The Jukebox of the Human
“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.”― Edgar Allan Poe
Anna Lomax Wood was visiting us this week. I have been friends with Anna since we worked on the Alan Lomax In Haiti boxset with the late, great Jeff Greenberg (lost the Grammy to the Beatles) which was also the first big project my wife Barb beautifully designed. Anna honored me a few years ago by inviting me to sit on the board of the organization her father Alan Lomax started, The Association For Cultural Equity. We spent the later part of yesterday…into the night, talking about the repatriation work the organization is overseeing, giving back old recordings to the communities who rightfully should have them, and talking about the massive catalog of recordings that Anna’s grandfather John Lomax collected in the 1930s-40s that are yet to be properly digitized and made available to the public.
Anna has stepped down from the position of Executive Director of ACE after twenty-seven years in that position. She does not seek the limelight, with a belief that the work her and her family have done should be focused upon, not the individuals who have done it. But the legacy she has built (and continues to build) is undeniable. The Global Jukebox, which she oversaw the creation of and continues to develop, could be enough of an accomplishment for anyone. As music site after music site is created trying to give the user a proper way to learn about and explore music of the world, Anna’s creation makes it an effortless and deep experience as “an interactive center for discovering, exploring and researching expressive culture, with links to past and present work in the field, tools to contribute samples of song, dance and speech, and guidelines for coding each dada set.” Within minutes upon hitting the site, the rabbit hole to incredible music is opened up, bringing the world closer together, using our collective cultural heritages to give a bigger understanding and acceptance of the human condition. Anna would describes it as a tool of connection that people can utilize to discover their heritage, to find out what is most probably still flowing through their veins.
Beyond the Jukebox, Anna was also the coproducer of one of my favorite music reissue projects: the Grammy winning Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings, which I dove into in a past Signal newsletter (ping me if you would like a file of the recordings) as well as a steward of so many releases of the recordings collected by her family.
We spent this morning going over some of the John Lomax Alabama recordings that are housed at The Library of Congress that Mike Minky and I are digging into for a future release. Playing her some of our favorite “discoveries,” which include classic blues music never before properly restored or available, getting her learned reaction to the music, which included analysis as to how the tracks connected to other musicians and places…the cultural markers…was the kind of experience music freaks like myself dream about. It is amazing how music can unlock secrets behind communities and migration and governing circumstances: how each recording amongst the hundreds we are listening to are documenting a slice of the history of the human experience— ultimately bringing us all closer as we better understand each other.
Viola!
Speaking of the human experience, let’s look at Sasha Sagan’s new podcast. Sagan is following brilliantly in her mom and dad’s footsteps…ok, not necessarily in their footsteps, because the path she is paving is all her own. Thank you David Pescovitz for turning me on to her (a while back..and it was wonderful to meet her) and turning me on to her new podcast.
Area just outside of Orlando named lightning capital of the U.S
Something to be known for…shocking! This article is best read while listening to The Flaming Lips’ Lighting Strikes The Postman. And did you hear that lightening struck the Golden Gate Bridge recently?
Rare rock star interviews ‘raw, complete and unedited’ in new Northeastern digital archive
Incredible newly digitized archive of music history….
Student helps reveal Anne Brontë’s skills in geology
It was Anne’s birthday yesterday causing my pulling up of this interesting read from a half-year ago….
Nothing like eating a little Spotted Dick while listening to the Great Tit.
The Infinite
by Leopardi (Translated by Robert Lowell)
The hill pushed off by itself was always dear
to me and the hedges near
it that cut away of the final horizon.
When I would sit there lost in deliberation,
I reasoned most on the interminable spaces
beyond all hills, on there antedilvuian resignation
and silence that passes
beyond man’s possibility.
Here for a little while my heart is quiet inside me;
and when the wind lifts roughing through the trees,
I set about comparing my silence to those voices,
and I think about the eternal, the dead seasons,
things here at hand and alive,
and all their reasons and choices.
It’s sweet to destroy my mind
and go down
and wreck in this sea where I drown.
