Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jonathan W. Stone
Publisher:   The University of Michigan Press
Imprint:   The University of Michigan Press
Weight:   0.359kg
ISBN:  

9780472038558

ISBN 10:   0472038559
Pages:   240
Publication Date:   30 November 2021
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments For Pete's Sake: Audio Preface Introduction. Finding Folkness in Rhetorical Studies (Turn, Turn, Turn) Interlude I: Resimplifications Chapter 1. Sonic Rhetorical Historiography: Re-Orienting Authenticity During the Inter-War Period Chapter 2. Rhetoric, Representation, and Race in the Lomax Prison Recordings Interlude II: Oral History's Exigence Chapter 3. Inventing Jazz: Jelly Roll Morton and the Sonic Rhetorics of Hot Musical Performance Interlude III: Popular Front Education Chapter 4. Folksong on the Radio: The Sounds of Broadcast Democracy on Columbia's American School of the Air Conclusion. Hearing the Lomax Archive Appendix: List of Audio Resources Works Cited

Reviews

Listening to the Lomax Archive is an important book for its techniques of listening for the implicit, non-musical aspects of a documentary recording. It also introduces distinctive selections as toeholds in the vast archive of Lomax recordings... --ARSC Journal--Edward Komara ARSC Journal (1/3/2023 12:00:00 AM) Including links to a collection of wonderful online recordings, this thought-provoking, enlightening book is for scholars of folklore and rhetoric. --CHOICE-- CHOICE

Including links to a collection of wonderful online recordings, this thought-provoking, enlightening book is for scholars of folklore and rhetoric. --CHOICE-- CHOICE

"""Listening to the Lomax Archive is an important book for its techniques of listening for the implicit, non-musical aspects of a documentary recording. It also introduces distinctive selections as toeholds in the vast archive of Lomax recordings..."" --ARSC Journal--Edward Komara ""ARSC Journal"" (1/3/2023 12:00:00 AM) ""Including links to a collection of wonderful online recordings, this thought-provoking, enlightening book is for scholars of folklore and rhetoric."" --CHOICE-- ""CHOICE"""

Author Information

Jonathan W. Stone is Assistant Professor of Writing and Rhetoric Studies at the University of Utah.

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