In the 30s and 40s, folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax travelled across America recording indigenous songs and oral histories, developing the now-hallowed Library of Congress Archive of American Folk Song. In the 1950s he moved on to Europe documenting songs in Britain, Ireland, Spain and Italy.

For the PBS TV series American Patchwork he travelled again through the south and southwest of America shooting 400 hours of footage between 1978 and 1985. This week the Alan Lomax Archive and Cultural Equity launched a YouTube channel for this material. There’s not a lot of material there yet, but this will no doubt become an impressive collection of anything folk and blues related. Check out some previews of what’s to come here below. Yeehaw!