"Always an Outsider Asking Questions"

"In Lomax's view, folk music was the creation of a collective culture, more vital and important than anything fashioned by individuals. His recordings made that previously ignored culture accessible to younger generations, though he wasn't always happy with the uses they made of it. He harshly judged the folk revival of the late '50s as 'a careerist machine … folk songs stripped of their social roots [and] turned into fodder for pop artists.' He was surprisingly receptive to rock 'n' roll: 'A stampeding herd of youngsters [who] set America singing, dancing, rocking to its own rhythms.' Yet he remained wary of the mass media, which he feared were wiping out centuries-old folkways, encouraging people to passively consume commercial culture instead of making their own."

Wendy Smith in the Los Angeles Times reviews John Szwed's Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World.