"Alan Lomax in Haiti" (1936-1937) Volume 5: Haitian Songs by and for Children (audio tracks, song list, & information)

World Field Recordings, Feb 15, 2024

Alan Lomax in Haiti 1936-1937 Recordings For The Library of Congress

Label: Harte Recordings

Release Date: 2009

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases a YouTube audio (sound) file of thirty brief clips of songs sung by Haitian children and recorded by ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax in 1986-1937 as well as a list of those songs,

This pancocojams post also includes information about and descriptions of this ten CD box set of  Alan Lomax In Haiti, including two customer reviews.

This post also includes two customer reviews of the Alan Lomax in Haiti box set.

The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, and aesthetic purposes.   

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to all those who are featured in these audio files and thanks for Alan Lomax for his musical legacy. Thanks also thanks to all those who are quoted in this post. 

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TRACK (SONG) LIST

5-1 Francilia– Dodo, Dodo, Krab Nans Kalalou (Sleep, Sleep, Crab In Calalloo [Okra Stew])

5-2 Secondary Students At L'Ecole Daumier– Un P'tit Pied Laurier (A Little Bay Tree)

5-3 Anna (219), Ce'Cile (2)– Un P'tit Pied Laurier (A Little Bay Tree)

5-4 Secondary Students At L'Ecole Daumier– Ti Zwazo (Little Bird)

5-5 Louis Florvilus– Delina, Pinga Manyen Moungo (Delina, Do Not Touch Moungo)

5-6 Students At L'Ecole Daumier– Pinga Manje (Don't Eat)

5-7 Students At L'Ecole Daumier– M Pa Manje Nan Jaden Manman-w (I Don't Eat In Your Mama's Garden)

5-8 Secondary Students At L'Ecole Daumier– Se Rosann, Yap Prete m Yon Pélen (Sister Rosanne, They're Lending Me A Mouse Trap)

5-9 Students At L'Ecole Daumier– O'Zanana (To The Pineapple)

5-10 Alan Lomax– Jwe Yoyo (Play Yoyo)

5-11 Boseuit Siniature, Tanis Aristide, Toto Antoine– Adye Manman Bay Kola-a (Ladies And Gentlemen, Give Us Some Cola)

5-12 Boseuit Siniature, Tanis Aristide, Toto Antoine– Twa Pa, Toutlanwit (Three Steps, All Night Long)

5-13 Boseuit Siniature, Tanis Aristide, Toto Antoine– De Rad Broule (Two Dresses Burned)

5-14 Boseuit Siniature, Tanis Aristide, Toto Antoine– Rozmeli, Ale Pale Manman-m Pou Mwen (Rosemarie, Go Talk To Mama For Me)

5-15 Alan Lomax– Agawou-o, Dyab la Bobo Lode (Agaou-o, The Devil Hurt/Kissed Lode)

5-16 Jean Blaise– Bonjou, Bonjou Manman Sira (Good Morning, Mama Sira)

5-17 Plaisance Boy Scout Troupe– Cantique Des Patrouilles (The Song Of The Patrols)

5-18 Plaisance Boy Scout Troupe– La Crocodile (The Crocodile)

5-19 Plaisance Boy Scout Troupe– Les Scouts Sont Là (The Scouts Are There)

5-20 Plaisance Boy Scout Troupe– C'est Le Piston Qui Fait Marcher Le Machine (lt's The Piston That Makes The Car Run)

5-21 Tazi Aldophe– Madmazel Ki Manje Kalabou (The Lady Who Eats Calalloo [Okra Stew])

5-22 Anna (219), Ce'Cile (2)– Je Vois la Marguerite (I See The Daisy)

5-23 Anna (219), Ce'Cile (2)– Hélèn

5-24 Anna (219), Ce'Cile (2)– J'avais Des Belles Fleures (I Had Some Beautiful Flowers)

5-25 Students Of L'Ecole Normal– Deyè Mòn-la, Ann Prale We (Behind The Hill, Let's Go See)

5-26 Students Of L'Ecole Normal– Bonjou, Manman Sira (Good Day Mama Sira)

5-27 Students Of L'Ecole Normal– Drums And Vaksin-s

5-28 Students Of L'Ecole Normal– M-pral Fè Lago Ti Zongle (Ti Zongle, I'm Going To Play Hide And Seek)

5-29 Students Of L'Ecole Normal– Pinga Way-o (Watch Out!)

