Washington, 1994.
Preceding element provides place and date of transcription only.
This transcription intended to be 99.95% accurate.
For more information about this text and this American Memory collection, refer to accompanying matter.
Mrs. Sidney
Robertson
2850 - 19th Avenue
San Francisco, California
Dear Mrs.
Robertson:
1. To guide the workers in indexing any material
which they may accumulate. 2. To supply 200 acetate discs to be used in recording folk-songs. The
finished records will become the property of the Library. (Should additional discs be required, they
will have to be applied for separately) 3. To make these records available for duplication.
4.
To supply blank catalog cards for indexes which then completed, will revert to the
Library.
I should like to amplify the third point to the extent of saying that the Library
cannot engage in any record "publication" projects. Duplication of records will parallel the
procedure now used in making photostats. These are made on Library machines and by commercial
firms at standard prices.
Very sincerely yours,
Acting-Chief,
Division of
Music
HS/me
Dr. George Herzog
Columbia University
New
York City
Dear Dr. Herzog:
A recent letter from Herbert Halpert suggests you might be
willing to act as one of the sponsors of the folksong collecting project I am endeavoring to organize
here. It would be invaluable if you were to feel like doing this. Would you send a letter to this
effect addressed to Dr. James B. Sharp, Coordinator, Statistical, Survey and Research Projects,
Works Progress Administration, 49 Fourth Street, San Francisco, Calif.? It would help materially in
getting the project under way.
Albert Elkus ha offered some guidance, and my project proposal
includes an outline of the steps used in your melodic classification investigations, with the idea that
we will be able to cooperate with you in furthering this work. I hope to find funds to enable the
Music Department of the University of California to act as chief sponsor and keep a set of the
records made for research here; but so far I have not been successful in this.
You will be glad to
hear that Elizabeth Ryan's eligibility for WPA has been finally arranged, and she is about to be
assigned to a Forestry Dept. project pending approval of this folksong project. For a while it seemed
doubtful that she could establish residence here properly. I'm looking forward to working with her.
I'm sure it can be arranged for her to finish her cowboy songs bibliography.
Cordially
yours,
(Mrs.) Sidney R. Robertson
Dr. Albert Elkus
Department of
Music
University of California
Berkeley, California
Dear Dr. Elkus:
[Illegible
page?]
At our last conversation you will recall telling me that so far all that the Music
Department could provide as its sponsor's contribution to the folk music collecting project was
guidance and its coridal interest. I went to see Dr. Kroeber, as you suggested, but had just left for
Chicago, to be gone all summer.
Since that conversation there have been the following
developments:
1) The Library of Congress has formally undertaken to act as co-sponsor and
will privde blank cards for indexing of disks and published collections of folk songs, plus a
minimum of 200 acetate blanks, cards and records to revert to the Archives of American Folk Song
at the Library.
2) An anonymous donor has given me $100 toward the establishment of
Archives of California Folk Music, to be turned over to the Music Department of the University to
aid in its sponsrship of this project, on condition that the Music Department match the amount.
3) Miss Eleanor Hague, who was asked by the head of the South West Museum to
transcribe the Lummis Spanish-American records, has undertaken to act as intermediaty in
arranging re-recording of this material. She found most of it too scratchy for transcription but there
is reason to believe much can be salvaged by skillful re-recording. The equipment of the Museum of
Anthropoligy is, I understand from Mr. Gifford, rather antiquated; but the Mechanical Engineering
people are better equipped.
4) Percy Grainger spent an afternoon with me recently
playing and replaying the material I collected in Arkansas and Missouri. He offered to send me a set
of Gramophone Company cylinders made in 1907 in Lincolnshire which show interesting
relationships with my Ozarks things. The cylinders were made at his request from the singing of old
people in the country and I have no doubt but they constitute the earliest recordings of authentic
English folk songs. If the University wants copies of these for comparative purposes, I'm sure this
could be arranged.
5) Henry Cowell sent a young man to me who has been studying the
music and dancing of foreign groups in this country for several years. He has an amazing list
ofsome 30-odd musical instruments from Central Europe, the Near East and the Orient which are
now in active use in San Francisco and near by. Only three or four of these are "revivals", like the
Irish harp. Recordings of these instruments, with tuning , measurements and photographs should be
extremely interesting.
I have done rather more exploring of material around the Bay and near
Santa Barbara and Carmel that I had done when we first discussed recording here, and am now able
to forsee more definitely what can be expected here: A few white
Idid n't see how this could
be done without embarrassing the University, in view of their already great generosity in so many
ways. You see, since the Library of Congress is carrying its share of the expense, I should have been
asking for money to enable copies of the records to be placed in the University. No matter how I
might qualify the request, it was too likely to seem inspired by you. Since the WPA is to my mind
only the means to an end, the real point of any such request is the desirability of establishing
Archives of California Folk Music at the University of California. I could hardly ask for money for
such a purpose without somehow indicating that the University would welcome such a collection of
records! Three of the clubs I approached are, however, considering giving the project some help and
I think that if we can just get started, this will be forthcoming late in the summer.
If the music
Department will promise us $100 after July 1st, we can start now by using the money already
pledged. The project is being written up for a period of six months, and I think we can keep going
that long on $200 for non-labor expense, since the Oakland school people can give us space and
equipment, if I keep my travel expense at the absolute minimum.
I have today discussed the
present situation with Mr. Pomeroy and he will get in touch with you. I do hope we can work the
thingout and get it settled before you leave. It will require a letter from you stating definitely what
the contribution of the Music Department can be. I should think it would be legitimate to say that
the University will help toward the expense of publication (in mimeographed form) of the results of
our research if, in your estimation, such publication is justified. It is
probable that Dr. Herzog's project in New York will publish anything we do in the way of
typological classification in cooperation with him. I've already been asked to collet a group of
western songs and edit them for the series published by this project, so I feel we can obtain sufficient
publication to satisfy Dr. Sharp if enough appropriate material turns up as I fully expect it
will.
Cordially yours,
Dear Henry:
There seem to be so very many things to
tell you, I don't know where to begin. My last letter was about Jugo-Slavs, no? Since then Austin
and I have been to Carmel, with our usual phenomenal luck in finding singers and willing help of
various kinds, and, if anything, a higher incidence than usual of absurd jokes. Carmel performed
very well -- we stayed at the Greenes', which is always mad and amusing, and Tony throve in the
midst of that hectic family, everybody talking at once and nobody listening to anyone else -- he said
it seemed just like home. On the Saturday night we went to a Spanish benefit dance on Foam St. in
New Monterey and found a surprising number of Basques, one of whom invited us to a big Basque
picnic at Saratoga the next day -- but when it came to the point we all, including our Basque and his
wife, were too tired to go. We were amused because we'd been told so many times that Basques
were unapproachable and farouche. Originally we'd rounded up about a dozen people who were all
to go in costume, just for fun; but we spent so long arguing Anne Greene and her escort into their
costumes that we somehow missed the rest of the crowd, who never did turn up, so only the four of
us arrived, in costume, among the dignified un-costumed Spaniards. At first they all frowned, then
the men thawed; and finally the women, after we'd bought5ยข chances on dishes, candy, a box
of groceries and a millinery order The music was nothing ---- very bad accordion player --- but they
did several varieties of the broom dance designed to stimulate exchange of partners. This was a new
wrinkle to Tony (it's pure American so far as I know) and he created tremendous amusement by
failing several times to get the point, and the voluble efforts to set him right in three languages there
were a few French Basques there too nearly finished me off. Very late in the evening they played
some jotas, etc., on the victrola -- records provided by the Astec Studio Shop advt. in Carmel.
Everybody without exception knew the jota and several couples danced the jarabe and Anne and I
had three or four men and women teaching us the jarabe at once. Later Anne could n't get over the
friendliness shown us, and the ease with which the ice was broken. All we had done, Tony and I
announced in unison, was have a good time! I was worried once or twice because Annie and
Adolph kept disappearing to take a drink of wine out in the car and for the most part they sat and
watched, to out disgust: I was afraid they'd emphasize our character of outsiders..... just some more
drunken smarty Americans ..... but finally they sobered sufficiently and toward the end they really
entered into the spirit of the thing
Sunday, we chased cowboys----one odd specimen who used to
work at Bettie Greene's stable; another great pal of mine, one of the famous Radcliffe brothers from
Salinas, Bill Radcliffe. He's sixty or so now, but in his palmy days he and his brothers constitued a
famous cattle-thieving gang. They were so well liked, however, that when they were finally
arrested, the townspeople rose to a man and delivered them from jail leaving the Sheriff under the
impression the crowd's intention was to hang 'em. Instead they were 'admonished', says Bill, and
turned loose. When Bill told me this story I inquired [how?] come he'd reformed. Well, said
Bill,[?] youknow they begun building fences all over this country
and it was n't what it had been by a long shot. One day I was coming along a draw and seen 40 steer
and without thinking much about it I run 'em off toward a private corral we had, without thinking
what I was doin'. Then all of a sudden I come to and I says to myself, what the hell are you doing,
Bill Radcliffe,
The best bit of Monterey County vaquero exploration we really did
yesterday in San Francisco a really remarkable piece of hunch-following.
I was technically
starting for my father's ranch at Fresno but Tony and I got into one of our interminable
conversations and he undertook to ride as far as Colma with me (where I was nearly diverted for the
fifteenth time by Tony's desire to explore the Serbian, Greek, Chinese & amp; etc. cemeteries!) ...
anyhow, we started over the shoulder of Twin Peaks and I cut across a new way and found a
surprising number of Garritt
Garritt
[?] at the Carmel Valley Center ? on the
edge of the Marble ranch... where they did (he says) the Varsvieenne to a special Carmel Valley
tune.... also lots of polkas, etc. You had to belong to the Farm Bueau to come that kept out Carmel.
How the real people thereabouts do hate Carmel! Tony was offered a job as guide at the Mission,
$30-40 a month for afternoon work, and two rooms at the Mission looking toward lobos, to live in..
for the summer. He is intrigued but doubtful, he is n't sure why, and I'll be interested to see how he
decides.
Today I wet to the Armenian Cathedral, and will write about that tomorrow I'm,
getting, thank goodness, sleepy. Also we did some pretty good hunch-following in Monterey our
last day there, and found a most wonderful old lady from the Asturias named Maria Garcia, who
runs a modest Spanish restaurant in tye "Oldest Brick House in California" and sings, my goodness!
some so very Arabic tunes, I nearly had a fit. We sat for four hours, she talking to Tony in a
[Spanish?] so clear that I understood almost every word and finally felt immerused in the language
was sure I could speak it too.... so I launched bravely forth only to find the words come out in
Italian, to my disgust! Then Tony unearthed some remnants of "old Spanish-Calif. Families" with
songs. He automatically takes on the ladies, I the gents, incidentally...very neat.
