Part 35

"I make my living as a very hard-working scientist," he said. "By using scientific methods, I can absolutely refute the ideas of those who say that Oklahoma doesn't matter, or that the Pygmies might as well be exterminated. Each of these people, we have found, has something for the human future, for the human destiny."

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The Mighty Lomax

from The Westsider, late 1977

It's oldies night on the radio. The d.j. has promised to play nothing but the greatest hits of the '50s and '60s, and sure enough, here they are -- "Irene Goodnight" sung by the Weavers; "Tom Dooley" by the Kingston Trio; "Abilene" by George Hamilton IV; "Midnight Special" by Johnny Rivers; and "House of the Rising Sun" by the Animals.

All of these songs reached number one on the charts. And they have something else in common: all are genuine American folk songs of unknown authorship that might have been lost forever if they had not been discovered and preserved by John and Alan Lomax, the famous father-son folklorist team.

The folk music explosion in America that peaked in the early 1960s and continues today owes more of a debt to the Lomaxes than to any performer or songwriter. John Lomax died in 1948 at the age of 80. His son Alan, 62, has been a resident of New York's Upper West Side for the past 15 years. Working seven days a week at his 98th Street office and his 100th Street apartment, Alan has carried on his father's work with a remarkable talent and energy. He has gone far beyond the simple collecting of folk songs, and maintains a dizzying schedule of activities -- writing books, catching planes for Europe or Africa, making movies, producing record albums and tapes, and heading a musical research project for the Anthropology Department of Columbia University.

Fathers and Sons

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.

Q: What's the purpose of cantometrics? How can someone learn it?

A: I recently published a set of seven cassette tapes of folk songs from all 10 cultural levels around the world. In the booklet that comes with it, the songs are broken down and analyzed so that the student can learn the cantometrics system on his own. When you learn the system, you can understand any music, even if you don't know the language it's being sung in. By the time you've heard two or three tapes, you get used to the world standard of music. Cantometrics measures things like repetition, ornamentation, rhythm, melody, orchestral arrangement. ... It analyzes music in relation to social structure -- political organization, community solidarity, severity of sexual sanctions. Cantometrics makes the world's music into a geography.

Q: How does American music differ from that of the world in general?

A: In our culture, for example, we didn't have much repetition until rock and roll came around. And that represents another influence. ... As you know, we of European background don't sing very well together. Everybody starts singing at a different tempo, like seven cats in a bag. But if you take people who live and work together, it's like clouds rolling out of the sea. ... It turns out that the people with the most repetition in their songs have the most primitive cultures -- at least, in relation to their economic development. Everybody knows the same thing about everything. So being specific is boring, and repetition is what they like. You don't impose your boring accuracy on everyone.

Q: What do you consider the real beginning of the folk music movement in America?

A: It all began in Texas in 1885 when my father heard "Whoopee Ti Yi Yo" on the Chisholm Trail. He was a country boy. He grew up in Texas, and the cowboys drifted past. He wrote the songs down just for the hell of it. Then he got a grant from Harvard and found out how important it was. He was the first person in the country to use a recording device, in 1902.

Q: Did you know Woody Guthrie very well?

A: Know him? I made him famous. I had a coast-to-coast radio program when Woody first came to New York. I introduced him when he first sang on radio. He stayed at my house. ... They offered him a huge contract, but he just walked off and went to Oklahoma. He was a deeply passionate person, and tremendously gifted. First of all he was the funniest man that ever talked. And Woody was so quick: talking to him was like playing jai alai. He got up in the morning and wrote 25 pages before breakfast just to warm up. And there was always a slightly strange thing about woody -- an itchy feeling that he had. It might have been beginning of the disease which later killed him.

Q: What's your connection with Pete Seeger?

A: Peter Seeger is my protege. I gave him his banjo. The banjo was a dead issue, and he came to me and asked what he should do with his life. He was a Harvard hippie. ... We got to be colleagues. We worked on the whole revival of the American folk music. I taught him most of his early songs.