UBC Dean of Arts Gage Averill has been nominated for a 2010 Grammy Award for his project, Alan Lomax in Haiti: Recordings For The Library of Congress, 1936-1937.
Nominated in the category of Best Album Notes, the nomination reflects the work Averill did to compile, edit the set and write the comprehensive book of interpretive notes. The project was also nominated for a second award for Best Historical Album, nominated in the names of the producers of the set: Jeffrey A. Greenberg, David Katznelson and Anna Lomax Wood; with Warren Russell-Smith and Steve Rosenthal as recording engineers.
The 10 CDs and two books, chronicle Alan Lomax’s 1936 Haitian recording expedition for the Library of Congress. Each volume showcases a specific style of music that Lomax encountered, each thoroughly discussed in Averill’s meticulously-researched liner notes and Lomax’s own field journal. The full-colour liner notes include song transcriptions, translations and essays.
Alan Lomax was an American folklorist and ethnomusicologist. He was one of the great field collectors of folk music of the 20th century, recording thousands of songs in the United States, Great Britain, Ireland, the Caribbean, Italy, and Spain. From 1937 to 1942, Lomax was Assistant in Charge of the Archive of Folk Song of the Library of Congress to which he and his father and numerous collaborators contributed more than ten thousand field recordings.
