Analysis of Alan Lomax's "The Land Where the Blues Began"

When seeking to gain a greater appreciation for farming in literature, the time of sharecroppers and tenant farmers is important to look at. For them, life was the farm. They lived and died with their crops. They depended on the land to give them everything it could because that was all they got. Lucky for anyone who seeks a deeper insight into the life of one of these sharecroppers, their feelings and experiences live on through their folklore. One such example is Alan Lomax’s The Land Where the Blues Began.

            In his book, Lomax explores the importance of the blues to farmers of that time in those bleak situations. He states how the blues are the anthem for those victims of anomie and isolation, those who became more of a commodity than a human. Lomax would know. He came from a family of sharecroppers and in the 1930’s, when tenant farming was becoming a thing of the past little by little; he and his father took to recording these old blues songs as they were sung from the mouths of those who they represented. He was a student of the victims of that time and learned some of life’s greatest lessons from the people he met. Citing one sharecropper’s song, “Now listen here, Mr. President, I want you to know they’re not treatin’ us right down here…” he shares where he learned the importance of the New Deal program and how powerful a group can be in getting things done in Washington, when they have a united voice.

            What Lomax did was no small task. It wasn’t of small significance either. Carrying around their 500-pound recorder, he and his father captured these farmers’ songs in their fields as they worked. With these recordings came the “complex polyphony of the blacks, which notation could not represent.” He also captured a neglected culture and gave us an incredible look into their perspective.

            Perhaps the most amazing thing we gain from all of his recordings is that we can hear an exact copy of what those people were singing. Many of these songs have evolved overtime, and the same song could be incredibly different from one field to the next. Just as the sharecropper’s verse previously cited, which spoke to the President of the U.S., their songs were a representation of the struggles and feelings of the time they were in. To try to hear these songs now from descendants would be impossible. Lomax made it a possibility to hear it “straight out of the horse’s mouth,” and the value of that cannot be underestimated.

            There is much we can learn from the past. Just as an almanac provides us with imperative information learned by those who came before us, the folklore of these times also bring a wealth of knowledge. We need to understand the damage we can do to others through unfair practices if we are to be successful. Any long-lasting business model must be fair to all parties and it is the same with farming. The tenant-farming model proved this with its collapse.

Sources:

Lomax, Alan. The Land Where the Blues Began. New York: Delta, 1993. Print.

Photograph: John Vachon, Office of War Information. Library of Congress Photographs and Prints, LC-USF34- 014000-Ef