>> From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. ^M00:00:04 ^M00:00:19 >> John Haskell: Good afternoon, everybody. I'm John Haskell, the Director of the Kluge Center, and on behalf of our staff, welcome to the Trans-Atlantic Call: People to People. This has been a week-long work-a-thon, is what we're calling it, sponsored by the John. W. Kluge Center and the American Folklife Division. We have brought together former AHRC, the Arts and Humanities Research Council Kluge scholars to apply their skills to the transcription, annotation, contextualization, digitization, and preservation, the words, most of them have "ation" in them, of Trans-Atlantic Call and other related broadcast materials that are being brought together online by the American Folklife Center. On this, the final day of this program, our esteemed scholars here will present related topics that will highlight the national/international relevance of the library's folklife collections. I should note that sometimes people note that the side -- the acoustics aren't as good. And if that's a problem today, then it's much better in the center. I'm going to turn it over to the Head of the Folklife Division here at the library, Todd Harvey. ^M00:01:32 [ Applause ] ^M00:01:38 >> Todd Harvey: Thanks, John, and I think I should say, welcome back to the library. We've missed you. I am not the Head of the Folklife Center. I am a curator at the American Folklife Center. I'd like to thank the Head of the Folklife Center, Betsy Peterson, for helping us to make this happen. And especially John Fenn, the Head of Research and Programs at the Folklife Center, who really did a lot to get us going, as did Travis Hensley at the Kluge Center. And especially, Mary Lou Reker, without whom we would not be here today. You have all of our gratitude. I'd also like to thank our sponsors, the Library of Congress, your national library since 1802. The John W. Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, the Library Center for Research and Scholarship, now taking applications for the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations. Our sponsor, John Regan Music Service, a trusted and proven name in sound reinforcement throughout the D.C. area. And the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, join us for real folk cultural explorations on a film next Friday and Saturday. See our website for more information. The American Folklife Center, preserving and presenting American folklife, because it's the law. Well, we have a great show today featuring a truly trans-Atlantic group of scholars. Let's give a big Kluge Center welcome to Kate Neale from London Town, Lawrence Davies of Edinburgh, Scotland, Delaina Sepko of Glasgow, the Birmingham of the North, the man from Cork, Alan Noonan, and from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Sarah Tomlinson. Did you get mine up? Our special guest today, of course, is America's most notorious and famous folklorist, from the great state of Texas, the man who recorded the world, one Alan Lomax. Tell us Alan, where you been so long? ^M00:03:43 ^M00:03:53 The man who recorded the world--. ^M00:03:56 ^M00:04:08 If were in 1939, we'd be dead, but--. ^M00:04:12 [ Inaudible audio playing ] ^M00:04:47 Well, these five scholars with me on the podium today, have had way too much fun this week. It's been an exhausting week, and we've spent the week with a single goal in mind. That is to provide greater access to the radio programs, created by Alan Lomas over a 20-year period, from 1939 to 1959, with a coda [assumed spelling] in 1968. These 300 programs, showcased the patchwork of expressive culture found around the globe and most specifically, in the United States. And I'll trust the audience today here to make their own investigations about Alan Lomax, using the tools that the American Folklife Center has placed online, tools that include more than 300,000 pages of manuscripts, sound recordings, and photographs. Each member of the panel, will contextualize a singular aspect of Lomax's broadcast output. And then we'll summarize as a group our ideas about audience -- the audiences that might benefit from using these materials and the tools that we can employ to reach those audiences. Our hope is that you will become engaged as we are, and as we have been in the Lomax radio programs, realizing that this badia [phonetic] is a small part of the American Folklife Center's 10,000-plus hours of broadcast. Hispanic radio, Polish radio, Yiddish radio, and that the library's total broadcasts are easily 10-fold that. This is a great radio town, with the library's holdings, those of other institutions around town, broadcast outlets such as The Voice of America, some commercial stations, and the crown jewel located a mile up North Capitol Street, National Public Radio, concentric circles, expanding and engaging our aural senses. So, let's get started with our esteemed visiting scholars, and I will invite Sarah Tomlinson up to talk about 1939 radio. ^M00:07:02 ^M00:07:15 >> Sarah Tomlinson: From October 1939 to April 1940, Alan Lomax began his first radio series of many, when he hosted 25 Folk Music of America radio broadcasts, for the CBS American School of the Air. These broadcasts listened to during a school day, by students in upper grades and high school, included a wide array of folk music from sea shanties to children's songs of play. Lomax and his collaborators, also prioritized musical diversity as they featured works by women composers like Ruth Crawford Seeger, African American performers like Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, and broadcast themes such as poor farmer songs and hobo songs. As folk music scholar Rachel Donaldson has argued, the Folk Music of America broadcasts, show Lomax's early concern for multi-culturalism. And throughout the week, my work-a-thon colleagues and I have also discussed how this manifested in Lomax's idea of cultural equity, a phrase that he coins later in life. Lomax's early engagement with many different styles of music and identities of people, also extended to his audiences. Looking to the Folklife Center's rich body of material on the Folk Music of America broadcasts, we can see and hear how Lomax engaged with radio listeners in multi-faceted ways, such as through fan mail, classroom manuals, singalongs, and song collecting. We can begin tracing Lomax's engagement with radio listeners by looking to one of the many fan letters in the Alan Lomax CBS Radio Series Collection. In 1940, Bill Damon [phonetic], a member of Mrs. Seegle's [phonetic] class at the Stratford Ave. School in Garden City, New York, wrote to Alan Lomax. "We have been listening to your radio programs ever since the first of the year. We have enjoyed them very much, but we have a few criticisms to make." And to two of these criticisms first. "The Negro Quartet on Tuesday the 13th, the Negroes clapped their hands so loud that it was very hard to understand the words." And second, "It would be a lot better if the programs were not changed." And then he wrote under, "What We Enjoyed," "These programs give us a wider vocabulary of different types and some of the songs." The grammar there in school child [inaudible]. So, this one letter written by young Bill, came in with a stack of other letters, all by students in Mrs. Seegle's class. And so, she had each student write to Lomax with criticisms and praises about broadcasts that aired in January and February of 1940. ^M00:10:15 Bill references the broadcast that the class listened to the same day that they wrote their letters. The broadcast was Negro Folksongs, featuring spirituals, and aired on February 13th, 1940. His complaint that the programs had changed, refers to a schedule change from the originally planned program for February 13th, which would have been British Ballads in America, a Part II. Indeed, several of his peers made similar complaints, not only about the schedule change, but also about the quartets vocal clarity. The quartet was the famous Golden Gate Quarter of African American singers from Charlotte, North Carolina. And the students' common grievances hinted that there had been a class discussion about the Folk Music of America broadcast, showing another manifestation of listener engagement, and through these letters, we can imagine what that class discussion must have been like. While Mrs. Seegle did not send a letter herself, her students' words revealed that she may have had some racialized notions that musicality of the African American musical styles and musicians are difficult to understand, in addition to her preference for schedule regularity. To Mrs. Seegle's credit, the February 13th broadcast did depart from an important tool for listener engagement: The American School of the Air teacher and student manuals. Schoolrooms used these guides to prepare for and follow along with the radio broadcast. On Folk Music of America, Lomax specifically designed them to facilitate singalongs. To prepare for the Negro Spirituals program originally scheduled for February 6th, the manual instructed students to learn the chorus of the folk song, "Samson." And when the program did air on February 13thm, Lomax invited students to sing along as they listened. And so, in the spirit of audience