Lomax the Songhunter

He could make stones sing, as folk singer Peggy Seeger once said about Alan Lomax. A key qualification for his profession: Lomax is likely the world’s most famous folk-song collector. More than 10,000 of his recordings have been catalogued by the American Library of Congress. Shortly before his death in 2002, Dutch filmmaker Rogier Kappers met him in Florida, and then followed his earlier footsteps on a trip through Europe. Though half a century has passed since the »Songhunter’s« visit to Spanish villages, windy Irish islands and the remote mining regions of Italy, Kappers tracks down musicians long immortalized in Lomax’s »Field Recordings« – some of them have lost none of their powerful vocal presence.