>> Elizabeth Peterson:
My name is Betsy Peterson
and I'm the Director of the
American Folklife Center.
And, I want to welcome you
on behave of the staff here.
The idea or the seeds for this
symposium were planted a few
years ago by Cathy Kerst and
have been further developed
over the years by Nancy
Groce and other staff
as we have engaged in planning
discussions about programming
and further collection
development.
So we see this as the first
of several programs and
or activities over the
next 18 to 24 months.
We're not fully sure what
those activities, you know,
what shape they are going
to take and, in fact,
want your help in
flushing out what some
of those things might be.
At the end of the day here, we
will have a final discussion.
And, we very much want
to talk with all of you
about your experience here
today and also what you would
like to see in the future.
We know that, whatever we
do, we do want to focus
on historical collections that
are already in the archive.
But, we very much want to focus
on current and future work
to be done by women
ethnographers, folklorists,
ethnomusicologists, etcetera.
So again, thank you.
I apologize, I have to rush
out for a little bit,
but will be back.
And, I know, Nancy,
in the meantime,
Nancy Groce has some logistical
announcements to share
with everyone before
we get going.
So welcome.
[ Applause ]
>> Nancy Groce: Good morning.
Thanks so much for coming.
We see this as the beginning
event of what will be,
for the American Folklife
Center, probably two years
of programming that
will include lectures
and some other activities and a
few more conferences and a lot
of input highlighted our women
generated collections here.
We know there are many of
them, of these collections.
We actually don't
have a final count.
And, sometimes it depends
on how you, who you credit
with bringing in collections
and doing collections
and who's involved.
So we'll be touching
on some of that today.
Right now, just for logistics,
we're going to have morning
activities and we're going
to break at 12:15,
I think it is.
This is, you're in the Madison
Building of Library of Congress.
The Folklife Reading Room,
the American Folklife
Center Reading Room is not
in this building.
It's in the Jefferson Building,
the other building
across the way.
There are tunnels
connecting them.
If you want to go during
lunch hour and check
out our Reading Room,
you'd be most welcome.
However you also might
want to go upstairs
to the 6th floor and get lunch.
There's, or you're welcome
to go out of the building.
But, we only have allowed an
hour and a quarter for lunch.
So we'd recommend the
cafeteria upstairs.
And, then we'll have afternoon
activities and we'll end
with a reception at 5.
We hope you'll, at least
some of you, will be able
to stick around for that.
So the other important
things to know when you go
to a conference is that there
are restrooms on this floor.
You go out the door
and it's to your right.
I think, I don't
think anybody drove,
I think we've taken
care of all the parking.
So I think we're all set.
So again, welcome.
And, for us this is, as I say,
embarking on a longer commitment
to this topic and to expanding
what we know and asking you
to help us expand
that knowledge.
So it's very much
a work in progress.
So thank you for coming.
And, we look forward to
working with you today
and also in the years to come.
So let me start by
introducing the moderator
for out next panel
who is Cathy Kerst.
Cathy was a Folklife
Specialist here
at the library for
27 years I think.
And, she's now a
Emeritus, Emerita.
And, so she was the one
that came up with the idea
or drew our attention to
how many collections of the.
Is it 3,200 collections we
have now, Todd, or 3,500?
We have a lot of collections.
But, an awful lot of,
a very high percentage
of them were done by women.
And, we often, when we turn
around to tell people
what we have,
it's often not their
collections that we emphasize.
So we want to just try to
correct that imbalance.
So, Dr. Kerst is well
known in various,
especially for work,
the New Deal.
And, in fact she's working
on a book presentation
with Dust-to-Digital in
the Library right now
on Sydney Robertson Cowell and
will be, I'm sure, will be glad
to talk about it
during the breaks.
She received an MA in
Scandinavian Studies
at the University of Wisconsin
Madison and did her PhD
through the Folklore program at
George Washington University.
Fortunately, she lives
in the area so we get
to talk to her frequently.
But, we miss her
here at the center.
So we're delighted
she's back today.
So I'm ask her to come up
to moderate the next panel.
[ Applause ]
>> Catherine H. Kerst:
Thank you so much Nancy
for that kind introduction.
I am thrilled, you can imagine,
that we're having
this symposium today
and that there are plans
to do more programs.
Because, the women's collections
in the American Folklife
Center are really quite amazing
from every era with significant
contributions that, really,
many people have never
heard about and, maybe,
even staff have not
totally uncovered.
So that's really a thrill.
Our first session will
be called Documentation
and Archival Collections.
And, our first speaker is Aldona
Dye who is a doctoral student
at the University of Virginia
in the Department of Music.
She is working on a really
exciting project or dissertation
about amateur women
folk music collectors.
She's changed the name
of her title slightly.
And, it's called a Core
of Trained Workers:
Virginia's Valid
Collecting School Teachers.
So I'd like you to
welcome Aldona Dye.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Aldona Dye: Thanks Cathy.
Okay.
Hi everyone.
Good morning.
It's great to be here today.
It's great to be
here at this event.
And, it's also great to be here
at the Library of Congress.
As a grad student
at a university,
it's actually really exiting
for me to present my work
at a public space instead of
an academic sanctioned space.
So that's really
exciting for me.
Today I'm going to
talk to you guys
about the Virginia
Folklore Society.
Their papers are at the
University of Virginia.
But, there's also a Library
of Congress connection
which I'll get to at
the, I guess at the end.
But, I'm guessing that a lot of.
Okay. I'm guessing that not a
lot of people here are familiar
with the Virginia
Folklore Society.
So I'm going to give
you a brief overview.
So founded in April 17th 1913,
the Virginia Folklore
Society's one
of the oldest state folklore
societies in the country.
It was founded by a University
of Virginia Professor
Charles Alfonso Smith.
And, they began collecting
English and Scottish relics
in the Virginia mountains.
Virginia was seen as this
sort of hotbed of English
and Scottish folk music.
So they set out to collect that.
But, they began to branch
out pretty considerably.
About ten years after they
started, Arthur Kyle Davis took
over in 1940, sorry 1924.
And, under his direction,
they published three books
of Virginia ballads
and folk songs.
There was Traditional
Ballads of Virginia in 1929,
Folk Songs of Virginia, A
Descriptive Index in 1948,
and More Traditional
Ballads of Virginia in 1961.
They also, under the
direction of Arthur Kyle Davis,
did some sound recordings.
And, I'll be playing
one of those later on.
And, they did a couple of
recording trips from 1932 to 36,
another in 1948, and
then another in 1961.
So it actually roughly
corresponds
to the books that they put out.
And, in the 1970s, Chuck
and Nancy Purdue took over.
And, they incorporated the
Virginia Folklore Society
into a non profit, which
directly led to the founding
of the Virginia Folklife
Program at Virginia Humanities.
And, they published
several volumes
of Virginia Folklore drawn
from Federal Writer's Project,
Portraits of the New Deal
and Ex-Slave Narratives.
And, the archive collections
for the Virginia Folklore
Society were accessioned
and organized during
their tenure.
And, actually, the Purdue papers
have recently been accessioned
at the UVA Library,
and, thanks to my friend
and colleague Sophia Bremmawits.
And, so we're really
excited to get into those.
So I'm part of a group
of academics, writers,
and artists interested in the
Virginia Folklore Society.
We've sort of become friends
all through our connection
to the Virginia Folklore
Society.
And, we've been looking at the
archives at the university.
We've done some ancestry
work on the folksingers,
we've connected some
materials to living descendants
of those singers and gotten
to talk to the families.
And, ultimately we're trying to
release a box set of recordings
with extensive historical
liner notes.
And, my partner Daniel
Bochman is here.
And, he probably knows more
about the recording phase
than anyone alive today.
But, he knows a lot.
But, today I'm going to
talk to you about one facet
of the Virginia Folklore
Society that I've focused on.
And, that's mainly, that's
the society's partnership
with Virginia school teachers
and the school teachers work
as ballad collectors in the
early years of the society.
Today I'm going to talk
about the initial partnership
and what the Virginia
Folklore Society desired
from the teachers and what
they expected to get from them.
And, then I'll show how
that partnership brought
in a whole lot of women, and
also what that actually got,
how that changed the scope
of the materials collected.
I'm a musicologist.
And, so what's of
particular interest to me is
that it was specifically
a musical element.
And, then I'll focus
on Alfreda Peel.
She was a school teacher in
Salem Virginia who is active
in the Virginia Folklore
Society performing many roles
and whose work directly
impacted recordings
that Alan Lomax made
in Virginia in 1941.
And, this work is a
chapter of my dissertation
on white womanhood and
folk song collection
in the early 20th century.
So my dissertation has
two critical goals.
The first is to call attention
to understudied women folk song
collectors several, actually all
of whom, who have
contributed to some of the,
mostly canonical collections
and also to look at how race,
gender, and economic
privilege were sort
of inscribed in those
collections.
How the, these women's
positionality as collectors,
how the folk song was a natural
and easy thing for them to do
and also how their
position, okay,
how their position shaped
the work that the did.
How it even, maybe impacted
how they heard the materials
themselves and what they thought
of it and what they did with it.
So from the beginning, President
Alfonso Smith was directly
in correspondence
with school teachers
about English and
Scottish ballads.
And, the teachers were
showing their interest.
Martha Davis, a teacher at the
Harrisonburg Normal School,
wrote to Alfonso Smith
on March 26th 1913 saying
that very much interested
in an article
in the New York Evening Post on
March 24th giving some details
of your work in ballad hunting.
And, I hope you'll
organize a ballad society.
And, she says for several years,
I've been making selections
of ballads for literary
and historical exercises
singing them to the old heirs.
It would be quite easy to
present the claims of ballads
and ballad hunting to
the normal school here.
And, even if nothing of
great value would turn up,
the interest would
have a cultural value.
So I'm seeing two things here.
One is that she's already
engaged in this work.
Right? Before the society's
even started she's already kind
of using ballads in her
own work for literary
and historical exercises.
And also she see that
there'll be interest,
other teachers will
be interested too.
And, less than a month later,
when the Virginia Folklore
Society was officially
incorporated, teachers
were written
into the official procedures.
The Department of
Public Instruction
and the Virginia Journal
of Education publicized the
Virginia Folklore Society
in their official publications
and used those publications
to request that teachers
submit ballads
to the Virginia Folklore
society.
They held annual meetings with
the State Teacher's Association,
later called the Virginia
Education Association.
And, these meetings continued
up until the mid 70s.
They held them in conjunction
with the Virginia Education
Association every year.
And, they also started ballad
clubs at state teacher colleges.
This one's at the State Normal
School in Farmville Virginia
in their April 1913 issue,
they do document the minutes
and the proceedings
of their ballad clubs.
And, so the ballad clubs of
the state teacher colleges were
to introduce ballads
into the curriculum
so when these teachers
would go off to their posts,
they would incorporate
that and ask their students
if they knew any ballads.
And, also the Virginia
Folklore Society tried
to engage the teachers in
competition with one another
like who could collect
the most ballads.
Obviously, there's an
ulterior motive there.
But, it also seems like
it was a fun thing.
And this partnership
was written about.
It was very much inscribed
in the official proceedings.
And, it was written about Arthur
Kyle Davis in 1930 in an article
that he wrote called On
the Collecting of Editing,
and Editing of Ballads.
In that article, he talks
about the divide, the division
of labor between ballad
collector and ballad editor
where school teachers
were collecting and people
at the University of
Virginia, men at the University
of Virginia were editing.
So yeah. There's two, there are
two reasons for this division
of labor that Davis
stated in the article.
The first was to cover
a large area quickly.
Virginia was seen as a hotbed
of English and Scottish ballads.
And, they thought, you know,
we have school teachers
posted in rural areas.
They know their students, they
know their student's families.
We can easily get them to
collect ballads and send them
in far more easier than it
would be if one person or even
if a group of people stationed
at the university would try
to go out and do that.
So it's sort of this
Ford assembly line model
of ballad collecting.
And, it was also to maximize
what they saw as the skills
of each class as workers.
Whereas, the women were, well
the teachers, I'm going to,
I'll get to that
in a little bit.
As the teachers were
talking to their students,
were already posted out there,
people at the university
are what,
Davis characterized
them as, quote,
men of academic vent
little suited to work
in the field, close quote.
More suited to looking at
the materials and, you know,
sifting out if they
are really ballads,
if they are really authentic.
And, he called the group
of field working school teachers
a core of trained workers.