engagement, I invite us all to do the same. So, first what we'll do is, I'll sing and we're actually only going to learn half the chorus, the first half. So, we'll do as -- I'll call in response, and then I'll play the broadcast and you can sing along with that. And so, if Lawrence could give me an [singing]. ^M00:12:38 [ Singing ] ^M00:13:01 And now, we'll -- oh, one cue is that you will hear the quartet sing the chorus. That's so that you can remember it. And on the second time, Lomax will say -- he'll say, "And everyone in on the choruses," and that's the time that you'll sing. So, wait until you hear him say that. And I'll cue you too. Okay, you can play the audio. ^M00:13:26 [ Inaudible audio ] ^M00:15:16 Excellent. Thank you for -- I think we should clap a little bit. ^M00:15:21 [ Applause ] ^M00:15:26 Yes, so, by singing along, Lomax was doing something that he did throughout his career, which was breaking down the barrier between professional musician and amateur, saying that we're all musicians. We should all participate. And in fact, the singalongs are one of many devices that he used to convince children and general audiences listening in, on the Folk Music of America broadcast, that they too were contributors to American music and its cultural history. At the end of every program, announcer Niles Welch reminded listeners, an audio here--. >> Will continue to collect the folk songs and ballads in your own community, and send them to Alan Lomax in care of the station to which you are listening. >> Sarah Tomlinson: So, students and their teachers sent in the folk songs, and indeed, some of the most exciting materials in the Folklife Center are folk songs sent in by Folk Music of America listeners. Similarly, to Mrs. Seegle's class, they also provide a record of classroom engagement. When Mr. Herr's [phonetic] class from Bethel Township schools in Pennsylvania, sent in Playground Songs, there's four of them here, Lomax replied, "The most pleasing thing about the American School of the Air broadcast, is to receive new songs and rhymes, that listeners send in. Your game songs will be added to the collection in the Archive of American Folksong in the Library of Congress, and will be kept there for study and for future generations." And here we are at a future generation, singing along, listening along, and continuing to engage with these materials. So, let's keep it going. Learning how Lomax engaged radio listeners in multi-faceted ways, through fan mail, [inaudible] manuals, singalongs, and song collecting, sort of an early crowdsourcing, right, certainly engaged my colleagues and I throughout this work-a-thon week. And I hope that this engagement also extended to our audience today. And I look forward to thinking enthusiastically about how we can continue to engage new and diverse audiences, with the Lomax radio materials. Thank you. ^M00:17:45 [ Applause ] ^M00:17:53 Oh, this is Kate Neale. ^M00:17:58 [ Applause ] ^M00:18:03 >> Elizabeth Kate Neale: Good afternoon. The collection and dissemination of traditional music, has often had a political dimension. Folk music has frequently been coopted into nationalistic projects in the context of conflict, often propagating or constructing an idealized national identity, which in many cases was based on the perception that a soul of a nation is reflected in its rote culture. This was particularly important in the context of Alan Lomax's radio work during the Second World War, during which time, he was involved in a number of groundbreaking radio programs, both in the U.S. and the U.K. And due to his institutional and professional connections, Lomax was in a unique position at this important historical juncture. However, Lomax recognized that folk song was not only as the voice of the people, but as the voice of the peoples. Rather than promoting a monolithic vision of an American identity and culture, he was at pains to emphasize the plurality and the diversity of people and culture within the nation. This was born out in the two projects that I'd like to talk about: The Radio Research Project of 1941 to '42, and the broadcast series giving the title inspiration for this work from Trans-Atlantic Call: People to People. So, at the outset of World War II, Lomax was already an established ratio broadcaster and folk music collector, here at the Library of Congress. And in 1941, he was transferred from the library to the U.S. Office of War Information, which was a government agency, created to disseminate information on both domestic and overseas fronts, but also to build morale in the American public. And from there, he became involved in the Radio Research Project, which was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, and developed by the Library of Congress, Dr. Archibald MacLeish at the time. Lomax's writings of this period, showed that he considered folklore and its process of communal generation selection and development, to be a democratic process in itself, but he was also conscious that this was true of the many varied regional and immigrant communities within the U.S. ^M00:20:16 During the war, the library's activities had to be contextualized by their contribution to the war effort, and Lomax wrote several proposals relating to the use of folklife material, gathered by the institution, exploring and articulating the role of the Archive of American Folk Song, in the National Defense Program. He identified the problem faced by America, thus. He wrote, "Well in advance of any armed aggression against a state, fascist forces have prepared the way by spreading dissention and producing cleavages among its people. In counteracting such tactics, especially in an emergency, there will be a tendency towards cultural regimentation, and writing roughshod over the emotions and sensibilities of the nationality groups, and immigrant populations. An effective defense program calls for national unity. But any effort towards national unity that disregards cultural diversity, will defeat its own ends." With this in mind, the Radio Research Project responded to the problem in one of its out [inaudible], the Regional Series, as follows, "In short, we show or hope to show, the real significance of the big concept words such as democracy, liberty, and America, by breaking them down into their everyday manifestations in communities or regions throughout the country. These programs do not speak in generalities, catch phrases, or glorious words. The stories are simply told in dramatic and human terms, sometimes through the eye of an individual, be he a reverend, and old sailor, a coal miner, or even a river." In total, the Radio Research Project, resulted in six broadcasts and two -- sorry. Six radio series and two standalone broadcasts, included not only the folk music and ballad hunting that we associate with Lomax, but also, oral histories and cultural memory drawn from across the country. Lomax's promotion of national unity through the medium of radio, therefore not only took account of but celebrated America's internal diversity. And then we see these ideas applied in an international setting in his work on Trans-Atlantic Call: People to People, which immediately followed but was not a direct output of the radio research project. Lomax was invited to work on Trans-Atlantic Call by the Columbia Broadcasting System, and the program was a collaborative venture between the CBS and BVC, which ran between 1943 to '45. And was explicitly designed to foster a friendly appreciation and understanding between listeners in the United States and the United Kingdom. Initially conceived as alternating half an hour broadcasts coming one week from the U.S., and the next week from the U.K., Lomax and his team visited communities across America, taking field notes, making recordings, and interviewing local people in order to capture the breadths and depths of American vernacular life. Throughout the broadcasts, emphasized the impact of the war and the changes in life that have been brought to bear on everyday communities. The broadcasts directly addressed the British audience, explaining the industry's terminologies and technologies evident in each location. One representative episode featured Mason City in Iowa, a large farming city. And Lomax's field notes, show that he interviewed characters from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, including Irish farmers, Greek canteen workers, and I also wanted to show this rather -- oop, hold on. Charming photograph, of Lomax recording a flock of turkeys that were eventually broadcast in the program. And also, actually got into conversation with Lomax and his interviewee at the time. So, Lomax's field notes became scripts that were then voiced by actors. So, the scripts are fairly expositionary [assumed spelling], highlighting potential confusions from Americans or British English. Explaining it out for example, what Americans call corn, the U.K. farmers would call maize, pigs, the hogs, explaining the differences between English farms and America farms. And, so on. As part of his attempt to capture the breadth of America's social and cultural diversity, Lomax also ensured that American urban life was represented alongside more rural communities. And in one particular broadcast from 