Prof. John Szwed’s new biography of Alan Lomax, the American folklorist and ethnomusicologist, is in, and available in CLIO, under call number ML423 L6347 S98 2010, and it promises to be a thoughtful and entertaining read. Szwed is a noted anthropologist and jazz scholar, professor in the Music Dept. at Columbia, and also Acting Director of the Center for Jazz Studies at Columbia. You can read the New York Times’ recent review at this link.

Interested in checking out some of Alan Lomax’s many recordings? You can search in CLIO under keywords= Alan Lomax, and then limit your search to music sound recordings. You’ll see a list of over 120 available recordings (which can be checked out for 4 weeks). There are also several recordings by Lomax available in the online audio databases American Song, and a few in Smithsonian Global Sound.