5-30 Students Of L'Ecole Normal– La Fig Banann (The Small, Sweet Banana)

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INFORMATION ABOUT AND DESCRIPTION OF THE TEN BOX CD SET "ALAN LOMAX IN HAITI"
from https://www.amazon.com/Alan-Lomax-Haiti-Various-Artists/dp/B002FOQY7C

Product Description:

"Alan Lomax in Haiti" Box Set

Various Artists (Artist), Alan Lomax (Performer)  Format: Audio CD

Cost: $259.95

2010 Grammy Finalist - Two Categories:

Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes

Review

In 1936, in the middle of scouring rural America for folk music that might have vanished forever if not for his efforts, ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax traipsed off to Haiti for four months with his 19-year-old fiancée and a 55-pound recording unit. The results are only now available for anyone to hear.

Mr. Lomax was out to document the music of everyday Haitians, in whatever form, and to hunt for the influence of African music, as he had in the U.S. A 10-CD box set, Alan Lomax in Haiti, traces how Mr. Lomax moved from the most accessible sounds, such as the dance bands of Port-au-Prince, who had incorporated New Orleans jazz from records imported by occupying U.S. Marines. Following leads around the country, he acquired celebratory carnival songs, work songs, and eventually the music of officially forbidden Vodou (what is commonly known as voodoo) ceremonies.

As the musicians played for Mr. Lomax (pictured at right), his recording device cut sound grooves onto aluminum discs. He produced some 50 hours of sound. But the music was never publicly released. Mr. Lomax rushed on to other places and projects, and when he did revisit the Haiti recordings in the 1970s, the sound quality disappointed him.

About 10 years ago, daughter Anna Lomax Wood helped launch an effort to clean up the recordings. New software minimized surface noise and enhanced the sound. A nonprofit founded by Mr. Lomax co-produced the 10-CD set, which is also available for download and was released this week. It includes film footage shot by wife Elizabeth, whom he wed in Haiti, and a transcription of Mr. Lomax's field journal. --Wall Street Journal

The estate of Alan Lomax, Haitan scholar, and the Library of Congress have joined forces to produce a chronicle of Lomax's 1936 Haitan recording expedition in collaboration with The Association for Cultural Equity. Along with 10 CDs of recordings of Haitian musicians, the set also includes two books. One, the field journal of Lomax and a hard-bound set of liner notes and essays detailing and translating all the songs in the set. This scholarly collection of the American folklorist and ethnomusicologist's work in Haiti will be a special gift for hard-core folk music fans. --Pop Matters

Lomax sonically documented much of American culture in the 20th century, and his work is well-known to students of history. But in 1936-37 he took off for Haiti, and more than 70 years later, what he discovered is finally available to us. The recordings have been miraculously cleaned up, and the results featuring Mardi Gras and Carnival music, choruses of singing children and Vodou ceremonies is haunting, celebratory and just plain strange to 21st-century ears.

Ten discs might seem like a lot of sound to take in, and to be sure, you should take your time to absorb it all. What a remarkable documentation of a long-lost journey. It's the ideal gift for the armchair ethnomusicologist who thought he knew it all. --Denver Post

From the Artist

Anna Lomax Wood, Lomax's daughter, explains in the notes: "...[W]e can now listen in to a pivotal era in Haiti's cultural history, when the country was throwing off U.S. imperialism and embracing both its African roots and the coming influence of jazz and African-American/Afro-Caribbean popular music and dance."

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TWO CUSTOMER REVIEWS OF THE TEN BOX CD SET "ALAN LOMAX IN HAITI"

from https://www.amazon.com/Alan-Lomax-Haiti-Various-Artists/dp/B002FOQY7C

"Customer review by Christopher D. Pino

5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliant restoration of Lomax's 30s fieldwork in Haiti

Reviewed in the United States on December 15, 2009

This set, particularly in the boxed set beign released today with Alan's trip diary and a musicological tour of Haiti was recorded by Alan Lomax with his wife on their honeymoon to Haiti in the Mid-30s. Like most honeymooners of their time (note dry humor), they carried an aluminum disk recording machine and many blank aluminum disks. Brilliantly restored by Magic Studio in NYC, produced by Anna Lomax, fruit of the honeymoon, and Don Fleming these disks can take you into a sound and time that is both eternal and out of both 17th Century Africa and France, little changed by the intervening centuries. The intense polyrhythm drum/song bands are particularly briliant as is the profound ability of song and dance to sustain the morale of peoples subjected to the worst imaginable hardships. I am not affiliated with the estate but did work for Alan for a decade. I believe these will win Grammies as did the Jelly Roll Morton box>"

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"Customer review by DJ Joe Sixpack:

 5.0 out of 5 stars A true treasure trove...!

 Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 2010

 Various Artists

 "Alan Lomax In Haiti"

 (Birdman Records, 2009)

This 10-CD box set is a stunning historical resource, drawing on extensive recording sessions conducted in the 1930s by fabled ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax on behalf of the United States Library of Congress. Lomax recorded hundreds of hours of music, ranging from antique European ballads and dance music to early meringue recordings, Afro-Haitian percussion and extended recordings of authentic voodoo ceremonies. Some of the styles represented here have disappeared entirely -- not just from the popular Haitian repertoire, but from the island itself; many recordings feature artists who were well known regionally but may come as revelations to many listeners. It is a a remarkable cultural resource, documenting a richly cross-pollinated New World island culture, a snapshot of a time and society that were almost entirely lost, and would have been had it not been for Lomax's tenacious urge to document and present the folklore he found across the globe. Recommended! (DJ Joe Sixpack, Slipcue Guide To World Music)"

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Remembering & Honoring John Wesley Work III

Edited by Azizi Powell
[Update: 4/14/2012]

Muddy Waters - Got My Mojo Workin'



Uploaded by ragbagken on Jan 11, 2007

"Blues Masters" 1966 Canadian TV

-snip-

John W. Work III and not Alan Lomax was who actually discovered Blues legend McKinley Morganfield, better known as "Muddy Waters".

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This post consists of excerpts of several online articles about African American composer, ethnomusicologist, collector, and educator John W. Work III (1901 - 1967). My editorical comment is given at the end of those quotes.

These excerpts are re-published to help disseminate information about John Wesley Work III. My thanks to all those who wrote these featured articles.

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From http://johnworkfoundation.org/About_John_W.html

Composer, educator, choral director, and ethnomusicologist John Wesley Work, III was born on June 15, 1901, in Tullahoma, Tennessee, to a family of professional musicians. His grandfather, John Wesley Work, was a church choir director in Nashville, where he wrote and arranged music for his choirs. Some of his choristers were members of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers. His father, John Wesley Work Jr., was a singer, folksong collector and professor of music, Latin, and history at Fisk, and his mother, Agnes Haynes Work, was a singer who helped train the Fisk group. His uncle, Frederick Jerome Work, also collected and arranged folksongs, and his brother, Julian, became a professional musician and composer...

His book, American Negro Songs and Spirituals (1960) contains 230 folk songs, and describes the origin and nature of various types of folk songs.

During the summers of 1941 and 1942, Professor Work, along with Charles S. Johnson, then head of the Fisk Sociology Department (later the University’s first black president), and Lewis Jones, also from the Sociology Department, collaborated with the Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress’ Archive of American Folk Song in a joint field study to record the music of the rapidly urbanizing Coahoma County, Mississippi. Some of the findings have been recently published in the book Lost Delta Found (Vanderbilt UP, 2005) and the album John Work III: Recording Black Culture won the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Album Notes, 40 years after Dr. Work’s death.

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From "John Work III: The Man the Blues Forgot" by Joe Kloc http://motherjones.com/mixed-media/2011/04/john-work-alan-lomax-blues

John Work III, born in 1901 in Tullahoma Tennessee, was a folklorist at Fisk University for almost 40 years. He attended Julliard and held music degrees from Yale and Columbia. According to music writer Dave Marsh, Work was Lomax's partner and guide in the early 1940s. He led Lomax first to Son House and later to Muddy Waters, where Lomax recorded part of what would later be released as Down on Stovall's Plantation. "Lomax never credited Work, but recent research has established him as at least Lomax's equal in the study"...

The omission of Work from the history of folklorists who traveled the south has had a significant impact on the way we understand delta blues music. The fact that Lomax and his father were white has led many to contend that the mythology of the blues was created by white record collectors.

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From http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/books/review/Marsh-t.html?ref=alanlomax Out on Highway 61 By DAVE MARSH Published: February 24, 2008 [A review of the book “In Search of the Blues” by Marybeth Hamilton]

One of the distinguishing characteristics of “In Search of the Blues” is that virtually no black voice is heard. (The page-and-a-half exception is a characteristically vituperative letter written by Zora Neale Hurston to John Lomax.) John Work III is not a figure in this tale, even though as a second-generation black musicologist, he was Alan Lomax’s partner and guide in a project to record blues in the Delta in the early 1940s. Lomax never credited Work, but recent research has established him as at least Lomax’s equal in the study. Hamilton gives him but two passing mentions, neither of which even alludes to Lomax’s dishonesty.

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From http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jan/09/alan-lomax-biography-szwed-review The Man Who Recorded the World: A Biography of Alan Lomax by John Szwed – review

...the combative American music critic Dave Marsh was having none of it; he described Lomax as "a dubious figure" who "believed folk culture needed guidance from superior beings like himself".