This typewriter's margin dingus is out of whack.
Maria said she would record songs
for us, but se wants her son to be present as she sings better when singing to accompany his dancing
.... so much the better of course!
She is a really remarkable woman. She has taught both her son
and daughter to dance; she spent a week, two years ago, teaching Spanish cooking in the cooking
school at the Emporium, and she had very shrewd notions for better team work among Italian
fishermen of whose intelligence she is very scornful. It seems that nowadays the commission houses
post a notice: Wanted, 10, or 20, or 6, tons of fish today. Then all the men go out, spend 40 or 50
dollars on gasoline, and each bring in the required amount. Thus the price of the fishaccepted is
forced down, and all but one or two of them have had their trouble and expense for nothing. Let the
union, says Maria, insist daily on a report of their needs from the commission merchants; then let the
men rotate, and on the days they make nothing they at least will have no expenses. But, says Maria
further, you can't teach them Italians nothing. The canneries are closed now, until next month, so
times are bitterly hard. Last season was n't a good one, either. She mentioned that some Italian
tenants in a house of hers have been unable to pay their rent for 16 months, and they have so little
food that she takes them the beans, etc., left over from the restaurant. [How?] can I let those people
go hungry, when here there are beans?, said she. At least we others always eat, and what I make
extra for the restaurant I have to do anyway and often it is not eaten ...... excusing herself lest we
think her 'soft'.
The most interesting music I've heard in this state was at the Armenian service
yesterday, and the service itself was entirely new to me and very intriguing in form. Did you know
that one part of the very long service, which lasts over 2 hours minus the sermon, is called the Rite
of Peace? and that the congregation exchange the kiss of peace along themselves.... the kiss goes
from the celebrant of the mass to the deacon and from him to he men and women the men sit on the
right, the women on the left, each member of the congregation nods right and left over the shoulder
of his 2 or 3 nearest neighbors, saying "Christ is risen," to which the reply is "Christ is risen indeed,
my friend." This is part of the regular Sunday service, and the celebrant and those prepared take
communion every Sunday too. The service was chanted and sung almost entirely ..... by the priest
The priest
and deacon, on the other hand, chanted in intricate curves like rabic script, with great dynamic
variation, shadows and highlights, and the subtle pitch variation like Turkish music.... Oh, that
reminds me I forgot to tell you about my Turk in Carmel---- that will have to be for later.
Twice
during the service the Host is carried clear around the altar, and at one point it is carried in
procession, followed by the choir and the catechumens, clear around the church from north to south.
After the benediction the congregation is given fragments of unleavened bread, like a thin bleached
tortilla --- bread blessed during the service and eaten, so the woman said who urged me to accept a
piece, in sign of fellowship.
It seems the Armenian service is cast in a language much older than
the current spoken tongue, and because it is now so little understood, they have recently published in
(in French) a missal with an English translation on the right-hand page. This also contains about 20
of the melodies ordinarily but not in this Cathedral used for the service, taken? from a collection
made in India and Persia 20 years ago. The congregation is noticeably elderly, and the preface to
the missal comments on this as a general situation in Armenian churches everywhere, which the
English text and rather full explanation of the ritual will, it is hoped, tend to change.
Twice
during the service the ministrant stood close to the altar and a red silk curtain with a great gold cross
on it was drawn across behind him, concealing him for 10 minutes or so while the choir continued to
sing. He is not apparently exposed to the gaze or the congregation while he blesses the bread and
wine nor while he partakes of the Eurcharist himself.
Miss Kalusian, a Sunday school teacher,
from whom - borrowed her Missal to read during the long sermon in Armenian, had a pamphlet of
instructions for Sunday school lessons which included `blackboard talks' for which one lesson plan
lay open to my gaze during most of the service. The recommended [?] legend recommended for insription on the blackboard
read:
>
SELL --- GIVE
(picture of money bags, with [suppilcating?] hands
below)
Then a large cross, and one words
FOLLOW ME
The priests were bearded men with bristling eyebrows, very terrifying to look
at, and several of the old women in the congregation looked at me so fiecely I was glad of the light
of day. The service contains some good round curses on unbelievers and I was formally told I might
stay through the [entire?] service --- apparently this is not usual (for non-communicantts) for at one
point there is a brief ceremony for the dismissal of non-communicants by the deacon. As I inquired
about the chanting of the service at the door, however, I was told to disregard this, though I had no
idea what they were talking about until I read the missal.
The hours and hours of sitting through
long harangues in Finnish, Serbian, Japanese, and now Armenian, that I have done lately! dear me.
You know, I really like it and am never bored, no matter how incomprehensible it is.
It was too
bad that Tony stayed behind in S.F. this trip. But I hope to bring him down here with me another
time. We have designs on the [King?] City Rodeo next Saturday, where we have a tentative date
with one of my vaquero friends from the Carmel Valley.
Oh, about the Turk------knowing
nothing about Turkey I am not very intelligible about this,and must ask Tony again what he told
me. Perhaps you remember Steve Patterson's chop house, or grill, or whatever he calls it, a block
north of Stanifrod's
This is my first visit to my father's fig ranch near Fresno in 15 years. I am
never going to find Fresno and exciting place to live, but the ranch is extremely comfortable, and the
vines and trees are thick around the big brick house, and the lawns thick as mattresses, and the
garden full of roses, and altogether it will be pleasant to be here for a while and sun this cough away
--- I still spend about 3 days out of 7 in bed with it. Quite a lot of mone seems suddenly to be
forthcoming for our project, through the University's kind offices; but there are still forms
to fill out
and people to see, so I must still go back and forth. I have a swell 5-page letter from Herzog, dated
May 8th, in answer to one from me dated Feb. 15th! so I have ceased trying to hurry any thing! But Herzog is very cordial and helpful. He saw Elkus last
week and says they "agreed on the value of my planning." I purr. I phoned Wolff and for once said
everything I had to say in the order in which I wanted to say it,--- he laughed very much at one or
two things. Probably by this time you will have seen him.
I keep meaning to outline the project
plans for you, as they now stand, and ask you for a letter endorsing and criticizing, but I always get
off on something else and then, suddenly, it is time to go to bed.... as now. I hope you can spare me
a letter within the next two or three weeks....... [?]
Warmest regards, Henry --- the very best luck to you..... The
more Tony an I enjoy ourselves the more consciously we miss you. But our kind of expedition is
never finished, and I shall be greatly surprised if we don't manage to go about together, the 3 of us,
before so very long.
As always,
Mrs. H. P. Van Sicklen, Secretary
The
Society of California Pioneers
456 McAllister Street
San Francisco, California
Dear
Mrs. Van Sicklen:
Some time ago I addressed the Society of California Pioneers, among other
groups, requesting financial and other aid in establishing a project to record folk music in California.
I am writing now to let you know that we have obtained the necessary money, and that we would
appreciate very much having the endorsement of the Society regardless of its ability to provide any
of the funds we need. There is probably no other single organization in the state which could be as
helpful in directing us to contacts with old-timers, and a letter giving assurance that we may draw on
your sources of information from time to time would be greatly appreciated.
The Works
Progress Administration is undertaking to establish this project in California, under the sponsorship
of the University of California and the Library of Congress. Our chief purpose is the establishment
of Archives of California Folk Music at the University of California, and a set of all records made in
California will be put in the Archives of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in
Washington, D.C.
I hope further to do a certain amount of research in California source
material --- chiefly the published volumes which list of otherwise indicate songs which were current
out here during a period antedating the musical memory of anyone now living who might sing for
my recording machine. As it happens there is considerable material of this sort in volumes on
California history which are not particularly rare. I do not hope to be able to conduct a really
exhaustive search for mention of old songs, but rather to match the best-known songs with their
tunes so that we may issue a selection of early and authentic Califrnia songs for the use of schools
and drama groups. This should not necessitate burrowing into manuscript or perishable newspaper
material. If by good fortune we are able to pursue our research into such material later, I should
expect to have especially rare or unique material microphotographed to prevent damage through
handling.
If, therefore, the Board of Directors of the Society of California Pioneers would
indicate its willingness to act as co-sponsor of this project for the establishment of an Archive of
California Folk Music, I feel such endorsement would help materially in what we are trying to do.
The Society's contribution as co-sponsor might then consist of permission to use certain of its library
materials, in a modest way, occasionally; and a further and invaluable contribution might be your
help in running down traditional performers for recording --- old time singers and fiddlers. It is a
great saving of time and travel expense if I can obtain advance information about people in various
communities who haveinformation or interests which parallel mine.
I should of course expect in
each instance to satisfy you, or anyone the Board cares to designate, that our use of your materials
may hope to be justified by the results, and that we will treat them with proper care. If as I go about
the state I can do any small chores for the Society, I should be only too glad to
With respect to your present
collection of music, about half of it will be of interest to a study of folk music in California and the
rest would certainly interest students of various aspects of California's musical history. Anyone
interested in the publication of music in San Francisco should find material of real value among the
old songs you have, for example. There is one item which was copyrighted in 1833, and a numer of
things from the years 1842-53. They do not relate to California
history particularly, for the most part, but as evidence of the reportoirs current among amateurs of
music here in the Seventies and Eighties, the collection is of real value. When my proposed project
actually gets under way, we can list this for you and perhaps obtain further information about
certain items.
Cordially yours,
SR/sa
P.S. The letter I request should be addressed to
Dr. James B. Sharp, Coordinator ofStatiatical, Survey and Research Projects, Works Progress
Administration, 49 Fourth Street, San Francisco, with a copy to
me.
Dear Sidney -
What the hell of a fine friend I am anyway! I certainly do deserve your censure for such
unpardonable delay. I cannot remember ever delaying so upon a matter of recommendation - and it
would seem to be the one I would most like to put through immediately. Well, here is the stuff. The
letter to Sharp goes with this - air-mail. To assure you I could give you a photograph of my desk
with the Sharp letter on it, sporting an old air-mail stamp I had to paste on.
Apparently it is no
secret that the crafts side of the KL laboratory is going over to WPA on July 1st. Nick expects to get
on to the Recreation Division under Sally and I, into the Music Project at the same time, though why
not sooner no one seems to know. I feel that Sally is largely responsible for the whole thing, though
AJD has done a pretty [?] smart piece of work. I think I can ask you,
therefore, to hold those 30 blanks in readiness to send to me PDQ when I can get AJD's formal
permission.
