Book/Printed Material Listening to the Lomax Archive : the sonic rhetorics of African American folksong in the 1930s

Title

• Listening to the Lomax Archive : the sonic rhetorics of African American folksong in the 1930s

Summary

• In 1933, John A. Lomax and his son Alan set out as emissaries for the Library of Congress to record the folksong of the "American Negro" in several southern African-American prisons. Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of African American Folksong in the 1930s asks how the Lomaxes' field recordings-including their prison recordings and a long-form oral history of jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton-contributed to a new mythology of Americana for a nation in the midst of financial, social, and identity crises. Jonathan W. Stone argues that folksongs communicate complex historical experiences in a seemingly simple package, and can thus be a key element-a sonic rhetoric-for interpreting the ebb and flow of cultural ideals within contemporary historical moments. He contends that the Lomaxes, aware of the power folk music, used the folksongs they collected to increase national understanding of and agency for the subjects of their recordings (including the reconstitution of prevailing stereotypes about African American identity) even as they used the recordings to advance their own careers. Listening to the Lomax Archive gives readers the opportunity to listen in on these seemingly contradictory dualities, demonstrating that they are crucial to the ways that we remember and write about the subjects of the Lomaxes archive and other repositories of historicized sound.

Names

• Stone, Jonathan W., author

Created / Published

• Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press, 2021.
• ©2021

Contents

• For Pete's sake : Audio preface -- Introduction : Finding folkness in the rhetorical tradition (Turn, turn, turn) -- Interlude I : Resimplifications -- Sonic rhetorical historiography : Reorienting authenticity during the Interwar period -- Rhetoric, representation, and race in the Lomax prison recordings -- Interlude II : Oral history's exigence -- Inventing jazz : Jelly Roll Morton and the sonic rhetorics of hot musical performance -- Interlude III : Popular front education -- Folksong on the radio : The sound of broadcast democracy on Columbis' American School of the Air -- Conclusion : Hearing the Lomax Archive -- Appendix : List of audio resources.

Headings

• -  Lomax, Alan,--1915-2002
• -  Lomax, John A.--(John Avery),--1867-1948
• -  Lomax, John A.,--Jr.--(John Avery),--1907-1974
• -  1933-1945
• -  African American prisoners--Songs and music--History and criticism
• -  African Americans--Music--History and criticism
• -  Folk songs, English--United States--History and criticism
• -  Folk songs, English--United States--Texts--History and criticism
• -  Prisonniers noirs américains--Chants et musique--Histoire et critique
• -  African Americans--Music
• -  Folk songs, English
• -  MUSIC / History & Criticism
• -  United States--History--1933-1945
• -  États-Unis--Histoire--1933-1945
• -  United States

Genre

• Criticism, interpretation, etc
• History

Notes

• -  Includes bibliographical references (pages 221-232) and index.
• -  Description based on print version record; resource not viewed.

Medium

• 1 electronic resource (xvii, 240 pages )

Call Number/Physical Location

• ML3556

Digital Id

• https://hdl.loc.gov/loc.gdc/gdcebookspublic.2021758769

Library of Congress Control Number

• 2021758769

Rights Advisory

• Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/legalcode External

Access Advisory

• Unrestricted online access

Online Format

• image
• pdf

LCCN Permalink

• https://lccn.loc.gov/2021758769

Additional Metadata Formats

• MARCXML Record
• MODS Record
• Dublin Core Record