Folk Collectors for the Web 2.0 generation (?)

In June 1933 Alan and John Lomax set out on their first field recording expeditions into the towns and villages of America to collect and make recordings of American folk songs, with a particular focus on contributions from African-Americans. This process, of taking the oral tradition of folk music and placing it in a secure and accessible environment for posterity and in perpetuity for future generation to experiences is something which had been going on for some time in the UK, was generally a preserve of antiquarian scholars of the late 1800's. It is these people we have to thank for such classics as “God Rest You Merry Gentlemen”, “House of he Rising Sun” and “Good night Irene”. These people took it upon themselves to formalise that which remained informal, and threatened to disappear.

We stand now in the midst of a new communication age, the internet provides the opportunity for informal communication between one person and another, there remains no consistent repository for the collection of cultural artefacts created and shared on the internet. Is this important? Well it's almost as important as the collection of folk songs around the turn of the century, these cultural artefacts are an important barometer of social opinion, thinking and activities.

There remains a number of issues, when Lomax started the process of collecting folk songs he had the backing of the Library of congress, however there will be no such support from the US Govt. on a project of this kind, much of the interesting and unique works that exist only on the internet exist beyond any grey areas of copyright legislation, firmly in the Black. This makes it problematic to host any large collection of these works in a single easily accessible place, as these would then obviously become a target for legal action.

I'm not sure it's yet to to the point where we need to try and forcibly preserve these works of art, but in the context of an ever changing internet, with no guarantee that a page hosting a particular piece of music will remain into the future, it is plausible that the works could potentially be lost in the future.

I think it's important that we maintain our connection with the past, and people's interpretation of that, it would be a shame if we were to lose such classic social commentary as this:



OK, so this was released as a white label boot leg as well, but you get the idea.

Photo courtesy of New York Folklore Society, video courtesy of Osymyso