A survey of work songs from around the world, recorded by Alan and John A. Lomax. We narrow the definition of work song to mean specifically those sung to assist in or accompany actual jobs of work. Visit our brand new work song exhibit here . Playlist (links to catalog records in the Lomax Digital Archive when available): 1a Alla Boara 1b A Mezzononte en Punto 2 Walter Brown on Privileged Penitentiary https://archive.culturalequity.org/film-and-video/american-patchwork/greenville-levee-1978 3 L...
Oct 01, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Been All Around This World has a new co-host! ACE Program Coordinator and Been All Around This World producer Michael Cormier-O'Leary joins Curator Nathan Salsburg in bringing you new episodes of this podcast. We are expanding the show's format to include episodes like today's, which is a continuous mix of music, mixed in with our deeper dives. This will allow us to release content more frequently while still developing longer form explorations of material within the collection. In the wake of t...
Jul 11, 2024•30 min
The last episode of our survey of John A. and Ruby T. Lomax's 1939 Texas recordings features highlights of sacred performances in the collection. 1) Eulalia Martinez, Paola Lopez, Genoveva Lopez: Gloria a Diós en las alturas (Sugarland, Fort Bend County, Texas, April 23, 1939) 2) Gonzalo Lopez, Cleofe Lopez: Vela por tu amante (Sugarland, Fort Bend County, Texas, April 23, 1939) 3) Iron Head Baker: This Heart of Mine (Camp #4, Ramsey State Farm, Otey, Brazoria County, Texas, April 23, 1939) 4) C...
Mar 01, 2024•29 min
An admittedly cursory holiday mix presenting performances from our new digital release, "Songs of Christmas, New Year, and Midwinter from the Lomax Collection," available now on the Lomax Archive's Bandcamp page as well as the streaming services. We invite you to pair this mix with our older holiday-themed episode , which features other related material (if some occasional overlap) and the complete "Sing Christmas" program. This ambitious radio broadcast was produced by Alan for the BBC on Chris...
Dec 18, 2023•30 min
Fiddlers, harp blowers, and guitarists recorded by John A. and Ruby T. Lomax during their 1939 Texas field-trip. 1) Frank Goodwyn & Manuel Salinas: Chinese Breakdown (Falfurrias, Brooks County, Texas, April 29, 1939) 2) Lake Porter: The Lost Girl (Falfurrias, Brooks County, Texas, April 29, 1939) 3) Lake Porter: Drunken Hiccups (Falfurrias, Brooks County, Texas, April 29, 1939) 4) Elmo Newcomer: Rye Whiskey (The home of Elmo Newcomer, Pipe Creek, Bandera County, Texas, May 3, 1939) [see here...
Nov 28, 2023•34 min
The Lomax Collection reflects a variety of human experience—from the sacred to the profane, from the rural to the urban, and from the public square to the domestic scene. The Lomaxes recorded lullabies all over the world, creating a record of the universality of these particularly intimate moments between parents and children. This episode gathers some of our favorite lullabies from the archive, and is part of a larger project on the subject, which includes an exhibit on the Lomax Digital Archiv...
Nov 02, 2023•32 min
An expansion of our Christmas and New Year episode of a few years back with extra tracks and more all around cheer. Links are to tracks' records in the Lomax Digital Archive. Those without them are either not Lomax recordings, or not yet included in the LDA. (If you'd like to assist in digitization/cataloging efforts to preserve and make available some of the early Lomax collections currently offline, please consider making a donation at culturalequity.org/donate, or drop us a line!) Happy Winte...
Dec 22, 2022•2 hr 22 min
Our eschatological episode of the program. Songs on final things: the end of the world, the end of time, judgement day, "when the stars begin to fall," etc. Playlist (links to catalog records in the Lomax Digital Archive): [Bed music] Fred McDowell: Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning 1. E.C. Ball & Lacey Richardson: Tribulations (Rugby, Virginia, August 1959) [ Your host credited Orna Ball rather than her brother Lacey Richardson as E.C.'s accompanist.] 2. James Moore and friends: World Is ...
