Been All Around This World
Summary: "Been All Around This World" explores the breadth and depth of folklorist Alan Lomax's seven decades of field recordings. From the earliest trips he made through the American South with his father, John A. Lomax, beginning in 1933, to his last documentary work in the early 1990s, the program will present seminal artists and performances alongside obscure, unidentified, and previously unheard singers and players, from around America and the world, drawn from the Lomax Collection at the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. It is produced and hosted by Nathan Salsburg, curator of the Alan Lomax Archive at the Association for Cultural Equity, the non-profit research center and advocacy organization that Lomax founded in 1983. (Photo of Alan Lomax by Peter Figlestahler.)
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- Copyright: Copyright 2018 Been All Around This World
Podcasts:
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. Woody Guthrie: Dust Bowl Refugees. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., March 1940. 6. Nimrod Workman: 42 Years. Mascot, Tennessee, July 1983. 7. Floyd Batts: Dangerous Blues. Parchman Farm Camp 11, Parchman, Mississippi, September 1959. 8. M.B. Barnes & prisoners: Oh Freedom. Parchman Farm Women's Camp, April 1936.
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. Elizabeth Austin and group: Sailing In the Boat When the Tide Runs Strong. Recorded in Old Bight, Cat Island, Bahamas, 1935.5. Dominick Gallagher: The Gallagher Boys. Recorded at Beaver Island, Michigan, 1938. 6. Penny Morrison and group: Cha déid mi do dh’fhear gun bhàta (I’ll Not Go To A Man Without A Boat). Recorded at Balivanich, Benbecula, Scotland, June 1951.7. Michele Ilari and fishermen: Cialomi (tuna fishing chants). Recorded off Agrigento, Sicily, Italy, June 1954.8. Jean Glaud: Hooray Irena. Recorded in Gouyave, Carriacou, Grenada, August 1962. 9. Lomax interview with Newton Joseph, interspersed with chanteys (“Hi-Lo Boys” and “Long Time Ago”), L’Esterre, Carriacou, 1962.
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 two songs from the Mississippi Delta (one by way of Detroit).1. Unidentified woman: All Power Is In His Hands. Recorded at the Coahoma County Agricultural High School, Coahoma, Mississippi, July 1942.2. Cecil Augusta: Crawford's Jump. Memphis, Tennessee, October 1959. 3. Sampson Pittman with Calvin Frazier: I Been Down the Circle Before. Detroit, Michigan, November 1938. 4. Unidentified: Strigaturi. Dragus, Romania, August 1964. 5. Alice Gibbs: Jerusalem Cuckoo (I Am A Donkey Driver). St. Eustatius (Statia), 1967.6. Unidentified: Cajun mazurka. Kaplan, Louisiana, 1934. 7. Unidentified Amazigh man: Al-Hamdulillah (Thanks Be to God). Aguelmouss, Ouarzazate, Souss-Massa-Drâa, Morocco. September 1967.
Dance tunes from Arkansas, Abruzzo, the Caribbean island of Dominica, Michigan's Upper Peninsula, a front porch in the North Carolina Piedmont (featuring Algia Mae Hinton, who passed last month), and an excerpt from the "Dancing Around the World" episode of Alan Lomax's 1948 "Your Ballad Man" radio show.
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 1959.4. Sonia Carbon and group: Bo Mwen Che. Woodford Hill, Dominica, June 1962. 5. Unidentified singers with Liborio Garanfa (guitar) and Giuseppe Gavita (violin): Saltarella. Scanno, Abruzzo, Italy, December 1954.6. Algia Mae Hinton: front porch boogie. Johnston County, North Carolina, July 1983.
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 Iberia, Louisiana, August 1934.3b. Mr. & Mrs. John Mearns: Pennyworth O' Preens. Recorded in Aberdeen, Scotland, on July 15, 1951. 3c. E.C. and Orna Ball: Paper of Pins. Recorded in Rugby, Virginia, August 30, 1959.4.
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 Went to Leland. Recorded at Parchman Farm (Mississippi State Penitentiary), Sunflower County, Mississippi, November or December 1947. 3. Margaret Barry: She Moved Through the Fair. Recorded in London, England, on November 1, 1953. 4. Georgia Sea Island Singers (Bessie Jones, John Davis, and Emma Ramsey) with Hobart Smith, Ed Young, and Nat Rahmings: That Suits Me. Recorded at St. Simons Island, Georgia, in April 1960. 5. Belton Sutherland: Blues #2. Recorded at the home of Clyde "Judas" Maxwell, Madison County, Mississippi, on September 3, 1978. 6. Sheila Kay Adams: Dinah. Recorded at the home of Dellie Chandler Norton, Sodom Laurel, Burton Cove, Madison County, North Carolina, September 6-7, 1982.
