We are very proud to be hosting an exceptional evening with rarely seen footage from the Alan Lomax Archive, introduced by a specialist of American folk music, and followed by singing from some great musicians and anyone else who would like to share a song.

FILM: Alan Lomax: Raw Footage (90 min)

Folklorist Alan Lomax travelled the American South from 1978 to 1983, documenting its traditional music. Portions of the 400 hours of footage — from Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana — were edited into the 1991 television series "American Patchwork," but the lion's share has never been seen publicly.

Tonight we will be screening some of Alan Lomax's very rarely seen footage of musicians from the American South. This will include incredible musicians playing blues, old-time, bluegrass and traditional folk.

Here is a pretty great example of what we will show tonight:

Alan Lomax Footage

ABOUT ALAN LOMAX (1915 - 2002)

According to the Encyclopedia of World Biography:

"No individual has done as much to catalog and preserve traditional American music as American folklorist Alan Lomax (1915–2002). A folklorist, publisher, author, and part-time musician, Lomax was a driving force in the folk and blues boom of the 1950s and 1960s, and helped the world discover such artists as Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, and Muddy Waters."

Alan Lomax was an exceptional folklorist and ethnomusicologist, and he recorded hours of music from the USA, Great Britain, Ireland, the Carribbean and Spain.

An archive now officially hold all his footage, and you can find out more about it here:

http://www.culturalequity.org/alanlomax/ce_alanlomax_index.php

+ SPECIAL GUEST

We are very excited to welcome an archivist and producer from the Alan Lomax Archive, who will be coming all the way from Louisville, Kentucky to talk about the footage that we will show tonight.

He is a fountain of knowledge about Alan Lomax and traditional American music, and this is a very rare opportunity to speak to him and ask him questions.

+ LIVE MUSIC!

We'll have some amazing musicians, admirers of Alan Lomax's work, playing for an informal sing-song after the film:

Alasdair Roberts

Cath & Phil Tyler

plus your good selves, if anyone would like to share a song or tune!

+ Soup!

We'll also cook some soup and have it with some bread after the screening, if you fancy some...

CONTEXT FOR THIS PROGRAMME

2011 marks the 60th anniversary of the first of Lomax's Scottish recordings, and Alasdair Roberts - a standard-bearer of the ongoing Scottish "folk revival" that Lomax's recordings helped spark - has curated an album of some of the material in commemoration.

It's out on November 8, and is called "Whaur the Pig Gaed On the Spree":

http://www.dragcity.com/products/whaur-the-pig-gaed-on-the-spree-scottish-recordings-by-alan-lomax

That's partly the reason why a representative from the Alan Lomax Archive is touring the UK at the moment to talk about Alan Lomax's work, and we are very proud to be having him at our venue.

Price: £5/3.50 (conc)