Alan Lomax

小简介  Alan Lomax（1915-2002）:民俗音乐学者，作家，田野录音师，电台DJ，民俗音乐出版家，美国国会图书馆民歌档案馆馆长。 1933－1995年60年间，Alan Lomax足迹遍布美国南方，巴哈马，海地，东加勒比海等地区，收集了成千上万的音乐作品，出版了不计其数的田野录音唱片。好不夸张地说，没有ALAN LOMAX，就没有完整的现代美国传统音乐史，也没有FIELD RECORDING的最初雏形。他对于民俗音乐学，音乐人类学乃至音乐史作出了极其伟大的贡献。 通过Alan Lomax的录音里面走出去的明星也层出不穷，包括有“黑人布鲁斯之父”之称的Son House，以及他的弟子，后来以诨名“Muddy Waters”在芝加哥成名的McKinley Morganfield。Alan Lomax使来自俄克拉荷马州的农民歌手伍迪·格思里（Woody Guthrie）成为传奇（他谱写的“This Land is Your Land”被称为美国第二国歌），而被誉为“现代美国民歌之父”的皮特·西格（Pete Seeger）当年就是Alan Lomax手下的图书管理员，他是在Alan Lomax的影响下才开始创作的。 大事记 1915 出生于得克萨斯州AUSTIN 1933 协助父亲JOHN AVERY LOMAX,进行了他为国会图书馆所做的第一次田野录音旅程。 1933-1942 跟随父亲，游历于美国南方及海地，巴哈马地区，录制了大量田野录音作品。包括帮助Leadbelly, Woody Guthrie, Aunt Mollie Jackson, and Muddy Waters等人录制他们的最早的声音。 1934 与父亲一起，出版《American Ballads and Folksongs美国民歌和民俗音乐》稍后出版了《Negro Folk Songs as Sung 》（1936）,《 牛仔之歌Cowboy Songs 》（1937）,《Our Singing Country （ 1938）》, 《美国民俗歌曲Folk Song: USA 》（1946）. 1936 在完成了得克萨斯大学哲学学位之后， ALAN LOMAX和她的妻子Elizabeth Lyttleton Harold花了数月在海地进行田野考察与录音。 1937 被任命为美国民歌档案馆馆长助理。 1938 Alan Lomax录制了Jelly Roll Morton超过八小时的录音和谈话资料，并依此为基础出版了《Mister Jelly Roll》（1950） 1939 攻读哥伦比亚大学人类学专业，同年制做了一系列CBS国际广播电台节目（American Folk Songs and Wellsprings of Music），获得大量喜欢民俗音乐的听众。并出版了一系列的音乐书籍，策划了众多民俗音乐表演。 1939-1949 LOMAX录制并出版了大量的民俗音乐作品，其中包括被誉为“黑人布鲁斯之父”的SON HOUSE,后来以“Muddy Waters”出名的McKinley Morganfield，Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Boy Williamson等等。 1939-1940 录制了Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Bill Broonzy等人的作品，探讨布鲁斯音乐的起源，收录在以后发表的《Blues in the Mississippi Night》里面。 1947-1948 经历千辛万苦，来到臭名昭著的密西西比监狱录制犯人演唱（演奏）的音乐，稍后出版了《Negro Prison Songs》 1948 制做了《On Top of Old Smokey》系列。 1950-1958 居住在英国。期间广泛录制了英格兰，苏格兰，爱尔兰民间音乐。并在BBC录制了大量广播及电视节目。并说服BBC聘请了Seamus Ennis and Peter Kennedy等人座位田野录音工作人员，采集大量民间歌谣。1961年在Caedmon厂牌出版了以这些录音为基础制做的《Folksongs of Great Britain》（10张一套） 1950 Alan Lomax将视野超越了美国本土以及加勒比海，以伦敦为基地，指导他的合作者们记录欧洲早期民俗音乐，包括英国，爱尔兰，意大利，西班牙，并通过BBC将这些声音传送给他的大量听众。在此期间，Alan Lomax还编辑了18张一套的“anthologizing world folk music”，由哥伦比亚唱片公司（Columbia Records）出版，开一时之先河。在多年以后，才出现了类似的音乐出版，如联合国教科文世界音乐遗产系列（UNESCO world music series） 1953-1955 Alan Lomax录制了大量西班牙意大利民俗音乐的田野录音，在Westminster出版11卷的《The Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music》（民俗及原始音乐） 1959－1960 Alan Lomax回到美国，在南方进行了一次专业而详细的田野采集工作，足迹遍布, Virginia ，Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, Georgia Sea Islands，出版7卷《The Southern Heritage Series》，以及极具国际声望的《Southern Journey》 1962 在加勒比海的西印度群岛进行了六个月的田野工作，录制加勒比海地区的英，法，西班牙语民俗音乐（包括千里达岛的印度社区） 出版《Hard-Hit People.》。 出版《Folk Song Style and Culture》 1978-1985 深入密西西比，路易斯安那，乔治亚，新墨西哥，维吉尼亚等州，为BBC录制了大量电视节目。 1993 凭借《Land Where the Blues Began》一书获得国家图书大奖。 2002 逝世 主要作品集合 电影（FILMS）: To Hear My Banjo Play Script; Willard Van Dyke, director, Office of War Information, 1945. Oss, Oss Wee Oss Script and direction with Peter Kennedy and George Pickow, English Folk Dance Society, 1951. Dance and Human History Script, direction and production, with Forrestine Paulay, University of California Extension Media Center, Berkeley, 1976. Step Style Script, direction and production, with Forrestine Paulay, 1979. Palm Play Script, direction and production, with Forrestine Paulay, 1979. The Longest Trail Script, direction and production, with Forrestine Paulay 1979. The Land Where the Blues Began Script, direction and production, 1985. Winner of the Blue Ribbon in the American Film Festival, 1985. 电视（TELEVISION）: Folk Music of Britain Writer, researcher, host; David Attenborough, director, BBC, 1952. Dirty Old Town Script and direction, Granada TV, 1956. American Patchwork Writer, director, narrator, producer of five-hour series aired on Public Television, 1979-1990. 