By Betty Zhang
Haitian scholar and UBC Dean of Arts Gage Averill didn’t receive his recent Grammy nomination from singing Bad Romance alongside Lady Gaga. He’s being recognized for a mammoth project unearthing the extensive recordings of Alan Lomax, a famed folklorist and ethnomusicologist.
When more than 1500 recordings by Alan Lomax were found on the shelves of the Library of Congress of Washington, his daughter, Anna Lomax Wood called Gage Averill, who had been traveling to Haiti since 1987. As one of the world’s foremost scholars in Haitian music, Averill agreed to take on the task of transcribing, translating, and interpreting these recordings made in Haiti in the 1930s.
When he took on the project, Averill was already the dean of U of T Mississauga and his daughter was four years old. “My daughter and my wife… said something to the effect of we’ll see you in eight months,” said Averill, since the project meant an extra eight hours of work each day. He went through Lomax’s recordings, notes, and even receipts to figure out names of small rural ensembles, or track down children of Haitian musicians.
“I am moved and astonished that he could, out of the dust of 70 years, produce notes of such scholarly depth and sympathy,” said Anna Lomax Wood.
What kept him going through the large volume of work was a will to contribute positively to the news stories about Haiti. “The one thing almost everyone can recite is that it’s the poorest country in the Western hemisphere,” said Averill. “So here’s an example of humongous riches from the poorest country.”
