Lomax's 1934 recordings remain thought provoking today

In the summer of 1934, John and Alan Lomax came to south Louisiana to record and in some cases, photograph musicians singing their songs.

The recording became a part of the Lomax Collection that can be found at the Library of Congress in the American Folklife Center.

But if you're expecting to hear a precursor to contemporary Cajun music, you could be left wanting.

"They weren't very interested in what we think of as Cajun music today," said Josh Caffery. "They saw it – and I think this is very important for us to understand – they saw it as the more popular music of the day; they saw it as being relatively new and fairly popular."

In fact, the Lomaxes considered it "accordion orchestra" music with accordions and fiddles and singing in Louisiana French. And since it had been recorded by the early ethnic recording industry, companies such as Columbia, they left it alone.

"They thought that that stuff had been recorded already," said Caffery, and therefore, the Lomaxes went on looking for what they considered American folk music.

Now, some 80 years later, the Lomax odyssey is revisited in Caffery's "Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana; The 1934 Lomax Collection." The book is the result of Caffery's time as an Alan Lomax Fellow in Folklife Studies at the John W. Kluge Center in the Library of Congress.

But there's more to the volume than words, lyrics, translations and photographs; there's the music, too.

Caffery thought about making companion CDs for the book, however, with almost 200 songs, it would've been quite the hefty package with possibly a dozen CDs.

"There's so many songs and so much audio it would've been not really feasible," Caffery said.

Still, Caffery wanted to make the audio available and when he applied for the fellowship at the Library of Congress, "as part of my application," he said, "I suggested that I would spend part of the time curating a website that would make the audio from that summer 80 years ago available and easily accessible online."

Barry Ancelet, professor of French Louisiana folklore, said Caffery's work covers a lot of bases, from the book's content to the actual recordings.

"It's extremely important for all sorts of reasons – historical, stylistic, lyrical – all sorts of reasons," said Ancelet. "Some of that stuff had already been effecting contemporary Cajun and Creole music.

"What Josh has done, he's gone back into the Lomax Collection and did the whole thing. I mean the complete, whole thing," he said. "It was a monumental undertaking.

"It shows a remarkable range of historical influences that we now know were existing in south Louisiana," he said. "It was part of the mix. And Josh's worked has continued this effort to try to understand Lomax and he's pushed it all the way."

And now you can hear what Caffery wrote about and what the Lomax Collection sounds like at www.lomax1934.com.

"Of course, there are ways to hear it if you go to different archives in the Library of Congress or at the Center for Acadian and Creole Folklore (at University of Louisiana at Lafayette)," Caffery said. "But there aren't that many people who have the time, really, to go and do that and sit through the archives their self.

"So that's what I've tried to do is do the archival work and make it available to whoever has the Internet," he said, adding that the songs can be heard on mobile device, too.

"That's what researchers do. They go and dig up dusty information and try to make sense of it," said Caffery. "That's what I'm just trying to do. I think it's what the Lomaxes wanted to do, but they didn't have the technology to do so when they did this so long ago.

"They wanted to make this a part of national memory and they wanted to give it back to the people who they recorded it from so they would know their own culture," he said. "And the good thing about technology today is that those visions can kind of be realized and people can be given access in a way that they weren't before."

In the process of researching the Louisiana Lomax legacy, Caffery also learned that they bypassed "accordion orchestra music," because many Cajun musicians were used to being paid when it came to their music.

"They had been paid by record companies," Caffery said. "So they wanted compensation for any recordings they would make."

But the Lomaxes didn't have funds for that; they basically had just enough to get around and record the music otherwise bypassed by profitable entities.

"They recorded this older stuff that no commercial recording companies would've been interested in, like a cappella French narrative songs," said Caffery. "They just recorded a very unique atlas of sounds that we otherwise probably wouldn't have for this area. We really wouldn't know about all of these different sorts of songs that people were playing."

Such as songs by the likes of Stavin Chain, Mr. Bornu, Leon Ewens, Frankie and Albert, and Lawrence Cormier and Cletus Mire. Caffery also found links to a few local musicians such as Chris Segura, Yvette Landry and Chris and Michael Stafford.

"It's the first major collection of field recordings done in Louisiana," said Caffery. "So it's really the first major audio collection of, I think, traditional music in our area."

An area, Caffery contends, "where traditional music continues to be a very important part of our lives and our culture," he said.

"Certainly, if we're inspired by older, traditional music, I think it's important to know just how broad that can be," said Caffery. "And I think these recordings show that."

Caffery said that by looking at how and what the Lomaxes thought of the music then may help "us get a good perspective on the music now.

"I think now we think of certain types of Cajun or zydeco music as being maybe commercial or overly poppy. But it's funny to think that the Lomaxes thought that about the music that we consider folk music today," said Caffery. "I think it's interesting to look around and say, Well, what aren't we seeing? What's going to be the interesting folk music 80 years from now coming from this area?

"Is it going to be what we think of as folk music, or is it going to be something totally different?" he continued. "Is it something that's not getting a lot attention, or is it something that's being written off as overly poppy or commercial?"

"I don't know," Caffery said. "I'm just saying looking at the way they thought of things then in comparison to how we think of things now, is now, I think an interesting exercise."

"John and Alan Lomax in Louisiana, 1934," Josh Caffery's collection of songs, pictures and information from the Lomax archives in the Library of Congress, is available online at www.lomax1934.com.