录音出版物（RECORDED PUBLICATIONS）: Columbia World Library of Folk and Primitive Music 18 vols., Columbia Records, 1955. First recorded overview of world music. Southern Journey 12 vols., edited and produced recordings of the White and Black South, Prestige Recording Company, 1959. Southern Folk Heritage 7 vols., the first stereo field recordings of American folk music. Atlantic Records, 1960. Music and Interviews with Jelly Roll Morton 12 vols., the first recorded biography of a jazz musician. The Library of Congress, 1941. Folk Songs of Spain 11 vols., the recordings of a field survey made in 1953. Folk Songs of Great Britain 11 vols., with Peter Kennedy, field survey of the British Isles, 1950-59, Caedmon. Negro Sinful Songs Performed by Leadbelly, the first commercial album of American folk songs. Producer. Musicraft, 1939. Dustbowl Ballads Performed by Woody Guthrie. Co-Producer. Victor, 1940. The Midnight Special Songs of Texas prisons, performed by Leadbelly and the Golden Gate Quartet. Victor, 1940. Folk Songs of the United States 5 vols., a survey of the field recordings in the Archive of American Folk Songs, including traditional southern, northern, and western Anglo-American songs and ballads, African-American songs of every type from the United States and Bahamas, Mexican American songs and ballads, a variety of songs and tunes from the Cajun country, produced and edited with notes. This was the first time in history a country had every published a full, field-recorded picture of its folk traditions. It had a world-wide impact. Negro Prison Songs Field recordings from Mississippi, 1947, using the first tape machine. Tradition, 1959. Heather and Glen Field recordings made in Scotland in 1950-51, that led to the founding of the Scottish folk song archive. Tradition, 1959. The Gospel Ship: Baptist Hymns and White Spirituals from the Southern Mountains Producer, programmer. New World Records, 1977. Sounds of the South Field recordings of the American South, including reissues of Southern Journey and Southern Folk Heritage. Atlantic, 1993. 广播（RADIO）: American Folk Songs Written and directed by A. Lomax, a 26 week survey on the American School of the Air (1939-40) defining all types of English language folk songs, featuring Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, the Golden Gate Quartet, Burl Ives, Aunt Molly Jackson, and field pickups of square dancing, French-Canadian and lumberjack songs. Well Springs of Music (a continuation of the American Folk Songs series) Written and directed by A. Lomax, also ran for 26 weeks on the CBS radio network. One of its programs, co-authored with Woody Guthrie, won an award as the best Music Education Program of its years, and the two series led directly to MENC adopting American folk songs as a main emphasis in its public school teaching materials. CBS then decided on a prime-time network show featuring folk songs. Back Where I Come From Written and co-produced with Nicholas Ray, on a coast-to-coast network Alan Lomax去世后，CNN报道的消息中称他为“你不认识的最有价值的音乐人”。 Few figures deserve greater credit for the preservation of Americas folk music traditions than Alan Lomax. Scouring the backroads, honky tonks and work camps of the Deep South, he unearthed a treasure trove of songs and singers, documenting the music of the common man for future generations to discover; through Lomaxs pioneering efforts, cultural traditions ranging from the Delta blues to Appalachian folk to field hollers continue to live on, with his invaluable recordings offering a compelling portrait of times and cultures otherwise long gone. The son of noted folklorist John A. Lomax, the nations preeminent collector of cowboy songs, he was born January 15, 1915 in Austin, Texas; from childhood on he followed in his fathers footsteps, assisting in song-gathering missions whenever possible. In 1932, John was contracted to assemble a book of folk songs, and soon he and Alan set out with a crude recording machine paid for by the Library of Congress; covering some 16,000 miles of the southeastern U.S. in just four months, they collected a wealth of African-American work songs, many of them recorded at various penitentiaries. Among the musicians the Lomaxes encountered during their travels that