And, also stated that this
plan to link the ballad quest
with the educational system of
the state constitutes, perhaps,
the most significant
and distinctive element
of what I call the
Virginia Method.
And, it was effective.
About ten years after
the society was founded,
they had collected ballads from
all 100 counties in Virginia
and they had found 51
ballads that were unique
to Virginia either
in text or tune.
When this happened, President
Alfonso Smith wrote celebrating
that Virginia has
found and rescued more
of these old world treasures
than any other single state
is due more to the interest
and perseverance and
intelligence of the teachers
than to any or all other causes.
He's being pretty clear there.
So obviously not ever
collector was a women
and not even all
teachers were women.
But, a large number were.
And, this partnership really did
bring women into the practice,
that academic practice that
was mainly the domain of men.
The annual bulletins throughout
their collecting years show
that during their most active
years, the ratio of women
to men collectors
ranged anywhere
from 3 to 1 to even 5 to 1.
And teaching as a profession
in the early 20th
century, very gendered.
And, normal schools where ballad
clubs were housed, were race
and gender segregated.
The Farmville Normal School,
that I showed earlier,
was founded at the end
of the 19th century
as the State Normal
School for white women.
And, we see a lot of,
we see a lot of evidence
of the teachers in the archive.
I mean the archive is
the Virginia Folklore
Society archive.
But, you only really have
to scratch the surface
to see a bunch of women
submitting, writing letters and,
interesting to me,
writing sheet music.
You just see a lot of ephemera
that has, attest to the presence
of women and their investment
and also shows how they
were shaping the collection.
Specifically, they
added a musical element
to what was considered
a literary endeavor,
a literary discipline.
And, so time and time
again you see it's women
who are pushing for
music collection.
So school teacher
Juliet Fultneroy
of Alta Vista Virginia,
oh and by the way all the
pictures I'm showing are
in the archive.
So school teacher
Juliet Fauntleroy
of Alta Vista Virginia,
who is one of the society's
leading collectors, she wrote,
in 1914, so just about a year
after the Folklore
Society had started.
She wrote to Alfonso Smith
saying I do hope you'll publish
all the heirs you can find.
Ballads can never
live without music.
Can you not induce other
ballad collectors to write
down the music also or to
get some musical friend
to do it for them?
And she wrote this after
submitting her own notation.
You also see, in the
Farmville Ballad Club,
that although they wasn't
founded to collect the music,
they really quickly
switched over
and added a musical element too.
The April 1913 edition that
I showed you, this was a page
from that too, and that
was their second meeting.
And, they wrote that
the club voted
that a committee
should be appointed
which would investigate
the possibility
of collecting the
ballad tunes as well
as the ballad verses
in Virginia.
So they're already
branching out.
And, then their first
publication in 1929,
the Traditional Ballads of
Virginia, the dedication page
or the forward credits
two music teachers,
Miss Margaret Snowdam
Brumall of New York City
and Miss Betty Booker of
Charlottesville Virginia
with giving expert
musical assistance
without which this volume
would've been bereft of song.
And, in the archive, like I
said earlier, you see a lot
of this ephemera that attest
to the presence of women
and their work and also kind of
gets at this network of women.
I think when Juliet Fauntleroy
says can you get a musical
friend to do it for them, she's
really speaking from experience
on things like network
of musical women.
And, you see that
in this ephemera.
I mean this one I'm just going
to point out really quickly.
So you, it was, This
McAfee's Confession was sung
by Mrs. Fred Spitzer
of Harrisonburg,
collected by Martha Davis, and
transcribed by Eunice Kettering.
And, this one, Molly Vont
sung by Texas Gladden
of Back Creek Virginia,
collected by Miss Alfreda Peel
of Salem Virginia
and transcribed
by Miss Cathleen Cox of Roanoke.
So you really see, you know,
people working together,
especially yeah a lot
of musical friends.
So what does, what
does this show?
I mean, obviously, it shows
women's, women's labor
in the archive in the
gender labor of teaching.
But, it also, to me, it gets
at a practice of, specifically,
like white upper class womanhood
working as how common it was
to work as music teachers or
amateur musicians playing piano
in the homes, in school
rooms or in music clubs.
Women's music clubs were a
big, a big social outing.
And so yeah, you
really get a sense
of how these women were
living their lives,
not just how the ballad,
the ballad work was going,
and that clash, not
clash, that collaboration,
it brings a musical element
to what wasn't considered
a musical element
in the university before.
And, so I think Alfreda Marian
Peel really exemplifies this
sort of, this new
kind of collector.
She was a school teacher
in Salem Virginia.
And, up until her death in 1953,
she was one of the
most active collectors
in the Virginia Folklore
Society.
And, she singularly collected
a substantial portion
of the material in
the first volume.
And, later on, when they
were making recordings,
she actually lent her
voice as a singer.
I'll play later.
And, she was a folklorist
in her own right.
She published a book called the
Witch in the Mill in her 40s.
And, this wasn't,
this is her own work.
And, it was a fictional account
but really highly inspired
by witchlore that she
collected in the mountains.
She was really fascinated
by witchlore.
I think that's another
thing too.
That's another thing that
teachers are bringing in.
They're always saying like I
have superstitions that I know,
I have witchlore that I know,
like I know other songs.
Are you really just interested
in the English and
Scottish ballads?
Like, being in the mountains,
I guess, you get a better sense
of what's actually
going on in Virginia
than what's just the surviving
English and Scottish ballads.
And her womanhood was a big part
of, it seemed to be a big part
of her experience
as a collector.
And, you see this in some of the
narratives that she has written
down that you can find
in the Virginia Folklore
Society archive.
She has an account of her trying
to find the song The
Devil's Nine Questions.
And, in it she talks
about her and her partner,
Caroline Melbard, as two
strange town women mounted
on two rough farm horses.
So they're sort of
seeing themselves as out
of place on their endeavor.
But, when they get to the house,
it sort of changes a little bit.
They find a woman with a pet owl
on her shoulder standing
in the doorway.
She's a sawmill cook who we
knew for a singing woman.
We told her of our quest and
asked her to sing for us.
And, she says I don't
have any time.
I have to get my dishes washed.
And, then Alfreda writes, my
friend volunteered to wash them.
So after many excuses, the
old woman finally consented.
And, so there's a little
bit of strong arming here.
But, I also see, you know,
that they were strange
town women going
through the mountains.
But, after they get into this
house where this woman is,
they're able to sort of, I don't
know, exchange domestic labor
for song collecting and make
a sort of connection there.
And, what ends up happening is,
this woman sings The
Devil's Nine Questions.
This is Mary Layfawn Martin
of Giles County Virginia.
Her real name was
Mary Layfawn Martin
and she sings the
Devil's Nine Questions
for Alfreda and Caroline.
And Alfred performed
multiple roles too.
Like I said earlier, she
was a singer as well.
And, we see evidence
of that in the archive.
There is the recording version
but there's also
written evidence.
In the 1922 Bulletin, they write
that Miss Alfreda Peel delighted
the audience by singing
to a pipe organ accompaniment.
And, this isn't the
first time that she sang.
There was actually some
meeting where she was absent.
And, then in the Bulletin
they say, you know,
the absence of Miss Alfreda
Peel was noted by those
who enjoyed her singing
the year before.
And, then in 1920, when the
Colonial Dames of America wrote
to Alfonso Smith
asking for some music,
she says he suggested they
write to a Miss Alfreda Peel
and ask her to be
present and sing some
of the ballads she
sung in Roanoke County.
She sings these ballads
very appealingly
and you'll get a better
idea of song literature
in colonial times in Virginia
in her singing than in any music
that I could send you.
She also had a longstanding
friendship
and a working relationship
with folksinger Texas Gladden.
The two met in 1916 when Alfreda
did her first ballad collecting
trip for the Virginia
Folklore Society.
They met in 1916.
They continued their partnership
up until Alfreda's death.
And, Alfreda was a
champion for Texas.
She got her into the White
Top Folk Festival in the year
where Eleanor Roosevelt
was present and Texas got
to meet the First Lady.
And, she really advocated for
Texas throughout her life.
And, she also shared
songs with Texas.
In 1932, when the Virginia
Folklore Society did their first
recording trip, one of
their stops was at the home
of Miss Alfreda Peel
in Salem Virginia.
And, Alfreda had gathered a lot
of ballad singers to her house.
And, she herself
sang on the record.
And, so I'm going to play
you some of her singing.
And, this is a digital
recording.
The University of Virginia
recently got a Clear Grant
to digitize the aluminum
disks that are in the archive.
So that's really exciting.
Yeah, there are some tape,
there's some tape transfers
the Library of Congress has.
But, now we've got
digital transfers.
So this is Miss, this is Alfreda
Peel singing Mary Layfawn
Martin's version of the
Devil's Nine Questions.
I'm going to play a
little bit of this.
>> This song is called the
Devil and the Nine Questions.
The version of the Old
English Ballad [inaudible],
Sung by Miss Alfreda M Peel
of Roanoke County Virginia.
[ Singing ]
>> Aldona Dye: So when Allan
Lomax came through Virginia,
in 1941, Alfreda pointed
him to Texas Gladden.
And, he recorded Texas Gladden
singing the same, the same tune.
The melody is slightly
altered, but you can tell
that it's the same one.
And, she attributes it
to Alfreda at the end.
So I'm going to start
right about here.
This is the rounder
records version.
They actually cut
the tape differently
so that you hear the
snippet of interview
at the end of the song, so.
[ Singing ]
>> Texas Gladden: I
learned that from Alfreda.
That's an Old English ballad.
That dates back around
40 years [inaudible].
>> Aldona Dye: So she's
pretty clear on that.
And, so you can see
the actual lineage
from Miss Mary Layfawn Martin
to Afreda Peel to Texas.
And, now that we've
come back to the Library
of Congress collection,
I feel like that's
as good a place of any to end.
So thanks for having me here and
thanks for letting me share some
of the Virginia Folklore
Society with you all.
[ Applause ]
>> Are there any questions?
>> At the end.
>> Aldona Dye: At
the end of the panel.
>> Catherine H. Kerst:
Yeah I should've said that.
I'm sorry.
We're going to listen to all
three of the papers and then,
and then have questions.
Our second speaker is
Sheryl Kaskowitz who I know
from her research
on Sydney Robertson
that I have also done some
of and I'm really excited
about the work she's doing.
She's an independent scholar.
She has a PhD from
Harvard University.
And, she is currently working
on a book about the New Deal,
or the Resettlement
Administration,
the New Deal era, about the
two collectors Margaret Valiant
and Sydney Robertson who
collected for resettlement.
And, she's doing
amazing work on that.
And, I'm eager to see
what she comes up with,
delighted to know
she's working on that.
The name of her presentation
is Government Song Women,
Margaret Valiant,
Sydney Robertson
and New Deal Collecting.
Please welcome Sheryl.
[ Applause ]
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz:
Thank you so much.
I just want to say thank you to
Nancy Groce and everyone else
who was involved in
this, putting this on.
It's a real pleasure to be here.
And also just thanks to everyone
at American Folklife Center.
I spent four months
at the Library
of Congress three years
ago and sort of felt
like they adopted
me, and especially
as an independent scholar.
It's always nice to come back
here and feel so welcome.
So thank you.
Let's see.
Okay. So when we
think about the arts
and the Farm Security
Administration,
most people don't
think about folk music.
We think of the famous
photographs by Dorothea Lang,
Walker Evans, Gordon Parks
and many others who were sent
out by the FSA's
Information Division
to document life during
the Great Depression.
And, that was with the
specific point of getting their,
these out into the public to
help people understand what,
you know, some of the effects
of the Great Depression.
But, back when the FSA was
called the Resettlement
Administration, it also had
a Music Unit that was hidden
within a division called
the Special Skills Division.
And, it quietly collected over
200 disk recordings almost all
of which are now held in the
American Folklife Center.
In an oral history interview,
decades later, Adrian Doranbush,
who was the director of
the Special Skills Division
and separate from the
Information Division
where the FSA photographers
were coming from.
But, the Oral History was really
trying to, it was in the 60s,
and they were gathering,
they were kind
of rediscovering
the photographers.
And, so the focus was
really on the art.
And, Special Skills did
all the graphic design
for the resettlement.
So that was the focus
of the Oral History.
But, what Adrian Doranbush
ended up saying was
that the units music
collecting was, quote,
the one tangible thing we
did in the Special Skills
which has really
lasted and boomed.