By the way, I think you should know of a queer mix-up in the minds of the
Rindlisbacher people. They thought that old Garwick was Mr. Sidney Robertson and asked "who
was the young woman if she wasn't ...etc." We had the craziest conversation ntil I discovered that
they thought you were a man. They said you promised them all copies of the records you made of
their playing, but that they have never received any. Can you clarify that?
I had a long talk
about you with Herzog. I dont know what he wrote of it, but I outlined a number of things that have
occurred to me about recording since we worked together.. He said he'd forward them - putting the
mike close to each instrument or voice in turn in an ensemble, taking the tuning of instruments on
the record just before or after recording, pictures, PICTURES, lots of documentation, including the
pertinent folk-lore, more leisurely work, more talk by the performers on the disk - before and after,
checking of words with the performer, the same performer singing interesting material at different
times, different members of the family singing the same song, recordings of play-party games and
square dances with particular reference to getting the calls, noise of action, etc. This is particularly
important when foreign language minority groups are being worked with - their relation with their
environment. Yes - stories, conversations, riddles, etc. You see I am getting more
folk-conscious.
I expect you will be getting a swell lot of material and look forward to hearing
it. As soon as I can after getting started on the Music Project, I am going to propose a clearing
house for music folklore. Botkin will back me up in the Writers' Project and I know Evans will, and
Cahill too. I think we'll get a system of coordination or at least exchange going soon.
[?] be in the way of being straightened out. You're activity in California
will be a factor of no little importance, for as far as I can see it is the first large scale and compeent
entry of WPA into the collection business.
Alan has just made a most interesting series of
recordings - Old Lellyroll Martin, early jazz and swing player, has talked played and sung onton
about 50 disks and countless hours of talk have been taken down short-hand. The bridge between
folk and popular art is most interesting to trace. You, in California, have a chance to contribute in a
unique way, for our scant information tells us that San Francisco figured along with New Orleans,
St. Louis and Chicago in that early history from 1890 to 1915. It might pay you to enquire into the
survival (possible) of players and singers in the prewar dives of the Barbary Coast and Chinatown.
(The more disreputable the better!)
Botkin is a new addition to our group. He is really fine.
Have you read any of his stuff on regionalism? You should play it up big in defining line
Californian field. He has a somewhat unwieldly but meaty article in the volume of papers published
by the Second American Writers' Congress.
I have a paper coming out in the July number of the
Magazine of Art, published by the American Federation of Arts, Wash. I hope you will be able to
see it.
Hamp blew in a few days ago. Nothing new. Same old game.
I metaa man not long
ago who had attended a convention of the STFU in Oklahoma and heard the whole gathering of
many hundreds sing John Handcox's songs. JH was there and lead them. Must have been exciting.
T e book of labor songs gets a bit nearer publication every now and then. The addition of Alan's
stuff is important. Do you get anything of that sort out west? Send it on, if you can, andwwe'll
prorate you in accordance with the scheme I think I sent you once.
Do forgive me a write
soon
Dear Charlie:
Thank you and thank you. Your letter to
Sharp was overwhelmingly kind and I still blush over it. Somany things crowd to my mind to say
that I don't know whether I'll ever get caught up --- the more so as half
a dozen people lie in wait to snatch this typewriter from me, even when I stand up to write ..... I'm
home again and even went to a Swedish Party and danced the hambo
last Saturday at Neptune Beach in Alameda, which was taken over entirely by 11,000 Swedes and
Finns. The hambo is wonderful, a very hectic polka in which the lady is swooped around the room
at a mad rate. This was the first such party I've attended where the young people shouted as loudly
for the traditional group dances as their elders.. and the floor was too crowded to breathe during
hambos, polkas and schottisches, and half empty during fox trots.
One young man said to his
party near me as they applauded for a continuation of hambo music That's the best dance of them
all, ---breathlessly. This was the Mid d summer celebration..... I've
been in bed recuperating ever since, but it was worth it and actually I'm not so badly off, I do get out
and around whenever I'm sufficiently determined.
'My' project is now out of my hands and going
on its way--- the University has approved it and guaranteed the money (which it's getting from the
State Relief Administration, incidentally,..) and it should be on its way to Washington by this time.
In maybe a month I'll be at work again, imagine that! I have n't raised the question of my health, of
course, because I fully intend to be quite well by then! but even if I'm not, I expect to have quite
surprisingly good assistants and propose to wangle through. Halpert's old pal, Betty Ryan, suddenly
proved to be a citizen of NYC and has returned to his project. But Mr. Lawton unearthed an even
sweller gal for me, Sivart Poladian, who took her M.A. in at U.C. in music with a thesis on
Armenian folk music (out of a book--- I mean, she used a published collection) and the thesis is
really a grand piece of work. Sh has had all kinds of business experience working her way through
U.C. as well, and is a delightful person, so I'm pleased. Happily she is eligible for certification. She
is as difficult as Dr. Brown of sainted memory ever was, however, about getting the 'originals' of
Armenian tunes and disregarding the present form here now. But I trust she can be cured of
that.
Had a visit with Henry the other day and he said he'd heard from you so I half expected
that you were beginning to come to life. `I was so amused at your difficulties over your job, and
sympathetic: it has been too funny for words out here, and it is just under 5 months since I started the
organization of this project by talking to Giulio Silva of Fed. Music (one of the few really intelligent
musicians on the S.F. project. Old Hertz, with his genius for nabbing good-paying jobs and doing
nothing, is Cock of the Walk in the Bay Region.) Silva is S.F. director. "All I do," he said to me
with a smile, "is just try to make a leetle music." I enclose Randall Thompson's Americana text,
which Fed. Mus. did out here. I was more taken with text than music; the performance was really
very good, though I understand it was done even better, later, by the
UC chorus under Thompson.
For two or three months I've seen only S.F. papers and practically
no magazines and during my last visit with Henry I kept saying: "Why, Idid n't know that!" about
various New York doings that he'd seen in the NY Times. Finally he said laughing: "Well, you just
come over here regularly and I'll be only too glad to keep you in touch with what goes on in the
world!" which for humor and courage takes the cake, it seems to me. Prospects of his release seem
better than they have been. Medical opinion is unvarying that he should be released but the prison
board has hitherto refused to except the opinion of any doctor paid by I've
forgotten, though Henry told me.... someone you know whose music you recently praised in a letter
to Henry. Dickinson? Hutchinson? or something... Anyway, the asst. was to report back to Drs.
Meyer and Wolf, and Dr. Meyer proposed to interest the convening psychiatrists and get a group
statement from them on the subject, which should weigh with the prison board if anything can. No
publicity is to be given it at first, anyway .... so shshshshshs. Henry did n't specifically ask me to
write you this but I'm sure he'd be glad to have your mind and Ruth's relieved to this extent. Then:
It seems when his case came before the parole board their refusal to consider his parole was based on
a statement of unknown source to the effect that Henry had been in prison before for the same
offence. Therefore he was treated as a second offender and the statement that he was a "dangerous
criminal" was read into his record at San Quentin. Doug Short, his attorney, was shown all this
recently for the first time--- apparently they seem to be relaxing just a little, as they were even
willing to let Doug know that the prison physicians consider him safe to be released. The problem
now is how to persuade the prison board to save face and yet go back on their oft-repeated statement
that no sex offender will ever be released during their jurisdiction. The statement that Henry had
been arrested before is of course entirely erroneous, it needs hardly besaid. You'll understand how
extremely important it is to keep all this under your hats for the moment...... The source of this
mistaken information seems to have been a defamatory letter which was written when Henry was
first arrested ---- somebody going a little nuts among the neighbors, probably.
Lemme see, what
else: Sally, bless her energetic heart, seems to have thought I was asking her for a job and she set to
work like mad apparently to arrange me one. But it is n't quite like that..... for 'political' reasons
connected with building up his job, Sharp likes to line up all possible 'cooperating agencies' --- at
least I think that is it. Also it is only good sense, when I say material useful in recreation can be
found, to ask the recr. people if they agree. Zanzig wrote me a letter out of the goodness of his heart
despite his profound disapproval of the song sheets! and of the 'bad singing' of folk singers.
"Cooperation is our Aim" nearly slayed [md] slew him; apparently! both for the reason that it 'sings
badly' and because he pointed out that you don't achieve cooperation by singing about it but by doing something together!
Of course he is dead right on both points, and I explained you would not have chosen that particular
song except for pressure from the coop. educ. people. Zanzig is a perfect darling, I've always been
crazy about him, and I've never seen such a perfect job of managing groups and producing beautiful
singing with any group no matter how awkward or reluctant or shy, the first shot, as he can do --- it
is miraculous, really. But of course he is thinking in such different terms..... He said: Look out,
child, or you'll turn into a scholar! which, considering that scholars seem to consider me a little
tainted by recreation and prog. educ. notions, tickled me. Zanzig disliked the records VERY much
because, forsooth, they were so badly sung! even Mr. Russell of Marion Va failed to charm him.
After he had heard the record and expressed himself I withdraw my request for a letter, but he
insisted on writing one anyway. I told him if we published any songs strictly for recr. groups we'd
ask him to try them out with some of his groups first, which he said he would do. He is a
person-of-one-idear, like us, only the idear is different; but the one-idearedness makes us kin
anyhow. He is doing a superlative job in his line, ---- extension courses for leaders, at universities
through the country. He is a city worker, primarily.... disapproved of
the Dodger because it fails to help toward mutual appreciation or different kinds of people! and I
told him he was taking it too seriously, that it was playful, the sardonic middle west which somehow
he fails to sense. I thought his opinions worth repeating, as coming from one of the smartest of his
kind in the country. I would give a
I must [wite?] Sally--- she said she was
sending you copies on the two letters, [hers?] and mine, so you'll know about my sweet
Jugo-Slavs.... Her point about keeping the lines open for coop. with music and recr. et all is
excellent and something I have been congratulating myself about in our set-up, though it is
accidental, actually--- I did n't have sense enough in the beginning to figure it out for myself. We
are a research project, upart of a big 1100-man U.C. WPA project... and while research seems to
come under Mrs. Woodward, we don't stem directly from any of the ig Federal projects, so-called.
