The Man Who Recorded the World: A Biography of Alan Lomax by John Szwed – review

Richard Williams hails the man who devoted his life to recording the songs and soundscapes of America and beyondIt may be hard, almost half a century later, to imagine the emotional turbulence experienced by a white, middle-class English schoolboy while listening intently to a recording of four black prisoners at the state penitentiary in Parchman, Mississippi, swinging their axes and intoning the overlapping lines of a work song with hoarse, urgent voices. But from such moments – the revelati...

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