1943, Lobal visits New York's Upper East Side, and throughout, the emphasizes again the range of ethnic backgrounds living alongside each other in harmony, with one character exclaiming, "Italians, Jewish, Irish, Negroes, all the same here. My name's Coco, yours is Cohen, yours is Fennesey. We're all alike, 100% Americans." Later in the series the format moved from actually -- from half an hour from one country and then half an hour from another, to actually switch to broadcast halfway through, so there would be a 15-minute segment from America and then a reply immediately with 15-minutes from the U.K. And unfortunately, we don't have the reply from Soho which would have replied to the Upper East Side. But it would be fascinating to see if and how the BBC reflected the diversity of Central London in a manner similar to Lomax's conception. However, we are able to listen to one of the replying programs from the BBC, which focused on the experience of women in wartime Britain. The narrator has just been seen the morning after a bombing raid, and we pick it up there. If we could have the audio? >> There are a lot of people standing around, people who lost their homes, and well, they were being advised by the women and the Women's Voluntary Service, you know the-- >> Yes, yes, I know the WVS. >> Oh, yes, that's it. Well, I went in to see if there was anything I could do to help, I guess. And standing in front of one of the tables was an old lady. I suppose she was about 60. >> I'm sorry to be troubling you like this. You must have a terrible lot to do. >> We're here to help, Mrs. Brown. That's our job. >> Well, you see, I -- I lost everything last night. My house down, my husband, they took him to hospital, but it wasn't any use. >> I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Brown. >> I don't hardly know how to begin. I -- you see, I've nowhere to go now. My girl was killed in the Blitzen [phonetic]. I've no one I can go-- >> We can take care of that for you, Mrs. Brown. The rehousing people at the Emergency Center will fix you up. >> Oh thank you, miss. I don't know where it is. I thought perhaps you might-- >> One of us will take you around there. And we'll call the Assistance Board as well. If your house is gone, there's a lot of things you'll need, money and clothes and food and things. >> That's very kind of you, miss. I don't want to be any trouble. I'm sure that there must be lots worse off than me. >> I don't think anyone could lose more than you've lost, Mrs. Brown. >> Elizabeth Kate Neale: So, these returning broadcasts explored aspects and impacts of the war in Britain that were outside the realms of experience for your average American citizen, often in very dramatic and poignant terms. So, Trans-Atlantic Call and Radio Research Project, both intended to build [inaudible] communities with particular social and political goals in mind, fostering cultural dialogs at both sub and international levels. The Library of Congress's holdings relating to the Radio Research Project and Trans-Atlantic Call itself, are rich and broad and include Lomax's original field notes, correspondence, institutional policy reports and documentation, as well as the radio scripts and audio files themselves. And as an ethnomusicologist, I'm fascinated by the use of musical material in culture, in these projects, to build communities and develop particular narratives around them. And there are many interesting strands to be drawn out. In particular, how Lomax' description so much gives a voice to the voiceless perhaps, but script the voiceless, because these scripts were carefully constructed, curated, and of course, eventually approved for broadcast by the Office of War Information. However, the material begs attention from a wide field of academic disciplines since Lomax's radio work offers fertile ground for the exploration and intersection of media and institutional approaches to folk like, the construction and delivery of propaganda, and the inclusions and the exclusions of marginalized groups, all of which concern us in the present day. Thank you very much. ^M00:29:09 [ Applause ] ^M00:29:17 Very pleased to introduce my co-work-a-thon, Lawrence Davies. ^M00:29:23 [ Applause ] ^M00:29:30 >> Lawrence Davies: Thank you. It's great to be back at the Kluge Center. ^M00:29:36 ^M00:29:51 >> Tell us a little about yourself. >> Lawrence Davies: Okay. I'm just finishing up my PhD at King's College, London. And I was a British Research Council Fellow here at the Kluge Center last year. Some of my work then was on Alan Lomax and his radio career, but also how Alan Lomax presented in particular, African American folksong and blues and jazz, both in America and in Britain. ^M00:30:25 And one of the things that I was continually amazed by at the Kluge Center, was the facility to bring in books, right to your desk. It was a fantastic experience. And one thing I thought was quite interesting, is I thought, "Oh, well I bring -- I won't bring my own books, because I'll be able to order them here." So, I [inaudible] just being able to create my library at home, effectively here. But within about a month, it was clear that I was actually creating an entirely new library effectively, on my shelves here, looking at books, making connections between scholarship that was entirely different to what I had made at home. So, I think that's a really good testament to Trans-Atlantic travel for the purposes of scholarship. Yes. And of course, the American Folk Life Center was invaluable for my research, in particular, the work with and assistance given to me by Todd Harvey and all of the other curators at the Folk Life Center. Being able to really get to grips with this material firsthand, and in paper form, brings things home to you in a way that even accessing them online doesn't quite give you. So. The Art of the Negro, is really a series that Lomax write not long after his arrival in Britain in 1951. And although, much of Lomax's work in Britain is on British and European folk music, and The Art of the Negro examines the link between African-American folksong, religious music, jazz, and blues, and contextualizes these traditions within African-American experiences of life in the segregated south. So, what I want to talk about today is not only how Lomax put together these programs about American music, but -- whilst he was in the U.K., but also how these programs were used to challenge the status quo, such as it was in the 1950s, about attitudes to the broader cultural value of African-American music and culture. And I should also say at this point, that some of the language in the extracts that we'll read and listen to have [inaudible] marks of the time at which it was recorded. The series was produced for the BBC's Third Program. This was the BBC's Arts and Culture Station, formed after the Second World War, to complement the corporations of the networks. The Home Service, which was current affairs, and the Light Program, which was mainly for music and variety entertainment. And the station's approach, the Third Program's station's approach, was firmly highbrow and intellectual. The first evening of transmission began with a lecture on how to listen, and it included recordings of Bach's "Goldbergs Variations," Monteverdi's "Madrigals," a lecture on current affairs by the Prime Minister of South Africa, and a concert with English composers, [inaudible] from the BBC Symphony Hall. What the station did on select occasions, widen its remit to the subject of folksong, particularly if the presenter was a well-regarded authority on the subject. And Alan Lomax was certainly recognized as such, by the station's controllers. So, the Art of the Negro is a short series, compared to some of Lomax's other radio projects, running to only three hour-long episodes. These are Mr. Jelly Roll, about the jazz composer and pianist Jelly Roll Morton and the birth of jazz in New Orleans, Trumpets of the Lord, about African-American religious worship, and then finally Blues in the Mississippi Night, about the origins, themes, and social meanings of the blues. The AFC's holdings on these broadcasts, are limited to a set of finished scripts. However, these are exceptionally rich documents. They reveal how Lomax constructed each episode from a wide range of audio sources. Lomax drew from across his own earlier fieldwork and musical knowledge, including recordings made while working for the Archive of American Folk Song, more recent interviews that he had conducted with folk singers and musicians, and then commercial recordings of blues and jazz. And without wanting to go into too much detail, it's possible to use the holdings of the Lomax collection, to dig right down into this process of authorship. This slip for example, show Lomax using the BBC's in-house reproduction services to make copies of interview materials he'd brought with him in preparation for the broadcast. And then correspondence files show the BBC and the Library of Congress already had a well-established exchange program, meaning that many of Lomax's earliest field recordings, were actually already over at the BBC and in their record library. Lomax [inaudible] source approach, was integral to his belief that folk song or folk culture was a bedrock of American