Hence we can coop. equally with music, recr., and drama... and anybody else interested. Elkus
wants to do some [typelological?] analysis a la Herzog, in cooperation with Herzog, for example.....
and we're going to do some library indexing, at the other end of the scale. I'm' looking forward to
much exchange of material ..... keep an ear to the ground for anything even remoted related to Calif.
in songs, will you? Thanks SO MUCH for the tip about ragtime people in S.F. NYC and New
Orleans..... (you should add Memphis). There must surely be some old boys out here....... An old
minstrel trouper changed a tire for me on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley a few weeks ago! and he is
priceless --- but be should be 'movied', his elocutionary gestures are beyond words. People like that
fall off trees into my lap all the time, it is a kind of magic. Mother's garage man, I think I told you,
turns out to be a much-interested-in-folk-lore
A letter from the hired-man-of-the-undertaker, now in Redding, Calif., remarked
apropos of the Louis-Schmeling fight the other day: "Gee but the fight tonight lasted quick, did n't it!"
I know of Botkin through Vance Randolph,
they are friends.... and of course I have Botkins Play Party in Okla. book, a grand piece of work. I'd
love to work for Botkin from all I hear of him, but feel I should work the thing put here for a few
months anyway, first. I want the experience of struggling with WPA research workers at the bottom
of the [ladder?] for one thing. The experience in organizing the thing has been priceless, but I want
to see if I can work it out and bring part at least of our plans to a head ... hitherto I've always been a
better starter than a continuer, but I expect that's something that can be remedied, with a little
determination. By the bye, I was much interesed to have you say that ours will probably be the first
large-scale competent entry of WPA into collecting..... and that's a statement I'd love to quote but
am afraid you are mistaken ...... I am not sure how or where but collecting has been done by WPA
in Oklahoma and New Mexico (under Campa of Univ. of NMex at Albuequerque) at least. Halpert
went into New Jersey and I believe New York.... and of course JAL's foray under Hist. [Reo?]. was
not a small undertaking. All of this was probably done by a single worker, however, except that I
think the N. Mex. one may have been bigger, but do not know. In all those instances recording has
been done on disks. There are undoubtedly other places where this has been done under WPA ---
perhaps in Texas. I saw an article clipped from a NYC paper saying that Fed. music had collected
about 2500 American folk songs. Was all of this on paper, for Pete's sake. Oh, there was also
[Gellert?], who worked for Halpert for a while.
I've thought of 'my' project as a very small one
--- it does not even technically cover all of the state of California, due to administrative separation of
this state into two.... a la North and South Dakota. So theoretically I cannot go
I have a plaintive letter from Knott in
which she says she feels this year's festival was better than last; but she says she had the benefit of
considerable advice from large numbers of folklorists, no two bits of which were the sme usually, so
it was scarcely very helpful. She said she "sighed for understanding souls like you (SR) who take
life seriously, but not too seriously." In view of what you wrote this amused me vary much! Of
course it is all very well to be folkloristically critical but I'd like to see any of the nice old boys like
for instance Gordan do as well! However perhaps the morning sessions should be definitely curned
over to a committee of experts, quite out of her hands, to present the people who don't show up well
on the big stage or who are too limited in their appeal. It seems to me to be a shame to waste her
experience and drive, and really, when you consider the things she does n't know, the things she does
know are quite surprising. It is awfully funny to think of her teaching at the Univ. of Washington!!
no, its Wash. Univ. at St. Louis---- dear me. Speaking of middle western culture, I had an awfully
funny letter from Vance Randolph in which he remarked that when meeting time came he was ill
and unable to present his paper before the Miss. Hist. Soc. at Columbia, Mo., so lo and behold they
gave it to May Kennedy McCord to road --- of all people! You'd have to know Vance, and the long
story about friend May's jealous gossip about him which at one time seriously and perfectly
unjustifiably upset Mrs. Randolph very much, a couple of years before her death .... I suspect May's
resentment resulted from Vance's lack of response to her coy inveiglements... I don't know.
Anyhow, Vance I imagine feels he wishes he lived in a period when one could remove obnoxious
people from one's path without fear of anything but congratulation! and with cause, for really she is
venomous. So his resigned amusement at the turn of events was droll! (All this is confidential,
Randolph apparently says nothing aloud.)
Lemme see, what other gossip do I know?
By the
bye, in writing Henry about prospective jobs, you know, don't you, that no ex-prisoner can be paid
from Federal funds? Occasionally one gets on WPA --- a manon the Writer's Project in S.F. the
other day gave his last place of employment as San Quentin! --- but not on non-security wage basis,
and not during parole period. He told me this and I imagine wanted it conveyed to you, as he
probably cannot write it....
How swell that you plan to come out here! You can probably
arrange to see him more than once, having come from a long distance, if you plan to be here only a
short time. This is almost a routine request and all right to make, though Henry is very anxious no
special treatment or priveleges be requested for him --- so much protest was received by the prison
authorities at first that it created a little resentment and he wants not to call attention to himself in
any way. But when you go to see him the first time, you can make the request verbally as you leave
to see him again before the noraml [30?]-days between visits have elapsed. Conversations are
surprisingly confidential--- they occur in a room full of people and the one or two guards can't
possibly hear you......
Oh: I ahppened to be in the phone office at Ventura, Calif., some months
ago, when the phone operator from La Jolla called up and inquired what C.I.O. stood for, nobody in
La Jolla knew. The phone operator did n't either, so just for fun I suggested she call the local
newspaper. When nobody there knew, I confessed I did and gave her what she called the "English"
for it.
The title list looks very elegant but I see lots of small errors. In a day or two I will return
with all the notations I can think of .....[most?] of the errors are probably due to my handwriting; but
the foreign titles are surprisingly accur
Mrs. Sidney
Robertson,
2850 19th Street,
San Francisco, California.
Dear Sidney:
I have just finished writing to all of your contacts and am now devoting myself to prayer for a week, hoping that the good lord will intercede and melt their stern academic hearts and dissolve their rigid regionalism so that I can do some good work in the woods this summer.
I shall let you know from time to time how things are going and I should enjoy very much hearing about your adventures and exploits on the West Coast. If there is anything that I can do to help, please let me know.
Yours for more Turks, Assyrians and Portuguese,
al/ms
Alan
Lomax
Dear Henry:
The project description, etc.,
has at last gone off --- to Washington, as I understand it. Mr. Pomeroy, WPA a dministrator for the
University, tells me he has signed it. I understand from someone else that he [md] Pomeroy [md]
considers we cannot possibly keep 20 workers busy for a year on [folk?] songs. Dear me, he is in
for a surprise. I have hopes that Miss Poladian's bad luck in getting a teaching job --- she has tried in
vein for 2 years and is very depressed about it because all the people who have been graduated by
the Music Dept in her year, last year, and half of those who graduated this year, have been
placed------ I rather expect that she will qualify for WPA and join our project. This is of course
swell from my point of [?] view, as she has some notion of
musicological research and in addition is trained office worker. She is a natural executive, always
thinking for everybody and one jump ahead of the procession all the time. This is a defect in the
field I find but a great asset to ave behind you among the files and books. She is a most charming
person and if we do manage to get her I shall feel much more secure[
Meanwhile, I have a long list of explorations with Tony Austin
about which to write you. It has more Armenians, Assyrians (including Joe Daniels, whom you
know) Icelanders, Mr. Botica the Dalmatian bagpipes player, the annual Swedish midsummer
festival, more Jugo-Slavs, the Caledonian Society and your friend Pat O'Neill with his Union pipes,
the Nestorians at Turlock, the fiesta de San Antonio at Mission San Antonio--- I think Itold you a
little of that --- and various odds and ends of things. I can hardly sit still at the typewriter because
Tony tells me that almost next door to a Foster's where we get coffee frequently someone has placed
on display two kinds of strange fiddles which sound like the two instruments variously described as the Hardanger fiddle.....
You know I think we
talked, last time, without my mentioning the Icelanders at all, yet I had only the preceding week
recorded among them. Anna had arranged with a young couple who live on the shoulder of mount
Davidson over toward San Jose Avenue, named Phillips, to have a party whenever I should be
ready, so I gave the word, finally, and she [md] Mrs. Phillips--- gathered perhaps a dozen people,
most of whom sang. One very serious gent had a number of songs written out (words) and he paced
about nervously and begged me to hurry up so he could get his chore off his chest! He sang ten or
twele songs of which perhaps half were supposed to be rymur. But I have my doubts about some of
them, because the definitions they could give me of the rymur were so contradictory. One of them
was a 'contemporary' song of 1902 or so. It seems that at the end of each Icelandic legislative
session it is customary for various people to write long songs, a verse for each act or the legislature.
This bit of song has survived because the Icelanders thought it so amusing that the legislature
proposed to appropriate money to teach each Icelandic girl to sew and cook. [?] The joke lay, as nearly as I could make out, in the superfluity of such
attempts on the part of the schools when every Icelandic mother teaches her daughters these things as
a point of pride. Among the guests on this night was a Mrs. Benonys from Berkeley, who is a
saleswoman at Roos Bros there, incidentally--- a pleasant white-haired fine looking woman with a
semi-trained voice. She has a brother in Iceland who is a composer (I am beginning to think the
remaining population in Iceland consists of composers exclusively, this has been said to me so
often!) and he has collected and published a volume of Icelandic folk songs which she promised to
request for me. This collection was made about 25 years ago. She will be very helpful as time goes
on I think, because she does n't care about recording herself and knows in general what is valuable
for my purpose, as Anna, bless [her?], is far from doing.
These people (excepting possibly two of the older men) are not the ones who sang in
5ths for you..... and the only group singing they did was a dance song, in which Mrs. Benonys sang
a line, the chorus replied in unison, and after repeating all this everybody sang a sort of refrain in
unison.... sea chanty or negro spiritual form. Either it was a very dignified dance indeed or their
fatigue as the hour grew late was responsible [md] but they sang it most decorously and slowly.They
assured me that was the way they sang it for dancing, but I really think they were too tired to
know.
Earlier in the day Anna and I recorded Mrs. Sigurasson's songs at Laguna Honda, but the
old lady did n't sing as well as the first time I heard her and she mixed things up a good deal and for
most of her songs (she sang at least 20, in two 'shifts') it is impossible to be sure of the melody.
However, those records are obviously going to be useful in stimulating other Icelandic memories ---
nothing seems to give a [ [?] urge to
perform like hearing a bad performance of something he knows. Mrs. S---'s Icelandic speech is
marvelously pure and clear, everyone said. I was struck by two things with the Icelanders---
undoubtedly on insufficient evidence, but I'd like to know what you think---- first, there seemed to be
a number of melodies in two parts used for texts whose verses had four lines instead of two,
requiring the repetition of the short tune. As I understand the Eddas are in a two-line verse form,
and as the Kalevala certainly is although it seems to be sung habitually in a 3-line form by repeating
the 2nd line--- I wonder whether those particular tunes might not legitimately be suspected of being
much older than the words, survivals of very early days indeed? When the scale tones are few and
the range small, I can hardly resist this notion.... Second, no two people present seemed to agree
exactly upon text, tunes, or both, to familiar folk songs. Given what you told me of frequent
improvisation among Icelanders, and the narrative, ballad character of so many of their songs, I
wonder whether they don't provide a parallel to our stage of development in American folk music.
