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Songs for Christmas and the New Year Collected by Alan Lomax

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As we approach the end of the centennial year of the birth of Alan Lomax, it seems appropriate to look at recordings of songs and music he collected celebrating Christmas, the new year, and Epiphany.  The recordings presented here are all part of the collections of the American Folklife Center, but many have been put online by partner organizations and researchers working to make Alan Lomax’s collections more widely available — with a great deal that is new this year. You may want to take note of these sites and collections to explore them further, so a list of these is provided in the Resources section at the end of this article.

Christmas

Alan and Elizabeth Lomax standing in a garden.
Alan and Elizabeth Lomax, ca. 1938. They were married in 1937 and began doing fieldwork together. Bess Lomax Hawes Collection.

Among the earliest Christmas songs recorded by Alan Lomax currently available online are from fieldwork he did in Kentucky with his new wife, Elizabeth, in 1937.  These include a fiddle tune, “Old Christmas,” played by Boyd Asher and recorded in Hyden, Kentucky and “Away in a Manger,” sung by a six-year-old child, Betty Sue Shepard, in Cumberland, Kentucky. Elizabeth Lomax can be heard giving the name of the singer at the end of this song. On the same trip they recorded “Fair Charlotte” (also known as “Young Charlotte”), a tragic ballad not usually thought of as a Christmas song, but in this version it is a celebration of Christmas time that causes Charlotte to go out in her carriage without enough wrapped over her fined dress to keep her warm, and arrives frozen to death at the party.1

The next year Alan Lomax went on his first solo documentation trip to Michigan and Wisconsin. There  he recorded “Christmas Evening,” a sad Irish ballad about a death at Christmas sung by John W. Green and recorded by Alan Lomax in Saint James, Beaver Island, Michigan, in 1938.2

In 1940 Alan Lomax hosted a CBS radio show called, Back Where I Come From, and for a Christmas treat, he presented “Christmas Songs with Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives.” Guthrie sang a song for children that he composed for the occasion, while Burl Ives sang a version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Both talked about early Christmas traditions, including gift-giving on “old Christmas” (Epiphany) instead of Christmas morning. This and other radio shows that Alan Lomax produced are available on the Association for Cultural Equity web site.

Two girls playing ximbomas as a small boy looks on.
A group of children in Spain playing small ximbombas, friction drums associated with Christmas. Photo by Alan Lomax, December 12, 1952. Courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity.

Lomax spent Christmas 1952 in Spain and collected songs in many regions in the last months of 1952 and January of 1953.  An instrument associated with Christmas and often carried by carolers, the ximbomba (or zambomba ) is found in many parts of the country, and is usually home-made. It is made from a clay-pot drum with a reed cane attached to the head. The reed is moistened and rubbed to create the characteristic sound. Drums made out of various sized clay pots have different sounds. Here is a group of ximbombas being played by a group of young people in Lagartera, Castilla-La Mancha. After playing for a bit, they sing a song, “Ronda de Nochebuena.

In the Balearic Islands of Spain Lomax recorded an interesting style of singing with gutteral adornment. “Caramelles Cobla,” is sung by Miquel Bonet (Can Frare or Jaia), Josep Cardona (Pep Pujoleti), and Josep Marí Prats (Pep den Rotes) of Sant Josep in this ancient Mediterranean style.

In January 1953 Alan Lomax was recording songs in the Basque country of Spain. This Basque song for Christmas Eve tells of the shepherds bringing lambs as gifts for the baby Jesus:  “Abenduko hilaren hogeitalauean” sung by a group of men in Tolosa, País Vasco, Spain, on New Years Day, 1953.3

Alan Lomax made many recordings of songs sung by the late collector and singer Jean Ritchie, who learned much of her repertoire in Kentucky. In 1959 he recorded her at his apartment in New York City. Along with some familiar Christmas songs, she sings some that are unusual, such as “Christmas Day in the Morning,” which describes the activities of various animals on Christmas and is certain to delight children. Her version of “I Saw Three Ships” (Come Sailing In), uses a familiar lyric sung to a different tune than the one widely known.

Lomax traveled in the Southeast making recordings in 1959 and 1960. Vera Hall Ward was an African American singer from Alabama who was recorded by several folklorists. This is her rendition of “The Last Month of the Year,” with an introduction to remind us of the joy of Christmas.

African American Man playing a wooden flute.
Merritt Boddie playing the flute. He is the band leader of the Marigolds Orchestra recorded in Gingerland, Nevis in 1962. Photo by Alan Lomax. Courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity.

