Listening to the Lomax Archive at the Library of Congress: The Rhetoric of American Folksong in the 1930s

FAIN: FEL-258129-18

Jonathan W. Stone
University of Utah (Salt Lake City, UT 84112-9049)

Preparation of a digital monograph on the rhetoric of music in American folksong recordings of the 1930s from the Lomax Archive, Library of Congress.

Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of American Folksong in the 1930s is a digital monograph centered on fieldwork of folklorists John and Alan Lomax. In my analysis of recordings the Lomaxes collected for the Library of Congress during the 1930s, I argue for music as a powerful rhetoric that can render and circulate both traditional and progressive values, often simultaneously. The project will break new scholarly ground in the humanities as it brings the sounds of the Folklife Archive to the reader in ways not possible in print. The book will utilize digital publishing tools to bring critical listening to the scholarly processes that will help better understand the complexities of history and history making. My argument is that such processes also enhance and complicate our understanding of rhetoric, an art usually associated with powers of persuasion, but also an art of understanding and of finding ways to hear and respond to even the most dissonant of differences.

Associated Products

Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of African American Folksong in the 1930s (Book)
Title: Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of African American Folksong in the 1930s
Author: Jonathan W. Stone
Editor: Sara J. Cohen
Abstract: Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of African American Folksong in the 1930s is centered on the careers and field recordings of folklorists John A. Lomax and his son Alan Lomax. It is an examination of the ways that the Lomax archive at the Library of Congress contributed to revised notions of US national identity during the Interwar period of the 1930s. I argue that folk music can be a key element—a sonic rhetoric—for interpreting the ebb and flow of cultural ideals within contemporary historical moments, particularly during times of crisis. In the 1930s, this was particularly the case as the crisis of the Great Depression undercut devotion to a number of cultural orthodoxies and long-held attitudes about nationalism, economics, education, and about race began to change. In 1933, and in the depths of the Depression, 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. As the book demonstrates, the music they gathered for the National Folklife Archive contributed to a new mythology of “authentic” Americana for the nation in financial, social, and identity crisis. The book highlights—or resounds—the impact of several key archival holdings: the prison recordings, a long-form oral history of jazz musician Jelly Roll Morton, and the use of folk music on an educational radio program for the Columbia Broadcasting System called American School of the Air. In these and other contexts, the music of the Lomax archive would have contradictory effects: even as the songs performed as agents for social change, they also upheld long-held conservative orthodoxies. Listening to the Lomax Archive will give readers an opportunity to listen in on these complex circumstances.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.press.umich.edu/9871097/listening_to_the_lomax_archive
Primary URL Description: Homepage for the open access version of Jonathan W. Stone's Listening to the Lomax Archive: The Sonic Rhetorics of African American Folksong in the 1930s. The digital version is enhanced with 40 audio resources.
Access Model: Open access
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780472038558
Copy sent to NEH?: No

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