At last!  Here it is, the definitive biography of Alan Lomax, America's foremost renegade anthropologist and musicologist.  Through his field recordings, archiving work, lectures, and writing, Lomax did more than anyone in history to bring folk music from around the world to the general public.  Drawing upon a wealth of Lomax's diaries and personal correspondences, John Szwed provides an extensive account of the man's work, struggles, political views, and personal relationships.  The breadth of Lomax's accomplishments and scope of his vision are truly inspiring.  Spanning most of the 20th century, the book reads as a sociopolitical history of the Unites States during this period as much as a biography, featuring prominent historical figures such as Leadbelly, Zora Neale Hurston, Woody Guthrie, Eleanor Roosevelt, and many more.  Essential for folk music enthusiasts and anyone interested in traditional culture from around the world.  For the uninitiated, get acquainted with a true visionary! Tune in to www.culturalequity.org to get hep.

Harry Smith is finally having hhis moment and getting his due.  John Szwed's long in the works labor of love is a good place to learn about "The filmmkaer, folklorist, and Mystic who transformed American Art.'

Named one of the Best Books of 2023 by the New Yorker and The New York Times' Dwight Garner

“The first comprehensive biography of this hipster magus . . . [John Szwed] allows different sides of Smith’s personality to catch blades of sun. He brings the right mixture of reverence and comic incredulity to his task.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

Grammy Award–winning music scholar and celebrated biographer John Szwed presents the first biography of Harry Smith, the brilliant eccentric who transformed twentieth century art and culture.

He was an anthropologist, filmmaker, painter, folklorist, mystic, and walking encyclopedia. He taught Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe about the occult, swapped drugs with Timothy Leary, had a front-row seat to a young Thelonious Monk, lived with (and tortured) Allen Ginsberg, was admired by Susan Sontag, and was one of the first artists funded by Guggenheim Foundation. He was always broke, generally intoxicated, compulsively irascible, and unimpeachably authentic. Harry Smith was, in the words of Robert Frank, “the only person I met in my life that transcended everything.”

In Cosmic Scholar, the Grammy Award-winning music scholar and celebrated biographer John Szwed patches together, for the first time, the life of one of the twentieth century’s most overlooked cultural figures. From his time recording the customs of Native American tribes in the Pacific Northwest and Florida to his life in Greenwich Village in its heyday, Smith was consumed by an unceasing desire to create a unified theory of culture. He was an insatiable creator and collector, responsible for the influential Anthology of American Folk Music and several pioneering experimental films, but was also an insufferable and destructive eccentric who was unable to survive in regular society, or keep himself healthy or sober.

Exhaustively researched, energetically told, and complete with a trove of images, Cosmic Scholar is a feat of biographical restoration and the long overdue canonization of an American icon.

Includes black-and-white and color images

Imprint Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

ISBN

9780374282240