So nearly all of these
recordings were collected
by two women; Sydney
Robertson and Margaret Valiant.
And, I should just say
that Sydney Robertson later
became Sydney Robertson Cowell.
And, during her life,
she insisted
on being called Mrs. Cowell.
I'm going to refer to
her as Sydney Robertson
because that was her
name at this time.
And, I've been working on this
for so long that I actually feel
like I'm on a first name basis
with Sydney and Margaret.
And, so I hope that isn't
because I devalue
their work in any way.
I just can't really think
about them in any other way.
So I hope I don't offend anyone.
I'll call Charles Seeger
Charlie also if that helps.
So and Sydney Robertson
and Margaret Valiant's work
is really not known, I mean,
thanks to Cathy, I think
Sydney's work is more known now,
but not this early collecting.
And, my sense is that a
lot of people have seen
that the Resettlement
Administration
of the New Deal collected
folk music,
but not really understood
what that meant.
So part of what I've
been looking
at is really understanding
why an agency called the
Resettlement Administration
was collecting folk music
in the first place.
So just some background about
the Resettlement Administration
and these are just
some brochures
that I found in my research.
I'm a big fan of New
Deal graphic design.
So the Resettlement
Administration was basically an
experimental agency that focused
on helping thousands of people
that were hardest hit
by the Great Depression.
So that was low income
farmers, tenant farmers,
and share croppers, and
also stranded workers
like unemployed miners and
urban workers whose jobs had
disappeared by resettling them
on newly created homesteads,
mostly in rural areas,
also in some suburban areas
like the Greenbelt towns, that
might sound familiar to you.
The Greenbelt was a
Resettlement Administration
planned community.
And so these were
across the country.
And, it was one of the
New Deal's more radical
and far reaching and
highly criticized programs,
as you can imagine.
If there was a backlash
against the New Deal,
this was the target.
And, so it lasted just two
years, from 1935 to 1937
when it was absorbed into the
Department of Agriculture.
And, that's when it became the
Farm Security Administration.
So the Special Skills
Division was created
as a service division to create
furniture and art and materials
for the Resettlement
Administration as well
as to provide training and
activities on the homestead.
So originally, there hadn't
been a plan for a Music Unit.
They actually added it later.
I found some memos of
someone going out and talking
to the homestead
leaders about the fact
that there was all this
strife on the homesteads
because people weren't
getting along.
And, the, and she said what
everyone said, we need to deal
with this emergency situation
as music leaders, which I love.
And, so they created a Music
Unit to meet that need.
And, they hired Charles
Seeger, Charlie,
who dispatched field
representatives
to the homesteads.
They were working
mostly in the southeast.
And, so these music
representatives taught
rudimentary music classes,
they organized musical groups
like symphonies and bands, and
they led community singing.
And, so in addition to leading
these musical activities
to meet this need, because
it was Charlie Seeger,
the Music Unit also recorded
folk songs on the homesteads
and in the surrounding
communities.
And, the songs were
then incorporated
into the group singing to help
strengthen community ties among
the homesteaders.
So he saw this direct connection
between this idea of a sort
of authentic folk music and
helping to build community
within these homesteads.
And, there's a lot
more that I can say
about resettlement
especially with some
of the things Aldona talked
about in terms of
race and class.
But, I want to get to the women.
So we'll do that next.
Okay. So this is
Margaret Valiant.
Charlie hired her.
They were friends
from New York City.
And, she traveled
down to Washington DC
with him and his family.
She actually became friends
with Ruth Crawford before Ruth
and Charlie were married.
And, so he hired her
in January 1936 as one
of the units first field
representatives in music.
And, she was assigned to a new
government homestead called
Cherry Lake Farms in
Madison County Florida
where she led music activities
and created theatrical pageants
for its resettled residents.
And, so collecting was
really just a small part
of what she was doing when she
first came onto resettlement.
She only collected a handful
of recordings at Cherry Lake.
And, she did the bulk
of her collecting later.
So after the Resettlement
Administration had officially
became part of the FSA in 1937,
the Music Unit was
basically shut down
and Special Skills
became very, I mean they,
it was phased out basically.
And, so everyone else was
reassigned except Margaret.
And, basically, under
the radar, she continued
to lead music activities
on FSA homesteads
without an actual Music Unit.
So she did that first
in the southeast
where the Resettlement
Administration first worked
and then in Montana.
She was called out to
lead a pageant in Montana.
And, then finally in
the FSA's migrant camps
in California and Arizona.
And this is where she
took up recording in 1939.
And, she actually became the
first collector to record songs
in those migrant camps,
though her collections usually
overlooked in favor of Todd
and Sokins collecting which
happened the following year.
And, she also collected songs
from communities in Arizona.
And, so overall the collection
in the American Folklife Center
has 40 disks of 136 songs.
So I'll come back to the
symphony if I have time.
But, the, after she left
the FSA, she was hired
by the National Youth
Administration and ran
as the music director and she
kept her recording machine.
And, so we have some
recordings that she did
of African American
students in Georgia.
There are more and I'm
still looking for them.
So I should just
say, in general,
there is a lot more information
out there about Sydney.
And, so Margaret is kind of,
I'm still piecing together some
of the mysteries about her.
So Sydney Robertson, as I said,
later became Sydney
Robertson Cowell.
She joined the RA's
Music Unit six months,
about in July in 1936.
And, she was originally hired
as Charlie's music assistant.
And, apparently, she says that
he always really wanted her
to stay in the office
and help her in DC.
But that, she really wanted
to be out in the field.
And, so there was this
tension about her job.
But, over the course
of her tenure,
she became the unit's most
prolific music collector.
As you can see, she collected
658 tracks in 10 states.
And, so when she returned
from her big two month
solo collecting trip,
at the end of 1936, she returned
in January 1937, she discovered
that the RA's Music Unit
would soon be no more.
And, she was reassigned to
a position at a homestead
in rural Minnesota that
was not music based.
But, she actually held
onto the unit's equipment.
And, that is where, and
so out in her own time,
she was on a homestead, she
was responsible for things
like the Canning Club and
the baseball team and all
of these logistical
things that were happening
on the homestead
in rural Minnesota.
And, then in her spare
time she would go
out into these communities
in the upper Midwest.
And, so she became the first to
record in the ethnic enclaves
of Wisconsin and Minnesota
and also the lumber,
the lumber towns there.
And, Alan Lomax would
follow in 1938.
So she is best known for
her collecting that happened
after starting in 1938.
But, she did have this rich
collecting that happened as part
of the Resettlement
Administration.
Sorry. So before I go into
more detail about the songs,
because I do want to
play some of the songs,
I just want to talk a bit more
about what the Resettlement
Administration was doing
collecting music
in the first place.
I think, when a lot
of people hear, okay,
this came from some New Deal
Agency, there's an assumption
that it's related to the WPA
somehow because the WPA is
who did most of the
collecting during the New Deal.
And, that was a job
creating agency.
And, so a lot of the underneath
obviously there was an interest
in documenting American
folk culture,
but there was also an
interest in creating jobs
for white collar workers.
But, the RA, I mean, you know
now what the Resettlement
Administration was
for and a little bit
about why they were
collecting music.
Which, to really serve
this specific social use.
So but what's important
to know about the RA is
that it had a larger goal which
is part of what made it radical,
in looking at it now, that they
called cooperative education
where they hoped to foster
an ideological shifts
on the homesteads away
from rugged individualism
to an emphasis on community
and collective responsibility.
And, this was the director,
Rexford G Tugwell, who was known
as Red, Rex the Red, was
very, he was open about this.
So homes on the homestead were
built in close enough proximity
to encourage people
to cooperate,
think of themselves
as a community.
Recreation programs and
community halls were planned.
And, so these were
done intentionally.
And, the Music Unit
was deeply intertwined
with the cooperative values.
And, so Charlie wrote that his
unit's main concern should be
quote, to regard music
as a social function,
to direct it toward certain
definite social goals
as an activity of masses of
people rather than merely
of isolated individuals.
And, so Charlie felt that the
best way to use music to help,
you know, define
a collective was
to collect this authentic
folk music of the people.
And, there's lots of things
to discuss about, you know,
their vision of what that
was and who was included
and who was excluded, that I
will be talking about in my book
when it comes out,
whenever that is.
So it's important to understand
the reset on the administration
and the context that the
collection takes place.
I think it helps if you
go to listen to the music
to understand that it had this
other purpose that was different
from other collection endeavors.
So I just want to talk
about how, you know,
some specific ways
that it shaped Margaret
and Sydney's collecting.
First of all, you can imagine
that conservatives might not
like this idea that the
government was using music
to encourage people to think
of themselves as a collective.
And, so the Music Unit was
very much kept on the DL.
Many of their memos are
marked confidential.
In fact, Charles Seeger got
in trouble, there was a,
for using that confidential,
marking so many
of them confidential because
none of them had the clearances
for official confidential, you
know, to look at government,
confidential government
documents.
And, if you look at the
annual report and you look
at special skills, it
does not mention the Music
Unit's activities.
I think the word music
is included in a list
of things that it does.
And, there really wasn't
anything in the press
about special skills in general,
but specifically about music.
So this is one, a newspaper
article that was rare
that describes Sydney's
collecting in the Ozarks.
So in that second paragraph
you'll see it says asked what
relation there is
between resettlement
and collecting old ballads,
Mrs Robertson said she
wouldn't dream of explaining it,
explained she is
definitely instructed not
to discuss the program.
So unlike the FSA's photographs,
which were very much
public facing,
the folk music collecting
was intentionally kept
under the radar.
And, that's one of the reasons
I think that we don't know
as much about it today.
Or maybe some of you know about
it, but, most people don't.
So the other thing that
I find interesting is
that the Music Unit had
a particular interest
in labor union protest
songs which they viewed
as successful model of music
being put to a social use
in this way in the way that
they were hoping to do.
And, so both Sydney and Margaret
collected these protest songs
and they're in the collections.
So Sydney was very
careful to cover her tracks
when recording these
protest songs.
As you saw, she was, she took
this mandate to keep things
on the down low seriously.
She usually wrote extremely
long detailed often funny field
reports back to the office.
But, the labor union
songs did not appear
on those field reports.
So the first one
that she did was
at a homestead called Cumberland
Homestead in Tennessee.
And, she set up a recording
session with the Garrett Family.
And, so this, I don't
know if you can see that,
is what the report looked like.
She sent these back to Adrian
Doranbush from all of her.
So from Sydney we had this
incredible documentation
about the context
of the recordings.
This isn't true for
Margaret unfortunately.
But, if you look at, if you
could see this, you would see
that it doesn't say anything
about any protest songs.
What she did was she wrote
a confidential report later
where she said I won't again
try to combine the recording
of labor and more orthodox
songs in the same locality.
It's too difficult to manage.
But, I think my tracks
were kept fairly clear
and the songs are good.
So we can listen to this excerpt
Strike at Harriman Tennessee.
And, this is a song that
Mike Seeger actually recorded
later on.
And, the words are accounting a
recent strike at a local mill.
[ Singing ]
So on the same collecting trip,
Sydney also made a special trip
to Saint Louis which where
she collected protest songs
that had been sung during a city
wide strike the protested the
city cutting its relief rules.
So just as in Tennessee, there's
not official report describing
her activities in Saint Louis.
So for me, I knew
that she went there.
She talked in correspondents
about going there.
And, then when I
looked through all
of her field reports,
there was nothing.
And, it wasn't, and what
she did, a confidential memo
that was going to end up with
her field reports was too public
for this maybe because the
actual Communist Party was
involved in these protests.
So Sydney wrote a
personal letter
to Special Skills
Director Adrian Doranbush
and then she mailed
it to the home
of a different Special Skills
staff person, just to be safe.
And, so this letter was
sort of hidden among some
of her correspondents
in a different place
in American Folklife Center.
So I felt like I had won
the lottery when I found it.
So she recorded 4 full
disks in Saint Louis,
about 15 different songs.
And, they were sung by a
multiracial group of activists
who sort of arrived
throughout the day.
And she loved, you know,
she describing the kinds
of things they talked
about and, you know,
the things that they
were drinking.
And, it sounded like
a very good time.
So here's one song that she
said was popular among the girls
in the Garment Workers Union
and other central trades.
And, it's sung to the
tune of Rock A Bye Baby.
She included the words in
her letter to Doranbush
and she wrote, quote,
say it over once
to that naive wilting
tune and see
if you don't think
that's a beauty.