popular music. In Blues in the Mississippi Night, Lomax begins by casting the blues as the musical voice of a modern nation. "The term 'the blues' is old," he says. "Shakespeare used it. The song form, is like the Cante jondo of Spain, the Fado of Portugal. All three are routed in Africa, but the blues is the folk song of the 20th Century, at home with machinery, and on city streets. If America had one national song, it's probably--." ^M00:36:01 [ Music ] ^M00:36:09 Can we play that from the beginning? I'll do my radio intro again. Or Lomax's radio intro. ^M00:36:16 [ Music ] ^M00:36:34 National music then, to Lomax's ears, was music created and consumed by the people, within their everyday lives. This is evident in Lomax's recollection of his first encounter with the blue's musician, McKinley Morganfield, better known now as Muddy Waters. And he recorded, while collecting songs in the Mississippi delta during the summer of 1941. "He was barefooted in ragged overalls. His house, in the middle of one of those endless cornfields. He played every Saturday for little dances in his county, but he had never seen a good guitar before he picked up mine. But listen to his song. A complex, delicately balanced, syncopated poem, perhaps the finest blues on record." ^M00:37:19 [ Music ] ^M00:37:55 So here, Lomax is again turning conventional opinion about musical value on its head. Even those who were confined to the bottom rungs of American society, with few material resources and little formal education, could produce music with immense artistic value and beauty. For British listeners of the Third Program, this would have been a powerful image. While they could access commercial blues recordings with relative ease, they lacked any real awareness of the music's folk roots, or the environment in which it was created. And this is the real emphasis of this social -- emphasis on social context rather, it's the real centerpiece of Lomax's broadcasts here, I think. Lomax draws on a series of interviews with blues musicians, Big Bill Broonzy, Memphis Slim, and Sonny Boy Williamson, that he had made in New York in 1947. But they are presented here as taking place in a back-country Mississippi juke joint. "The night settled down. One of those hot, [inaudible] August nights in the Mississippi [inaudible]. The blues was rolling slow, sleepy, and tired. It was time to ask questions. I said, 'Listen, Bill. You sit here and sing the blues all night, and never seem to get tired of them. What are they about anyway?'" >> Some people say that the blues is a [inaudible], but I don't say it like that. I say it's a man that's got a companion and she turned him down. And things like that happen, you know? And that's why I gets the blues from. When I want to see my baby, and want to see her bad, and something happened and I can't find her, and that gives me the blues., >> Lawrence Davies: So, although Lomax's setting is fictionalized, the musicians' testimony was direct and from the heart. Speaking under pseudonyms to protect their identities, Broonzy, Slim, and Williamson, spoke candidly about their experiences of crushing manual labor, harsh treatment by white bosses, and how the blues could be used to voice the trauma of these experiences. >> I've known guys, they wanted to cuss out the boss, and he was afraid to go up to his face and tell him what he wanted to tell him. And I've heard him say sing those things, sing words, you know, back to the boss. Just be behind the wagon, hooking up the horses or something, and then or the mules of something. And then he'd go to work and go to singing, and said things to the horse, you know? Horse [inaudible] like the mule, stepped on his foot. Said, "Get off my foot, God damn it," or something like that. You know? And he meant he was talking to the boss, "Son of a bitch, [inaudible] get off my foot," and such things as that. That's the point. >> Yes, blues is kind of a revenge, you know it--? >> Lawrence Davies: So, these accounts laid bare the evils of segregation, but also the optimism and resourcefulness of spirit that helped people survive. Such as this apocryphal yet sinister tale of a delta farm owner named Mr. White. >> I know a man at my home. They call him Mr. White. That was at on the plantation. Well, he had his own place there. It was about 50 or 60 miles of his place. It's a square, you know what I mean? From one side to another, you know? And all his fences around his place was white. The trees, he painted them white up as far as you could get. And all the cattle and the sheeps, the goats, and the hogs, and cows and mules, horses, and everything on his place was white. And anytime that his cow or his goat or [inaudible] have a black goat or a black sheep or a black calf, a black colt, anything like that, he give them to the niggers. He didn't want nothing on his plantation black. >> Lawrence Davies: To be able to hear such lengthy and personal accounts of life in the south and in such detail, was unprecedented, not only in Britain, but in blues scholarship as a whole in this period. These broadcasts were therefore an early step in understanding the unique circumstances that gave rise to African-American traditional music, and how Black and expressive culture inspired American popular music as a whole. Moreover, we can trace from this one broadcast, how Lomax continually reused and reformulated the field recordings and interview materials that he used in the Art of the Negro throughout his career. His interviews with African-American musicians became the inspiration for several books, LPs, and even a documentary film. Lomax clearly heard great power in these recordings, and I think we can hear that same power when we listen to them today. In this way, the future engagement with Lomax's radio materials that his project aims to inspire, will hopefully allow the important messages of the AFC's collections to continue to be heard. Thank you. ^M00:42:42 [ Applause ] ^M00:42:50 If I could now hand over to my colleague, Dr. Delaina Sepko. ^M00:42:56 [ Applause ] ^M00:43:03 >> Dr. Delaina Sepko: I'm just going to switch it up a wee bit. Stand here if that's alright so I can see the slides. Thank you very much for joining us this afternoon. It really means a lot to us to have you hear. And could we have the first sound clip, please? ^M00:43:19 [ Music ] ^M00:43:35 >> Alan Lomax: Get on board everybody, and ride with me. This is Alan Lomax, your ballad man, inviting you for another ride on the Folk Song Train. The train that runs wherever the people make their music. ^M00:43:47 [ Music ] ^M00:44:00 >> Dr. Delaina Sepko: Thank you. I'm here to just introduce you a little bit to another one of his radio broadcasts, called the "The Ballad Man" or "Your Ballad Man." And to a particular episode called, "Singing Newspaper." Now, the broadcast took place on the 17th of July, 1948. And it was one of 60 episodes that aired between October 1947 and January 1949. In terms of construction, there were two 15-mintues halves, with a total of 30 minutes, and the broadcast took place on Mutual Broadcasting Network, which could be considered one of the four major broadcasters of that time. They were topical in nature. So, when they were put together, they might be about women and men. In this case, it's about popular topics that you might find in a newspaper. This particular episode, which I have here the playlist for, shows that it's generally composed of recorded music, some live performances, and Lomax gives commentary over the top of most of it. So, it might be what you would find familiar from today's radio broadcasts. So, in that respect, it has a very sort of dee-jay sort of approach to it. However, this playlist is entirely made-up of prerecorded, commercially recorded music. What we can see from that is that we've got a combination of live performance and recorded music that's happening during each of these broadcasts, and what we can see, although I'd hoped that was a little bit bigger there, what we have is a request for reissue, basically. So, what was happening is the broadcast would play a song, people would write in, in the way that my colleagues been already telling you about, asking, "Where can I buy that record? Where can I get that song?" Well, a lot of them were really difficult to get your hands on. So, here we can see a demand for reissue. People are wanting copies. Copies that are commercially produced, in this case. Now, anybody who's familiar with commercial music, knows that there a few hoops that you need to jump through in order to be able to play them, and this was the case even back then. So, here we can see a list including some of the songs that are on this particular episode, asking for those tracks to be cleared. Meaning, given permission to play them on the radio. So, what we're starting to see in this case, is a little bit of tension between folk music, which is generally seen as something that you share, that you do as a community, and that's something that's very much part of American cultures in that respect, versus, commercial recordings, things that are commodified and require permission for broadcast. However, Lomax still incorporates a lot of the traditional formats that he's been using in all the other broadcasts where he's asking for