Songcatcher appropriates the real life story of Alan Lomax, transforms Lomax into a woman, shifts his career into an earlier period in the 20th Century, adds lesbianism to its uninteresting plot and wastes valuable time that could have been devoted to the music of Appalachia. There are, however, two valuable aspects to the film. One is the music which Lomax collected and which is now preserved in the Alan Lomax Collection at the Library of Congress in Washington and to a considerable extent on recordings drawing upon that collection, The other redeeming feature is Emily Rossum, 14 at the time, a delicate beauty with a wonderful voice. I wish the movie had made more use of her voice in presenting the music instead of having it sung by folks representing the local population. Of course, what Lomax did in part was to record the songs sung by people with not very good voices. Much of the music sung by Pete Seeger, among others, is drawn from the work Lomax did (which also included collecting folk music from Europe). The film is correct in asserting that the music of Appalachia can be traced to its roots in Scotland and England and that, in many cases, the Appalachian versions are "purer" than contemporary versions still sung in Britain. But lots of singers have also recorded the same ballads (like Barbra Allen) in their Scottish or English versions. The music is sometimes identical but the words are frequently somewhat different. The brief period when folk music was highly popular in the United States was filled with Appalachian folk music performed by artists like Joan Baez and Judy Collins, the Weavers and many others. Seeger was one of the Weavers, the group which might be said to have launched the folk music boom. It's a fascinating history -- much, much, much more interesting than this lousy movie.
Review of Songcatcher