The girls adore and
are perfectly aware
of the light irony
and the contrast
between the bitter words
and the childlike tune.
>> Rock A Bye Baby.
[ Singing ]
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz: So later,
for Margaret, at the FSA camps,
I know, Margaret was much
more open about her collection
of labor protest songs.
And, perhaps because
she was working
with very little oversight.
She didn't have a
direct supervisor.
She seemed to be reporting
directly to a division head.
And, so they probably
didn't have time to read any
of her specific information.
But, anyway, so there's a
lot more that I need to find
out about the context
of her collecting.
But, she recorded
this version of Going
Down the Road Feeling Bad at
Camp Shafter in March 1939,
which was one of the FSA camps.
And, so in contrast to
Sydney's extreme efforts
to keep her protest
collecting confidential,
Margaret actually included
these lyrics in the compilation
of song lyrics that she put
together and sent out to,
I'm still, again, trying to
understand the arrangement that.
But, I did find this
in someone's collection
at the FDR Library.
So I know it got out there.
But, so it starts in the middle,
this song starts in the middle
of the refrain before moving
on to the protest lyrics.
But, maybe I don't have time.
How much time do I have?
>> About 10 minutes.
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz: Okay.
Well.
[ Singing ]
Okay. In the interest of time,
we can go back and listen.
But you can see the, you know,
it ends with we had to organize
and come and join the
CIO, which was a big deal.
The planters in California
were strongly opposed
to what the FSA camps
were doing.
And, so the fact that she was
willing to show this support,
pass it support for the
CIO, if she had, had a,
if this had gotten out there,
it actually probably
would've gotten the FSA
into some trouble.
So there's a few important
differences in Sydney
and Margaret's experiences
that I think stem partly
from their different roles
within the FRA and FSA.
So Sydney's job at the RA was
always focused on recording.
And I think that, that kind
of laid the foundation
for her later work.
And, her work in the Washington
office also included meetings
with technicians from the
Presto Recording Company.
And, so she got detailed
instructions about how
to operate the equipment.
And, before her own
collecting, she was sent
on an apprenticing trip to North
Carolina with these two men,
John Lomax and Duke Professor
Frank Brown where she was able
to get more comfortable using
the recording equipment and talk
to these men about
their experience.
And, I just, after the
trip Charles wrote to one
of the supervisors,
quote, her experience
with the two collectors
reveals a flare
for diplomacy, which I love.
I don't know what that means.
But, one can imagine.
So this trip also began
Sydney's development
of her own recording
methodology which focused
on putting her subjects at ease.
And so as she wrote,
the collectors visits
to make records should be
a social occasion never a
business one.
Anything like crisp businesslike
manner smacks of the city
and will be, and will
defeat one's ends.
So that connects to that idea of
these townswomen and this issue
of class that comes
up with someone
like Sydney coming
out to record.
So I might not have
time to play this.
But, one of the ways this
came up was Sydney collected
from Emma Dusenbury, who some
of you may know, she was sort
of well known as
kind of legendary
for the astonishing
number of songs and range
of songs that she knew.
And, John Lomax had gone to see
her and recorded some songs.
And, apparently,
according to Sydney,
Mrs. Dusenbury sent him away
because she found him rude.
And, so when Sydney went, she
had been cultivating this sort
of warmer connection with
her, with her subjects.
And, also Mrs. Dusenbury sung
several songs she said were
for girls only, for Sydney.
So that also shows, you know,
what women collectors, you know,
they they could have
a different approach.
So I'm just going to play
the very beginning of this.
Because, if you listen to
these Dusenbury recordings,
they kind of chat in between.
Anyway, this we'll just listen.
[ Laughter ]
They're just laughing.
[ Singing ]
Oh okay. So anyway,
all these are available
to listen to in the archive.
So Margaret also prized
a personal connection
with the people she recorded.
And, Ralph Rinzler and Kate
Rinzler actually interviewed her
in the 1970s from the, and she
talked about, she said I began
to learn the trick of
getting people to sing
because I would take my guitar
and I would strum a little,
and that breaks down the
reserves and they would see
that I was modest about
it and honest about it.
And, then they would say
oh my granddaddy used
to sing such and such.
And, Margaret really had
no training in folklore.
She didn't have any,
so some of her songs,
she's obviously accompanying
the people either
on the guitar and the piano.
So, but unlike Sydney, Margaret
never received any training
on the recording equipment.
And, so she recorded very
little in her early work
at the Resettlement
Administration.
And, Sydney later said
that Margaret didn't make many
recordings for the RA because,
quote, she was a little
afraid of the machine.
And, she, and Sydney said that
Margaret needed an assistant
who wasn't always
available to run it.
So I can talk more about
this difference between them
and their personalities
and things like that,
if people have questions
about it.
So when Margaret joined the FSA,
they gave her a different
recording machine to record
in Arizona and California.
But, she still didn't
receive any training on it.
And, so I as amazed to stumble
upon this track hidden among her
recordings where she was talking
with two men about her trouble
with her recording equipment.
And, they recorded it as a test.
So you're going to
hear her voice.
And, at the beginning she
just mentioned the fact
that the needles
on the recording equipment
produced fuzz and that she had
to figure out for herself that
she needed to use a little brush
to remove it from the record.
>> Margaret Valiant: Well
now isn't that queer?
I had to figure that out myself.
Nobody told me what
to do about this fuzz
and I went crazy
right in the middle.
>> There wasn't anyone out
there that knew how to do it?
>> Margaret Valiant:
Nobody not anybody anywhere.
You get radio man and they
said they never saw one
of these things before.
And, they fooled around and they
experimented with [inaudible].
And this was.
>> Well you don't need to do
it all the time, [inaudible].
>> Margaret Valiant: Well
how you going to tell?
And that thing, you're
recording the record
and all the sudden this gets
all up inside that needle.
But I assure you it did.
>> It doesn't make a difference.
If you, once in a
while, get a good file.
>> Margaret Valiant: But all
of the sudden you turn around
and you look at this thing and
it's good and you look back
and it's caught up
around the needle you're.
[ Inaudible ]
I thought it was
good for six months.
Why I had that impression
I don't know.
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz: I'm
so happy that I could play
that for people who
would appreciate it.
And, I'm not quite sure what
to say about it, you know,
other than the man
saying it as an art form.
And, you know, it may also
show that Margaret was focused
on the performers more
than the equipment.
And, I think part of that
has to do with the fact
that she started out as
this music representative
who was working with the people.
And, I think she always saw
the recording as an outgrowth
of that more than an interest
in the product, if
that makes sense.
How am I doing?
>> Two.
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz: Oh okay.
All right.
Okay. So I did just want to,
I can go through
this very quickly.
Because there was
some other things
about Margaret's
collection that,
because I don't think people
really know very much about it.
And, she has a knack for
recording talented musicians
who would go on to be famous.
And, so there are a couple
of those that I thought,
I feel like some people
would be excited about.
So the first is Russell
Chubby Wise who's a fiddler.
He played with Bill Monroe's
Bluegrass Boys in 1942 and later
with the Grand Ole Opry.
And, he was inducted into
the Fiddler Hall of Fame.
She recorded him at
Cherry Lake in 1936.
And so he was in his early 20s.
And, he hadn't been playing
with the band, apparently,
his bio says he was living in
Jacksonville and was working
as a cab driver and
playing in clubs at night.
And, I'm still trying
to understand what
brought him to Cherry Lake.
But, anyway, we probably
don't have time to listen.
You can just get a sense that,
when you come across these,
and if you've listened to the,
you know, the amateur fiddlers,
and there are a lot of them, and
then you come across something
like this, it's clear
that there's something
different going on.
[ Music ]
Okay. So there's
about, there's a whole,
there's maybe eight
tracks of him playing.
So the second artist that she
recorded, which had nothing
to do with the FSA
migrant camps, but,
it was while she
was out in Arizona.
And, she recorded Lalo
Guerrero who's now known
as the father of Chicano music.
And, she recorded his guitar
quartet, Los Carlistas.
This photo was in a
collection of her photographs.
And, that, I can talk more about
that photograph on the patio
of Margaret Sanger, Margaret
Valiant led a crazy life is all
I can say.
So anyway, so I don't know the
circumstances of why she decided
to record these songs.
She did talk about
including these songs
of Mexican Americans, they were
included in her compilations
to say that they,
you know, that,
I wish that I had the quote.
But, it was something
that like, that they're,
they're in any case
she saw them as part
of what she was collecting,
which was a big deal
at the time, and not to excuse
some of the other problems that,
of inclusion and exclusion
in these collections.
But anyway, so Los
Carlistas, sorry, this,
they had already found
some fame at this point.
They had appeared in a Gene
Autry film called Boots
and Saddles.
So they were unattributed.
And, they made their
first commercial recording
in the summer of 1938.
But from my early research,
the songs in Margaret's
collection weren't
commercially recorded.
So I can just play
you a little of that.
[ Music ]
Okay. Sorry.
Anyway, there's a
lot of songs by them.
There's probably five
scattered across a couple
of different collections.
How am I doing?
Zero time?
Zero time, okay.
Well I just, I will just quickly
say that this is part of,
I think, this there's
a growing trend of kind
of uncovering women's
unacknowledged work.
There's lots of books
right now about that.
And, so I kind of see this
as part of that and maybe,
you know, folk music's version
of, you know, code girls
and rocket girls and all of
these books that are talking
about this kind of
hidden work of women.
And, so at the end of their
life, both Margaret Valiant
and Sydney Robertson kind of
talked about their, you know,
looking back and acknowledging
that they were unacknowledged.
So I don't have time to
read this whole thing.
But, you know, she says, you
know, it was made clear to me
that I got minimum
pay for maximum effort
and he got maximum
pay plus credit title.
What I've accomplished
is this, I survived.
I survived the vanitas vanitatum
of the guys who took credit
and pay for my achievements.
And, Sydney said something
similarly specifically
about her experience at the RA.
And, not to, you know, throw
Charlie Seeger under the bus.
But, you know, she said
that this quote at the end,
he never did realize that
there was any different
between thinking up the
idea of the recording
and doing the actual work.
So thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Catherine H Kerst:
Thank you Sheryl.
And, our third speaker is
Ann Hoog, Folklife Specialist
in the American Folklife Center.
She's worked here at the
Library of Congress since 1998
and has worked in many
capacity as Reference Librarian,
as Coordinator of Processing.
She's done many presentations.
She knows the collections
very well.
And, she is recently been
the coordinator of project
to put a lot of the Folklife
Center's Historic Field
projects online.
The Folklife Center used
to do field projects.
And, she holds an MA
from, in American Studies,
with a concentration in folklife
from George Washington
University.
She will be speaking about women
and the American
Folklife Center archive.
Welcome Ann.
[ Applause ]
>> Ann Hoog: Good morning.
So the topic is Women
and the American Folklife
Center Archive.
It's not a broad topic at all.
First of all, I'm standing
in for my supervisor Nikki
Sailor who's the head
of the archives.
She couldn't be here today to go
on an important acquisitions
trip.
And, so I'm standing
here in her place.
So I've had a few days
to put this together.
But, it's been really,
even though it was put
together very quickly,
it's been a real joy to work on.
Cathy mentioned the field
projects, which is going
to be a lot of what I'm going
to be talking about,
talking about today.
So when I first started
thinking about,
I just want to point
out this photograph.
I just, I came across it at
one of the field project,
Chicago Ethnics Art Project.
And, it was right at the
beginning of a project
when there was nothing
on the wall behind them
as they went further
in the project,
there were like pictures
and brochures and maps
and all kinds of stuff.
So it's a really
interesting point in time here
in the very beginning, April
1977, the very beginning
of these field projects.
But, I'll talk more about
that a little bit later.
When I first started thinking
about how to approach this topic
of Women in the American
Folklife Center Archive,
I first tried to think about
how to present the information,
whether to go chronological
and to talk
about the earliest
documentation in the archive,
including those made by
of course Alice Fletcher,
Helen Roberts, Frances Densmore
among many, many others.
They all made recordings
of songs and narratives
of numerous American
Indian Nations
and other traditional music
in the early 20th century.
To continue with the
chronology to move
on to the mighty disk era
of Ruby Lomax, [inaudible].
And Sydney Roberson Cowell.
Or, you know, to make a list,
and I think some of this list,
thanks to Nancy Groce
for compiling this list,
which goes on for a
couple of pages here.
This was just a list of
some of the contributors
of materials in the collection.