input, looking for feedback from people, and really wanting an exchange. The sort of recursive format, a back and forth. Something that is reflective of the folk communities that he works for and with. And in this respect, you could sort of see these broadcasts as [inaudible] a conduit for folk music and folk cultures that they're part of. So, in this case, we have a letter, and -- that he's written to somebody who sent stuff in. And it's just an expression of gratitude. I hope that he can get it into his broadcast, but that he's only got eight songs that he can play per episode, it might take him a little while to get to it. And then the other image is in fact, a list to honor those requests that came through, a list of requests that have been made from fan mail. So, they are keeping track of these, with you know, hopefully the intent to include them at a later date. Whether they made it in or not, I can't say right now. I think there's probably another talk in that. But what we can see from here is that back and forth. However, let's go back to the fact that this is a constructed format, and here we can see -- although it's seven years prior to this broadcast, already Lomax is being selective about the things that he's playing. And when it comes to commercially available folk music, he is very selective. In fact, [inaudible] probably worth reading a little bit of it here. So, "After listening to 3,000-odd commercial records of white and negro songs, and tunes from the south, I've compiled this list of 350 representative titles in order that the interested musician or student of American society, may explore this unknown body of Americana with readiness. But, I have come away from this listening experience with the certainty that American folk music, while certain folklore specialists have been mourning its decline, have been growing in new directions to compete with thick musical commercial music." So, here we have a sense that he wants to share, but he's careful about what he shares. So, while we can see a lot of back and forth, a very discursive sort of program going on, he only wants to share very particular sorts of things. So, while he is a conduit, he an arbiter of sorts. So, it's worth bearing in mind that that's what's happening here. ^M00:50:05 So, we begin to see a tension. If you're not aware of it already, on the one hand, we have conservation and the very acts -- the field recording trips, the concerts, the broadcasts, the books, and the recordings, all of the things that Lomax is involved in. All of the projects and all of the output that's he creating. These are an attempt for him to both find, collect, and share American folk music with Americans and the rest of the world. And in this case, because at the time, he is sort of in between Library of Congress work and his trip to the U.K, he is very much within the music industry at the time. So, he's working within a very commercial industry in that respect. And here we can see that he will do that to achieve some of these aims. However, we can start to see issues of dissemination. How that product, how that music, gets to people who might be interested in it. So, here we can see that he's used the wide-reaching formats like radio and commercial recordings to achieve that. We can also see that there are administrative hoops that need to be jumped through, in order to gain access to some of those recordings and to play them. So, what we start to see is the tension within, the intimacy, and the personal ownership, something that is therefore there. Something that someone can identify with, rather than something that's released en masse to everyone else. Now, I think that it would be easy to start asking questions like, "Whose is this? Was he right? Was he wrong? Who's got the right answer in this case?" And I think that the really interesting thing about having collections like Alan Lomax's, is that it's up to you guys to make that decision. This isn't for me to tell you. It's not even for Alan Lomax to tell you. These collections, these songs, belong to everyone, and that's part of what we're trying to get across here to you today, to give you the opportunity and to give you the inspiration to look into them. And find -- we were privileged enough to go down and look into the vaults the other day, and even us, even us old hands at doing this, still find joy in just looking at it, let alone listening to it. Thank you very much. ^M00:52:43 [ Applause ] ^M00:52:49 And finally, I'd like to introduce my colleague Alan Noonan. ^M00:52:53 [ Applause ] ^M00:52:58 >> Alan Noonan: Good afternoon, everyone. It's such a sincere privilege to be here before you at the tail end of my Kluge fellowship. I almost want to just enjoy the moment, you know, as we were all kind of talking about what an absolute and sincere pleasure it is to be here and stand in these halls and do this research, and look out here and see so many people interested in the materials and the things that we're looking at and talking about. I would like to give a quick thanks, if that would be okay? And I might slip back into my [inaudible] accent at certain times during this presentation, so I hope you all understand me at that stage. I'd like to thank Steve, Jen, Nancy, and especially Todd at the Folklife Center. Mary Lou Travis, Ted, John, Dan, and Emily, as well at the Kluge Center. And I'd also like to thank my other fellows who were with me throughout the year and who are wonderful and sincere help and I'd just like to really emphasize the fact that my experience here has been such a wonderfully, productive exploration. And I want to use the word "exploration" quite purposefully. So, allow me to shift gears, which is probably a bad phrase to use since Americans use automatic, but my presentation will be slightly different. And in the way of it being an exploration, in the way that Alan Lomax explored certain collections and tried to collect material, I too came here, exactly a decade ago, to explore American history and Irish history and the ways that those intersect. And I had just begun my graduate career, I was younger and a little less gray at that stage, at the University of Montana. And with the help of Professor Flores and Professor Emmons [phonetic], I began to dig deep into the history of 19th and 20th Century American cultural and social history. It wasn't long before I heard a song that would become very familiar to me in my time in Montana. And it is with this version of a song, that I would like to begin my exploration into these fascinating sources with you all today. So, this is -- yes. >> Well you hear this old song, way off out across the flats, or you can hear bouncing off the walls of them boxed canyons. ^M00:55:24 [ Music ] ^M00:57:20 That song stands for Texas and Colorado and Wyoming and Montana and every other state out there, west of the Mississippi River. We don't aim to miss none of them on this old Cannonball Express neither. Sometimes though, we call this train Victory Cannonball. Sometimes we call her the War Bond Special. That's because everybody that rides this train is a war bond daddy. We had a meeting about war bonds the other day, and the main question was--. >> Alan Noonan: And then that section would lead directly into a piece promoting war bonds. I mean, they're -- this radio broadcast, the [inaudible] Armed Forces Radio Service, Bound for Glory, was produced by Alan Lomax, and of course that was the famous Woody Guthrie playing that song. He invited American musicians to come onto the show and play their favorite songs or even reimagine their own songs that they had already known. And of course, with all the references to Montana, that should be a fairly familiar song at this stage. And I really just couldn't interrupt it. There's an awful lot of layers that we could dig in further into that, but I just wanted to start off with what I kind of started off, when I was starting to dig into these collections. But with this song echoing in your ears, allow me to pass onto the next stage which was, because we had so much -- so little time to dig into the collections, we decided to divide up particular broadcasts into sections. And so, it was given to me to look into. A Ballad Hunter looks at Britain, which was produced in 1957, and had these eight episodes. Now, strangely enough, I started to look online at these sources. All of them were on the Library of Congress, digitized at this point. The scripts for the episodes, that is, I should say. And I was redirected to the episode, Dublin to Donegal. This was just me looking up A Ballad Hunter, Library of Congress. And as a proud [inaudible], I didn't think I was going to learn too much that I did not already know about Ireland. Alan Lomax, on the other hand, expected to find just about everything travelling Ireland, but in the two decades preceding his arrival, the arch government had established a folklore commission. And that was charged with the preservation of songs and stories from older generations. Lomax met Seamus Ennis, and he is an intimidating authority on Irish music, who we will look at next. But these clips are from Lomax's diary, travelling around Ireland where he talks about the many, many late nights that he had. [Inaudible] band till 3 a.m. And then the