Marsh also claimed that when representatives of the Ledbetter family approached Lomax regarding the formal copyrighting of "Goodnight, Irene", "he adamantly refused to take his name off the song, or surrender income from it, even though Lead Belly's family was impoverished in the wake of his death two years earlier". More damning still is the more recent discovery that Lomax appropriated research done by the likes of the black scholar John W Work, who was his conduit to pioneering blues artists like Muddy Waters and Son House. "Sometime soon," Marsh concluded, "we need to figure out why it is that, when it comes to cultures like those of Mississippi black people, we celebrate the milkman more than the milk."

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From http://www.amazon.com/John-Work-III-Recording-Culture/dp/B000VPB6Q6

[A review of John Work III: Recording Black Culture]

[Work] argued that our appreciation of the black roots music of the era would have been greatly enriched had the writings of the researchers reached a wider audience. With the release of Recording Black Culture, an album consisting largely of newly unearthed acetates made by one of the collectors, John Work III, we now have the music itself to buttress this claim.

Mr. Work, the most eminent of the black folklorists, was not merely an acolyte of Mr. Lomax but clearly had ideas of his own. Where Mr. Lomax tended to treat black vernacular music as an artifact in need of preservation, Mr. Work sought to document it as it was unfolding. Thus on Recording Black Culture, instead of spirituals harking back to the 19th century, we hear febrile gospel shouting set to the cadences of what soon would become rhythm and blues and rock 'n' roll...

Issued by Spring Fed Records, a label based in Woodbury, Tenn., Recording Black Culture demonstrates not only Mr. Work's understanding of the dynamic way vernacular music functioned in black culture but also his omnivorous musical appetite. In addition to dramatic examples of gospel singers anticipating rock 'n' roll, the selections include rare recordings ranging from black Sacred Harp singing to the virtuoso banjo playing of Nathan Frazier, performing as half of the banjo-and-fiddle duo Frazier & Patterson...

Some of the recordings that he had made with Mr. Lomax, largely the work songs and spirituals favored by Mr. Lomax, had been deposited in the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. The rest of the performances, which have gone unheard by the public for the better part of seven decades, give a more expansive view of the black vernacular music of the time.

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EDITORIAL COMMENT
In this supposedly post-racial United States, it says a lot that Alan Lomax usually receives accolades for his Delta Blues collection activities without any mention of his joint collaboration with African American composer, ethnomusicologist, collector, and educator John W. Work III.

I consider it to be very troubling that Alan Lomax never credited John W. Work III, his African American partner and guide in the collection of Delta Blues in the early 1940s.

This failure to credit the collection work of African American John W. Work III reinforces the idea that only White people collected African American music from the South.

Which collector’s work gets mainstream funding and public recognition determines what and how we think of the music that is collected. That funding and public recognition also determines what and how we think about the people who make the music that is collected.

Let's give John W. Work III the recognition and accolades he so very much deserves!

UPDATE: Here's a comment from a reader on 4/13/2012 that calls into question the information that I've included in this post:

Dear Ms. Powell,

It is not true that Alan Lomax didn't credit John Work. John Work's name appears on all the recordings that he made for the Library of Congress with Lomax and always has. Furthermore Alan Lomax mentioned John Work's folk songs book in the bibliography of his books. Not only that John Work was the first name to be credited on the acknowledgments of Lomax's book, "The Land Where the Blues Began" which covers 75 years -- contrary to what Dave Marsh and Robert Gordon (who are rock music critics not folklorists, mistakenly assert. Work was based in Nashville, not Mississippi. Son House led both both Lomax and Work to Muddy Waters.

Lomax worked with hundreds of people besides John Work and all of them are given proper credit on his recordings. Lomax obtained funding for the Coahoma Mississippi project from the Pan American Union's Music Division, which was headed by Charles Seeger (Pete Seeger's father). In 1942 congress voted to cut off all funding for the Library of Congress and stipulated that it would not restore funding if the LIbrary sponsored folk music collecting, which Southern legislators feared was a form of Civil Rights organizing.
John Work was a noted composer of classical music and is mentioned in all reference works devoted to classical music. He is not a neglected figure at all. His book on folk music has never gone out of print. It is available as a Dover paperback, or was last time I checked.

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I appreciate anonymous' comment, and acknowledge my error if indeed the information that anonymous presents is correct. However, I still maintain that John Work has received very little recognition for his collection efforts and his other accomplishments. And I hope that even in a small way this post helps to shine a well deserved light on that great American.

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