Talking with Zanzig the other day, who craves songs for group singing, I realized all over again
what individualists our singers are and what a small amount of folk singing in this country is group
singing (American folk singing, I mean, inthe sense of Ky. mt.. Ozarks, etc.) Group songs are
almost entirely dance songs, singing games and
Later, when the project starts and I ha ve more records, I am to
meet with these and other Icelanders again. I enjoyed them so much --- suche grand people. Thank
you so much for the experience, Henry.... I had an awful time getting the titles straight, everybody
spelled Icelandic words at me, nineteen to the dozen and all at once. On the way to record Mr.
Botica's bagpipe playing the next day, we stopped at Anna's to check these over and Anna insisted
on calling up Caroline Cummings, despite our insistence that we had an appointment and must go
on. I did n't know she [had?] phoned and we were absorbed in checking the Icelandic titles in Anna's
little Oriental room, Anna, Barney, Tony and I, when Mrs.... I forget her name [md] Caroline---
came in, full of conversation and anxious to show us the pictures of her new house. I was quite
honestly scarcely conscious she had come into the room, as I was concentrating on Barney and Anna
against the girls' conversation with Tony and the son-in-law, and Tony reproached me afterwards for
my rudeness. I' did speak to her and then I turned back to what we were doing without
I think I'd better conclude this and get it off, as I can't possibly cover all the ground I
want to today anyway----- and there are those instruments which may be removed from the window
any minute --- !
You'll be glad to hear I finally had two letters, a long list of stuff to check over,
and an unbelievably cordial copy of a letter to Jim [ Sharpe
[?] the folk music base is to be encouraged [?] it won't be time and effort wasted. He was complimentary beyond
words, both in his letter to Sharp andthe ones to me, about our project plans [md] and says such
elaborately enthusiastic things I was quite floored, partly with astonishment and partly with
embarrassed blushes. He [ says?] the reason he delayed writing so
long was that he lost my letter giving Sharp's title! which is exactly like Charlie --- only he
[?] enormous bill for
travel expense, and no work for WPA-ers provided in connection or as a result. Then some woman,
I never knew her name, collected widely with a machine in Oklahoma; and Campa has been
fathering a state-wide project in New Mexico, at the Univ. of N. Mex. Also WPA has gone with a
recording machine into New Jersey and into Florida, to my certain knowledge.
Anyhow,
apparently Charlie is feeling pretty cheerful, as you deduced from your letter! I am so relieved that
he has a job, they must have had a bad time, as his salary stopped in January and unless they have
both changed enormously since last year, they never had a cent of money saved. Of course this is
largely because Charlie has sons in college and was contributing loyally to a number of 'causes'; but
their vague propensity for getting into elaborate jams of one sort and another was expensive too.
Once they heard that [?] some friends were closing their NYC
apartment for a week [md] friends who had once offered them said apartment, perhaps a year
before, and whom they had not seen nor heard from since. So they sallied forth to NYC expecting to
locate the key through some psychic process. Of course this failed them and when they still had
found no shelter at midnight on Saturday Charlie became very firm with Ruth (he told me) and they
went and registered at (I believe) the Ritz. If not the Ritz, it was a comparable hotel, and Charlie
showed me his $28-for-two-days bill not without some pride! They had to stay for two days because
they could n't find anyone to lend them the money to get themselves out of the hotel until Monday.
There are a good half dozen such stories, complications rainingfrom every direction in a way one
somehow feels could only happen to the Seegers. Once a member of the Special Skills staff rescued
the two children from a drunken farmer's wife with whom the Seegers [?] had enthusiastically left them (farm life will do them so much good)
while they--- the parents--- went on a long field trip through the deep south and to Arkansas. Being
helpless herself with a small son who had typhoid, Judy persuaded one of the hospitals in
Washington, with great difficulty, to take the children until their mother could return ----- this after
frantic into the
hospital then I had to talk them out again without paying the bill; and then after 48 hours there was
again having to back track on all my previous speeches...... Washington is such a city of
[wanderess?] that there was no boarding school taking such small children that had room for two
more.....
The woman who wrote about mission music is Anna Blanche McGill, a great pal of
mine, a nice white-haired maiden lady in mourning for her sister Josephine who collected in the Ky.
mts. She was a part of the 'folklore front' in the office of the National Folk Festival people at
Chicago --- expected to prevent bad breaks in that field on the part of Sarah Gertrude Knott, the head
of it,-and she managed to rearrange the grammar of the broadcasts slightly, and so on. She belongs
to the [Densmore-Rague school --- and as I seem to have a fatal fascination for enthusiastic
white-haired ladies she quite adopted me.
Charlie's job will take him about the country ---- and,
he hopes, out here......
I have been in Fresno briefly again, surrounded by [Amerians?] two deep,
so have not seen C.S. Smith. I have to see Ed. Lindeman at U.C., too, I am told, though I do not
quite understand why. I had a hasty letter from his assistant in charge in Washington asking me to
get in touch with him -- no [explnation?]. However he's a man I've always wanted to meet, he
knows a lot of things I'd like to know.
Like you and a few other people.
Must stop, must
stop. More soon---see you soon -- --- all good things to
you...
Dear Herbert:
To let you know, hastily, that 'my' project was finally
apprved out here after various absurd vicissitudes; and included in the letter recommending approval
by Washington, as a partial basis for such recommendation, is included the statement that a unit of
the Nat. Service Bureau has [ ? ] asked to publish a volume of songs
to be collected by this project.
As it turns out we have enough money to publish, more really
than we need, so that we can include some microphotographing of documents libraries would prefer
we should not handle; also some photos of instruments........ Our sponsor's funds come from the
State Relief Administration via the University of California--- money turned over to the University
for use on this project at the rate of $7.50 per man month; ergo, $150 per month, about twice what I
was requesting. SRA not unnaturally prefers this to paying $21 or so per man month on relief; but
the joker is that none of this money can be used for travel by someone not on SRA staff. WPA is
giving me a trifle of travel money by a comic process which consists of adding $11 to my salary and
then subtracting $30 for a travel allowance so I'll have to hunt up a trifle more somewhere. Anyway
it doesn't matter, there'll be plenty to do.....
So, you don't need to publish our stuff unless
youwant to; but I am pleased to note, as establishing a happy precedent, that you may if you like.
We have two superb music copyists on NYA at the University at our disposal and can prepare the
sheets and send to you complete, ready for your photolith process.....
As nearly as I have any
ideas about it at all now, I'd like to issue first a sort of combination of Wisconsin-Calif. songs, a
study of the Ford familyr epertoire. Two of the brothers are out here now; one of them in Wis.
continues sending me songs, among them, out of a clear sky last week, the 'Yorkshire Bite' if you
please. Alan Lomax is going up there this summer and will record the older men in the family
whom I missed --- and send me copies or I'll know the reason why;--- and the brothes out here know
a lot of amusing and interesting stuff ----- probably 75 [gon?] songs when boiled down. One of the
brothers who sang for me in Wis., my most fluent singer, is out here now, which establishes the
bridge. The first lot are thanks partly to Special Skills, FSA; the others will be pure unadulterated
WPA --- except for those I've got on my own time in addtion--roughly half. OK by you? Southern
Folk Lore Quarterly wants to see 'em--I thought they might print the 3 rare Child ballads and one or
two others, first.... ?) How are your publications coming along? Do let me hear from you. I've
heard not a word from Tony Ryan since she left; but I doubt whether she has my address. Please tell
Herzog for me that we're coming along, over all the highest hurdles, merely formal ones left now,
and as soon as we formally open I'll write him and get down to cases. Carleton Sprague Smith is out
here and asked to see me-- we meet tomorrow.
I was so tickled by Herzog's saying he would not
go into details, when he last wrote me, since undoubtedly my plans had changed since my original
letter to him. There speaks a man of experience!
Best regards-- as
ever...
Tell Tony I'm practically well ---- only recently
discovered I've been gadding about with a mildy fractured spine and, was much, cheered --- and
practically cured-- by the
Dear Dr.
Spivacke:
Hastily --- am writing in dim light in my car on a ferry boat between Oakland ad S.F.
so please forgive errors...
First: the WPA project you have been so helpful with has been
approved here and we are waiting for confirmation of that approval from Washington, which is I am
informed practically certain, within a few days.
Second: Dr.Eduard Lindeman has been out here
and he took me up on a high hill to show me the cities of the world and I am afraid I succumbed. He
offered me a job in Washington, encouraging collection and engineering dissemination of American
indigenous material all through the country, for use in recreation in this country. A few former
Special Skillets have gone onto his staff and I am tremendously flattered to be included. (Recreation
Division of WPA). So many people I know would give their eye-teeth to work under Lindeman, he
is absolutely tops in his rather broad sociological field, in this country; and I really feel I would be
an idiot to miss the opportunity, although like a nit-wit I tried at first to argue him out of the idea on
the graound
Now: I suppose a strictly conscientious person would dash to Sharp, under whom the
proposed f.s. project comes, and tell him all this, particularly in view of his feeling that this project is
chiefly important as allowing me to collect in the field. But I ain't agonna do no such things if I
manage to unearth a possible successor for myself, as I believe I can. The University of Calif. music
dept. really wants the project and the staff is vitally interested in it -- good people there, too. We
have much more money for materials (though less than we need for travel) than we expected at first,
so plan photographs and other trimmings; and the removal of my recorder will not cripple the project
as it can, if put to it, purchase one of its own. The music dept. is contemplating buying one
too.
If for any reason there is much further delay in putting the project into operation, however,
may feel obliged to confess to Dr. Sharp that I can't be counted on, whereupon the choleric Dr.
Sharp (he is singularly like JAL) will undoubtedly cancel the project in a rage. Unless I am sure I
can in operating smoothly, it certainly would do more harm than good to let it
start. I think this is improbable, as I hope to convince Dr. Lindeman that I will be more useful to
him if I have the experience of the details of organization here first. But there is that possibility that
we may never get into operation at all.
