Alan Jabbour

Alan Jabbour was born in 1942 in Jacksonville, Florida, and was educated in Jacksonville public schools and the Bolles School, where he graduated from high school in 1959. He graduated magna cum laude from the University of Miami in 1963 and received his M.A. (1966) and Ph.D. (1968) from Duke University. A violinist from the age of seven, he was a member of the Jacksonville Symphony, the Brevard Music Festival Orchestra, the Miami Symphony, and the University of Miami String Quartet.

While a graduate student at Duke, he became interested in folk music and folklore, and in 1965-68 he made extensive trips in North Carolina, Virginia, and West Virginia, to record instrumental folk music, folksong, and folklore on tape. This collection, particularly rich in traditional fiddle tunes from the Upper South, is now in the Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress. The documentation trips verged into a process of apprenticeship, and he began playing the fiddle under the influence of new masters. In particular, he learned the style and repertory of Henry Reed, a master fiddler who lived along the New River in Glen Lyn, Virginia, and was then in his eighties.

As Alan Jabbour began to learn the regional fiddling style and repertory of the Upper South, he joined together with three other young musicians to form a band devoted to playing these oldtime tunes, including Tommy Thompson on the five-string banjo, Bertram Levy on the mandolin, and Bobbie Thompson on the guitar. They called themselves the Hollow Rock String Band, after a rural community outside of Durham where the Thompsons lived and where the band gathered for regular jam sessions and music parties. The band was at the core of an oldtime music scene that blossomed in Durham and Chapel Hill in the later 1960s. In 1968, the year that Henry Reed passed away, the band released a long-playing record called The Hollow Rock String Band: Traditional Dance Tunes (Kanawha 311). That album, which became a document of the oldtime music revival in the 1960s and 1970s, has recently been reissued as a compact disc (County Records CO-CD-2715)

In September 1969 Alan was appointed head of the Archive of Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture) at the Library of Congress. There he supervised the development of the national archival collection for folk music and folklore. He edited a long playing record drawn from earlier recordings in the Archive, which was published in 1971 as American Fiddle Tunes (now available on CD as Rounder Records 18964-1518-2). With Carl Fleischhauer, he undertook a three-year project to research, record, and photograph the history and traditions of a single Appalachian family. This was published in 1973 by the Library of Congress in a two-record album entitled "The Hammons Family: A Study of a West Virginia Family's Traditions", which was recently re-issued on CD by Rounder Records to critical acclaim. A companion album appeared that year on the Rounder label, entitled Shaking Down the Acorns. Both these publications were released in a double-CD edition in 1998, entitled The Hammons Family: The Traditions of a West Virginia Family and Their Friends (Rounder 1504/05). As part of the Library's Bicentennial effort, he initiated an anthology of fifteen long-playing records containing examples of folk music traditions in the United States. During this period he performed less often as a musician, but an LP entitled The Hollow Rock String Band (Rounder Records 0024) includes him on the fiddle, Tommy Thompson on the banjo and guitar, and Jim Watson on the guitar, mandolin, and autoharp.

Hollow Rock String Band, circa 1967. Left to Right: Tommy and Bobbie Thompson, Bertram Levy and Alan Jabbour

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In April 1974, Alan moved to the National Endowment for the Arts to become founding director of that agency's grant-giving program in folk arts. Under his direction the Folk Arts Program grew rapidly as a source of funding for the varieties of folk cultural expression in the United States, and it continued to grow after his departure in 1976.

In August 1976 he became the founding director of the American Folklife Center in the Library of Congress, continuing in that position for 23 years until he stepped down as director in mid-1999. Established by the American Folklife Preservation Act of 1976 (Public Law 94-201), the Center is directed to "preserve and present American folklife" through programs of research, documentation, archival preservation, live presentation, exhibition, publication, dissemination, training, and other activities involving the many folk traditions of the United States.

The Center's Archive of Folk Culture, formerly known as the Archive of Folk Song, is the principal repository for field documentation of American folklore and folklife and contains important holdings from all the major regions of the world. In the 1980s, while focusing on his duties as an administrator, he occasionally turned his attentions to editing folk music documentary albums and playing music at occasional public events and gatherings. He edited, with John A. Cuthbert, another LP publication related to the Hammons Family, The Edden Hammons Collection, published by West Virginia University Press in 1984. And in the early 1980s, an LP entitled Sandy's Fancy (Flying Fish FF-260) featured him on fiddle, Tommy Thompson on banjo, and Sandy Bradley on guitar and piano.

One of the many projects developed by Alan at the Center is a large collection of fiddle music from Henry Reed, a huge influence on Alan in the 60's. Alan spent much of the mid sixties visiting and documenting the fiddle music of the late Henry Reed from Virginia. Henry was in his 80's at the time, and his music and charm provided much original material for the budding old-time music scene in Durham/Chapel Hill back in the 60's when The Hollow Rock String Band was taking flight.

Alan Jabbour retired from federal service at the end of 1999. In celebration of his retirement, he has resumed playing the fiddle more actively and is undertaking frequent appearances and engagements as a musician and fiddle teacher. He served as guest curator of Fiddle Tunes of the Old Frontier: The Henry Reed Collection, an online presentation of the Library of Congress published in 2000. The collection makes available online the entire field collection of recordings and manuscripts created during his visits with Henry Reed in 1966-67. In 2000 he curated an exhibition on folk art at the Crealdé School of Art in Winter Park, Florida. He has published widely over the years on the subject of folklore and folklife, including many publications on American folksong and instrumental folk music, and he is a frequent lecturer on topics related to folklore and folklife, folk music, and cultural policy. His publications include both print publications and the editing of a number of documentary recorded publications. He has served on various panels and boards, including the Humanities Council of Washington, D.C. (co-chair, 1987-88), the American Folklore Society (president, 1988), the Fund for Folk Culture (chair, 1991-94), the National Coalition for Heritage Areas (1993-97), the European Center for Traditional Culture (1996-98), and the Alliance for American Quilts (1996- ). He is married to Karen Joy Singer Jabbour, lives in Washington, D.C., and has three children, Rebecca, Aaron, and Hannah.

January 2001