following day, "In bed with the flu." And I'm not sure if it is exactly the flu that struck him down, but there were many nights where his diary notes that he had ended the night before, 4 or 5 in the morning, singing these songs and of course, when you get these almost sanitized radio broadcasts, we're not exactly sure what exactly are the cultural settings of these recordings. Now these diaries again, open up that sort of deeper understanding that these were where songs were sung. These were where these traditions kind of developed. These were where people would stay up and tell stories, recite poems, sing songs. So, that's just one brief layer that I kind of wanted to just highlight that the collections might not dig into too much. This is Seamus Ennis and Lomax's impressions of Ireland I think are quite charming. ^M01:00:47 He describes it of course at first, you know, gray, winter sky, but a soft gray. "Further sky on this, and the mists were a gentle screen from the cold of the upper heavens, and not the barbs of snow or ice." And so, we'll play the first recording. ^M01:01:07 [ Singing ] ^M01:02:42 So, that's Seamus Ennis reciting what he believed to be a Dublin song. And I don't know if anybody else has made the connection yet, but Alan Lomax made that connection with something very quickly. Can we head back to the other one and play the second recording? Sorry, thank you. >> Alan Lomax: When I heard that song, I realized I'd come to the end of a ballad trail that had run through my own family history for a long, long time. Forty years earlier in a Texas cow town, my father had recorded the same song, but dressed up in cowboy chaps and a sombrero. Instead of the old [inaudible] baby, it as the cowboy and his little orphaned [inaudible]. ^M01:03:21 [ Music ] ^M01:04:00 You can imagine how I felt when I found that the roots of this best of all cowboy ballads in a Dublin kitchen. And when Seamus told me that he'd heard the same tune sung in gallic somewhere down in Cork, my [inaudible]. >> Alan Noonan: Well, I thought I'd cut it off there because immediately when I heard that part of the recording, I was like, "Oh, oh no. I've never going back to Cork again now." And of course, where else would I end up when I was doing research over in America. But you know, my own native Cork. And he travelled down to Macroom, to meet with a woman, Elizabeth Cronin there on the right. And Macroom is a few short miles away from where my people are. And we'll play that recording now of Elizabeth Cronin singing the song in Gallic. >> Alan Lomax: But we haven't come to the end of the trail till we call a Mrs. Elizabeth Cronin who at [inaudible] was wrinkled and rosy and sweet, like an apple that's lasted out the winter, and from her basket of tunes, she straightaway produced this Dobe [phonetic] song, put in Gallic this time. ^M01:05:00 [ Singing ] ^M01:05:14 The old people say that this is the oldest tune in Ireland. And it was the Virgin Mary's croon when she was rocking the infant Jesus to sleep. ^M01:05:26 [ Singing ] ^M01:05:37 Well, that shows you how a ballad hunt can bring you back pretty close to the beginning of things. And in Cork we found there was a special lilt in the music. There in Cork, where the red earth and bluish rock curl up through the green, you can look around you and believe in fairies. >> Alan Noonan: I like that charming phrase by Alan Lomax because there's a lot to unpack there. People have this impression of the fairies being these genial, nice, lovely things that you might see on the front of cereal boxes, but in actual fact, they were quite malicious and the rumors and curses and stories and tales about the fairy folk or the wee folks are not something that would be said lightly, which is funny the way that they've been so sanitized over history, and even in the way that Alan Lomax, back in the 40s and early 50s when he's compiling these recordings, is talking about them. Regardless of that, Elizabeth Cronin's own story is in itself sanitized and mythologized in its own way because the story that she is saying, that it is the oldest song and that it was sung by the Virgin Mary, is a beautiful story to tell, but unfortunately, the deeper origins of the song are quite dark and depressing. So, this is Padraic O'Keefe playing the oldest version of the song that we have. >> Alan Lomax: With Padraic O'Keefe, the fiddler, who knew the tune and said it was composed during the famine. "Nobody left in the town, not even to bury the dead," Pat said. "Only an old man, he rocking a hungry baby [inaudible]." And old Padraic made his fiddle say, "Mama, Mama." ^M01:07:12 [ Music ] ^M01:07:35 >> Alan Noonan: So, for Padraic, his response to initially being recorded when he was told my Alan Lomax is, he told him that it was for the BBC. Padraic replied, "I don't care if it's the BBC or the ABC." He was going to tell a story and have it be recorded. And so, he played that song for him. And a few short miles from Macroom, where these songs were recorded, is where I spent my earliest years in Kilmichael. And right there, in that graveyard in the corner, far left of that photo, is a famine commemoration which has recently been established by the local community. It was the site of a mass grave during the famine, where they would have used coffins with hinges to put the bodies, because they had to reuse them. And on the opposite view, is my own grave -- or the gravesite of my grandfather. Not my own gravesite, but yet another. But my grandfather is buried in that same graveyard. And yet, this act of remembering, commemorating, thinking about the past, and finding something that you would never expect to see, in the Library of Congress, about your own people and about your own past, is something that has really caught me off guard. And if feels appropriate then, that here, in these hallowed halls, and I think I can use the term "hallowed halls," of the Library of Congress, that I, like Alan Lomax, found a connection that links me back to the beginning of things, if not for all things, then for at least me. And in this search, the sense of cultural equity, really shines through, that we can read and understand our shared human experience, and the shared music, poetry, and stories within these collections, and within each of us. Thank you very much. ^M01:09:30 [ Applause ] ^M01:09:43 >> Todd Harvey: Hi, I'm Todd Harvey again, and it's good to have the lobuleers [phonetic] on. I wonder, John, can you turn them all on because -- what time is it, Andrew? Andrew? >> Twenty -- twenty past. >> Todd Harvey: What? >> Twenty-past. >> Todd Harvey: Twenty past. So, another 15 minutes or so, but I want to accomplish a couple things in this 15 minutes, and that is to let you all interact with us, if you want. I think there are some microphones around. ^M01:10:06 But also to talk about -- I mean, you've heard some moving and thoughtful stories today about the Lomax material. How it's impacted each of these scholars and granted, we're a bit under the spell at the moment, because we started at 9 o'clock on Monday morning, and I don't think any of these folks have really slept since then. They have just had their nose into it. And that's what happens in a week of this. We started with nothing and we've ended with this. But it's not enough for us to do the scholarship. I think what's important is that we're able to reach more people than we would just reach on this podium. John, can you also put my PowerPoint back up? And so, we need to talk about audience and we need to talk about products. And I have a couple slides that I think will help to move us forward. Who had that--? >> It's up on the [inaudible]. >> Todd Harvey: Can you grab it for me, please? Well, of course the Library of Congress is interested in both of these things. And we've done in a fairly passive way, because it's just available on the library's website. We've put up a lot of these materials online. It's an expectation now, I think that material be accessible online and we're trying to oblige. As I said, putting up 300,000 pieces of paper is no small feat. And if you work a little bit through this, you'll find many, many recordings, photographs, and other things. But there are other ways that we reach out to the world, which is different than reaching the world. We reach out to the world using a number of enterprise products. And that would be for example, the library's online catalog which is a great place to search and find things. And then outreach, such as the library's blog series and Folk Life Today's -- American Folks Life Center's blog. If you don't subscribe, you should. It's a lot of fun. And through podcasts. And we have a Facebook page. We have the library's Twitter account. I think there's an Instagram account. So, we're trying, but as I said, that's different than reaching to audiences. And we had a really robust discussion yesterday about reaching to audiences and if I can summarize, and then ask for you input. We have identified kind of two classes of audience. And the first would be communities of origin, or niche communities. And in terms of communities of origin, we can see how the Irish broadcast can reach back to Cork, and have that kind of meaning to a man from Cork. Probably a deeper meaning that I could