So: Here am I, with a car and a recorder and a list of
118 contacts in this northern part of Calif. In particular I have an Icelander with 5 tunes to which
the Eddas are still chanted, my 32 or so performers on folk instruments in or near S.F., a few rare
Calif.--Spanish, early days-- bits, one good contact in the Robinson Jeffers country, a few
lumbermen in the far north mts. of Calif. and a few-migrants -- also odd bits of Armenian, Assyrian
and Basque stuff that I can get quickly. It is not sufficient--- I mean, I cannot hope to get sufficient
material for research in any one field, such as the University naturally wants; but I can get some
good samples of what there is here, enough to represent Calif. in the AAFS quite respectably,
whether the project starts or not. Only I want to get busy at
once.
I shall certainly have requested blanks of the AAFS
under every conceivable type of arrangement before I'm through! But I am well enough to keep
busy now and though I'm poor, my long suffering parents will probably provide me with gas for a
while yet!
Of course if the project goes through these 50 blanks I am now requesting will
constitute a first installment of the 200 blanks you have proffered the project as co-sponsor.
I am
going to try to use my remaining [?] blanks and if necessary some
Farm Security Admin. aluminum blanks I still have, over the week end, recording a Portuguese folk
play for the festival of San Antonio at San Jose --- if I get confirmation of the rumor that it is a
traditional folk play not unlike the Pastores. I'm so glad to be feeling pretty well again -- until the
past month I had not been free of pain for almost six months --- I had a cracked vertebra and,
unbelievably, did n't know it.
Thank you and thank you for all your helpfulness.
Maybeso
on this new job I have plenty of week-ends in strange places and can go by car with room for my
companionable little Presto. Maybeso I go into New England, where Dorothy Thompson offered me
a letter to Mrs. Helen Flanders, long long ago. Maybeso a lot of interesting things.
C.S. Smith
of NY Pub. Lib, has been out here and of course it would be just my phenomenal luck to be with
him when he made the only really exciting find of mission music that I know of --- he had been to 17
missions unavailingly, and unearthed this really good stuff at --- of all places --- the Stanford Univ.
museum --- which I blush to admit I would never have dreamed of exploring. I trust it is all right for
me to tell you this! come to think of it I am not so sure he wants it broadcast yet .....
My new job
is confidential as yet, please --- it is far from settled yet. But I wanted you to know why I'm requested
Always
cordially,
Since the Archive
contains no records from California, I recommend that she be furnished with fifty acetate discs (cost
ca. $37.50).
Chief, Division of Music
Please purchase the above records from Radioscriptions, Inc., 726 Eleventh Street, N.W., Washington, D. C., and ask them to send twenty-five to the Music Division and twenty-five by railway express to Mrs. Sidney Robertson, 70 Avon Way, San Francisco, California.
Dr. Harold Spivacke, Chief
Music
Division
Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
Dear Dr. Spivacke:
I was notified
today that the project for folk music collecting in California has finally been approved all around
and can go into operation within a few days. We have to rent space and interview prospective
workers, etc., which takes four or five days. So some time next week we should begin to need blanks
Would you
mind sending me a few sample cards made out to show the form as finally determined for 1)
Indexing of folk music disks; and
2) Title index for contents of published volumes of folk
songs.
I shall need these to serve as models, since I don't altogether trust my memory for the
details of library procedure. I can get some help from librarians here, of course; but insofar as we
are entering a specialized field, I'd like to provide for the problems that come up. We'll have at least
one person with some library training on the project, and perhaps more -- to work on these
indexes.
If the Library has issued any bulletins on cataloguing procedure which might be useful
for my workers to read, would you either mail me copies or let me know how I can get them?
Incidentally, some time ago someone wrote me that you had published an article on indexing of
folksong records, without mentioning where. I'd like to send for that if you will tell
I believe we did not discuss
the problem of mailing expenses for cards and freight charges on records. Would it seem fair to you
if the Library met this cost from Washington to California and we met the return expense? We have
an very unwieldy set-up to meet non-labor costs, as our money comes from the State Relief
Administration to the University for WPA, all on requisition, and I don't see how in the world we are
going to manage some items like stamps.
With, cordial regards, I am
Very truly
yours,
Mrs. Sidney Rbertson
70 Avon Way
San Francisco,
California
Dear Mrs. Robertson:
For the time being, at
least, it seems advisable to keep this venture completely separate from the WPA project in order to
avoid any confusion. The Archives is prepared to cooperate in this manner with individual
collectors of standing.
The material you describe is very interesting, but please do not neglect
any songs of Anglo-Saxon origin which may be available in that territory. Are there any miner
songs still being sung?
The records will be shipped to you as soon as possible - twenty-five will
go out today. Will you need the others immediately and if so where shall we send them? Please do
not wait until all these are recorded before sending them to us. For many reasons this will be much
more profitable. After all they are safer here than stored in your car.
Alan is now on a recording
trip which will take him through Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. You probably know about
Charles Seeger's new position with the Federal Music Project.
With best wishes for a pleasant
and successful trip,
Sincerely,
Harold Spivacke
Chief, Division of
Music
HS
mr
Mrs. Sidney Robertson
c/o Music Department
University of
California
Berkeley, Calif.
Dear Mrs. Robertson:
Please acknwledge their receipt immediately. I cannot send you any more discs until I get that receipt
because of various complications regarding bills, vouchers, etc. Please tell me also if you received
any envelopes for the records.
I shall send you a supply of cards immediately. (I'll need a receipt for these, too.)
Enclosed you will find a photostat copy of my article on cataloging folk-songs and a few sample cards. Please copy and return the photostat as it is the only copy I have. The article was published in the Notes of the Music Library Association. Analysis of published collections should follow the regular A.L.A. rules for cataloging, a copy of which you can find in any library. Please make separate cards for titles and refrains and even first lines, if you can. Send me a few samples of the first cards made and I shall be glad to advise you.
I believe it will
be possible for the Library to take care of shipping charges involving the Library's property. But
please notify me before you ship us anything and I will instruct you
how to proceed.
With kindest regards,
Harold Spivacke
Chief, Division of
Music
HS
mbr
Mrs. Sidney
Robertson
70 Avon Way,
San Francisco, Calif.
Dear Mrs. Robertson:
Sincerely
yours,
Harold Spivacke
Chief, Division of
Music
HS
mbr
Dr. Harold Spivacke
Music Division,
Library of Congress
Washington, D.C.
Dear Dr. Spivacke:
I am so sorry to have
confused things by requesting the blanks in two different ways. Enclosed are receipts for disks and
folders and cards. The latter I have not seen yet but I am assured that they are being held for me at
the University.
It is too bad you had to wire me, the more so as the records had been in my hands
for 36 hours when your wire arrived. The confusion was occasioned by the fact that the post office
here changed the address of my mother's house to a number on a street that hitherto had no
residences on it and therefore was not in the city directory. Until your package miscarried we had no
way of knowing that; and I daresay the only reason your telegram arrived was that I had just
telephoned around to notify the various agencies likely to have to deliver to us.
When the
express delivery people couldn't find the house, somebody had the idea of mailing a
holding-till-called-for card. This got mixed with other papers at the house unfortunately, and
apparently by the time I found it and telephoned the express company, they had notified you of
non-delivery.
Upon receipt of your wire I called the express company again to make sure you
had not sent me a second box of 25 disks; but they are not now holding anything for me, so the
transaction should be complete now.
To add to the general confusion I was struck by a falling
tree in a wind ten days ago -- casualties not serious, just a series of sprains, all slight -- and on the
same day my recording machine was stolen from my car, standing in my mother's driveway. I had
left a window open when I locked up at night. Another is available temporarily, however; and I'll
buy a second one if this one doesn't turn up soon. The mike and other loose bits of gears, needles,
etc., I still have, fortunately.
Since I wrote you about my conference with E. Lindeman, I should
now explai that when he got back to Washington he found the set-up there had changed during his
weeks on the Pacific Coast and the work he hoped to have me do doesn't now seem possible. While
I very much regret losing the opportunity of working with him, I am better satisfied to stay with
what I've started out here until I feel I've learned what I need to know about the problems on a small
scale. Everybody out here, almost without exception, considers that I've tackled something that can't
be done. Either they feel there are no songs, or else that work for 20 people cannot be provided.
Henry Cowell and Albert Elkus are the single exceptions. I should have hated to abandon the ship
before proving them mistaken.
I was discussing the problems with Christine Fredericks, librarian of the music department of the San Francisco Public Library, and it seems to me that in cataloging records made in the field here we should leave the choice of the main title to you. But we will do cards for first lines and refrains on the books we index, with pleasure, and for the records when possible.
Do you want us to type our cards before forwarding to you, or confine ourselves to plainly-written cards done by hand, to be typed by you later? We won't type for a while, anyway, until we get settled into our jobs.....
One more query: I don't suppose there
is any way of persuading the Audio Devices people to ship records in a square tin box so that disks and folders be kept together? The presto
people who sold me my records here provide [?]
We are not yet settled in our quarters but will be in a few days.
Thank you so
much for all your trouble. I mn looking forward to the time when my work, my living quarters, my
car and my dog will all be settled in the same town. There is certainly a star of confusion over folk
song collectors. I really have done a number of other jobs that ran smoothly without perpetual
explanation and correction and adjustment; but just let me touch folk songs and immediately
everything in connection begins to act as if it were possessed,-- including me.
Cordially
yours,
P.S. Enclosed receipts are
personal. Now do I transfer them to WPA or the University for the project, and send you official
receipts? Or what?
Received of Music
Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (Per Audio Devices, Inc. NYC) Twenty-five (25)
blank acetate disks, 12 inch.
Sidney E.
Robertson
August 25, 1938
Received of Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington,
D.C. One package blank library catalog cards
One package folders for
records
Sidney H.
Robertson
Mrs. Sidney H.
Robertson
70 Avon Way,
San Francisco
Dear Mrs. Robertson:
I had already complained about the round boxes for the records. I sent you this rand because I had heard that they were superior to all others.
Why don't you go to a phonograph store and ask for some of the cardboard boxes in
which they receive their shipments from Victor and other phonograph companies. If these prove
unsatisfactory, let me know and I shall try to get you some square metal boxes.
Sincerely
yours,
Harold Spivecke
Chief, Division of
Music
HS
mbr
Dear Henry:
I wrote the Reno Gazette people
just after seeing you, and phoned the News today to check on it. The girl I talked to could n't tell me
whether or not the renewal of your subscription had come through but said she would check back on
it and write for the missing copies since Aug. 9th also.
