ACE took the Global Jukebox on the road to present and demonstrate its newest incarnation at the 10th annual Brooklyn Folk Festival on April 8th.

ACE President Anna Lomax Wood, Executive Director Jorge Arévalo Mateus, Senior Researcher Kathleen Rivera and Researcher Violet Baron led a full audience through the highlights of the Global Jukebox, and a discussion on its applications.
 

Margaret Mead taught us that elders transmit culture through their open palms. I have found this to be a helpful precept. It must have been at the Folklore Society Meetings ​in Nashville. As I was walking out,​ I saw a figure enrobed in a dark shawl seated in a wing chair with his back to the conference looking out at the grey afternoon. I tried to go by quietly but he noticed. His eyes lit up and ​he broke into ​his crooked smile. “Anna, it’s so nice to see you.

ACE’s Jorge Arevalo Mateus and Kathleen Rivera gave a presentation entitled “Vision and Dance: The Global Jukebox, The Urban Strain, and Rock Metrics” at the Rock and Roll Forever Foundation’s 2017 Summer Teacher Workshop, held at NYU on July 20th.

The annual workshop brings together a stellar group of guest presenters, educators and cultural specialists that are working to share new ideas, media, and technology with utility for Arts education and pedagogy.

ACE is excited to announce that ours was one of the 1,029 Art Works grants approved for agency support this spring.  We will be working with Delta State University on a multi-channel project entitled “Back Home to the Delta: Preserving, Cataloging and Repatriating the Historic Lomax Mississippi Recordings, 1933-42″.  We look forward to sharing more as it unfolds.

On November 19, 2016, Spanish-music scholar Judith Cohen attended the Càntut Festival, held in Cassà de la Selva, near Girona, Catalonia, to give a presentation as an introduction and background to Rogier Kapper’s film, Lomax the Songhunter [Lomax: Caçador de cançons].  The presentation followed Alan’s trajectory through Spain, with bits of music.

Jorge Arévalo Mateus and Anna Lomax Wood will attend the Society for Ethnomusicology 61st Annual meeting in Washington, D.C., November 9th through the 13th. The Global Jukebox will be published on January 15th and Anna will be asking for feedback for a beta version from members of the Advisory Committee who may be present at SEM: Patricia Campbell, Judith Cohen, Todd Harvey, Anthony Seeger, Michael Tenzer, Philip Yampolsky and Lawrence Witzleben. Recent discussion on the SEM listserv has raised important questions about Cantometrics and its place in our discipline.

Volume 8, Issue 2 of American Quarterly, the official publication of the American Studies Association, featured an article about the Alan Lomax Archive.  Read it here.

On May 18th the Library of Congress held a wonderful celebration marking the 40th Anniversary of the American Folklife Center in the Great Hall of the Thomas Jefferson Building. The entire Association for Cultural Equity staff was honored to be invited, and traveled down the Washington, D.C. to attend. Prior to the party, ACE was treated to an in-depth tour of the Alan Lomax Collection at the Library of Congress.