But, how do you do
this without sounding
like a freight train racing
through our collections
with lists of names,
dates, and locations
for a folklorist's version
of We Didn't Start the Fire?
It is interesting to even
think about how you start
to compile a list like
this because you have
to look not only
at the collections
where the names are prominently
in the collection title
like the Vida Chenoweth
collection
or the Roxane Connick
Carlisle collection.
But, also to look at the
contributors to collections
that don't appear in the titles.
As many of you are
probably aware, a team of us
at the Library of Congress have
been workign for several years
to get the AFC Regional Field
Project surveys from the 1970s
through the 1990s online.
Photos once only viewable
through tiny color slides
with a light table
and a contact sheet
with a loop are now digitized
and becoming available online,
free to listen to,
view, and download,
plus the searchable metadata
that includes names, places,
dates, cross references to
both creators of the content
and most often, and
often those depicted.
With so much content
in one place,
this seems like a
good place to start.
This is the South
Central Georgia team,
Beverly Robertson
there up front.
A good place to start to
uncover the tens of thousands
of photographs, hundreds of
hours of sound recordings
and thousands of pages of field
notes, logs, and field reports
on wide ranging topics
from religious expression,
occupational folklife,
textiles, crafts, music, dance,
folk medicine, and an endless
number of other topics.
And a focus on those
materials documented
by the women field
workers involved not only
as photographers,
recordists, and interviewers,
but also as the project
planners, field coordinators,
and contributors to these
projects that have, for decades,
served as the national model of
field work and documentation.
I'm going to mostly,
in this presentation,
let the collections
do the speaking.
So I'm going to be showing a lot
of photos many of which haven't,
we haven't seen grouped
together like this in one place.
So I'm going to pause
for a few second on each
of these photos just
to absorb it.
I also have three or four audio
samples to kind of let the faces
and voices here tell the
story in this room rather
than have me ramble on and
merely describe them for you.
One of the great strengths
of these field projects
is the reflexive nature
where it not only
was the camera turned
on the community
traditions being documented,
but also on the documentation
process itself.
As a result, we have a
rich collection not only
of the regional communities
being studied
but the communities
of the fieldworkers,
photos of them doing their
work with their tools.
There's a couple pictures
with cameras Lyntha
Eiler is a contributor
to many, many field projects.
>> Lyntha Eiler.
>> Ann Hoog: Oh Lyntha Eiler.
That's Lyntha again,
that's a checking the light
on the Blue Ridge light meter.
And, then there are
a number of pictures
with recording devices
and the context.
And, the various locations where
recordings are taking place
that really capture that
context and the relationships
that are built during fieldwork
such as many recordings
done outside.
In doorways.
Literally, there's like so many
photos of people standing next
to a door in doorways.
You got to think about, you
know how sometimes you think the
interview is over
and you're leaving
and you realize it's
still going?
I don't know it's
like the entering
and exiting o the interview.
And, of course, in
people's homes,
so just kitchens
and dinning rooms.
Living rooms.
And places of business, lots of
occupational folklife in places
of business, of, you know,
so often you see the recording
device there in the picture.
It wasn't just the picture of
the interview taking place,
it's also the tools being used.
Interviews done in cars.
This, Carl was sitting
in the backseat running the tape
recorder, Carl Fleischhauer,
he was running the
tape recorder.
And, when you listen
to this recording,
you can hear the car driving
along the road, they're going
over bumps, the car seats
are squeaking up and down,
you hear a little voice from
her, this is Mrs. Eda Anderson,
her granddaughter
speaking up sometimes.
It was really just, you know,
this, they were driving out to
where she'd been growing
some medicinal herbs,
where they ended up
documenting that.
But also documenting the
transit from her home
out there was fascinating.
That's from Chicago
out on Lake Michigan.
And, at various events,
which were documented throughout
these field projects, parades.
Here we have the
Milk River Train.
This is Kay Young participating
in the Milk River Train
in Montana, which was
about a five day journey
to experience the wagon
train as pioneers once did.
And, it ended on Labor
Day in Malta Montana.
But, she took part in
this, in this project.
And, later on, there's an
audio clip of her talking
about this experience.
Of course, front porches.
There's a lot of
pictures on front porches.
I love this picture, it really,
I hadn't seen that one before.
And, of course, in workshops.
So here's an audio sample I'm
going to play, just to kind
of bring some life to
some of these photos.
This is Paula Johnson in
the Montana Folklife Survey,
talking with a couple
wheel rights.
This is done in the evening,
you can hear crickets chirping
in the background,
they're sanding the wood.
And, I just think that
this is a good example
of occupational folklore
documentation and the types
of probing questions
a fieldworker has
and a good example of
how to do an interview.
A lot of times, where as a
fieldworker you know a little
bit but you don't know a lot.
You're still asking
these questions.
And, in the background,
you're also going
to hear a lot of clicking.
And, at first, I was trying
to figure out what it was.
And, it's the photographer
that's there,
it's actually Michael Crummet
taking pictures, so again,
documenting our own,
our own process.
And I just want to play this.
[ Inaudible ]
>> Paula Johnson: So for this
wagon you have 40 inch wheels
on the front and 48 on the back?
>> 44.
>> 44.
>> Paula Johnson: So you
there's only 4 inches different
in the wheels for front
and back in a buggy?
What about their wagons,
are the the same size or?
>> Well, there are, well like
one company would have made say
like a 50 inch wheel in the
back and a 46 wheel in the front
or a 47 or a 45 it's just.
>> Paula Johnson:
Yeah there's no.
>> There's no pattern that
we've run onto anyway, you know.
>> Paula Johnson: Yeah.
>> What experience we've
had working with it.
>> Paula Johnson: Well the one.
>> One thing's your
speed's different,
you know, [inaudible].
>> Paula Johnson.
So they're real big.
>> Yeah. See the bigger
the wheel the faster
and the bigger load
you can put on it.
>> Paula Johnson: Yeah.
But the harder it
is to make them.
>> That's about right.
[Inaudible] and then there's
some bigger than that yet too.
But, then there's [inaudible]
your wagon wheels are
in twos fillings and your
wagon wheels are in fours.
>> Paula Johnson: What
do you mean by fillings?
>> This is called a filling.
>> Paula Johnson:
Oh okay, the rim,
that's what I call them a rim.
>> Yeah you call them
a rim, they're iron.
>> Paula Johnson: Is that,
you all call it a filling?
>> Yeah this is a filling,
your filling then
your iron rim on it.
>> Paula Johnson:
Iron rim, okay.
>> But, they them wide ones
they put them in fours,
and sometimes twos like this,
and the [inaudible]
so hard you can't.
>> Paula Johnson:
You can't get one.
>> You're pulling on
this and bending them
when you're pulling them,
it's a lot harder to do.
>> Paula Johnson: You've been
mainly doing buggies though.
Right?
>> Yeah.
>> Paula Johnson:
No stage coaches?
>> No. Would like to get me one
of I could get a hold of one.
>> That's [inaudible].
>> Mainly for ourselves, just
for ourselves [inaudible],
you know, [inaudible].
>> Paula Johnson: Yeah.
>> Ann Hoog: So if you ever
wondered what a camera sounded
like in 1979, you know,
it was interesting.
But, this, you know,
it's so hard
to just find little
clipos of interviews.
I just, you want to play
the whole interview.
That, I mean they're, they
talk for an hour or two hours,
there's a part one and
two to this interview.
It's really fascinating.
Of course, no fieldwork
venture would be complete
without going to music venues.
So you know, these weren't
recordings that were, you know,
brought back here to the library
and made in the studio as,
you know, much in the tradition
of like what we were hearing
with Sydney Robertson and
Margaret Valiant going out
and making these recordings in
the context where they exist.
So this is just kind
of a fun thing I wanted
to play for a minute.
She interviewed Jimmy
Walker as well
about Boogie Woogie
piano playing in Chicago.
But then she, several
days later, she went back
and recorded him playing.
[ Music ]
All right, it also just
exemplifies the importance
of knowing how to
use your equipment
and make a good quality
recording.
That was, that was
really, really great.
And clearly Jonas W Dennis was
there taking pictures as well.
I think that was the day
that this picture was taken.
So beyond the fieldwork itself,
also documented was the thinking
of the communities of
fieldworkers is the settings
where planning and directing
projects was happening.
This is Greta Swenson, who
was the Field Coordinator
of the Chicago Ethnic Arts
Project with Alan Jabbour
who was the then newly appointed
and first Director of the AFC.
And, this was, again,
this picture was,
see there's stuff
on the wall now.
So this was probably more
like May or June 1977.
But, that's the same desk
where that first black
and white picture was.
I think capturing some
of the dynamics in some
of these pictures is
kind of interesting.
They're kind of looking
at each other
with tight lips at that moment.
Not sure what they were talking
about, but there was a lot
of coordinating to be
going on at the time.
And, speaking of
planning, this is a photo
of Geraldine Johnson taken
at a planning meeting
for the Blue Ridge
Parkway Project.
And, it was kind of a
midterm planning meeting
where they were reflecting
back on some
of the things they had found
and thinking ahead to some
of the stuff they
still wanted to find.
And, because we have
such rich documentation
in these field projects of
Gerry Johnson's interviews
with quilters.
In fact, it was one of the first
of American memory
collections back
when we were putting
collections back online
in the late 90s early
2000s, the Quilts
and Quilt Making an
American Collection was one
of those early ones that went
online that included a number
of these interviews that she did
for the Blue Ridge
Parkway Project.
So I just wanted to play this
because so often, you know,
we've heard her interviews with
quilters and her fieldwork.
I don't know if I've ever
heard her sort of going on in
like a planning meeting
about what her approach was
and how she was, how she
was doing her fieldwork.
The sound quality on
this was, to warn you,
was a little bit tricky to deal
with because it was recorded
at a meeting and I think
there was two mikes put
in the middle of a table.
And, so I've tried to bump
up the sound a little bit.
So maybe if you close
your eyes and listen.
But I'll play it as long as we
can tolerate the, tolerate it.
>> Gerry Johnson: The
quilting tradition is something
that I find very rich and
very interesting to me here
and is actually performed here
which as in everything that has
to do with quilting
exists in the area.
And, it seems to me, in the
little research I've done
on quilting, two kinds of
studies have predominated.
One the examination of museum
pieces, I find is [inaudible]
and secondly the examination
of the very quaint quilting
bees as they're called.
The latter quilting
groups don't seem to me
to be very prevalent
in this area.
[Inaudible] might be.
One is, I guess everybody
knows any quilt made
in quilting proved inferior
and therefore nobody wanted
and nobody quilted that way.
[Inaudible] and then
other reasons.
Perhaps the churches, which
are frequently the center
of this kind of quilting
activity don't have, maybe,
social organizations
to say [inaudible]
to provide this kind
of ongoing activity.
[Inaudible].
Anyway, the thing about quilts
that interest me are
the piecing first
of all how they hand piece,
some seem to be machine pieced.
I'm curious to whether
there's one type prevalent
for the market and one type
prevalent for home use.
I'm interested in the relative
use of what I call frame quilts
and [inaudible] quilts.
[Inaudible] for sale.
I know I'd like to
investigate that relationship.
The applique quilts I've
found are not traditional.
I haven't found any traditional
applique patterns yet.
Normally those are bought from
kits and then quilted applique
and quilted before
[inaudible] for sale
and generally not for use.
That means they are a special
kind of quilt, bought in a kit
and then given to a
special member or sold
for a fantastic price.
I'm particularly interested
in the quilting pattern.
I think I've bent
everybody's ear about that.
The quilting patterns
themselves and [inaudible] seems
to be very prevalent here and I
haven't seen it in other places.
And, that's that's the fan of.
>> The stitching pattern.
>> Gerry Johnson: Yeah
the stitching pattern.
And, I'm quite interested
in the way that's it's done,
a piece of chalk attached to a
string and then a fan drawn on.
I was told that the
fan should consist
of at least five lines,
five lines precisely.
I haven't been able
to verify that.
That being a very old quilting
pattern tradition in this area.
And, in fact, I was told there
are only two ways to quilt.
You either quilted by
the fan or by the piece.
And.
>> Ann Hoog: So I've also heard
reported there are only two ways
of quilting by the
fan or by the piece.
It's kind of interesting
hearing her reflect on that.
And then knowing, you know,
in retrospect that she went on
and just, you know,
found some of the things
that she was looking for
that she hadn't quite found
at this point.