Yesterday I spent the day with the
Molekani on the Potrero hill. Their singing is really something amazing, and they are the friendliest
folk ever. I don't know how much you know about them, so I'd better start from the beginning. The
word Molokan means Milk-drinker; and they believe themselves to be the first Russian Christian
Church, according to the sign on their church building. One of their members, however, told me that
their forefathers were Russian Catholics who seceded --- I suppose about the time of the
Reformation. They are a kind of Russian Puritan, and their difficulties, musical and otherwise, are
so exactly like the history of the Pilgrims I could hardly believe my ears. There is a small
congregation of Molekani at Santa Rosa; and another quite large one in Los Angeles. The latter call
themselves something my friends here translated as "Holy Jumpers" and in general their music is
livelier. The San Francisco congregation seems to belong to an older and more conservative
tradition.
The congregation is perhaps two-thirds man -- fine Russian types, blond mostly, short
and stocky; the old men with soft thick beards had beautiful faces, I loned for a camera. The women
all cigarrettes
[?] stitch [?] or heavy wool which we think of usually. I have an idea that every bit
of decoration was fought for bitterly, as the right to wear short sleeves to Mass has been in the
Catholic Church.
[?] During the service the congregation is
arranged in an odd fashion which is dictated by the kind of psalm singing they do. The chief singers
among the men sit on two long benches facing each other. At the far end is a small table with a huge
Bible on it, and the chief preacher and his two aides sit at that facing the room. Across the near end
of the two men's benches are two other benches on which two rows of women sit facing the men and
the table, with their backs to the door. Those four benches hold the `singers'; the rest of the
congregation [?] around the [?]
[?] can sing unless he really can, I was
told.
To return to the elders upstairs; I don't know whether I can
make clear what happens during the psalm-singing, although I listened for two hours in the morning,
another hour or so in the afternoon and two hours and a half in the evening, and sang with the
women part of the time. I don't understand what the cue is that brings in the second part ....
As
nearly as I now know, however, what happens in this:
liner out -- they all know the psalms by heart anyway -- so his
chant becomes momentarily a third voice. At Christmas and Easter the church is crowded and the
singing does n't stop all night and gets very rhythmical and excited, I was told. But this
congregation does n't go in for 'jumping'. You can imagine how beautiful it was, however, with this
average congregation of 90 people, of which perhaps two-thirds were 'singers'.
I forgot to
mention that the part lined out is rarely more than eight-ten syllables; and as many notes are sung to
each long-drawn-out syllable, this brief phrase may result in a musical phrase of thirty measures,
though the average seems to be about 16 [measures?].
I listened outside all morning and then went searching through the building for someone
who spoke English. In the Sunday school room I ran into Mr. Agapoff, who is the son-in-law of one
of the chief preachers and the nephew of another. He was interested in what I wanted to do (record
the whole service, excepting the prayers, possibly and the reading at the Bible, as I knew this would
seem especially sacrilegious to them), and championed the cause at the meeting later. I was
introduced to a lot of people; among them the preacher to whom Mr. A-- was not related, a pleasant
man who said he could not of course decide such a thing alone, but they would discuss the matter
and determine the attitude of the congregation. Mr. A-- said he would get a group together at
someone's house if the congregation turned the idea down, so at the meeting which followed the
evening service I was not alarmed, but only a greatly-intrigued spectator.
Like the Quaker
meetings, the church represents a community organisation in which every man has a voice and a
vote; and believe me, they exercised their voices! I did n't remain for the voting, but am to be
informed later. But they let me stay during the discussion, although some of then were greatly
embarrassed by a big man around seventy who shook ? his finger at
me across th big room and urged that the money-changers (me) be cast out of the temple. This was
not with a lot of 'nitchevos' around the room and probably did my cause good. Another man was
worried for fear the records would be put in circulation and be played in a saloon or a dance-hall!
and a third man made a dramatic speech to the effect that the Americans had a symphony ? orchestra, a civic chorus, and songs of their own so why did n't we leave
them in peace? It took them a long time to grasp the historical idea, of course, although a good
many of them had been plaintive about the impending loss of the old way of singing. In general the
younger group (men and women between 50 and 65) were in favor of the idea; over 65, nothing
doing. My friends seemed to feel that the proposal would go through, however, and that these who
disapproved would simply stay at home. It was the same thing, they said, when they had a
Christmas Tree in the church last year for the children. A lot of the old people classed the tree
among the forbidden 'idols'. I had a fine time! Such a spate of Russian; and such a sense of
democracy in the gathering -- men and women alike free to speak. I reassured them about
commercialization of the records, and spoke briefly about the great beauty of the music they'd
brought with them, which the U.S. gov't did n't want to have lost -- the first I ever spoke with a
translator at hand going into action between each sentence of mine. Afterwards half a dozen men
came up with cards and invitations to come home to tea with their families, which of course I shaIl
do --- they are sweet people. At the moment, however, I stuck to Mr. Agapoff and the sweet little
woman who translated for me.
Mr. Agapoff has a neurotic wife whom he took me home to meet
--- leading me in the back door down the side of the hill and showing me his Russian steam bath he
has just built, the double bunk in the bedroom, and his wife -- in that order. She is recovering from a
nervous breakdown', due, sid Mr. A-- to 'too much experience we had in our family.' It seems that
when Mr. A-- and his wife were about 14, (they had been living in S.F. since they were 2), their
parents decided to return to the old country to escape the contamination of modern city life. But the
part of Russia they had lived in now belonged to Turkey, and their relatives were living along the
Don River in holes in the ground covered over with branches --- they emerged to [greet?] the
repatriates like moles from the ground. No food, no water fit to drink, no way of earning money or
procuring clothes. Finally my two friends married, after two years, and returned to S.F. For a few
years all went well; then the depression hit them, and until the last few months they were in debt and
wretched. "We had too much experience" seems to describe it pretty well. Except that the Molekani
were '[led?] here by God' I have been unable to discover when, where and why; but that will be
Monday
Dear Henry:
I've been wearing my
ring on the wrong hand for several days to remind me to add, to my account of the Molekan music,
the fact that half the time each successive verse of the psalm is raised in pitch. This is deliberate; the
reason one man gave me was that the psalms should be sung fairly high (for the sake of the most
desirable religious emotion), but that as they are very long they begin low and work up gradually.
The effect is exhilarating and exciting, of course, beyond words, though each rise is no more than a
half tone and sometimes barely that.
Late Saturday afternoon I got home from Berkeley and
found a message to the effect that I would be expected the next day -- yesterday -- in the evening, to
record the Russian Church service. I had intended to borrow a machine from the dealer here, with a
better microphone which would enable me to sit in an adoining room; but he had closed up, so I had
to do what I could with what I had. The results are surprisingly good, but the situation was not
entirely natural because I had to sit in among the singers. I was surprised to hear so promptly that
the Molekani were willing to have the recording done, after all the eruption of antagonism to
modernity and machines at the meeting I attended the first Sunday; and I was even more surprised to
find that the people who had shouted loudest against the idea, were the most prominent as
psalmleaders when it came to the point. Score 1,100,101 for democracy and free speech.
As
usual there were many touching or funny things. They had had a mid-week meeting it seems, to go
over the details, and a committee was appointed to assist me. Chief on this committee was a man
who achieved this eminence because he is working as a wood-finisher at a new radio station and was
therefore known to be on intimate terms with microphones, etc. During a sort of intermission they
had in the service, after I'd started recording, he inquired whether the bare wooden walls were
desirable acoustically, and when I said they were not, he got up and made a speech about the
sound-absorbent walls at his radio studio. This was acceptable procedure, apparently, much as it
might be in a class studying current events. This same gent started and stopped both the psalms and
me, which had the advantage of enabling me to got the psalms on the record entire, without missing
the rather random beginnings which ordinarily follow silent prayer and usually come too suddenly to
be anticipated. But of course my helper's care created the atmosphere of a performance rather then a
service, and as a result the psalms only once or twice reached real [?]
heights of fervor. The records, which last only 4 1/2-5 minutes, were too short for a single psalms
sampling, and always in a rush,
partly because there was so much ground to cover but chiefly because if the collecting was too long
drawn out so that the per-record cost hit the ceiling, the recording would be stopped. He was always
distressed ecause I did n't get the complete body of information about singers and instruments that
would constitute solid research material, and as he never had any conception of the limitations of
singers' strength, nor the comparatively short [?] span of their interest
and their quick suspicion of too prompt and definite questioning, I don't think he ever was convinced
that I was anything but a very sloppy worker. If you can hang around for days
song the first
shot; but you don't even dare note down the approximate age of your singer until after leaving, since
your notes are invariably observed. I was always in a state of data-indigestion: I always had more
information than I had a chance to note down, and there was always a lot more information I wanted
I had no chance to get.
To go back to the Molekani: After the
regular three psalms they added three more for good measure; and then came the graver three
preceding each of three prayers. After the benches are put back the group stands and sings; then a
prayer is begun, standing; at a fixed point all kneel and continue to pray to themselves, the leader
improvising a prayer aloud, and [?] at the end of each prayer, and
sometimes in the course of it, they bow their heads almost to the ground -- it is almost like the
prostration ofthe faithful in a mosque. The last of the 3 prayers is the Lord's Prayer, sung and then
spoken, and the last period of prayer, kneeling, is silent.
One of the nice things was the crowded
church on this particular night; there must have been a hundred women, heads all covered with a
shawl (mine too) and more than that many men, some with brilliant long Russian blouses under
vests and coats. A smaller congregation would have been fatal to the recording; the crowd absorbed
much of the reverberation and on the whole the recording was surprisingly good, considering the
limitations of my carbon mike. After the [?] service I played bits of
everything back to them -- and such pleased smiles as there were.
Even the crossest ancient who
most distrusted me came and patted me on the back and inquired sociably about my religious
affiliations. He and a dozen others invited me to their houses for tea, and one lady living on Mission
Street is going to give a tea party for me. They are the most engaging people! and much easier to
deal with than my beloved Serbs, and more interesting as individuals than the Icelanders. All
Russians seem to be philosophers, and this particular group has had a rare amount of experiences as
basis for its reflections.
The old fellow who asked me what church I belonged to (for two cents
I'd have claimed to be a Buddhist!) reminded me of one of my grand colored lady friends at Henry
Street. I used to sing with the colored chorus when William Lawrence, (for 12 years Roland Hayes'
accompanist,) led it, rocking back and forth with the best of them. As the group broke up one
evening one handsome old black gal put an arm around me and murmured; "Honey, is you a
Christian?" I absent-mindedly thought the alternative to Christian in this instance was Jew, so I
nodded. She gave me a great hug and said warmly: "Honey, I jest knowed you was one of us!"
When I was able to gather my hysterically scattered wits, I realized that Christian to her meant the
Christian Churh, a sort of revivalist organization, and I suppose my rhythmical rocking with the
group was some sort of key gesture indicative of salvation, or something.