Nov 29, 2022•1 hr 4 min•Ep. 15
(Scroll down for playlist and links to resources mentioned.) This episode provides an introduction to the singers and sites visited by John A. Lomax in the Palmetto State between 1934 and 1940, on the occasion of...: The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the Association for Cultural Equity, and the Charles Joyner Institute for Gullah and African Studies at Coastal Carolina University are pleased to announce that the entirety of John A. Lomax's historic South Carolina recording...
May 06, 2022•28 min
[Bed music:] Sid Hemphill and band: The Death March ( Quitman Co., Mississippi, August 1942 ). Mr. & Mrs. Boyd Hoskins: Ah, Lovely Appearance of Death ( Horse Creek, Clay Co., Kentucky, October 1942 ) Bessie Jones: Oh Death ( St. Simons Island, Georgia, October 1959 ) Nimrod Workman: O Death ( Mascot, Tennessee, July 1983 ) Bessie Jones tells a story of a woman enduring a night’s worth of ghostly trials ( NYC, October 1961 ) Sheila Kay Adams: Little Margaret ( Burton Cove, Sodom Laurel, Madi...
Oct 25, 2021•1 hr 9 min
August 30, 2021, is the 70-year anniversary of the 1951 Edinburgh People’s Festival Ceilidh, the seminal event that heralded and generated the Scottish Folk Revival of the 1960s. Alan Lomax was on hand to record it in the Oddfellows Hall, and thus able to preserve a document of a legendary concert that alerted the astonished urban audience to the continuing vitality of Scotland’s rich heritage of traditional song. People in the rich folk culture of the Gaelic-speaking West, or speaking the Doric...
Sep 03, 2021•2 hr 9 min
Brutality and inhumanity were central to the Southern state prison farms, in their theory and their practice, and of them all, the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Farm was the most brutal and inhuman. Both John A. and Alan Lomax made repeated visits to Parchman, recording — under the eye of the disinterested white captains, sergeants, and warden, and the guns of the "trusty" prisoner-guards — a body of American song unmatched in its depth, dignity, and power. Folklorist and prison doc...
Feb 07, 2020
Sacred Harp -- the four-part shape-note singing tradition long confined to the American South, but recently enjoying remarkable international popularity and participation -- fascinated and challenged Lomax for most of his career. He recorded it multiple times, trying with increasing technological sophistication to capture its indelible magic. In this episode, we survey Alan's Sacred Harp recordings and the tradition's development, ethos, and survival. Intro: United Sacred Harp Musical Associatio...
Oct 21, 2019
1. Sid Hemphill and band: The Carrier Line (or the Carrier song). Sledge, Mississippi, August 1942. 2. Sid Hemphill and Lucius Smith: Going Away, Won't Be Long. Senatobia, Miss., September 1959. 3. Miles and Bob Pratcher: I'm Gonna Live Anyhow Until I Die. Como, Miss., 9/59. 4. Fred McDowell with Fanny Davis and Miles Pratcher: Shake 'Em On Down. Como, 9/59. 5. Rosa Lee Hemphill Hill: Faro. Como, 9/59. 6. Sidney Hemphill Carter: Pharoah. Senatobia, 9/59. 7. Ed Young; Lonnie Young, Sr.; G.D. Youn...
Sep 21, 2019
The Fall 2019 season of the program will commemorate the 60th anniversary of the so-called "Southern Journey" field-recording trip and explore various regions, traditions, and performers Lomax and Collins visited and recorded. This first episode is a (highly cursory) survey. 1. Hobart Smith: Railroad Bill. Bluefield, Virginia, August 25. 2. Texas Gladden: Whole Heap of Little Horses. Salem, Virginia, August 26. 3. Charlie Higgins, Wade Ward, and Bob Carpenter: Did You Ever Seen the Devil, Uncle ...
