group until 1958.
By the late 1950s the hard work of Seeger, Alan Lomax and others in promoting folk
music had begun to pay off in a nascent folk revival. Artists like Burl Ives, The Kingston
Trio and Harry Belafonte had hit recordings and the first Newport Folk Festivals (with
Seeger and his wife Toshi among the organizers) were bringing outstanding artists, both
traditional and revival, to appreciative northern audiences. Seeger became something of
an icon to many of the young musicians of the folk revival for his refusal to compromise
politically, his dedication to the anti-war and civil rights movements, his own strong
songwriting (He wrote "Turn Turn Turn" and "Where Have All The Flowers Gone" in this period)
and his willingness to champion and perform the music of young songwriters including Bob
Dylan and Tom Paxton.
As the 1950s became the 1960s, Seeger's career began to recover from the damage of the
blacklist. His contempt conviction was overturned in 1962. He began recording for the
major label Columbia, for whom he had his only commercial hit, Malvina Reynolds' "Little
Boxes" in 1964. He toured throughout the US and Canada, performing in larger venues and
getting more and larger audiences to sing along with him. In 1963 and 1964 he toured Asia,
Africa, The Soviet Union, and Europe. He threw himself into the civil rights movement,
performing and marching throughout the South, raising money through benefit concerts and
convincing a young Georgia singer and activist named Bernice Johnson Reagon to form
the SNCC Freedom Singers.
In spite of his newly found stature, Seeger was still blacklisted, unable to appear on
network television. A 1963 ABC series called "Hootenanny", designed to cash in on the
burgeoning folk revival, refused to hire Seeger. The shows actions led to a boycott by many
of the folk world's major artists before the show's cancellation. In 1967 his appearance
on the "Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour" was edited from the program after he sang the anti
Vietnam War song "Waist Deep In the Big Muddy". He appeared later that year in another episode
and performed the song without incident.
By the mid-1960s the folk revival that Seeger had worked for began to break apart into a
variety of musical sub-genres, and the old left radicalism that Seeger grew up with was
replaced by a new left radicalism that left him uncomfortable. At the same time, the Civil
Rights Movement changed as the evolving Black Power Movement forced many white participants
to the sidelines. Seeger turned his attention to protesting the Vietnam War and to
environmental concerns, working to clean up the Hudson River through the building and
sailing of the sloop Clearwater.
During the 1970s and 1980s, Seeger turned his attention to writing, publishing The Incompleat
Folksinger and a book on reading music. He continued to perform and work for political and
environmental causes, often performing with Arlo Guthrie. In 1980 a reunion concert by the
Weavers was filmed and released theatrically.
As the 1980s became the 1990s, a changing America viewed Seeger more and more as a revered
cultural icon rather than a dangerous revoultionary. The former dangerous communist radical
received the Presidential Medal of Arts at the Kennedy Center in 1994 and was inducted into
the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 1996. He received his first Grammy for his 1997 album
Pete, recorded for Paul Winter's Living Music label. He continues to perform on occasion
and will release several new songs on Appleseed records in the Summer of 2003.
For More Information
Website:
http://home.earthlink.net/~jimcapaldi/
Books: How Can I Keep From Singing
- by David King Dunaway
McGraw-Hill, New York, 1981.
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