Save Austin’s Cemeteries and Austin Parks and Recreation’s historic Oakwood Cemetery present “The Lomaxes in Austin: Oakwood Spring Concert,” featuring John Lomax III and Anna Lomax Wood at the Oakwood Cemetery Chapel, 1601 Navasota Street, at 1:30 p.m. on Easter Sunday, April 5, 2026. Seating is limited within the Oakwood Chapel. Event parking is free along the Oakwood Cemetery “Main Street.”
The free concert and talk will feature American folk music and stories by the grandchildren of the legendary American ethnomusicologist John Avery Lomax Sr. – John Lomax III, son of John Lomax Jr. the highly noted folklorist and performer, and Anna Lomax Wood, daughter of the legendary ethnomusicologist, folklorist, archivist and musician Alan Lomax.
John’s and Anna’s grandfather John Avery Lomax Sr. is buried at the Oakwood Cemetery, and Anna’s father and John’s uncle Alan Lomax has a cenotaph at the Oakwood Cemetery, signifying the Lomax family’s deep ties to Austin and Texas.
Grandson of pioneering folklorist John Avery Lomax, University of Texas at Austin graduate John Lomax III grew up surrounded by music. His father, John Avery Lomax Jr., co-founded the Houston Folklore Society in the Lomax den when John was 7. Uncle Alan Lomax and Aunt Bess Lomax Hawes often brought their own special magic to family singalongs. John Lomax III had an extensive music industry career in the Nashville as a writer and managing Texas music legends Townes Van Zandt and Steve Earle among others. At the age of 78, John began performing professionally featuring the Lomax family’s 150-year musical history.
Granddaughter of legendary musicologist John Avery Lomax, Anna Lomax Wood is an anthropologist, an ethnomusicologist, a public folklorist, and a Grammy award winner, who has produced festivals, concerts, workshops and music tours featuring immigrants from Northern and Southern Italy, Spain and Greece. Anna Lomax Wood was instrumental in working to preserve her father Alan’s vast and foundational archives and advance their repatriation initiatives with her work at the Association for Culture Equity (ACE). ACE was founded by Alan Lomax and is housed at New York City’s Hunter College (CUNY). Anna led the effort to digitize the massive Alan Lomax archive which was deposited at Hunter College with the original analog archive being deposited at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. Anna Lomax compiled and produced numerous releases of her father Alan’s archival recordings on Rounder Records culminating in a Grammy Award for Best Historical Album as a producer of “Jelly Roll Morton: The Complete Library of Congress Recordings.”
The Lomax Family’s Ties to Austin and Texas
John Avery Lomax was raised in Bosque County, Texas and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1897. John Lomax taught at Texas A&M University and was a co-founder of the Texas Folklore Society. John Lomax Jr. was born in Austin and graduated from West High School in 1924. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1928. A performer in his own right, John performed at the first two Kerrville Folk Festivals and was a founder of the Houston Folklore & Music Society. Alan Lomax was born in Austin and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1936. Alan’s music and archival work with his father and on his own is vast and foundational to American and World music. Bess Lomax Hawes was born in Austin and excelled at classical piano and folk guitar at an early age.
The Lomax Family’s Monumental American Music Legacy
Decades before the 1950s folk music revival and the “birth of rock ‘n’ roll”, historian and preservationist John A. Lomax was sent by the Smithsonian Institute with a 390 pound recording machine built into the trunk of his Model A Ford automobile to investigate, record and preserve various folk music traditions of the blue-collar workers and the “under classes.” While the Jazz-Age was booming in the dancehalls of the elites, John and his sons Alan Lomax and John Jr. took to the road to document the forgotten music of the American people. John Sr., Alan and John Jr. recorded, preserved and celebrated musical traditions that would have been lost to time had it not been for their vast and expansive efforts.
Alan Lomax, is the legendary ethnomusicologist, musician, folklorist, music collector, archivist, writer, scholar, broadcaster, political activist, concert promoter (Folksong ‘59), oral historian, and filmmaker. Alan served as the Director of the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress. Alan independently collected the folk songs of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Italy, Spain, and the Caribbean. Alan Lomax founded The Association for Culture Equity and consulted with Carl Sagan in selecting music for the Voyager Golden Record sent into space in 1977. The Library of Congress acquired Alan’s independent work in 2004.
Bess Lomax Hawes, an accomplished folk musician and educator in her own right, served at the Smithsonian Institution, where she led the Smithsonian’s 1976 Bicentennial Festival of American Folklife on the National Mall, was the first director of the Folk and Traditional Arts Program at the National Endowment for the Arts and created the National Heritage Fellowships recognizing traditional artists and performers.
The results of the family’s—John Avery Lomax Sr., Alan Lomax, John Jr. and Bess Lomax Hawes—monumental music and cultural work can still be heard today in almost every form of popular music around the world.
About Save Austin’s Cemeteries
Save Austin’s Cemeteries is a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving the city-owned historic cemeteries in Austin through documentation, preservation, and education and promoting them as local and state cultural resources.