Digital Lomax: His fieldwork goes online
Alan Lomax envisioned his collected fieldwork culminating into an amalgam of traditions, a sort of “global jukebox” available to the masses to learn from and enjoy. Finally, Lomax’s vision is palpable, thanks to technological advancements in online archiving. Today, what would be his 97th birthday, his archive of over 300,000 minutes of sound recordings, 76 miles of film, 250 dozen videotapes, 5000 photographs and innumerable manuscripts begin the digitization process, with about seventeen thousand tracks of music being available by the end of February. In addition, a collection known as “The Alan Lomax Collection From the American Folklife Center,” a sampling of sixteen Lomax field recordings are being released by the Global Jukebox label. The Global Jukebox project was Lomax’s brainchild, which he strenuously devoted his final two decades developing. The project uses archived digital info on each of Lomax’s recordings and utilizes this data to find intercultural similarities within traditions. The process works a lot like popular music websites like Last.fm and Pandora — however, this collection will offer so much more, including the largest collection of dance film anywhere. Folks like Google, Bruce Springsteen, the Coen Brothers, various educators and the Library of Congress are all praising the digitization of the Lomax collection. With a complete collection of Lomax’s lifetime work available for everyone online, we can all gain a firmer grasp of the ties that bind us as human beings, but also the plethora of ways that each culture has nuances all worth saving. More info visit <http://www.culturalequity.org/features/globaljukebox/ce_features_globaljukebox.php>.