Message-Id: <199907011742.KAA11494@dns.ccit.arizona.edu> Date: Thu, 1 Jul 1999 13:49:47 -0400 From: Tamara Swora-Gober <mailto:tswo@LOC.GOV> Subject: LC National Digital Library announces "Southern Mosaic: The John To: mailto:IMAGELIB@LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
This announcement is being widely posted*************************************** The Library of Congress National Digital Library Program announces the release of “Southern Mosaic: The John and Ruby Lomax 1939 Southern States Recording Trip Collection” at the American memory website at the following URL: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/lohtml/lohome.html
This multiformat ethnographic field collection includes 686 sound recordings, as well as photographic prints, fieldnotes, dust jackets, and other manuscripts documenting folksingers and folksongs discovered on the Lomax's three-month, 6,502-mile trip through eight Southern states: Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, South Carolina, and Georgia.
Beginning in Port Aransas, Texas, on March 31, 1939, and ending at the Library of Congress on June 14, 1939, John Avery Lomax, Honorary Consultant and Curator of the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center), and his wife, Ruby Terrill Lomax, recorded approximately 25 hours of music from more than 300 performers. The recordings represent a broad spectrum of musical styles, including ballads, blues, children's songs, cowboy songs, fiddle tunes, field hollers, lullabies, play-party songs, religious dramas, spirituals, and work songs. Over 100 songs are sung in Spanish.
A special presentation on the collection provides a state-by-state snapshot of the Lomaxes' expedition, highlighting the diverse musical styles of each region, the variety of documentation archived by the collectors, and many of their experiences on this field expedition through the rural South in the 1930s.
The sound recordings in the Southern Mosaic collection were taken from disc recordings in the Library's collections. When original discs were unavailable preservation tapes were used. The analog audio from the discs and tapes were transferred to Digital Audio Tape (DAT) to produce a master source for digitization. Some surface noise and scratching may be apparent on the recordings since they have not been enhanced or altered in any way from their original state. WAVE and RealAudio versions have been supplied for each recording. The WAVE files were created from the DAT tape at a sampling rate of 22,050 samples per second, 16-bit word length, and a single (mono) channel. The RealAudio files were derived from the WAVE files through means of digital processing and were created for users who have at least a 14.4 modem.
Patrons wishing to use this collection can search for items in many ways, including by city, state, and county where the recording took place, performer name, song title, musical genre, and recording venue. Also included in the collection is an extensive bibliography and discography for those interested in doing further research on the folk music documented in this collection.
The presentation of this online collection is made possible by the generous support of The Texaco Foundation.
Other folklife-related online collections, selected publications of the American Folklife Center, and information about products and services are available from the Center's homepage: http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife This collection is the fifth American Folklife Center contribution to the American Memory Web site.
Please send any questions regarding this or other American Memory Collections to mailto:ndlpcoll@loc.gov