So it's really interesting
hearing the process of that.
So here's just a
series of portraits
of fieldworkers exemplifying
just some
of these things we've
been talking about,
some of them at meetings.
This is Margaret Owen
at that same meeting.
And, I just, I just
like these pictures.
This one I had to share.
And this is again Gerry Johnson.
She was involved in many
field projects, Rhode Island.
This was a planning meeting for
Rhode Island Folklife Project.
Kay Young.
And again, a lot of
these pictures were
at planning meetings.
Chicago Ethnic Arts.
So this is sort of
getting, getting [inaudible]
and again wanted to kind of
wrap up some reflections.
This is a team meeting of
the Montana Folklife Team.
A good, you know, reflection on
fieldwork that they had done,
so the project was
over at this point.
And, again, the sound quality
is a little challenging.
I mean, you can see sort
of way over on the left is
where the mike stand was.
And, you can very clearly here,
that's Barry Tolkien up there
in the left, very
clearly hear him.
And he talks a lot.
He talks a lot.
I mean he was the
project director.
But, you know, the other
three are in the room
but they're a little
bit harder to hear.
So, you know, basically
what they're talking
about here is some of the Kay
Young and Paula Johnson talking
about some of their frustrations
about not having documented
enough women's folklife
in the Montana Project.
So I just want to play
a little bit of this.
>> One of the things that
kept cropping up as we went
around the state was
the prominent role
of women [inaudible] a
lot of the traditions.
It was the feeling if you ran
across something that, you know,
a woman had invented
or had developed this particular
weaver slide, I can't remember,
there are other examples, now.
But I remember being struck by
a lot of women were involved
in hanging, things that seemed
to not fit the easy
stereotype of masculine west.
And, I just wondered, did we get
far enough with any of our stuff
that would make anything
on that?
>> I'm disappointed that we
didn't get to talk more on it.
>> Yeah.
>> I felt that on
the wagon train too.
>> Were there many women
on the wagon train?
>> Oh sure.
It was very difficult to
find a way to talk to them.
They were busy or
doing something.
>> Well maybe that says
something, you know,
in itself that the
women were busy
and have responsibilities
just like they do on ranches.
And, they get out and
take the reins of wagons,
they're out mowing
the hey as well
as all the household
responsibilities.
It seems like, on some cases,
the women have actually more
responsibilities than the men
because they have
the household chores,
which men very rarely get
involved in, but also they're
out there helping the
men with their chores.
Now, this isn't across the
board safely I don't think
but it is actually something
that should be pursued later on
and that we did not
adequately get good coverage on.
>> I think, you know,
there's such a big [inaudible]
of information about
women's folklore generally
in the country.
And, I've always
thought as [inaudible].
>> Ann Hoog: Gary Stanton.
>> Gary Stanton:
And a lot of type
of people they just don't
know the questions to ask.
But I just wonder if there are
other situational things too
like maybe [inaudible] and
they work in the mine as well
as the homes but it was still
difficult to contact them.
>> We talked to a
lot of women though.
I do wish we could've
talked to more.
We did talk to a lot of women.
And, I'm just wondering if
maybe the reason we get a little
unsatisfied with the collecting
has to do with the fact
that many of the men we
interviewed were performing
or performing like [inaudible]
or you know doing things
that were readily
recognizable as traditional.
And, maybe if we had more
time to spend with one woman
and go back for repeated visits
we would've been able to.
>> Yeah.
>> Get more.
>> The women stuff that we got
most generally was the stuff
that we already identified
like quilt making for example.
>> Quilting.
>> Quilting.
The women seemed, in some
of the homes we were in,
well when we were
in [inaudible] home,
[inaudible] was obviously
talking in full information
and attitude but insubordinated
herself being hostess
and I guess our focus
was all on [inaudible]
so we might have found out a
lot from her, but we didn't.
A lot of places like that
[inaudible] the kingpin
of the family.
And so she was talking more
than anybody else, I think.
>> In remember [inaudible],
we went out to see him.
>> Yeah.
>> And seemed like
seeking the wife,
we found out that she
quilted and crocheted.
>> Yeah. Yeah.
>> All kinds of things too.
>> I'm glad you asked her
because in [inaudible]
all the whirligigs.
I mean, that's what
we went there for too.
But on the other
hand, it seemed to me
that she was a very sensitive
woman who might have.
>> I don't think she
would've brought it up.
>> No she wouldn't have.
I'm trying to think.
She wouldn't have been
pestilent about it.
But, she might have
been [inaudible]
because she's also
obviously an artist
that we spent all day
paying attention to her.
She didn't look like she'd
be small minded about it.
>> No.
>> It would've been small
of us not to see that stuff
and we, and we ended up.
And, I just wonder how
many things like that,
that we just caught partly when
we went to see somebody else,
that's happened not between
sectors all the way through,
it happened in the state
prison as well where looked
over something because
we [inaudible].
But, I sense that women's
folklore is a lot more basic
[inaudible] where the folklore
women are involved more
[inaudible] program.
>> Ann Hoog: So I had to
just play that whole clip.
And, there's a really
interesting part
at the beginning
to where he talks
about well maybe Gerry Tolkien
as well, maybe it's just
because there are more men
folklorists than women.
And, they have that
discussion as well.
So it's interesting.
So I just wanted to
end with this slide
because when the fieldwork is
over, you have to come back
to create those logs and
field notes and create order
out of what you just created.
And, I just want to
say one major piece
of documentation missing here,
because I didn't quite have
enough time to pull it together,
is to look at the field notes.
The field notes are also online.
And, the field notes is where
you can really get into some
of the deeper thoughts that some
of these fieldworkers are having
about their day to
day situations
and where they warrant some
of the challenges they
were dealing with.
So that's definitely an
area to explore further
and dive into the collections.
And, there's so much
more to learn about women
in these collections
in the archives.
So please come visit
us and learn more.
[ Applause ]
>> Catherine H Kerst:
Thank you Ann.
If the three speakers
could come up.
This was a great
session, exciting.
And, I'll ask a question
to start us off.
It's really wonderful
to see the photographs
of the women doing fieldwork.
I think, for many of us, nobody
was there taking a picture
of us doing fieldwork.
We don't even have
a documentation.
And, for women in previous
eras, you certainly don't have
that sort of images
of women often engaged
in doing fieldwork.
So it's really exciting
to see that.
In my work with Sydney Robertson
Cowell, I've been excited partly
by her correspondence, her field
notes, her, hearing her voice
which comes through
really strongly, gossip.
And, she kept copies of
things, there are carbons and,
of things that she sent into
the Library of Congress.
So you know, talking to so and
so about this and talking to so
and so about that a lot of it
having to do with the rapport
with the people she's
recording and
or all the problems
in trying, you know.
I went to his barbershop,
I couldn't find him.
I went to all the
other barbershops.
You know, sort of telling you
about the process and sort
of hearing her voice and then
also hearing her talking.
I've been working with the
WPA California collection
with Sydney talking
about working with WPA
in DC and in San Francisco.
And, I guess what, so
that's, so in a way I feel
like I've been privileged to
have someone who is so verbose
and so many layered and
complicated as Sydney.
But, so I'm curious
with Aldona's work,
you did talk a little bit
about the school teacher
speaking a little bit
about the context and sort
of being from outside.
And, I wondered how much more
of that can you find in letters
or other kinds of documentation?
I wonder, sometimes,
because I work with Sydney,
I think women are more evocative
about all of this personal stuff
and the mechanics
of doing fieldwork.
But, I think maybe
my view is skewed.
So I'm curious to hear further.
>> Aldona Dye: Yeah,
there's definitely a lot of,
a lot of personal letters
that give you a real sense
of their personalities and some
challenges that they're facing
and some frustrations.
Alfreda Peel specifically, she's
got letters to Arthur Kyle Davis
in the archive that it just
reads like, I mean it's like me,
it's like my soap opera.
They're just like her
personality really comes
through, you really
get the sense
that she's a really
outspoken person,
a really outspoken woman.
And, actually there's, it's one
of the more interesting things
I've gotten from the archive,
which I actually should've
included now that I think
about it, is Alfreda's
conversations
with Arthur Kyle Davis.
And, they seem to have a
pretty close friendship.
But, they have conversations
about a group
of rival folklorists in
Virginia which is John Pyle
and Anabel Morris Buchanan who
did the White Top Folk Festival.
And, there really seemed
to be this rivalry going
on where the Virginia
Folklore Society felt
like this other group
of collectors was sort
of usurping their
authority and also doing it
in an exploitative sense.
And, so you get, there's
letters from Alfreda Peel
to Arthur Kyle Davis
where she says, you know,
John Pyle asked me to sing
on this NBC radio broadcast.
Can you compose my
letter saying no?
I'm kind of scared to.
And, then she said I'm going
to forward you any letters
I get form him unopened
and you can open them
because I'm scared to.
I don't like him.
And, she also, at one point,
she discovers a folk
festival in Back Creek.
And, she starts to
participate in it
or she starts to observe it.
And, she writes to Arthur
Kyle Davis, you know, this is,
this folk festival is
gotten a for the people
by the people Back Creek.
I'm assisting mainly
as an observer.
God forbid I act
as Mrs. Buchanan.
And, you know, that sort of
speaks to this, there's a real,
it's a bit of a class thing
between Buchanan and Peel.
And, there's also the sense that
Peel sees herself as a friend
of the people she's looking
at where she sees Buchanan
as a sort of outside exploiter.
It's just one thing.
I don't, but you do get, yeah,
a real sense of the experience
out in the field and
these personal connections
and personal rivalries, yeah.
>> Catherine H Kerst:
That's fascinating.
So and for Sheryl, you've
got two very different women,
Sydney on the one hand
and then Margaret.
Your, the clip that you played,
the recording was fabulous.
To actually hear
Margaret Valiant's voice.
Were there other places in
her recordings where it sort
of veers into a conversation
with a performer or?
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz: Not
in the collection itself.
There, it's more with there are
several interviews that I found
with her later, back in the 70s.
But, she is much, she
keeps her cards much closer
to her chest than Sydney.
And, I often find myself, it's
actually sort of the reading
between the lines that she
has things in her letters
that will say something
about one
of the men running
one of the agencies.
And, it would say in parentheses
like double entendre,
if you know what I mean.
And I was like no I
don't know what you mean.
So yeah, so I feel like, I mean
I have a similar experience
with Sydney where she kind of
puts everything out there and,
you know, writes I feel like
my perfect thing from Sydney
from this time was she
had a broken typewriter
that couldn't do spaces.
But, she wrote the
letter anyway.
And so, and it's kind of
the way, sometimes you feel
about her and her
opinions and her, you know,
just her observations.
And, she just had
so much to say.
And, so it's just this block
of text with no spaces.
So yeah, I mean, I mean
thinking about, you know,
these tape recorded
conversations it's like,
it's so amazing to be able
to, to chart the process.
And, that's something
that's missing.
I mean, the other thing that
I would say is that, I think,
when I started this
project I assumed
because it was a federal
agency I would just go
and all the records would
be all in one place.
And, that's not true
at all for the New Deal
and especially these programs,
you know, that weren't,
that's sort of seen as
peripheral, you know,
in the grand scheme of things.
So I feel like there's still a
lot hidden and to be learned.
And I, you know, I wish,
I wish there was more.
And, that's why I, by, you
know, coming across that clip
of her talking to those
men was, I mean, amazing.
>> Catherine H Kerst: So
basically, there's information
about the process and their
relationships with people.
But, then there's also the
material that they've collected
which has not necessarily
seen the light of day.
So for Ann, I wondered,
and I haven't looked
at the field reports.
Are the, an this may be a
totally stereotypical thing
to say.
But, are the women's field
reports different qualitatively
from the men's field reports?
Are there, is there more about
relationships and making contact
and rapport and personal
connections?
>> Ann Hoog: So I
haven't spent a lot
of time approaching the
field notes in that way.
But, I think that would be
a fascinating thing to do.
I mean, because, especially
in the early field projects,
a lot of the women fieldworkers
were actually looking
at food ways and quilting
and things, I think,
some of the subject matter
is definitely different
in these field notes.
I can think of one example
from, I don't remember
if it was New River
or Cold River
where the person writing the
field notes was concerned
that the person they
were talking
to was sharing too much
personal information.
And, there was this
note that was
like Mary can we delete this?
You know? And, it just seemed
like, but I hadn't really,
seeing it was all in capital
letters and things like that.