Well:
How'd I get off so far from the Potrero hill? As a matter of fact that's about all I know at the
moment, about Molekani.
I don't know whether I ever have explained to you that I go so into
detail about my experiences recording when I write you about them because I then keep a copy in
my Journal and thus th letters serve as notes hot off the griddle.... not that I'm apologizing for the
details because I know you like 'em; but as it seems more important to me to get everything in than to get everything in coherent order, I sometimes stick bits in in odd
places rather than let them be lost.
Tony Austin tells me that in the Russian orthodox Church the
Credo is sung with gradually rising pitch.
I have been studying Fox-Strangways' book on the
music of Hindostan. I suppose you know it. It seems a very important book for anybody concerned
with the development of melodic music, as in folksong. I had no idea of the extent of the
possibilities before, and it was amazing to me to realize all over again how some of my mountain
singers duplicated Indian conventions in singing --- I had never grasped the fact that Indian musical
systems had names for all the characteristics of vocal style in our folk song, along with innumerable
others. You had already made me familiar with the general scheme of rhythmic development in the
drum accompaniments --- dislocation of the rhythmic pattern to make a cross-rhythm, etc., (so that
for two or three years I've delighted more than ever in this side of Bach's music, incidentally). But I
got very excited over something quite new to me, "grace" as F. Stangways calls on, on the drum. Did you know about this? Probably so, but I had never heard of
the ? hour-glass-shaped drum whose thongs are squeezed to vary the
pitch after a tone is struck, and I think that's an amazing idea.
Speaking of amazing ideas, I had
dinner with the Cages, and John told me about your elastic composition notion for the dance, and I
really think that 's one of the most exciting things I've heard in a long time. It's as completely
original an idea as if it were [?] pure revelation. If you've been busy
hatching such miracles no wonder you've looked brighter the last couple of mouths. Don't fail t
write Percy Grainger about it --- he'll be as pleased and excited as anyone could wish. You know it
seems to me a very good idea anyway, regardless of its convenience under the special circumstances:
It's high
More power
to you, Henry, and a good blessing.... [?] this sort of thing. One of the most difficult verse-forms for
improvisation is one in which each line reads alike, syllable for syllable, both backwards and
forwards. In general it is considered a stunt, though almost anybody is able to do it --- like
charades; and this explans the curious inconsequence of ideas evident when these verses are
translated. I don't know yet how many of these patterns are included in the definition of rymur; but
there are at least four I know of. Perhaps different varieties have other names. They are sung to
known tunes, hence the association with dance.
The Aran Islanders film is in Berkeley this week, and I'm going to
try to see it.
I called on my Armenian scholar frien in Sanger this last trip down the Valley. He
was born in Ispahan, in Persia, and is descended from a group of Armenians who were ordered by
the Shah to leave their homes and colonize in Ispahan.... the Armenian name of this colony is Jurfi,
or Jurfe. Jurfi was established in 1610 or there-abouts by this arbitrary command of the Shah of
Persia. Armenians don't marry into other races much, so although they were born in Persia, Mr.
Galoostian and his wife remain Armenian. They moved to Calcutta after they grew up, and he
taught in a famous Armenian school there for many years. He speaks persian, Armenian,[?] Hindustai, Turkish and Arabian; all these fluently--- and he reads them
plus three or four dialects as well. His library is full of beautifully hand-written volumes, some of
them illuminated --- Persian, Arabian, etc. It seems that Persian cannot be printed because it is a
form of shorthand which changes according to the syllabic context; but some of his Persian books
seem to have been mimeographeed by the gelatine-offset process --- which means very small editions
of course.
Mr. Galoostian told me a number of interesting things -- among others, he says only
two Armenian families [?] have come to the U.S. from Persia in the
past 30-40 years, although a number of single men have come. He spells his Armenian name in the
Persian fashion; a Turkish Armenian would spell his Kalustian, and I know a family of that name in
Fowler, incidentally. They sound alike, of course...
Speaking of mathematics, Mr. Galoostian
told me that Hindus are wonderfully gifted by nature in math.... He told me you can take any
guttersnipe in the street and ask him to multiply 1 3/7 by 11 6/13 and the youngster would give you
the right answer at once, as if the matter as immediate and direct a perception as our recognition of
color or of 2 plus 2. Moreover, the Hindu mathematical system has names for all these unusual
fractions which include implications about the chracter of each, --- just as we have a number of
supplementary ideas about the fraction 1/2 --- we understand immediately its relationships with
related numbers - 1, 1/4, 1/8, 3/6, 4/8, etc. the Hindu carries all this much further, and grasp it for
courious items like 7 3/22 and 168 8/11. Moreover he has a series of names, of work of memoria
technica such as Fox-Strangways mentions for raga, for all these fractions and innumerable others.
Fox-Strangways rage a remark that amused me, as it is so well illustrated by all the rather infrequent
dealings I've had with Hindus: He said the E Indian loves to classify and name all conceivable
variations of rhythms, scale, mode, etc.; but it bothered him not at all that only one out of 20 of the
lot were ever put into actual use. It is the Platonic notion of the existence of ideals in the abstract
somewhere. The Hindu seems to enjoy feeling that all these extra possibilities may be attained by
reaching out his hand --- though he never bothers to make the effect, actually.
The last time I
was at Sanger Mr. Galoostian showed me reams and reams of 'literature --- poems in the Spencerian
stanza; novelli of 55,000 words, vary Oriental and long-drawn-out, and prodigiously unintersting, to
me, as he had some English bits about the Armenian ritual and Armenian folk music that I wanted to
read. He is more intelligent than the classic E. Indian 'Babu' immortalized by Rudyard Kipling; but
has? he writes in rather the same way --- glorious long words, used in
almost?], but not quite, the right places. One line I remember was about the nightingale. "Which
snuggled all alert upon the limpid branch." This time when he asked me if I liked poetry I said "Not
much," because my time is too limited to get tangled up in his efforts to find a published, which is
what he showed signs of asking me to do, last time. He remarked in another connection that his
impulse, upon finding a friend, was to "turn himself inside out" --- and although I enjoy the
Galoosians, I find their interest in telling me all about themselves and
inquiring all about me a trifle wearing. Their chief use to me is in
general Armenian information --- they know nothing about music. I can't make out whether their
complete lack of reserve is due to normal Oriental manners or whether they are simply overwhelmed
with pleasurable excitement at making a `white' friend.
Mr. X-- had occasion to borrow some cooking utensils,
pots and pans, from a neighbor. When he returned them, he sent along a lot of small ones of his
own. "What is this?" said the neighbor. "These small things are not mine." "Oh yes, [?] they belong to you," said Mr. X. "Your big kettles and pots, thrown
together here as they were, mated and bore young." "A funny thing!" grumbled the neighbor. And
he kept the small utensils along with his own.
Later on Mr. X.. borrowed even more pots
and pans than before, and of course the neighbor was only too glad to oblige him. When, however,
after some weeks they had not been returned, the neighbor, meeting Mr. X-- over the back fence,
ventured to inquire about them. "Oh," said Mr. X. 'It's a great shame, but I can't return them." "Whyever not?" said the neighbor, astonished at X--'s
sad mien. "Well, you see," said Mr. X-- with the air of a man breaking bad news, "They all died."
"Died!" said the owner of the utensils indignantly. "What nonsnse! How can tin saucepans and
iron pots die?" "If they can mate and bear young, they can be
expected to die one day, assuredly." To the neighbor's protests, Mr. X-- was only to glad to point out
that since his neighbor had accepted the idea of human characteristics for his metal utensils [?] when he accepted the small pieces of tinware in the first place,[?] it was now too late to claim replacement on different
grounds....
This is the one they all thought most hilariously funny: A man and his wife were distressed not to be invited to the celebration attendant upon a wedding in a friend's house, since they too enjoyed feasting and dancing "I'll tell you what," said the husband, "I'll pretend to beat you furiously, you run off to our good neighbor and beg him to protect you; then I'll come running after. To create a pleasant atmosphere and divert my attention, he can hardly refuse to invite us in to share in the good things.... that's only good manners."
The joke here lies not in the obvious
trick upon the neighbor, but in the use of bad manners -- (the beating) to claim [?] an invitation which can be depended upon an inevitable because it is
good manners. Our western form of the same joke runs this way:
A gentleman in London
was late for a dinner party, and arrived much fussed and all out of breath, having mussed his tie,
mislaid a cufflink, had difficulty finding a taxi, etc.,etc. He arrived, happily, in time but breathless,
and was pleased to find his partner at dinner an attractive and distinguished person --- I believe this
is a diplomatic corps story, as I remember --- It was some time before he retrieved his lost poise, and
as the butler offered him a large bowl of very gooey salad, his partner was astonished to see him
reach out, take a good fistful of the things in the dish and [?] put it on
his plate without benefit of serving fork an spoon. The glazed expression of this well-mannered lady
called his attention to what he'd done; and he laughed nervously and said apologetically: "How
absurd of me to be so absent minded. You knew, really, I thought he was offering me
spinach!"
It seems that this book of jokes is so well known to every Armenian (It was printed in
Turkish originally, but the stories are very old, and are continually added too--) that when in a
group of Armenians you tell one, someone else caps that with another, and a third guest adds a third,
and so on. The frequency with which the stories are told, their wide familiarity,[?] is a recommendation, in the Oriental view.
Yes, I'll write Grainger
but I should think he'd rather hear from you than from me. Chris Fredericks arranged to go see you
one morning last week, but she had to send a message breaking the engagement because her aunt,
with whom she lives, had a fainting spell" ---
Do you remember my suggesting to you, a long
time ago, what you really ought to concoct a course in rhythm for students? You had your book on
rhythm in mind then and were n't interested; but I still think it should be done and that you're the
only person who could do it. I'll write more about this another time.... As
ever.
Dr. Harold Spivacke
Chief, Music Division
Library of
Congress
Washington, D.C.
Dear Dr. Spivacke:
The project here moves on snail-wise
and has not formally opened
yet!
It is
now almost 3 1/2 months since it was okehed in Washington, and we are still
Mrs. Sidney
Robertson
70 Avon Way
San Francisco, California
Dear Mrs. Robertson:
Alan Lomax had so much to do in Michigan that he may not be able to record in Wisconsin on this trip.
I never heard from Percy Grainger.
I agree with you that you had better continue recording in California until something else materializes. Do not forget the American songs because we have no such material from this state.
With kindest
regards,
Sincerely,
Harold Spivacke
Chief, Division of
Music
HS
mr