Sep 05, 2019
1. Villagers of Cáceres, La Mancha: Christmas processional, Christmas Eve 1952 2. Merritt Boddie and Marigolds band: Christmas Machete, Gingerland, Nevis, July 1962 3. Norman Edmonds and the Old-Timers: Breaking Up Christmas, Hillsville, Virginia, August 1959 4. Sophie Loman Wing and group: All Night Long, St. Simons Island, Georgia, June 1935 5. Kelley Pace and prisoners: Holy Babe, Cumins State Farm, near Gould, Arkansas, 1942 6. Vera Ward Hall: No Room At the Inn / Last Month of the Year, Liv...
Dec 23, 2018
Topical, protest, and resistance songs from Kentucky, Virginia, Arkansas, Trinidad by way of New York City, Oklahoma by way of California, and the Mississippi State Penitentiary, better known as Parchman Farm. 1. Sarah Ogan Gunning: I Hate the Capitalist System. NYC, November 1937. 2. Hobart Smith: Peg and Awl. Bluefield, Virginia, August 1959. 3. Big Bill Broonzy: Black, Brown and White Blues. Decca Studios, NYC, March 1947. 4. Lord Invader: Yankee Dollar. Town Hall, NYC, December 1947. 5. Wood...
Aug 06, 2018
Songs from and/or of the sea (and one Great Lake), from Italy, Scotland, Grenada, the Georgia Sea Islands, and Lake Michigan. 1. Captain A.H. Rasmussen: interview on chanties/Amsterdam Maid (fragment). Recorded in London, 1955. 2. Daniel Aitkens & tombstone feast group: Blow the Man Down. Recorded in La Resource, Carriacou, Grenada, August 1962. 3. Big John Davis, Henry Morrison, and Georgia Sea Island Singers: Hop Along, Let’s Get Her. Recorded in St. Simons Island, Georgia, October 1959. 4...
May 14, 2018
The Lomaxes are well-known for the recordings they made of artists who went on to become famous and influential figures in traditional and popular music alike: Lead Belly, Bessie Jones, Woody Guthrie, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Muddy Waters. But there are countless wonderful singers and players in the Lomax collections about whom we know next to nothing or nothing whatsoever, and this episode focuses on some of them, with music from Memphis, Cajun Louisiana, Morocco, Sint Eustatius, Romania, and...
Mar 27, 2018
Dance tunes from Arkansas, Abruzzo, the island of Dominica, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a front porch in the North Carolina Piedmont, and an excerpt from the "Dancing Around the World" episode of Alan Lomax's 1948 "Your Ballad Man" radio show. 1. Said excerpt, early 1948, Mutual Broadcasting System. 2. Edward King: Le Jour D L'an (New Years Day). Recorded in Baraga, Michigan, October 1938. 3. Neal Morris & Uncle Charlie Higgins: Wave the Ocean, Wave the Sea. Timbo, Arkansas, September 1959. ...
Mar 02, 2018
A selection of songs concerning love in its vagaries, timed for Valentine's Day. Performances from Atlanta, Georgia; Cajun Louisiana; Scotland; Southwest Virginia; Turkmenistan; Eastern Kentucky, and the Arkansas Ozarks. Playlist: 1. Blind Willie McTell: King Edward Blues. Recorded by John A. Lomax in Atlanta, Georgia, November 5, 1940. 2. Isla Cameron: Died for Love. Recorded in London, England, February 11, 1951. 3a. Ella Hoffpauir: Papier d'épingles. Recorded by John A. and Alan Lomax in New ...
Feb 13, 2018
In the inaugural episode of "Been All Around This World" we survey Alan Lomax's seven-decade field-recording career, with music from Haiti, Ireland, Mississippi, North Carolina, and the tiny Caribbean island of Carriacou, recorded between 1937 and 1991. Playlist: 1. Rara St. Therese: Mwen tètè (I Am Stubborn). Members unidentified. Recorded on March 27, 1937, in Carrefour Dufort, Haiti. 2. Tangle Eye (Walter Jackson) with Hard Hat (Willie Lacy), 22 (Benny Will Richardson), and Little Red: When I...
Jan 30, 2018
