I will be traveling out to Mildred’s Lane to give a seminar titled Land, Music, People: People’s Songs, Alan Lomax, and “folk” in Contemporary Art (description below).

Mildred’s Lane is collaboration between artists Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett and their associates. This Project is a long-term experiment in large-scale project , research and event based practices with a living museum and an educational institution attached. This active site is a 92+-acre compound in the upper Delaware River Valley region of Pennsylvania near New York City.

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Land, Music, People: People’s Songs, Alan Lomax, and “folk” in Contemporary Art

“And when you sing a song about your own lives, you are doing the same thing they do—you are making folk music.”
-Alan Lomax, 1915-2002

This seminar will focus on the life work of Alan Lomax—the larger than life figure that took on the project of recording the music of the peoples of the world. We will direct our attention primarily on Lomax’s work in America, and how the music he discovered was not only telling of cultural context, but an indication of the American landscape from which it emerged; the Western plains, wilderness, mountains, broad rivers, highways and railroad lines.

The impact Lomax had on American culture was profound. He popularized folk music through his connection to radio and media and created a shift in the way America looked at and valued the production of culture—he made it clear through folk music that what was produced by people (that did not necessarily identify as musicians or artists) in their daily lives could be of significant cultural value.

We will culminate in a discussion on the use of “folk” and “peoples” in contemporary art practice looking at works including Jeremy Deller & Alan Kane, Harrell Fletcher & Jens Hoffman, Jim Shaw, Henry Darger, Althea Thauberger and others.