Alan Lomax is associated with “discovering” Muddy Waters and documenting Mississippi Delta blues, with field recordings from the American South and far-flung countries. Who knew that he also roamed Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin, recording the region’s fast-fading vernacular music, much of it transplanted by European immigrants, sung in languages other than English, and already undergoing transformation from exposure to radio and recordings in the New World?
Lomax factors into a splendid new publication from the University of Wisconsin Press, James P. Leary’s Folksongs of Another America: Field Recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937-1946. It’s a hybrid—a handsome illustrated hardcover book with five CDs culled from the American Folklore Center’s archive (one of them recorded by Lomax) plus an amazing artifact, the DVD Alan Lomax Goes North. The documentary includes color movie footage shot by Lomax during his Midwest rambles; in some cases we hear the voice of Lomax describing the scene; in others, a contemporary reader recites from Lomax’s letters or diaries.
The footage brings to life some of the songs and performers as described by Leary or in the original field notes published in the book. Glimpsed are Scandinavian immigrants playing button boxes, a “Viking cello” and other homemade instruments while dancing to the rhythms. On the outskirts of Detroit, in the shadow of the Chrysler plant as Lomax said, he discovered a community of Serbs playing shepherd’s pipes and the two-stringed bowed gusli and singing almost shaman-like about mountain spirits, saints in the form of birds proffering counsel and false knights on the road.
Folksongs of Another America is a priceless compendium, a fascinating work for anyone interested in the deeper streams of Americana, American ethnic culture and the history of the Upper Midwest.