understand because he's a community of origin. And a niche interest group might be the educational kind of classroom setting that you were describing earlier. And those kinds of things take partnerships. They take dedication. They take long patience and thought and feedback from the communities, in order to craft something that's meaningful to them. Engagement with the mass media is something else entirely. And the Folk Life Center does that. You know, we're going to screen American Epic, which was a film that was released on PBS, I believe recently. And made a big splash. It was a feature film and they used some of our footage from the Lomax footage in it. And so, we can engage with the mass media. We can talk to filmmakers about how to use our stuff. We can even reach out to filmmakers, but it's in a very different way than approaching communities of origin. It's a press release or a packet or something like that saying, "Hey, this is what we have." Then they take it and use it in their own way. Have I at least approached the discussion that we had? I think everybody's lob [phonetic] is up now. Delaina's? >> Delaina Sepko: No, I think you have, and thanks for the recap, Todd. And we definitely struggled with there are almost too many options. And what was the best way to do justice to the collections to get them out as much as possible, but to do it in a meaningful and thoughtful sort of way. We recognized that we have an -- lessons from the past that we can look towards. Broadcasts like Trans-Atlantic Call, that we can look to the formats that maybe Lomax has used previously, and maybe adjust them a little bit for a modern context. But we also know that time has moved on and things have changed. So, in what sort of way might we need to adjust those to make them relevant now? We know that we have fairly effective tools in terms of reaching a large audience. The Twitter, the Facebook, all of these kinds of things, but they are not an -- they are a vehicle. They are not a product. And so, we were very aware of how we might be able to use those, in a way that like I said before, did everything justice. Did the people that we were trying to reach a service and in the same way, do right by the things that we were trying to connect them with. It's not an easy task. I'm not sure that we've even come up with a firm sort of idea, but we have at least had time and spent the time to consider these sorts of things, and that is precisely why we're opening up to you guys at the moment, because we don't have a final kind of product. We want everyone else's collective experience. We want to maybe hear your suggestions. We want to know what you've tried, what's worked, what hasn't worked, and then what things would you be interested in as a member of a niche community, as a user of social media, and all the things that fall in between? >> Todd Harvey: Do you want to talk about maybe a concrete idea that we discussed yesterday? >> Sarah Tomlinson: Sure, so I teach a music appreciation class at a school in Durham, North Carolina. And so, bringing some of the radio materials that were originally created for kids, to the classroom there, is something that I already have a community partnership with, and that we can make happen. And so, that type of -- and that sort of fit into our conversation about communities of origin. And actually, when we first found the stack of letters from Mrs. Seegle's class, we said, "Oh, we have to go to the Stratford Ave. School and show them the letters that maybe their grandparents wrote. So, even a more you know, a school as a community of origin for school programs, but also the specific school can sometimes work. A way you can sort of incorporate it, like the Golden Gate Quartet being from Charlotte, North Carolina. So, bringing that particular broadcaster. They were actually on many of the school broadcasts, bringing one of those too. Some more in Charlotte and highlighting that local connection. And I think we also talked about, that way you sort of see and know the impacts that you have in doing outreach activity, when you work with a specific group, rather than when you put something on a mass media platform. There's more uncertainty about what its use will be, and the anxiety is that it will sit there, and nobody will actually engage with it. But then of course, it has the potential to affect that many more people. So, I think that tension was what we were going back and forth about do you want to do a [inaudible] impact to a kind of smaller group or big, but possibly more risky project, yes. And we even thought about packaging -- you can make a podcast about going to a school, you know. You can bring them together in interesting ways. >> Todd Harvey: Right, that would be the hybrid. >> Sarah Tomlinson: Yes. >> Todd Harvey: If we could find an institutional partner to create a series of podcasts about us going back to the schools to engage with communities of origin. It might be something -- I don't suppose anybody from NPR is here, are they? What kind of foster questions do you all have, if any? The Folk Life Center you know, has a lot of experience engaging with communities, back into -- well, the most prominent example I can think of is our federal [inaudible] project, where we made taped copies of [inaudible] of Native American communities, and then disseminated to those -- you know, their -- those communities, their own intellectual property. Their own cultural heritage. And those are partnerships that began with that gesture and have continued in a major way ever since. So, we you know, that kind of thing is I think very much in line with the partnerships with the communities of origin. And engagement with the mass media is something entirely different. What do you think, Nancy? ^M01:20:02 You have a microphone right there. >> Actually, I was going to take the opportunity, since we have some panelists from outside the U.S., to ask what the impression is of the Library of Congress and the American Folk Life Center? Among both scholars -- I assume scholars generally know what we have, but perhaps also musicians and community historians and how we might be able to up our visibility in the U.K. and in Ireland? >> Alan Noonan: I might start digging at that question. That's a really good question. I know that [inaudible] was the Lomax fellow here several years ago, and she actually turned me on to the Library of Congress's collections a little bit more than I probably would have, and that was kind of leading me into to apply for the Kluge fellowship here and really start digging into the 20th Century oral record, oral histories, and records of miners and mining communities, around the U.S., whereas you know, I might have gone -- just stayed in the nice confines of the 19th Century. But I think a project like this gives us a huge opportunity and a huge avenue to explore a greater collaborative sort of outreach, and I know that that word "outreach" is awfully dangerous, but all of us are former fellows of this institution, and all of us have had this wonderful opportunity to be here, even if just for this week. I think underutilizing people like [inaudible] or even myself, this project here, gives us a chance to reestablish those links and reemerge with some other sort of project and some other reassessment of these connections that do exist. I mean, again, like even myself, and I wouldn't consider myself you know an [inaudible] Corkman, I didn't know about these connections. That was kind of why I'm kind of coming to you saying that, this was a local connection that I had, that I never understood. That it added richness and depth to my own understanding of who I am and where I come from. And for a Corkman to admit that, is a big thing. So, I think that there is definitely a path forward. Where we go on from here, is really a sort of exciting question. I think you've touched on that question, but we can go further than that. >> Lawrence Davies: I would add to that, that yes, there's a temptation so much at the moment to think in terms of national boundaries, both in -- and borders, both in the U.S. and also in the U.K. You know, we have the British Library. We have the British Broadcasting Corporation and obviously this is the nation's library here at the Library of Congress. But in reality, the people who've worked for these and continue to work for these institutions, and the collections that they house and the things that they produce, always overspill those boundaries. And so, ways of formalizing -- continuing to formalize those and to exchange material and to use material, could only be a good thing. I don't want to talk too much about the Trans-Atlantic Call because I mean, you've done the work on it, but one other thing we found as you said, there's no -- we can't see the other side of the-- >> Elizabeth Kate Neale: Yes. >> Lawrence Davies: The -- yes. You go through it, yes. >> Elizabeth Kate Neale: So, what's missing but not missing because it's not Lomax material are the BBC replies in some cases to the Trans-Atlantic Call. So, I mentioned in the little talk that I did just then about we don't know what Soho said to New York's Upper East Side. And we don't know the institutional kind of processes and priorities that would have informed that