And it just kind of, did kind
of stand out as, you know,
maybe there was a little bit
more thinking along the lines
of sharing these deep
personal stories and making it
in the recording and being
very concerned about that.
But, I haven't really
holistically looked
at the field notes.
But I think that would be
really interesting to look at.
>> Catherine H Kerst: Thank you.
Yeah I wonder.
I mean it's the materials
they collected
which have not really
gotten attention.
But, then I also wonder, I
think work needs to be done
on what additional perspectives
have some women had that sort
of enhance our understanding
of the whole process
of collecting and, you know,
the reasons for collecting,
their background,
socioeconomically, or whatever.
I just wonder how that'll
contribute to the whole story?
And, I'd like to open up the
conversation for questions.
>> Okay. I have a
question about Virginia.
Basically, when Cecil
Sharp went to Virginia,
Alfonso Smith was his guide and
he did go to a lot of schools.
And, I've read a lot about what
the wonderful Cecil Sharp did
to influence Virginia
collectors.
But I would really
love to know more
about how they influenced him
and his collecting techniques.
>> Aldona Dye: Okay.
I don't know how
they influenced him
in his collecting techniques.
But, he was, the years
that he came through,
I mean he actually contributed
a lot to their collection too
and was a big contributor.
Yeah, I'm not, I'm not so sure
about, I haven't looked too much
into the correspondence
between Sharp and Smith.
>> Isn't that your university?
>> Aldona Dye: It would be yeah.
Yeah.
>> Catherine H Kerst: Steve,
>> I have a question for
Sheryl which involves this sort
of big secrecy with DC and
the Settlement Administration,
which doesn't seem to pertain
from the very beginning
because Charlie did accomplish
about six songs on
those one sides.
And, he told a story and
in oral history in which,
after he published Dodger,
his boss Tugwell got a call
from Representative Vincent
who was a powerful republican
congressman threatening
to defund the Settlement
Administration
because the song began
the candidates of Dodger.
And, but the only version
of that story I've ever
heard came directly
from Charlie at an oral history.
But, I wonder if Sydney refers
to it at all and if you think
that might be, that incident
itself might have been behind a
lot of that secrecy where she
was, you know, directed not
to discuss the project at all.
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz:
Oh that's interesting.
I don't know the timing
of when that happened.
>> Right.
>> I mean, her trip
was December 36.
So yeah, the Music
Unit had only been
in existence for
less than a year.
>> Right.
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz: I think
or a little more than a year.
Sydney talks about that.
But in her reminiscences
I don't know, I can't,
which is another thing that is
tricky, I think about working
with these figures who
then went back and sort
of told the narrative.
So it's Sydney, we,
there is actually,
the AFC has an collection
of Sydney's reminiscences.
And, so it's always a sort
of going back and forth
between the actual
historical documentation
and then what she remembers.
And, I, that wasn't
made explicit but it is,
it is interesting to think about
whether there was some incident
that made them go underground.
The fact that they weren't
in the, in the executive,
in the report, in the
annual report makes me think
that it might have
been all along.
And, I think that, it
wasn't necessarily only tied
to the fact that, you know,
the cooperative education.
But, also just that the
Resettlement Administration was
battling this idea that
they were providing luxury
to the poor.
And, so they really tried to
keep any evidence of that,
you know, away from the
press and things like that.
But yeah, that's an
interesting idea.
>> Catherine H Kerst: Yeah Ann.
>> Thank you all three of you
for such really interesting
presentations.
I am curious Aldona.
Right? Were the school
teacher collectors, one,
is there any information of the
context in which they collected?
Like did they use equipment?
Were they mostly writing down?
Did they do this like in school
or did they go tramping out,
you know, on you
know, into the brush
and find people up
in the mountains?
And then, I'm interested
to know if they were using,
if they wanted to
integrate these ballads
into the curriculum, what
were the censoring mechanisms
and who did that?
Did they just use everything?
I just did a BYOBH
assignment with my students,
Be Your Own Ballad Hunter.
>> Aldona Dye: Oh cool.
>> And you're always just
totally amazed at the content
of these ballads, you know,
murder and premarital sex
and walking in the woods
and coming out pregnant.
And I just can't
believe it, which is one
of the reasons that I do it.
Did they use all these
in the schoolhouse then?
Or who was, who was
picking and choosing what
and how were they used
in the curriculum?
>> Aldona Dye: Okay.
So I'll try and answer
those in order.
First, so the school teachers
didn't use recording equipment.
It's all hand written.
There's a lot of notebooks
that were submitted,
which is actually
pretty interesting.
There's some notebooks
submitted and you can see,
Alfreda Peel has her 1916
notebook and it's marked
up by the university
folks, you know,
just like we found this
one, we found this one,
oh this one's not a true ballad.
So some get called
and some get kept.
And, so yeah it's written,
mostly written verses
but then also these sheet music.
And, then more and more
the sheet music starts
to come to the fore.
And, actually, so the recording
was done by Arthur Kyle Davis
in collaboration with Lorenzo
Turner [Inaudible] they sort
of shared a recording machine.
And so when Virginia had it,
they made all these recordings
at the houses of several
collectors, Alfreda Peel,
Juliet Fultneroy,
even Anabel Buchanan,
even though they
have this rivalry.
And, then they used
those recordings
to make more accurate
transcriptions,
which is not how we
think of them today.
But yeah, they wanted more
accurate transcriptions.
As far as the teachers
incorporated
into their curriculum, oh
actually, and the idea was
that you would go
into your classroom
and ask your students do you
or did your grandparents
know these songs,
and get that information
that way.
But, then there were
collectors, like Alfreda Peel
and Juliet Fultneroy,
actually no, more Alfreda Peel,
Juliet Fultneroy was stay
more in her schoolhouse,
but would actually go out into
the mountains and find ballads.
I don't know too much
about the limitations
of it being the Virginia
Folklore Society archive means
it's mostly you see
what's coming in
and not really the reverse
and how it's going out
and how it's used
in the curriculum.
So unfortunately I don't
really know about that.
>> Catherine H Kerst: And, Lacy.
>> This question's for Ann.
And, I'm wondering if we know,
roughly, just the percentage
of women folklore in
the AFC collection,
how many were married, had
children, or were black?
>> Ann Hoog: Yeah.
That's a really interesting
information to know.
And, no we don't have
that information.
I really feel like with
a lot at looking at some
of these contemporary
fieldworkers, it's just kind
of getting started and finding
out some of these things.
As far as how many were
married or had children,
the children come up
frequently sort of in passing
in conversations
although very directly
in the Blue Ridge
Parkway project
because the Eilers had a six
month old baby Andrew Eiler
that they were carrying around
with them on the field trip.
And, there's pictures of
Andrew Eiler all over the place
where they're like
tickle, tickle, tickle.
You know, I mean it's like at
the planning meetings, you know,
and he's, you know,
dancing around.
On apparently on
fieldwork trips, you know,
they would be going into
churches and whatnot
and they'd be passing the baby
around the congregation,
you know.
I mean it really kind of help
them, you know, be real people
with the communities
where they were talking,
talking about children.
And, I would say in the Montana
project this came up when,
which was part of the
clip that I didn't play
at that same planning meeting
where they were talking
about like the difficulties
of getting, getting some
of the women's folklore.
And, Kay was talking about, Kay
Young was talking about how,
well, you know, every
time we wanted to talk
to them they were busy.
It's like oh the school
year's about to start
or the school year has
started, or now it's, you know,
the holidays are coming, my
kids were going to be home.
And, there were a
lot of these excuses.
And, I think it was some of the,
I think it was Barry Tolkien it
was well maybe that's just sort
of a rhetorical thing
whenever they're busy.
And, she's like when I
was getting my kids ready
for school, like, you know, I
didn't want to talk to anybody,
I didn't want anybody
sitting there.
And, they were like well maybe
if we had documented how do you
get your kids ready for school,
you know, that would've been
an approach to take rather
than saying can I talk to you
about your canning traditions
or something like that.
You know? I mean it was, I
find that very interesting
and it comes up in
conversations.
And, then as far as how many
fieldworkers are black or,
you know, coming from other
ethnic groups throughout,
yep I really, Robinson
for sure, there aren't
that many especially
from that time period.
I, and, I mean, this
will, this will come
up with the Latina
folklorists that Allina's talk,
I guess she'll talk about later,
I guess that's a challenge
for this fieldwork for sure, so.
>> Catherine H Kerst: Stephanie.
>> Listening to you talking
about people in the 30s
and people in the 70s, you have
a sense of some progress there
in the kinds of things
that women can do
and participate in [inaudible].
And, yet if you look at
the 30s, some of the things
that they were doing are
just amazing for the time
when there were more
social restrictions
on what women can do.
I just, I'm amazed at
Sydney Robertson Kyle
and what she was able
to get away with.
And, I wonder if you had a sense
of people in some way trying
to stop and limit what
women could do in the field
or question their being
in the field at all?
Which I have found in
other situations in talking
with groups [inaudible].
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz: I would
say for Sydney specifically,
she seemed to, and
Cathy may have something
to say about this.
But, in my, I feel like she saw
herself as being able to exist
and thrive in a world of men
kind of from the beginning.
Like, I mean, I feel like she
said things like, you know,
I became so comfortable
with the equipment
and I would find myself in
these technical conversations
about the recording equipment
with this group of men, which,
you know, they don't usually let
women into those conversations.
Sydney, I mean, going back
to when she was growing up,
I mean she came from privilege
and, but, she, you know,
pulled herself out of her elite
girl's school and decided to go
to a public tech high school
because she wanted
to be an engineer.
And, she said, and
she called it a boy's,
it was a public school I think
but that program was
mostly boys, men,
you know, high school.
But, I kind of feel like I saw
all of these examples of times
when she, in particular,
was willing to live
outside those restrictions.
And, I don't, in terms of
Margaret, it's more complicated
and I feel like I'm,
it's still evolving,
my understanding about her.
She was, men often called
her, you know, striking.
She was very warm,
very charismatic.
And, I think that she used more
sort of traditional femininity
as to, you know, to her
advantage except like in,
as we listened, when she was
completely not, you know,
listened to, in terms of
dealing with the equipment.
So anyway, I have some
other, I mean both Sydney
and Margaret were divorced
without children
living independently.
They both kind of, by
this time they were
in their, in their 30s.
And, they had kind of
forged their own path
in different ways already.
So I can't speak
to the experience
of other women doing this
kind of collecting work.
But yeah it's definitely
interesting to think about.
>> I'm thinking of
Marguerite [Inaudible]
who was a [inaudible]
who went out.
In fact actually [inaudible]
which has made a nice leap
for me because Marguerite
[Inaudible] also learned how
to use the equipment and the
other women on the team did not.
And, it made, and she went off
on her own and did recordings
because she was able to do that.
And, she just didn't care
about the gossip [inaudible]
and people telling her
she couldn't do it.
And, that's actually.
>> Catherine H Kerst: I think
also the New Deal era during
so few years, so much was
done also in photography.
Women, some how I got the
feeling, I've gotten the feeling
that it was an era of a
short era of social mobility.
I mean it was sort of
chaos socially so that,
and even African
Americans in working in WPA
and in the various federal
programs, that they,
this was not an academic
setting.
This was something new.
And, people who had a lot of
energy and rushed in sometimes
where able to make a niche
for themselves where, like,
Sydney was not an
academic and Margaret was.
I mean that these, that somehow
they were able to fit in,
in the social chaos of the era.
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz:
Well I think Eleanor Roosevelt
had like a direct hand.
And, she actually convened all
the women working in agencies
like invited them
to a tea every,
I don't know how
often it happened.
But, she cultivated that.
And, I do think that
there was this sort
of blip during the New Deal when
there were these opportunities.
And, what I found is that
then when the New Deal ended,
you know, there really wasn't
anything like that for them.
And, they both took
very different paths.
But, they both rose into
leadership positions, you know,
like that sort of director
level within the New Deal.
So it's something to think
about in terms of what
that structure allowed for
women, I mean, within reason.
>> Catherine H Kerst:
I mean, yeah,
Sydney became Mrs Henry Cowell
and did not do much
recording after the new deal.
>> Sheryl Kaskowitz:
Right exactly.
She got married and Margaret
adamantly decided not to do that
and sort of did some like ad
hock, she was writing pageants
and she said that she worked
for wrote some radio plays,
she was living in New York.
And, then in the 1950s she
was called back to take care
of her ailing father and moved
back to Tennessee and sort of.
