The elder Lomax was primarily a songhunter. His first collection, Cowboy Songs, was published in 1910. It contained such gems as "John Henry," "Shenandoah" and "Home on the Range," which he heard for the first time in the back of a saloon in the Negro red light district of San Antonio.
Alan was born in Texas in 1915. When he was 13 years old his father gave him an old-fashioned cylinder recording machine, and the boy was hooked. He became a full-time song scholar at 18. In that same year his father was put in charge of the newly created Archives of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in Washington. When Alan was 20 he took over as archives director. The father-son team eventually provided more than half of the 20,000 songs in the collection.
The Lomaxes wrote many books together; they introduced American folk music into the nation's public schools, and through their radio programs in the U.S. and Europe, made celebrities out of such performers as Burl Ives, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie.
Whereas John Lomax was interested in the music for its own sake, Alan began some time ago to look for the deeper meaning, or social significance, of folk songs. In his many trips around the world he built up a collection of recordings from every continent and virtually every major culture. Along with a co-worker he developed his findings into the new branch of anthropology known as cantometrics.
When the Voyager 2 spacecraft left Earth last August for a journey beyond the solar system, it carried on its side a unique record player with a specially made disk for alien beings to hear and enjoy. The disk contained 27 musical selections, which have been named "Earth's Greatest Hits"; 13 of them were chosen by Alan Lomax.
The following interview was conducted in various rooms of Alan's office on a Friday evening in August, 1977. One room was filled with recording equipment, tapes and records; another with music books; a third with computer readouts; and a fourth with movie films. Lomax spoke rapidly and found it difficult to sit still. He is not a neat housekeeper, a sharp dresser or a master of the social graces. He is, however, a tireless worker who gives the impression of being totally absorbed in his work. A large, robust man, he will no doubt continue to be a major figure in the field of international folk music for years to come.
Question: What exactly is cantometrics?
Answer: It means, literally, singing as a measure of culture. With it, a song performance may be analyzed and related to a culture pattern. Each aspect of music stands for a different social style. By using cantometrics you get the story of mankind in musical terms. … It's like the guy who says, "I don't know anything about music but I know what I like." It means that kind of music stands for his background and what he believes in.
Q: How did you develop this new science?
A: I started this project in 1961. … We analyzed 4,000 songs on a computer. Out of that has come a map of world culture. There are 10 big groups or styles of music. Stone age people have style 1. … We found there's a similarity of Patagonian music and Siberian, even though these people live near the opposite poles. … Along with studying song, we have also studied dance and conversation in the same way, from film. I probably have the biggest collection of dance film in the world — 200,000 feet. Maybe the New York Public Library has more, but that's specialized in fine art.