STEPHENVILLE — The Texas Folklore Society (TFS) and Tarleton State University’s Department of English and Languages will host John Lomax III, grandson of TFS co-founder and pioneering musicologist John Avery Lomax at 6 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 10 in the O.A. Grant Humanities Building.
Admission to the show is free and will tell the story of four generations of the family, who have found, recorded, preserved, promoted and presented unique American music for over 140 years.
“I sing some of the best known of the cowboy songs John Avery Lomax discovered as well as selections by my father, John Avery Lomax Jr., Uncle Alan and Aunt Bess Lomax Hawes,” Lomax III, 80, said of the solo, acapella show. “I talk about the songs, the circumstances of their discovery and I mention the work of some of the lesser-known Lomax family members.”
John Avery Lomax and his son Alan obtained more than 17,000 field recordings of American songs, stories, church services, narratives and children’s play-party games that became the basis of the American Folk Song Archive in the Library of Congress.
Collectively, the Lomax family has produced 52 books, dating from John Avery Lomax’s 1910 “Cowboy Songs and Other Frontier Ballads” to Anna Lomax Wood’s “Songs of Earth” published in June 2021.
The performance will bring Lomax III close to the old family homestead in Bosque County, near Meridian. The Lomax family arrived in Texas from Mississippi by covered wagon in 1869 and settled on a small farm near the Chisolm Trail.
“Texas Folklore Society is thrilled to honor the Lomax legacy by bringing John Lomax III and the family’s story to Stephenville,” said Texas Folklore Society Executive Director Kristina Downs. “Theirs is a story rich with folklore and history and at the heart of our mission to collect, preserve, and share the customs and traditions of the people of Texas and the Southwest.”
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