Alan Lomax
The Alan Lomax Archive and IODA, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance, have partnered to make thousands of traditional and vernacular music recordings available worldwide. As part of the campaign, Lomax and IODA will disseminate Lomax’s recordings digitally to an international network of retailers. The partnership comes on the heels of the recently released biography, Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World, by John Szwed.
Alan Lomax (1915-2002) is considered America’s foremost folklorist. He dedicated his life’s work to the documentation of music and cultural traditions across the world and is perhaps best known for making the debut recordings of American legends like Lead Belly, Muddy Waters, and Woody Guthrie on behalf of the Library of Congress.
The recordings — many previously unreleased—are drawn from Lomax’s fieldwork from 1933 to 1991, during which time he sought out and recorded hundreds of hours of music from a huge diversity of cultures. They will be released on the Archive’s new label, Global Jukebox.
Collaborations with folklore institutions like the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and Spain’s Muséu del Pueblu d’Asturies, indie record labels Mississippi Records and Dust-to-Digital, among others, and university presses including those of the University of Nebraska and the University of Wisconsin will enable the Archive to make its more than 17,000 recordings available to diverse audiences worldwide. Through IODA’s international distribution network, Global Jukebox releases will be available at hundreds of digital retailers including iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, MOG and Rdio, and through mobile providers such as AT&T, Nokia, T-Mobile, Sprint, Telefonica and Verizon.
