In 1947, 1948 and 1959, renowned folklorist Alan Lomax (1915-2002) went behind the barbed wire into the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Armed with a reel-to-reel tape deck--and, in 1959, a camera--Lomax documented as best an outsider could the stark and savage conditions of the prison farm, where the black inmates labored "from can't to can't," chopping timber, clearing ground and picking cotton for the state. They sang as they worked, keeping time with axes or hoes, adapting to their condition the slavery-time hollers that sustained their forebears and creating a new body of American song. Theirs was music, as Lomax wrote, that "testified to the love of truth and beauty which is a universal human trait." Their songs participated in two distinct musical traditions: free world (the blues, hollers, spirituals and other songs they sang outside and, when the situation permitted, sang inside as well) and the work songs, which were specific to the prison situation. A chilling account of how slavery persisted well into the 20th century in the institutionalized form of the chain gang, Parchman Farm includes two CDs with 44 of Lomax's remastered audio recordings and a book of more than 70 of Lomax's photographs, many published here for the first time.
B**L
A window to another world
Superbly produced, as always, from one of the most wonderful labels on the planet, Dust-to-Digital is to be congratulated on another winner. 'Parchman' is both a beautiful object - panoramic book of photographs, a few brief essays and two CDs - and a confronting set of insights into another world; a prison farm in Southern US in the 40's and 50's.There is a foreword from Alan Lomax - and an interview by him of an inmate and singer at the back, an introduction by Anna Lomax Wood, a short essay by Bruce Jackson, and many photographs, most in black and white, some in colour, often accompanied by a few words from one of the songs.I guess what I find most interesting, apart from a superficial uncomplicated enjoyment of the music, are the stories and themes represented by and implied in the songs. In brutal circumstances, without instruments or other means, this is the music that emerges - a synthesis of African and contemporary American musical traditions, even though most of these men are several generations removed from the days of slavery and a more direct connection to their African or Caribbean heritages. Sadness, violence, regret, sex, and occasional touches of hinted tenderness are to be found here, also abbreviated stories of how things came to be, and expressions of hope and hopelessness.Those, like me, who may have some of these tracks on other CDs, may still find this worthwhile for the windows it opens, and the insights it adds to the origins of the recordings. There is a depth of humanity to Lomax's work that sometimes gets forgotten when according him kudos for his field recordings, and here we are reminded these songs - perhaps exotic to our ears - were made by men who loved and were loved, and were trapped in a place of unrelenting hardship and cruelty. And not a white man among them.Highly recommended.
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