A man with a lifetime of adventures, Jack Loeffler has been a professional jazz trumpeter and classical recorder artist, an environmental activist, “aural historian,” accomplished author, folklorist, practical anthropologist, sound engineer, and radio producer.
Jack Loeffler lives and loves what he does. As an “a-u-r-a-l historian” he devotes his life to working with indigenous cultures and recording their relationship to the land. He believes that the knowledge and wisdom of people who live on the land close to the earth--such as the Hopis, Navajos, Pueblo Indians as well as tribes from Mexico--can help our species survive. Jack records the nature sounds, the music, the stories of these groups to develop an environmental consciousness for the world. As his Navajo friend Shonto Begay wrote, “by documenting the voices and stories of the land Jack, moves us and helps us to rediscover our own voices”
From his rich recordings, Jack creates sound collages for CDs and radio programs we hear on National Public Radio, such as the Turquoise Trail, the Lore of the Land, and a special production on Aldo Leopold. Jack has also recorded the largest collection of New Mexican Hispanic folklore and folk music. La Musica de los Viejitos is one collection of this music. His recordings are housed in the Smithsonian and will be available at the New Mexico History Museum as well. Jack has also published five critically acclaimed books.
In 2008 Jack received the Governor’s Award for Excellence for his writing and his ethnomusicology work. This year he received the Edgar Lee Hewett Award for Outstanding Public Service from the New Mexico Historical Society.
Jack ‘s daughter Celestia writes about her Dad and “best pal.” “He makes friends everywhere he goes, because he cares. He empathizes and connects with every living being he encounters. From the child sitting across from him at a restaurant to the Navajo elder, and the great horned owl to the spiny cholla cactus, he cares about it all.” A good friend wrote about Jack: he lives every day “in the moment, while creating a legacy for posterity that will have resonance in Santa Fe and far
Jack Loeffler is a true Renaissance man
During the 1950s and early 1960s, Loeffler was a jazz trumpeter who performed throughout the United States. He has written numerous books, including "Adventures with Ed: A Portrait of Abbey," which was published in 2002 and recounts his experiences with writer and pioneering environmentalist Ed Abbey.
Loeffler moved to New Mexico in 1962 and has spent the last 40 years devoted to preserving and sharing the arts and stories of the people of his adopted state. He has interviewed and recorded writers, visual artists, traditional indigenous people, musicians and ordinary people who live in every region of the state. As a master artist in ethnomusicology, Loeffler has set extremely high standards for sound quality and editing. Through his artistic recordings, he has exposed the world to traditional Hispano and Native American music and culture.
Loeffler's personal archive of interviews, music and environmental sounds has been fully digitized onto archival gold CDs and hard drives to be saved for future generations. The collection is already being used in current exhibitions and programs at the Palace of the Governors which will share this outstanding ethnographic collection in the new State History Museum, which is set for a public opening on Memorial Day weekend 2009. Loeffler's radio shows, which include the ongoing "Lore of the Land" and "Moving Waters - the Colorado River and the West," are legendary, not only for the information they impart but for the inspiration they engender.
"Loeffler is a National Treasure who is revered in his field from the Folklore Center at the Library of Congress to small villages in rural New Mexico," said nominator Sue Sturtevant. "While very few people deserve the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Arts, Jack Loeffler is one who does!"
