Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and documentary filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-20th-century American South and published research on hoodoo and Caribbean Vodou. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays.
Alan Lomax was an American ethnomusicologist, best known for his numerous field recordings of folk music of the 20th century. He was a musician, folklorist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in preserving folk music traditions in both countries, and helped start both the American and British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s, and early 1960s. He collected material first with his father, folklorist and collector John Lomax, and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the Archive of American Folk Song, of which he was the director, at the Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs.
John Avery Lomax was an American teacher, a pioneering musicologist, and a folklorist who did much for the preservation of American folk music. He was the father of Alan Lomax, John Lomax Jr. and Bess Lomax Hawes, also distinguished collectors of folk music.
Ruby Terrill Lomax was an American educator and folklorist, who worked with her husband John A. Lomax to collect American folk songs, campaigned for women's education, and was Dean of Women at University of Texas at Austin.
The Archive of Folk Culture was established in 1928 as the first national collection of American folk music in the United States of America. It was initially part of the Music Division of the Library of Congress and now resides in the American Folklife Center.
Carl Lamson Carmer was an American writer of nonfiction books, memoirs, and novels, many of which focused on American myths, folklore, and tales. His most famous book, Stars Fell on Alabama, was an autobiographical story of the time he spent living in Alabama. He was considered one of America's most popular writers during the 1940s and 1950s.
Adell Hall Ward, better known as Vera Hall, was an American folk singer, born in Livingston, Alabama. Best known for her 1937 song "Trouble So Hard", she was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 2005.
"Wade in the Water" is an African American jubilee song, a spiritual—in reference to a genre of music "created and first sung by African Americans in slavery." The lyrics to "Wade in the Water" were first co-published in 1901 in New Jubilee Songs as Sung by the Fisk Jubilee Singers by Frederick J. Work and his brother, John Wesley Work Jr., an educator at the historically black college in Nashville, Tennessee, Fisk University. Work Jr. (1871–1925)—who is also known as John Work II—spent thirty years collecting, promoting, and reviving the songcraft of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, which included being a member and director of the Fisk Jubilee Quartet. The Sunset Four Jubilee Singers made the first commercial recording of "Wade in the Water" in 1925—released by Paramount Records. W. E. B. Du Bois called this genre of songs the Sorrow Songs. "Wade in the Water" is associated with songs of the Underground Railroad.
To Ella is an album by American folk singer Odetta, released 1998 on Silverwolf Records. Recorded live at the Kerrville Folk Festival, it features traditional songs including "Amazing Grace" and a 27-minute "Ancestors Suite" containing several songs.
Swing Dat Hammer is an album by Harry Belafonte, released by RCA Victor (LPM/LSP-2194) in 1960. It is a collection of chain gang work songs. The last cut is a collection of workmen conversations.
Bess Lomax Hawes was an American folk musician, folklorist, and researcher. She was the daughter of John Avery Lomax and Bess Bauman-Brown Lomax, and the sister of Alan Lomax and John Lomax Jr.
Odetta at Town Hall is a live album by American folk singer Odetta, recorded at Town Hall, New York, NY. At this time, Odetta was at the height of her career and performed an annual concert at the venue, typically in the month of April. It is not clear if this is her 1961 or 1962 concert performance. It could potentially be a compilation of her performances at Town Hall throughout the early 1960s. This album was first issued in 1962, as per the Vanguard Discography logs. The internet and some CD reissues will sometimes incorrectly report that this album was released in 1963.
The Essential Odetta is a live album by American folk singer Odetta, originally released on LP in 1973.
Absolutely the Best is a compilation album by American folk singer Odetta, originally released in 2000.
Narrative psychology is a perspective in psychology concerned with the "storied nature of human conduct", that is, how human beings deal with experience by observing stories and listening to the stories of others. Operating under the assumption that human activity and experience are filled with "meaning" and stories, rather than lawful formulations, narrative psychology is the study of how human beings construct stories to deal with experiences.
James "Iron Head" Baker and Moses "Clear Rock" Platt were African American traditional folk singers imprisoned in the Central State Prison Farm in Sugar Land, Texas. The men made a number of field recordings of convict work songs, field hollers and other material with John Lomax for the Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Music in the 1930s.
Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States is a collection of histories by formerly enslaved people undertaken by the Federal Writers' Project of the Works Progress Administration from 1936 to 1938. It was the simultaneous effort of state-level branches of FWP in seventeen states, working largely separately from each other. FWP administrators sought to develop a new appreciation for the elements of American life from different backgrounds, including that from the last generation of formerly enslaved individuals. The collections of life histories and materials on African American life that resulted gave impetus to the collection.
Martha Strudwick Young was an American regionalist writer known for her recounting of Southern folk tales, fables, and songs of black life in the plantation era. She was admired by other writers for her skill with dialect. Young was inducted into the Alabama Women's Hall of Fame in 1986.
Richard Brown, also known as Uncle Rich Brown, was an American musician and singer of spirituals and blues. He lived on one plantation near Sumterville, Alabama, all his life. John Lomax recorded him in 1937 and 1940 singing eleven songs, most of them spirituals. One of his most popular recordings was "Alabama Bound".
John A. Lomax Jr. was an American folklorist, performer, and land developer. He co-founded the Houston Folklore & Music Society and contributed to the preservation and publication of folklore and folk music during the 20th century, continuing the work of his father and brother. Lomax once defined folk music as "a story in song written no one knows when, no one knows where, no one knows by whom or even why."
