The Art of Field Recording

Athens man's quest for folk music

By Philip Graitcer

Atlanta, Ga – During the 1940s and 50s, field recordings made by Alan Lomax for the Library of Congress introduced Americans to traditional music and led to the folk revival. Coffee houses, hootenannies, and groups like The Weavers and the Smothers Brothers took the country by storm. By the mid-1960s, rock and roll and the British invasion had captured America's listening tastes. Folk music disappeared, and some thought it was dead.

But a recent release of field recordings of folk music shows that traditional music is still alive, and Art Rosenbaum of Athens, Georgia has made it his life's work to find and record it.