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dc.contributor.authorStone, Jonathan
dc.date.accessioned2021-11-02T09:25:19Z
dc.date.available2021-11-02T09:25:19Z
dc.date.issued2021
dc.identifierONIX_20211102_9780472902446_28
dc.identifier.urihttps://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/51246
dc.description.abstractIn 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. 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 of folk music, used the folksongs they collected to increase national understanding of and agency for the subjects of their recordings 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. Throughout Listening to the Lomax Archive, there are a number of audio resources for readers to listen to, including songs, oral histories, and radio program excerpts. Each resource is marked with a ? in the text. Visit https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.9871097#resources to access this audio content.
dc.languageEnglish
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AV Musicen_US
dc.subject.classificationthema EDItEUR::A The Arts::AV Music::AVA Theory of music and musicologyen_US
dc.subject.otherrhetoric
dc.subject.othersonic rhetoric
dc.subject.othersonic rhetorics
dc.subject.otherfolksong
dc.subject.otherLead Belly
dc.subject.otherJelly Roll Morton
dc.subject.othersound studies
dc.subject.otherhistorio
dc.titleListening to the Lomax Archive
dc.title.alternativeThe Sonic Rhetorics of African American Folksong in the 1930s
dc.typebook
oapen.identifier.doi10.3998/mpub.9871097
oapen.relation.isPublishedBye07ce9b5-7a46-4096-8f0c-bc1920e3d889
oapen.relation.isbn9780472902446
oapen.relation.isbn9780472038558
oapen.imprintUniversity of Michigan Press
oapen.pages259


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