Artist: Alan Lomax
Title: Alan Lomax in Haiti
Label: Harte Recordings
Genre: World
UPC: 824247018617
Territory: World
Release Date: 11.17.09
We are very excited to help release an amazing collection of recordings by Alan Lomax in Haiti. Curated from over 50 hours of field recordings by the pre-eminent Haitian scholar, Gage Averill and released by Harte Recordings, together with the estate of Alan Lomax, and in collaboration with The Library Of Congress and the The Association for Cultural Equity.
From the time that Alan Lomax left his position as head of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in 1942 through the end of his long career, he amassed one of the most important collections of ethnographic material in the world. It includes more than 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of motion picture film, hundreds of photographic prints and negatives, over 120 linear feet of correspondence, field notes, research files, and much more.
While recording for the Library of Congress in the 1930s, Lomax made trips to Haiti and the Bahamas. The recordings made in Haiti in 1936–37 provide a window on Haitian expressive culture recorded soon after the departure of the American Marines, while Haiti was in the throes of a nationalist and africentric movement.
Anna Lomax Wood, Lomax’s daughter, explains in the notes:
“…[W]e can now listen in to a pivotal era in Haiti’s cultural history, when the country was throwing off U.S. imperialism and embracing both its African roots and the coming influence of jazz and African-American/Afro-Caribbean popular music and dance.”
This groundbreaking production of the story, the sounds, and the sights of the legendary musicologist’s trip to Haiti is a 10 disc product,bundled with a 165 page digital booklet, containing extensive notes, Lomax’s journal, and hours of amazing, never-before-heard music that no longer exists on earth!
“Demonstration of the Tuning of the Malinoumbas” (mp3) by Ago’s Bal Band
“Instrumental Merengue” (mp3) by Surprise Jazz
“Drumming – 3 Drums of the Sosyete Boumba” (mp3) by Drummers of the Sosyete boumba
from Alan Lomax in Haiti
(Harte Recordings)
“Alan Lomax was capturing the human spirit in song … The music moves us … not only because the traditions it documents are disappearing, but because it lives and breathes anew each time it’s heard.”
— David Greenberger, NPR’s All Things Considered
Tags: Alan Lomax
