The British ballads became a new kind of form in their hand. And out of them came the blues, a new kind of song of commentary and satire, a song form which, after all, has become the main musical form of the whole human species.

He was also a folklorist ethnomusicologist archivist writer scholar political activist oral historian and film-maker. After 1942 when Congress cut off the Library of Congress's funding for folk song collecting Lomax continued to collect independently in Britain Ireland the Caribbean Italy and Spain as well as the United States using the latest recording technology assembling a treasure trove of American and international culture. With the start of the Cold War Lomax continued to speak out for a public role for folklore even as academic folklorists turned inward.