When the Lomaxes set out in 1933, they were on a mission to make audio recordings of “unadulterated” folk stylings from rural communities cut off from the contaminating forces comtemporary music through records and radio (Filene 2000:56). Writing to his wife, Lomax explained that they were collecting songs that “seem folky” (51) from prisons and rural communities that were less susceptible to modern musical influences. They were out to collect “authentic” samples of a truly American folk tradition, separate from the European peasant folk song tradition.
The Lomaxes were trying to break away from the manuscript-driven study of folk music which remained in the stacks of libraries to get at folk songs without the degree of interpretation from the folklorist. Audio recordings were supposed to capture “pure folk,” although little consideration was given to the influencing factors such as the context of the recording, the people present, and the purpose (the apparent government sponsorship by the Library of Congress which caused some singers to address the President directly in their songs (56-57).
Lead Belly’s large folksong repertoire was used by the Lomaxes to assert that folk songs were still alive in contemporary America, yet they insisted on looking at these isolated pockets of communities like prisions. But isn’t this in some ways counterintuitive to the argument that these traditions really be representative of “contemporary America” as a whole? Why, then, could they not have looked in the cities and suburbs of America for the American folk song traditions. The Lomaxes argued that Americans should fight the tendency to think of folk culture as static, yet they themselves were searching for the music with the least influence from other sources, i.e. the most unchanged. This raises a contradictory conundrum for popular conceptions of “the folk” by academics and the public. This contradiction is further complicated by Lead Belly’s evolving performance and song style, partially encouraged by the Lomaxes, such as making his pronunciation more understandable to northern audiences and increasing Lead Belly’s distinctive “interpolated narrative” in his performances (65-66).
While billing Lead Belly as “pure folk,” they also exoticized him as the “other,” a primal performer linked at once with purity, danger, past, and present. They emphasized his prison past and attested to his animalistic nature in ways that still don’t make any sense to me—what exactly does it mean to be “as sensual as a goat” (59)? Lead Belly was even forced to perform in his old prison uniform, despite his express aversion to this. This brings up many historical issues that we have found intertwined in folk culture, revivals, and commodification of the folk, such as racial and class inequality, exploitation, and romanticism.
While they claimed to be exhibiting the pure folk, the Lomaxes were in fact doing something much more interesting and useful, which is highlighted in Filene’s Chapter 4. Their recordings allow us to see how these performances and folk styles evolved over time even within the scope of just one person, Lead Belly. The Lomaxes “fundamentally misrepresented the reality of folk culture…[which] had always depended on its adaptability,” but their series of recordings actually showcase that even as they discouraged change except in their own sanctioned cases, Lead Belly found small ways to adapt in true folk fashion (71). The restriction of change is what held Lead Belly’s songs back from widespread success. His music did not reach wider popularity until it was adapted by his successors, ranging from the Weavers, to Little Richard, to Kurt Cobain. Below are two youtube clips of "Where Did You Sleep Last Night," the first by Lead Belly, and the second by Nirvana about 50 years later.
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