The Deep River of Song and Music

Bessie Jones brought the songs of the Gullah Geechee of the Georgia Sea Islands to wide audiences. Her vast repertoire of sacred and secular songs was documented by Alan Lomax, who worked with her to form the Georgia Sea Island Singers, who accompany her here.

For over four decades, Alan Lomax brought folk music to millions through radio and television broadcasts.  In January 1945 Woody Guthrie joined in efforts to boost morale and sell war bonds, singing this song to the tune of Get Along Little Dogies on Armed Forces Radio.

“Empower the community and we all win.​" Bishop Charles Atlas Twine, aged 100 when Alan Lomax recorded him in 1960. Born enslaved, Twine was a moral and spiritual force, a civil rights ​​activist and advocate for women in Portsmouth VA. Here he leads The Last Mile of the Way.

“O Love, whenever I pass by here I see your eyes.” Giuseppe and Maria Pingitore of Feroleto Antico, Calabria, are shown singing this lyric poem, layering parts, drone, and melody. The accordion is attuned with the pitch, intensity and timbre of these Southern Italian voices.

This celebration of Travelers sung by Jimmy MacBeath is from North East Scotland. Travelers are often nomadic or semi-nomadic and possess distinctive language, narratives and beliefs. Through his recordings and broadcasts Alan Lomax sparked the 1950s British folk music revival.

Rosa Amaya “La Faraona” was a Calé (Romani in Spain) dancer belonging to an important dynasty of Calé flamenco artists in Granada and founder of the Zambras Gitanas of Sacromonte. Alan Lomax recorded this soul stirring Fandango del Albaicin in a Calé cave in Granada in 1952.

When Alan Lomax first met Appalachian singer Texas Gladden in Smyth County, Virginia she poured out her vast store of ballads, lullabies, game songs, stories, early country music, and life history. The song “I Never Will Marry” can be traced back over 350 years.

The fife and drum music of Northern Mississippi has roots in Africa and early American military bands.  The cane fife is played solo and with drums. Like many other songs recorded by Alan Lomax, Young’s composition was covered by contemporary popular musicians.

Vincenzo Morrone of Caggiano, Salerno, Campania playing a “Pastorale” (Shepherd's serenade) on his magnificent handmade sheepskin bagpipe with five pipes, the size of a man. In 1954 there were over 200 bagpipers in this remote village, once a bastion for the Knights Templar.

“Come, Sleep, by a long road, come make her sleep, the  wind is coming”, so goes a ninna nanna (lullaby) as was sung for Alan Lomax and Diego Carpitella in Cardeto, Calabria, Italy in 1954. Pictured here is Carmela Cosacchi and her baby, listening to the song being played back.

Long before he became a famous Chicago bluesman, Muddy Waters recorded this song with riveting bottleneck slide guitar on Stovall Plantation for Lewis Jones and Alan Lomax for a study of societal and musical change in the Mississippi Delta by the Library of Congress and Fisk U.

Sweet Honey Duncan came from a gifted musical family from Carriacou and La Resource, Grenada. Here, she and 10 others sing Gone to Ninevah, an anthem (hymn) with multilinear harmonies, “trumping” (rhythmic, rapture-inducing breathing) and call and response, recorded in 1962.

Following a triumphant 1947 Town Hall concert, Memphis Slim, Big Bill Broonzy (William Lee Conley) and John Lee (Sonny Boy) Williamson, sang and spoke about the roots of the blues, turning from love troubles to forced labor, lynchings, deep poverty and racist violence.