The youtube channel of the Alan Lomax Archive has posted the entire recording session that Lomax performed in 1942 in Sledge, Quitman County, Mississippi. The documentation was organized as part of the work that the ethnomusicologist from Austin was carrying out for the Library of Congress’ Archive of Folk Song. On that occasion Lomax recorded Sid Hemphill, a multi-instrumentalist, born in 1876, which for several decades was the patriarch of music – this is the term used in the Archive section dedicated to this great musician – Mississippi Hill Country. The band was formed by Alec Hemphill “Turpentine” Askew, Will Head, and Lucius Smith, all originating in Panola County, Mississippi, and was often called upon to play at parties and picnics. Already in the forties were published many records of the Delta, especially in blues music performed with guitar and piano accompaniment. Lomax was the first – just in 1942 – documenting the music of the Hill Country, helping, thanks to Hemphill, the discovery of the use of a wider instrumentation, which included violin, banjo, flute, pan flute and drum.

Autore: Daniele Cestellini

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