Alan Lomax (January 31, 1915 – July 19, 2002) was an American
field collector of
folk music of the 20th century. He was also a
folklorist,
ethnomusicologist, archivist, writer, scholar, political activist, oral historian, and film-maker. Lomax produced recordings, concerts, and radio shows in the US and in England, which played an important role in both the
American and
British folk revivals of the 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. During the
New Deal, with his father, folklorist and collector
John A. Lomax and later alone and with others, Lomax recorded thousands of songs and interviews for the
Archive of American Folk Song at the
Library of Congress on aluminum and acetate discs.