Flowers

Alan Lomax's Scottish Recordings 1951–-57 Stewart Smith , December 9th, 2011 13:32

12.02.12

"Tomorrow, songs / Will flow free again, and new voices / Be born on the carrying stream." -Hamish Henderson 'Under The Earth I Go'.

In the summer of 1951 the great American folklorist Alan Lomax made his first song collecting tour of Scotland, humphing his 70 pound Magnecord tape recorder through the north-east and the Western Isles. Having devoted much of his life to recording American folk music, Lomax had turned his attention to music from other parts of the world. Commissioned by Columbia to compile an LP covering the music of the British Isles, Lomax soon realised Scotland deserved an album of its own.

Ewan MacColl introduced Lomax to the Scottish poet and folklorist Hamish Henderson, explaining that the American was "not interested in trained singers or refined versions of folksongs. He wants to record traditional-style singers doing ballads, work songs, poltical satires... bothy songs, street songs, soldier songs, mouth music, the big Gaelic stuff, weavers' and miners' songs." Accompanied by Henderson and the brothers Calum and Sorley Maclean (the latter the greatest Gaelic poet of the 20th century) he recorded around 25 hours of material that summer. "The Scots have the finest folk tradition in the British Isles," Lomax wrote, and the songs he found on this and subsequent excursions were "among the noblest folk tunes of Western Europe". Lomax and his companions' field-work was disseminated through album releases and numerous BBC broadcasts, and played a key role in the development of the folksong revival of the 1950s. In addition to preserving songs and traditions, they brought to prominence such great singers as Jeannie Robertson, Jimmy MacBeath and Davie Stewart.

Source: The Quietus