I’ve just augmented my post on Chinese stammerers, ancient and modern, with an evocative passage from Sima Qian’s Records of the grand historian, in which a stammering minister speaks truth to power (parts in my Hollywood screenplay for Michael Palin and Stormy Daniels).
Stephen Jones: a blog 
Did you see Cold War? It was about Polish ethnomusicologists and their role in national propaganda. Is that a big thing? What were the politics of Alan lomax and the American interest in pre War acoustic blues in the 40s/60s?
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Ha, I feel as this this comment belongs with one of my posts under the Iron curtain tag?! Anyway: I look forward to seeing Cold War, and sure, ethnographers did their best under state socialism everywhere (see e.g. my post on musicking in east Europe). As to Lomax and co., there’s loads to read (not yet by me…)
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What do you suggest on the whole topic of white people discovering the pre war acoustic blues and collecting it? I’m curious for personal reasons — my Dad was a Jewish guy from Brooklyn born 1925 and amassed a world-class collection traveling down south in the 40s and 50s. He discovered it while working in DC during the war.
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Good topic indeed. I haven’t looked into it much, but you can get a long way with Google… and you can combine it with your dad’s story!
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