This remarkable book recovers three invaluable perspectives, long
thought to have been lost, on the culture and music of the
Mississippi Delta.
In 1941 and '42 African American scholars from Fisk
University--among them the noted composer and musicologist John W.
Work, sociologist Lewis Wade Jones, and graduate student Samuel C.
Adams, Jr.--joined folklorist Alan Lomax of the Library of Congress
on research trips to Coahoma County, Mississippi. Their mission was
to explore the musical habits and history of the black community
there and "to document adequately the cultural and social
backgrounds for music in the community." Among the fruits of the
project were the earliest recordings by the legendary blues singer
and guitarist Muddy Waters. The hallmark of the study was to have
been a joint publication of its findings by Fisk and the Library of
Congress. However, the field notes and manuscripts by the Fisk
researchers became lost in Washington. Lomax's own book drawing on
the project's findings, "The Land Where the Blues Began," did not
appear until 1993, and although it won a National Book Critics
Circle Award, it was flawed by a number of historical
inaccuracies.
Recently uncovered by author and filmmaker Robert Gordon, the
writings, interviews, notes, and musical transcriptions produced by
Work, Jones, and Adams in the Coahoma County study now appear in
print for the first time. Their work captures, with compelling
immediacy, a place, a people, a way of life, and a set of rich
musical traditions as they existed sixty years ago. Until the
surfacing of these documents, Lomax's perspective was all that was
known of the Coahoma County project and its research. Now, at last,
the voices of the other contributors can be heard.
Including essays by Bruce Nemerov and Gordon on the careers and
contributions of Work, Jones, and Adams, "Lost Delta Found" will
become an indispensable historical resource, as marvelously
readable as it is enlightening.
Illustrated with photos and more than 160 musical
transcriptions.
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