F O L K :
photographs, artifacts, film and music recordings from the Alan Lomax Archive
June 02, 2006 — August 06, 2006
Image: Alan Lomax at the home of Wade Ward, Galax, Virginia. August 31, 1959. Photo by Shirley Collins. Courtesy of the Alan Lomax Archive.
Opening reception: June 2, 2006, 7 – 10 pm
Gallery Hours are Friday – Sunday, 12 – 6 pm
Alan Lomax is America’s foremost folklorist. He recorded thousands of hours of traditional music over the course of his seven-decade career, played a central role in the development of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, and first heard in Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, and Muddy Waters the singularity and genius for which we now know them. Lomax also coined the term “cultural equity,” which held that music and other forms of creative cultural expression are fundamental to the lives of the people who make them, inextricably bound to their ways of life and livelihoods, and are thereby worthy of study, representation, and respect on their own terms. He wanted cultural equity to take its place among the fundamental principles of political, social, and economic justice, and predicted that the struggle for this equal representation for all homegrown expressive styles — music, dance, cooking, clothing, etc. — would become an increasingly important struggle in the globalizing 21st century. FOLK will examine Lomax’s photographs, recordings, films, and writings documenting America’s “folk” expression and reflecting his commitment to cultural equity.
Contemporary perspectives of our collective inheritance of folk culture, however, are also important. As part of a performance series, we’re inviting musicians to present original compositions along with their own renderings of traditional music, not just that culled from Delta blues or Appalachian balladry, but inspired by any of the world’s countless musical traditions. Our audience will thus have the opportunity to see examples of folk material being appreciated, negotiated, and reinvigorated. Among the musicians and groups already scheduled to perform are Hazel Dickens, Will and Ned Oldham, Jason Molina, Elizabeth Mitchell and Daniel Littleton, Josephine Foster, Amir ElSaffar, The Ebony Hillbillies, Hisham Bharoocha and Samita Sinha.
FOLK will serve as a retrospective of a particular man and his work; it will also reiterate the virtues of cultural diversity and its equal representation – virtues that are increasingly vital today.
Exhibition: June 2 – August 6, 2006
Performance series: April – August, 2006 for a full schedule, please visit www.brooklynfireproof.com
This exhibition is co-organized by Jessica Lin Cox (Brooklyn Fire Proof) and Nathan Salsburg (Alan Lomax Archive)
For more information, please contact Jessica Lin Cox at:
brooklyn fire proof
101 Richardson Street, Top Floor
Brooklyn, NY 11211
tel: 718.302.4702
email: friends@brooklynfireproof.com