broadcast, whereas we do know that from this side. So, what Alan Lomax actually achieved you know, a Trans-Atlantic Project at the time of a war, you know, now with our incredibly connected world, I think we should be able to build on that and do something more. But yes, finding the partners, building the partnerships, I think there's a huge amount of mileage in going back to communities of origin because the people who live there now, I mean, we talked about migration. We've talked about all sorts of things, but the people who live in these locations now, may not know that there was such interest from America in their traditions and their cultures. Even within America, you know? Mason City, some of the news reports that were so excited about how Mason City would be presented, not only to the U.S., but to the U.K. I think that it's easy as an ethnomusicologist and a folklore enthusiast to be enthusiastic about it on a personal level, but I think there's a much broader audience than just in this room, for that. >> Alan Noonan: Yes, what's the phrase we were thinking of something in partnership? >> Elizabeth Kate Neale: Sorry? >> Alan Noonan: There were two Ps that we were working off of. The something and partnership. The differentiation between -- product and partnership, is it? That we would go to various groups, be they local, historical societies, or museums, or local institutions and things like that, and we would arrive, and we would offer them something of interest. Maybe an exploration of these sources. Not necessarily done by us, but offer them this material that they might explore themselves and you know, we would be there. If they want a collaborative project, we would be available for that. But that -- these alternative formats might be something that they themselves could explore. And so, again, the localism isn't simply like us going into the local communities and saying like, "We will tell you your history." It's them further exploring what's going on at the present, what happened in the past, and contextualizing it from there. >> Sarah Tomlinson: Yes, and again, what type of product-- >> Alan Noonan: Exactly. >> Sarah Tomlinson: -they would use, or that they already use, so that it can -- so that we're creating something that is you know, going to be effective, yes. >> One of the words I -- thank you. One of the words I heard pop-up over and over again, in different forms, were collaborative outreach, crowd-sourcing, a reiteration. And what I hear in that is something like what Lomax did originally, which was to go out to the people and get material coming in to the collections, you know? And so, much of what you're looking at, I imagine there's still many people who have heard these broadcasts, you know, have photos, have recollections that could be added to what's already there. And putting up something like chronicling America which so many newspapers that scholars use, that researchers use, wonderful, but the addition that I keep hearing from you of bringing in the audience. I really applaud that. I think that's wonderful. >> Delaina Sepko: Well, I think that was a big part of and how we started out this week, is that instead of being -- you know, we all know a thing or two about music or about Alan Lomax, but that doesn't make us an authority on any of it, you know, in that respect or all of it, you know, in that way. And that what we were very keen to do, was to invite people into that conversation to bring them into the process, and in a sense, leave the produce almost open-ended at the back, to allow that space for, not just for access to old, but for the ingest of new. And any sort of form or you know, we've been calling it product for a lack of a better word, but it really does feel like more of a process, where things are an added, things are reimagined, and then reproduced. And so, you know, almost the broadcast, this podcast was a way to potentially do that, and that we had an opportunity to showcase what maybe happened say, during Trans-Atlantic Call. You know, when Soho called and the Upper East Side. You know, that -- you know, we know that that half of the conversation is missing, but what happened if -- what would happen if Gloucester, Massachusetts, calls Gloucester, England? What would happen today if that happened? Or what if Durham, North Carolina calls Durham, England? You know, there's a real opportunity there just in using a city name as the linchpin and just be able to work an idea around that. And create more folk, more folk culture, more folk music, the folk whatever comes into it. And that's where we saw an opportunity to use things like social media and other various kind of digital platforms to allow that ingest, and then also to share it back out again. >> Todd Harvey: I see -- Josh, do you have a question back there? And then we'll do one more question, and then I think we need to take it out. We're almost out of time. >> First of all, thank you for five excellent presentations, and six including Todd. Thank you very much. I enjoyed it a lot. So, on the point you guys were just raising, I think Nathan Salzburg at Cultural Equity, the Alan Lomax Archive in Kentucky, has actually done exactly this. And he's actually managed to work with local historical societies and local schools about Kentucky history in specific. That just seems like a natural synergy for what you guys are proposing here since other Alan Lomax areas have already even had the same concept. I mean, it's a great concept, of course. Yes, absolutely. So, that's what I wanted to say about that. And he'll be at the conference too. You can talk to him there [inaudible]. >> Todd Harvey: Right. Right. And don't forget the Radio Preservation Task [inaudible] Conference coming up in five weeks or so. Did you have [inaudible]? And wait for the mic. And then we're going to let Alan take us out. >> My question was just more specific towards your presentation. Did you have any audience? Did you have -- sorry, I'm like super nervous right now. ^M01:30:35 Any audience feedback from the U.S.? Did you look into any of that? >> Lawrence Davies: Not on those -- on the Arts of the Negro program. So, those were broadcast in Britain-- >> Yes. >> Lawrence Davies: -only. And-- >> And the audience? >> Lawrence Davies: There is some audience feedback. There's some in the collections but they're unfortunately not relating to the episode that I looked at. There's some to Episode 1, which is interesting because it's a mixture of sort of seeing you know, people here, power and authenticity and Jelly Roll Morton playing. And we sort of -- we can think about that in two ways. We can either take it at face value or we can sort of say that there was -- it fitted -- it may have fitted a stereotype or something that British listeners may have imagined that New Orleans was -- you know, New Orleans at the turn of the century was like. There may be more at the BBC archives and the BBC archives are a little bit more difficult to get into than the Alan Lomax collection. So, that's another thing about this you know, partnerships, actually matching up these Trans-Atlantic things. But of course, as I sort of gestured to at the end, this material was used by Lomax over and over and over again. And so, we can also look at the reception to his work more broadly about things like The Land Where the Blues Began, the Rainbow Sign and these various other books, and things that he wrote. So, I think it's an area that we need to look more at basically. But thanks. >> Todd Harvey: Excellent question. And you know, the blues and the Mississippi Night recordings I think were considered too hot to release. He had intended to release them. I don't think he released them for another decade. >> Lawrence Davies: Yes. >> Todd Harvey: Because they -- yes. Because of the imagined reaction. I want to say thank you to everyone for spending your Friday afternoon with us. And I can't even say thank you enough to my friends. And let's have a little Lomax radio to take us out. La Partenza. ^M01:32:51 [ Music ] ^M01:33:45 >> Alan Lomax: This is the music of the old port of Genoa, whose many storied, close-packed, palazzios, make a sort of downtown Manhattan on the Mediterranean. Winding through those narrow lanes, you must arrive at precisely the right hour of the evening, at a particular wine shop, that looks like all the other bars in that foggy and obscure district. And there you will find, the Genoese dock workers, drinking flasks of their white Ligurian wine, and improvising in the seven-part, trallalero style. ^M01:34:14 [ Music ] ^M01:34:21 Trallalero is a music as richly textured as a Medieval tapestry, and is bountifully joyful as its own green Ligurian hills. To most Italians however, it seems unfamiliar and even un-Italian. You must listen again and hear the docker who thrums guitar noises out of his throat, the tram-conductor's soprano with his [inaudible] southern arabesques of melody, the Tuscan operatic bravura of the tenor and baritone, the incredible Sardinian basses. Listen to this, and realize that trallalero is the musical sum of Italian folksong. ^M01:34:54 [ Music ] ^M01:35:41 >> Todd Harvey: Thank you all. ^M01:35:42 [ Applause ] ^M01:35:47 >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at ww.Loc.gov.