summer was a Louisiana prisoner named Huddie Ledbetter; they helped obtain his release, employing him as a chauffeur and making his first recordings. Ledbetter went on to fame under the name Leadbelly, and remains one of the true legends of American folk and blues. Beginning in 1933 and lasting through to 1942, Alan — working alone as well as in conjunction with his father, writer Zora Neale Hurston, musicologist John Work and others — recorded folk and traditional music for the Library of Congress throughout the Deep South, as well as in New England, Michigan, Wisconsin, New York and Ohio. He also recorded in Haiti and the Bahamas, pioneering the archival study of world music which increased in the decades to follow, and in the field made the first-ever recordings of Woody Guthrie, Muddy Waters and Aunt Molly Jackson. Concurrently, the Lomaxes teamed on a number of books, including 1934s American Ballads and Folksongs, 1936s Negro Folk Songs as Sung by Leadbelly, 1937s Cowboy Songs and 1938s Our Singing Country. In 1938, Lomax turned to jazz, recording more than eight hours of vocals, instrumentals and spoken recollections from one of the founders of the form, Jelly Roll Morton. A year later, he premiered American Folk Songs, a 26-week historical overview broadcast as part of the CBS radio series American School of the Air; Lomax also continued to write and direct special broadcasts promoting the war effort in the months ahead. In 1946, he sat down with Memphis Slim, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Big Bill Broonzy to explore the origins and philosophy of the blues, issuing the sessions in 1959 as Blues in the Mississippi Night; he spent the remainder of the decade recording prison songs in the Mississippi area, and in 1948 became host and writer of the Mutual Broadcasting Network series On Top of Old Smokey. In 1950, Lomax relocated to England, where he remained for much of the decade; there he documented the traditional music of the British Isles, with his recordings becoming the basis of the ten-disc 1961 series Folksongs of Great Britain. During the same period, he also made extensive field recordings in Spain and Italy. Lomax returned to the States in 1959, and immediately made another expedition into the South, where he discovered, among others, bluesman Mississippi Fred McDowell. A year later, he published the book Folk Songs of North America; a six-month field trip to the West Indies followed in 1962, and there he recorded traditional musics from the English, French and Spanish-speaking people of the Caribbean, as well as the Hindu culture of Trinidad. In 1967, Lomax teamed with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger for the book Hard Hitting Songs for Hard-Hit People; Folk Song Style and Culture, the product of his years of world music study, followed in 1968. The advent of new technologies opened up new worlds for Lomax, and in the 1970s and 1980s he made a series of journeys back to the South to videotape traditional musical performances for the PBS series American Patchwork, completed and broadcast in 1990. At the same time he continued work on the Global Jukebox — an intelligent museum interactive software project — and put the finishing touches on 1993s The Land Where the Blues Began, which won a National Book Award. Throughout the 90s and into the twenty-first century, Rounder records steadily worked toward reissuing a 100-CD series showcasing Lomax most legendary field recordings, generating a newfound audience for his scholarly efforts in ethnomusicology. Alan Lomax continued his work lecturing, writing, and working with the Association for Cultural Equity until his death at the age of 87 on the morning of July 19, 2002. Fortunately for archivists and music lovers everywhere, his painstaking documentation of the music and cultures of the world will be educating and enriching the lives of curious listeners for centuries to come.