Association for Cultural Equity

For over a century the Lomax family has shared treasures of the world’s deep river of song and dance. Their field research yielded an unparalleled 17,000 recordings, photos and media productions from the US, Caribbean and Europe.

The Association for Cultural Equity was founded in 1983 by folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax. We provide free online platforms and programs, drawing from collections housed by the American Folklife Center of the Library of Congress.

The Lomax Digital Archive provides free access to the audio recordings, film and video, photos and interviews in the Lomax collections, while our Global Jukebox website includes music from 6000 traditions from 1200 cultures and features lesson plans, ‘Find Your Musical Roots” for creating musical family trees, comparative analysis tools and “Journeys” into musical styles and artists.

Our repatriation initiative provides high quality digital copies of recordings to source communities and activities for revitalizing traditions. We enable young artists, researchers and low budget productions to use our materials gratis or near gratis, and we ensure royalties are distributed to descendants of artists the Lomaxes recorded.

ACE is an accredited NGO of UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage convention. We collaborate with archives and cultural organizations worldwide.