the world of manifold civilizations

Waiting for a friend last night came across a free paper/pamphlet from Brooklyn Fire Proof entitled Folk, which is an exhibition of photos, artifacts, and film and audio recordings of Alan Lomax.

Lomax was one of America’s most important folklorists, dedicated to cataloguing and archiving the music and legacies of the likes of Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Muddy Waters, among many others. He was almost singularly responsible for creating the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Lomax also coined the term “cultural equity,” the "music and other forms of creative cultural expression are fundamental to the lives of the people who make them, inextricably bound to their ways of life and livelihoods, and are thereby worthy of study, representation, and respect on their own terms." Beautiful, no?

For Lomax, cultural equity could only occur within the realm of the artist, it would take shape from within the creative struggle for equal representation of all homegrown and individual expressive styles—music, dance, cooking, forms of dress and appearance—and he predicted, quite accurately, how the fight to maintain this would become increasingly important in the 21st century.

Focusing on Lomax's famous Southern recording trip, "Folk" reflects not on his musical compositions, it also examines his documentary photography, films, and writings during this period, which were central in his expression and definition of what cultural equity meant. The exhibition runs 'til August 6, and seems to me to be just one of the most interesting offerings in a long time.