John Avery Lomax (1867-1948) was a collector and
champion of American folksongs, especially cowboy ballads and African-American songs.
He also shares, with a small number of other collectors, the distinction of being one of
the first to make extensive use of the phonograph in the recording of field
collections. While certain of Lomax's methods (e.g.: inconsistency of care in citing
sources, and combining variants into composites) are now considered unacceptable by the
academic community, his importance as a collector (and, in particular, his making of
thousands of archival field recordings) is beyond dispute. Also, he is important for his
groundbreaking work in the examination of folksongs within their social contexts.
Dr. J. Marshall
Bevil
is a native of
Houston,
where he also currently lives. He is both a
string music educator and a
musicologist (B.Mus.
with honors,
Oklahoma Baptist University, 1970;
M.Mus. - Musicology,
University of North Texas, 1973; Ph.D. - Musicology, University of North
Texas, 1984) with specialization in the
history of bowed string instruments,
oral-aural musical transmission, British
and British-American folk music, and British academic music of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His
doctoral dissertation
has been published by University Microfilms, International
(UMI
No. 8423854, "Dissertation Services"),
and he has published
post-doctoral studies in
professional journals and presented papers in his areas of specialization at
regional, national, and international academic convocations in both the
United States and Great Britain. He also is the author of encyclopedia
articles on John Avery Lomax, Alan Lomax, and Percy Aldridge Grainger; and
he has published on the Internet. In addition to his pedagogic and academic
pursuits, he is a
performer
on the
Welsh crwth, a
composer and arranger
for string and vocal ensembles (publications on
Sibelius.com, from December of
2004), and a forensic
musicological consultant and expert witness in copyright
and intellectual property misappropriation disputes
( links:
1
2 ).
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