In September 1959 Lomax recorded songs at the 56th Annual United Sacred Harp Musical Association Convention in Fyffe, Alabama. The Alabama Sacred Harp Convention sang “Sherburne,” better known as “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night,” and a less well-known “Christmas Anthem.” For those who have not heard this style of singing hymns before, you will hear the choir sing the tune first using names for the notes, fa, sol, la, etc, before they begin singing the lyrics of the songs. Sacred Harp groups at this time organized as white and African American groups with some differences in style and repertoire. These examples are from the white tradition.4

Caribbean bands often translated popular Christmas songs into their own musical styles. In 1962 Lomax visited Gingerland on the island of Nevis, and recorded the Marigolds dance band playing “Noel,” in in the style of a Caribbean dance tune. In this recording, the band leader, Merritt Boddie, leads the melody on the flute.

GeorgiaSeaIslandsSingersbyAlanLomax600
Members of the Georgia Sea Island Singers. Bessie Jones is in the center front. Photo by Alan Lomax, 1962. Courtesy of the Association for Cultural Equity.

In 1969 Bessie Jones and the Georgia Sea Island Singers performed “O Day” or “Yonder Come Day” for Alan Lomax. This song may be used on Christmas Eve,  New Years Eve, or both for singers who are staying up the whole night, so it is called a “watch night song” and welcomes the dawn.  In this interview Bessie Jones and John Davis talk with Alan Lomax about this song and “watch nights.”

Songs for the New Year

New Years Eve and Day are a time for socializing, visiting, and dancing in many cultures. In Quebec, Canada, New Years is an even more festive period than Christmas.  In 1938 in Baraga, Michigan, Alan Lomax found Edward King, a Québécois singer, who performed a dance song for the New Year, “C’est dans temp jour de l’an.” In its many verses, the song celebrates the whole of the Christmas and New Year season  [part 2 of this song is available at this link. Added 12/20/2018.]

While on a recording trip in Louisiana in 1934, John and Alan Lomax recorded Lunéda Comeaux performing a song for dancing, “Fait le tour” (We danced all night), a song set on New Years Day after a dance.  Joshua Caffery has made this and other recordings from the 1934 Louisiana field trip available online. In his book, Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana: The 1934 Lomax Recordings (2013), Caffery notes that New Years Day is an appropriate time for asking a girl’s father if he can court her, so this song may relate to this romantic moment.5

Lomax traveled in Romania in 1964 and collected this medley of songs for the new year in Dragus: “Llaube (The Dawn) / Happy New Year / Strigaturi” performed by an unidentified group of men.

Epiphany

In many places Three Kings Day or Epiphany is celebrated in addition to Christmas. In some cultures it is the day that gifts are given as it celebrates the day that the wise men visited the new-born Jesus. “Los reyes magos,” sung by Araceli Garrido, Carmen Gómez, and Angelines Soberón  is a song for Three Kings Day that Lomax recorded in Potes, Cantabria, Spain, in November 1952.  That same month in Galacia, Lomax recorded a group singing a song for Three Kings Day with a bagpipe, “Buenas entradas de Reyes.”

In 1962 Alan Lomax was able to record a session of songs performed in French by a group led by Eugene Modestus in Paramain, Maraval, Trinidad. They performed as if they were singing for an all-night vigil at the crèche on the eve of Epiphany or, as they called it “the break up of Christmas,” even though it was the end of April. “Cantique,” is an example of the solemn songs often sung at this event. As the dawn comes, January 6th is greeted with more joyful songs, such as “Bon Novelle.”

I hope you have enjoyed this tour of the Lomax songs of the holidays currently available. More are available in the collections listed below. As you will find as you explore these collections, a many people continue to hard to make Alan Lomax’s legacy available and to support research on the cultures he documented.

Notes

1. Sidney Robertson Cowell recorded Warde Ford performing another version of “Fair Charlotte” in California in 1938.

2. See James Leary’s Folksongs of another America: field recordings from the Upper Midwest, 1937-1946 (2015) for a study of this recording trip. There is an article in Folklife Today on Leary’s research: “James P. Leary and Folksongs of Another Americaby Stephen Winick, July 30, 2015.

3. A translation of this song may be found in the liner notes for The Basque Country: Biscay and Guipuzcoa, Basque translations by Juan-Mari Beltran and Aintzane Camara.  Rounder Records, 2004.

