Alan Lomax: recorder of the world, creator of Pandora?

To many people, Alan Lomax is simply the man who introduced the world to Woody Guthrie (and legendary folk songs like �This Land is Your Land�). But for Alan Lomax, Guthrie was just one of thousands of musical discoveries made over the course of more than half a century. Lomax, who served as Assistant Folk Song Archivist for the Library of Congress in the 1930s, recorded music from some of the most remote corners and people on earth � including Caribbean field workers, pygmies and black American prisoners. But how much do we know about the respected oral historian, producer, and interviewer?

John Szwed is the author of a new biography centering on the world’s most famous ethnomusicologist called �Alan Lomax: The Man Who Recorded the World.� He joins us in studio.