Wade Ward and Alan Lomax. (Photo Shirely Collins / The Association for Cultural Equity)
Alan Lomax made his life’s career recording unheralded artists, largely in the South.
The nearly 5,000 hours of audio being released for free online includes the Sea Island Singers, recorded in 1959.
Athens ethnomusicologist Art Rosenbaum worked with Lomax.
"They were a group that come from the Gullah-Geechee culture," Rosenbaum says. "And so he was very interested in people like John Davis and Bessie Jones, the great singer of the Sea Island Singers. So, he made some really monumental recordings."
Lomax also recorded Georgia prisoners, mountain balladeers and shape note singers.
It was part of a career spent traveling the world, documenting traditional music styles, including those at a Dahlonega music festival in 1980.
Lomax is credited with popularizing folk music by organizing concerts and making television appearances.
Lance Ledbetter of Atlanta’s Dust to Digital Records says, his Georgia trips spanned from 1935 through the 1980s.
"Do the math," Ledbetter says. "That's 50 years he was in and out of Georgia coming down here recording Georgians performing song and thought it was very important."
Lisa Love knew Lomax’s work from her stint as director of the now-closed Georgia Music Hall of Fame.
She now advocates for Georgia music at Georgia Department of Economic Development and says, the prodigious collector anticipated the concept of a "global jukebox" long before the Internet existed.
"It takes a certain personality to be driven by telling the stories of others but Alan Lomax did that," Love says. "He really captured the culture and heritage of those times."
Lomax died in 2002.
His affiliated Association for Cultural Equity plans to release 17,000 by the end of the month.
Join us for a live Twitter chat about Georgia music with Art Rosenbaum and Lance Ledbetter today at noon. Twitter handle @gpbnews. Hash tag #AlanLomax.