4. Folklorist John W. Work recorded “Glory Shone Around,”  a version of “While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night” sung to a different tune, performed by an African American sacred harp group in Alabama in 1938.

5. pp. 106-107.

Resources

Online Collections Used in this Article

Alan Lomax Collection of Michigan and Wisconsin Recordings, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

The Association for Cultural Equity (ACE), founded by Alan Lomax to disseminate his work, this is the largest “online archive” of Lomax’s field documentation. Songs in this article can be found the radio series Back Where I Come From and the collections Caribbean 1962, Jean Ritchie 1949 and 1950Romania 1964Southern U.S. 1959 and 1960, and Spain in 1952 and 1953.

John and Alan Lomax in Louisiana, 1934 is a site presenting recordings made in Cajun, Caribbean, and Creole communities created by Joshua Caffery as a product of his research for his book Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana: The 1934 Lomax Recordings (2013).

The Lomax Kentucky Recordings, presented by Berea College, The University of Kentucky, The Association for Cultural Equity, and the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Also New Online

The Alan Lomax Collection Manuscripts, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress.

Related Articles

Hall, Stephanie. “Songs of the Winter Season Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell,” in Folklife Today, December 19, 2013.

Winick, Stephen. “Auld Acquaintance for the New Year: Burns’s Auld Lang Syne,” in Folklife Today, December 31, 2013.

Winick, Stephen. “Farewell to the Holidays,” in Folklife Today, January 6, 2015 (on Ephiphany).

Winick, Stephen. “James P. Leary and Folksongs of Another America,in Folklife Today, July 30, 2015.

Winick, Stephen. “Rediscovering Lomax: Joshua Clegg Caffery and ‘I Wanna Sing Right,’” in Folklife Today, August 26, 2015.

Comments (4)

  1. As I am Spanish I was interested in the Lomax recordings and listened to the song Ronda de Nochebuena recorded in Spain.To my surprise next to Language it says Spanish and Aragonese. I am no expert but I can hear only Spanish. Aragonese is a dialect/language spoken only in parts of Aragon mostly near the Pyrenees, with a small number of speakers now. And next to culture I also wonder if it should not say just Spanish as it is played in other parts of the country as well, mostly the South (i.e Jerez in Andalusia) and along the Mediterranean. The location mentioned: Lagartera (in Toledo province) is at the very heart of today´s Castilla-La Mancha (New Castille at the time of the recording).

    • Thank you for your comment and the information about that song. There is a good deal of work to be done to expand our knowledge of the music, songs, and spoken word recordings by Alan Lomax. In many cases the information we have on the recordings is sparse or incorrect. The items are being cataloged using information from his field notes, but he was not fluent in all of the many languages he recorded. He also sometimes made general notes about the songs in a region, and those notes may become attached to an individual song in that group when it does not apply — this may be what happened in this case. Luis Bajen Garcia and Mario Gros Herrero worked on the liner notes for the Rounder Records CD that presented a selection of Alan Lomax’s recordings “The Spanish Recordings: Aragon & Valencia” published in 2001 — so perhaps this information may be of help to you.

  2. Lomax, Alan: would love to hear his Christmas selections.

  3. Hello, E.A.L. – I don’t know how “Aragonese” ended up in the description – you are quite right; it shouldn’t be there. Alan Lomax did not write “Aragonese” for this entry, and neither did I when I was working on the data base entries many years ago. It must have somehow jumped from one data sheet cell to another and can be corrected. The culture entered reflects the place whereLomax recorded it, not how many parts of Spain it’s found in, and it was recorded during the Christmas season in Lagartera, La Mancha. The La Mancha CD has not been issued yet, but I interviewed a few of the people Lomax recorded in Lagartera several years ago, together with a colleague who has prepared the notes. And a note about the Caramelles – this singing style with the glottal ornaments is not really a Mediterranean tradition; it’s pretty specific to Ibiza (and Formentera) – and in fact not even the entire island. There are guttural vocal ornaments heard in singing in parts of Iran, Siberia, and elsewhere, but not as they’re done here. The “Cobla” just refers to the fact that it’s only one stanza – the entire Caramelles sequence takes almost half an hour to perform, and Alan Lomax recorded only a short excerpt. Happy new year! And Stephanie Hall, thanks for this splendid selection! (I’d seen a transcription of the quirky little “Christmas Day” and hadn’t realized Jean Ritchie sang it – what a treat 🙂 )

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