Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.94 (949 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0143120735 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 448 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2014-07-23 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Szwed, a biographer of Miles Davis and professor of music and jazz studies at Columbia University, gamely charts Lomax’s itinerant, messianic, world-changing endeavors, beginning with his start as his folk-music-collecting father’s assistant and on to his myriad inventive and demanding ethnomusicology projects, his barely surviving on grants and Library of Congress stipends, his run-ins with the FBI and embroilment in controversies, and his continual self-reinvention. Driven by a voracious hunger for life and unshakable faith i
Mr. Baker said A Favorite. Alan Lomax has long been a favorite of mine. I am continually amazed at the depth and breadth of his life's work. This book is not only well written and researched but flows from chapter to chapter with ease. Maybe it's my love of the subject and the love of his subjects, but I couldn't put it down and was continually amazed at the impact Lomax had on the USA and the world. What we listen to today, how we listen to it and understand it and most notably who we listen to is in large part a direct result of the lifelong work of John and Alan Lomax, wh. kinsellajr said A. warts and all look at a renaissance man and an American original. If yo u have any interest in A mericana, folk, blues ,jazz in short music, then I recommend this book. When folklorists were heroes Richard Elias Szwed is an excellent biographer and folklorist. (Disclosure: I took a class with him at Temple University decades ago.) His subject, Alan Lomax, came to the collecgtion of folksongs via his father, John Lomax, who belonged to the heroic age of folklore studies, when men (and one woman, Olive Campbell) went trekking into the hinterlands armed with smiles, the promise of a free drink, and a half ton of cumbersome recording equipment. Alan, John's youngest son, at first had a love-hate relationship with his father's avocation, joining him on a song-c
One of the most remarkable figures of the twentieth century, Alan Lomax was best known for bringing legendary musicians like Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Muddy Waters, Lead Belly, and Burl Ives to the radio and introducing folk music to a mass audience. This authoritative work reveals how Lomax changed not only the way everyone in the country heard music but also the way they viewed America itself.. The definitive biography of Alan Lomax-from John Szwed,"the best music biographer in the business" (L.A. Weekly). Now John Szwed, the acclaimed biographer of Miles Davis and Sun Ra, presents the first biography of Lomax, a man who was as influential as he was controversial-trailed for years by the FBI, criticized for his folk- song-collecting practices, denounced by some as a purist and by others as a popularizer
. He lives in New York City. He is a professor of music and jazz studies at Columbia University. John Szwed is the author of So What: The Life of Miles Davis and Space Is the Place: The Life and Times of Sun Ra, among other works