Remembering Folk Figure Art Rosenbaum

An influential figure in the preservation of American folk and traditional music, artist, musician, and scholar Art Rosenbaum passed away earlier this month (Sept. 4) at the age of 83.

For over 50 years, Rosenbaum traveled around the United States recording blues music, fiddle tunes, and a wide range of other traditional music. His recordings were published in The Art of Field Recording: 50 Years of Traditional American Music. Celebrated alongside the legendary work of folk figures like Alan Lomax and Pete Seeger, the recordings unveiled previously untouched and under-examined realms of Americana from parlor tunes and church hymns to chain gang songs and folk ballads.

The first volume of the collection earned Rosenbaum a Grammy award in 2008 for Best Historical Album. Watch a short glimpse of the footage below.

Rosenbaum’s work intimately captured America’s folk landscape as he regularly recorded the song traditions of migrant workers, music in religious practices, as well as the tune of transient folk and blues troubadours. He was among the few people to ever record the music of celebrated Chicago blues picker Scrapper Blackwell.

“My interest has always been in the older layers of the tradition, and not solely because they are interesting links with the past,” Rosenbaum told Georgia Music in a 2006 interview. “Whenever they’re performed in the voices and with the hands of gifted singers and musicians, they are not just artifacts of the past – they are a living, ongoing art form…and a very powerful one.”