Yeah. I mean it definitely felt
like this opening and closing
in terms of the opportunities
for them.
>> Catherine H Kerst: Yes.
>> On the Virginia,
again, collectors,
were any of them African
Americans and did they collect
from African Americans?
>> Aldona Dye: There's a
recording of one gospel quartet
and that's as far as I know.
In the collectors, yeah, none
were African American except
for the partner of
[inaudible] but that's,
he's a completely
different university.
And, that's something I'm
actually trying to get
at in my dissertation,
like the specificity
of race in all of this.
And, I'm really seeing the
notation practice as part
of that, as something
that, the specifically
like educated white women would
be doing, especially their works
in like music clubs
and as teachers.
And, I'm also seeing,
actually in relation
to the last question
too, I'm seeing the work
of the women I'm looking at
in my dissertation as sort
of an outgrowth of like around
the turn of the century.
It seems like there's a lot of
work for women that was sort
of like getting out into
the field, like, you know,
settlement schools, traveling
nurses, even fieldworkers
for other organizations,
just like sort of,
I don't know like soft skills.
Like being able to talk to
people and being not seen
as a nonthreatening force
and seeing this work as one.
And, that was, I mean, that
was a little bit earlier
like around, yeah, around
the turn of the century.
>> Cahterine H Kerst: I
think one more question.
Lisa?
>> Having been a student with
the Virginia Ballad women,
looking at it musically,
you talked about [inaudible]
to which the content
have been coming
through the Virginia
Ballad Collectors.
These women have a very
rich musical tradition.
But, it's probably formed
by their classical music
or quasi classical
music upbringing.
So when it comes, I think
it's just fascinating
that they were the ones
who brought the tunes
to the Virginia ballads.
But, when they did so,
what choices did they make?
As we know from listening,
lots of fieldwork was recording
tunes often changed from verse
to verse, a lot of
semitones or quarter,
or teeny weeny micro
tones incorporated.
Was there any interest in
ornamentation or vocal style,
or improvisation in
the ways they tried
to transcribe some sort
of an earth form of tunes?
>> Aldona Dye: Yeah.
They, talk more about
the difficulties
in capturing those tunes,
those sorts of aspects.
We talk about like the
mountain whine that tone
that you can't get
from notation.
And, also singers like
sliding up to a note
or not fully staying on one.
Or even some transcribers found
it difficult to fit the melodies
within a standard like 4/4 or
however they were, 4/4 or 6/8
or however they're
putting it in.
So there's that difficulty.
And, as far as I know,
and I want to look
into this a little
bit more, but that,
at least in their
published works
that seems to be their stance.
That, like, yes this
is an imperfect method.
And, so we'll just talk,
we'll talk about the
ways that it's imperfect.
>> Thank you it's a very
interesting perspective you
brought out [inaudible].
>> Catherine H Kerst:
Great session,
very exciting beginning
to this symposium.
Thanks Nancy for organizing it.
>> Nancy Groce: Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Nancy Groce: We're going to,
we're going to now go
for a short session.
We are taking advantage
of this symposium
to also highlight some
of our collections.
And, we've, we asked our
colleagues, the archivists
to come forward and talk
about some of the collections
that we have that we think
were either their favorites
or they're working on or need a
little more advertisement is the
wrong word, but promotion
highlighting.
So we're going to do two very
short presentations now by two
of my colleagues, Jesse
Hocking and Allina Migoni.
And, if you'd like
to come forward,
what we'll do is we'll just
run, I think maybe, well you,
maybe we'll take
questions immediately
after each one just
to keep it focused.
So let me start by introducing
Jesse Hocking who's an Archivist
with the American
Folklife Center.
And, he's just recently
joined us in May of this year.
And, he previously severed as
a Digital Project Archivist
at the Wisconsin Center for Film
and Theater Research and also
with the Rare Book
and Manuscript Library
in Athens Georgia.
He has an MA in Library
and Information Studies
from the University
of Wisconsin Madison
and has also studied Film
and African American Studies
at University of Georgia.
He's going to be speaking about
Nancy Sweezy's collection.
[ Applause ]
>> Jesse Hocking: Thank you.
All right.
I'm so excited to talk
about this collection
because it's what I do
every day right now.
It's mid processing.
So it's really exciting
to drum up some excitement
about this collection.
And, really I'm just going to
show you all a lot of photos.
We've been diving in full time.
So there's lots to see.
Also these are not
official Library
of Congress digitalization
quality photos.
This one on the left is
literally a picture of a slide
through a View Finder.
So forgive me.
But, this is Nancy Sweezy
and she is the namesake
of the Nancy Sweezy Collection.
Most of her work,
she's mostly known
for her work in Jugtown Pottery.
So we'll talk about that.
In 2006, she was an NEA
National Heritage Fellow.
So this is the manuscripts
as they stand right
now, as of last night.
So I'm working on it.
So Nancy produced
several books in her work.
And, the top two are about
the southern pottery tradition
raising clay.
So the one on the
left was published
by a Smithsonian
publisher in 1994
and on the right republished
under Chapel Hill's
Press in 1994, 84 and 94.
And, we'll talk about the
other two books as well.
So this is Ralph Rinzler,
her long time friend
and collaborator
on many projects.
She got to know Ralph
when she was working
in Cambridge in the music scene.
She was the president of the
board of Club 47 which was one
of the main folk venues.
And, Ralph was seeking
out southern musicians
for the Newport Folk Festival
which she was involved
with at the time.
And, he asked Nancy,
because she was a potter,
to bring up some southern
traditional craft artists
from the south.
Because she was much more
focused on material culture,
which is another great
thing about this collection.
Many of our collections
focus on songs, folk songs,
but this one is much more about
objects and material culture.
And, so Sweezy, Rinzler,
and Norman Kennedy established a
nonprofit called Country Roads.
And, this would become a
very important organizations
in her work.
It provided a lot of monetary
support and allowed her
to do a lot of different
things in her time.
So when she was touring through
the south, she collected a lot
of these objects and traditional
crafts which she sold.
She sold in the store
Country Roads
which existed for about a year.
So they're all very beautiful.
And, when she went down to
the south to meet the artists
who were making these crafts,
she actually got to see,
you know, this is the person
who made this corn husk doll
and was started documenting
the actual practice
of creating these crafts
that she was trying
to create a market
for in Cambridge.
She also studied
crafts in the southwest,
which the next few photos are
from that area of the country.
And, I'm including any notes
that are accompanying the
photos when we have them.
So as you can see, a real
wealth of traditional crafts
from weaving, basket making,
everything in between.
So in 1968 Country Roads
purchased Jugtown Pottery
which is near a sager
of North Carolina.
And, that same year Ralph
Rinzler became the official head
of the Festival of American
Folklife here at DC.
And, so their paths sort
of diverged as she went
to do this hands on work
of running a pottery.
And, she established
apprenticeships
which were very important
at the time, brought a lot
of young artists
through Jugtown.
So this is a Jugtown Pottery
timeline but they were founded
in the late teens early 20s.
This is the Jugtown crew with
Nancy Sweezy in the center.
They had a traditional
wood burning kiln
and produced a lot of pottery.
These, this is the
Owens Vernon Owens
on the left and his wife Pam.
And, extremely talented potters.
This is Vernon again
working on the wheel.
So I could just show you photos
of these all day, I love them.
Some rest and relaxation
as well.
This is Nancy actually
turning herself.
So Nancy also really brought a
lot of, she was very adept to PR
and bringing press attention
to this area that had sort
of fallen off post
prohibition really.
And, she, there were a lot of
clippings from the collection
where you can see that she
was bringing, you know,
these large donors to Jugtown.
And, she was getting the
word out there that this area
of North Carolina was very
fertile country for pottery.
This was a big one, 1977 Walter
Mondale's wife Joan came down.
This was the year that Carter
and Mondale took office.
And, she visited Jugtown.
And, as you can see, Nancy
Sweezy was front and center.
This is probably my
favorite press clipping.
This is a promotional material
from the accounting firm
that did Jugtown's books.
And, I think it just really
shows you like they were
like proud of their
client in Jugtown,
ancient and modern contrast.
And, my favorite part is that
they called Nancy Sweezy,
they said at right, owner Ms.
Nancy Sweezy a sophisticate
in overalls.
I love this photo I
think it's so funny.
And so she was in North
Carolina until the 80s.
And she actually sold the
pottery to the Owens family
and they still run it today.
And, so she traveled throughout
the south and the southwest
and created this
book Raised in Clay.
So she visited a lot of
other potteries outside
of Jugtown as well.
I love the back splash
of all the clay.
So she did a lot to
promote other potteries
as well as Jugtown.
In 1985, she moved
back up to Boston
and started the Refugee
Arts Group.
And, they similarly did
an apprenticeship program
where they would invite sort
of masters of folk crafts
and have them mentor
younger practitioners.
So this is from the Lowell
Folk Fest she was involved
with Lowell.
She also worked on the
Folklife Center's field project
in Lowell.
So this is just to
give you an idea
of what the promotional material
would look like for a night
of programming at Refugee Arts.
And simply this is the
master on the right
and the apprentice on the left.
So everything from
music and dance
to fabric arts, there's
fiddlers.
This kite maker says, down
on the right hand side,
he's a Cambodian kite maker
available to demonstrate
in schools, libraries, and
community organizations.
So it was very much about
getting recent immigrants,
allowing them to retain
these traditional crafts
and find an outlet to perform
or keep them alive
in the community.
And, so then in the 90s, she
started taking many trips
to Armenia and documenting
folk culture there,
which eventually became a book
that she edited with
her son Sam.
And, Sam Sweezy became a
professional photographer.
So a lot of these amazing
photographs were taken by him.
>> Excuse me.
>> Jesse Hocking: Oh sure.
>> Are these images
Armenia or Turkey?
>> Jesse Hocking: They did
work through the whole area.
Right now, since this
is mid processing,
I couldn't tell you exactly.
But yeah, I'm hoping to find
like a slide log at some point
in the manuscripts that
will tell me exactly
where most of these were taken.
>> You'll just have
to travel there.
>> Jesse Hocking: I guess so.
>> I'll help be the collector.
>> Jesse Hocking: But this
is traditional bread making,
lavash, and.
And always back to pottery.
So that was just a
snapshot of this collection.
It we'll hopefully
have a [inaudible]
up at the end of this year.
And, I also want to thank
Carolina [inaudible]
who has helped me sort through
the several thousands slides.
Thank you.
[ Applause ]
>> Nancy Groce: Can we take?
>> Jesse Hocking: Oh sure.
>> Nancy Groce: Any questions.
Okay cool.
>> Jesse Hocking: Great.
>> Nancy Groce: The, my,
the next colleague I'm going
to introduce is Alda
Alina Migoni,
whose only recently
joined our staff
and we're delighted to have her.
She's a reference librarian
at the American Folklife
Center now.
And, she has degrees in
Latin American Studies
from the infamous UCLA.
And, she's originally
from San Diego.
And her recent interests include
Latinx studies in human rights
and artists protests,
especially in Latin America.
She's, in addition to being on
our staff, she's also president
of the Hispanic Cultural Society
at the Library of Congress
and is a Member at Large in
Reforma the National Association
to Promote Library
Information Services to Latinos
and Spanish Speaking
Affiliates of ALA.
And, she's going to be speaking
about Latinx collections in the,
some of them, because
we have lots,
in the American Folklife Center.
Please welcome Allina.
[ Applause ]
>> Allina Migoni: So sneak peek.
All right, as Nancy
mentioned, Allina Migoni.
And, I have been here since May,
so very short amount of time.
And, in my brief experience
here, my colleagues
and some researchers themselves
have pointed me in the direction
of some interesting collections.
So this will serve as a
lightening round in some sorts,
in 15 minutes, 4 collections
of Latinas in the archive.
Three collections where the
Latinas are the ethnographers
or the folklorists and the
fourth a very amazing 100 year
old informant that I of a new
recently acquired collection.
So the first collection I'd
like to bring your
attention to is [inaudible].
This was compiled by Lydia
Cabrera and recording
by Josephina [Inaudible].
So some of you may be aware
of Cabrera's extensive work.
This collection includes 14,
12 inch disks with this title.
They feature instrumentals,
prayers, salutes,
and songs mostly recorded
in the [inaudible] province
of Cuba and some in Havana.
These are especially significant
because Cabrera was not known
for her recording
of her field work.
She extensively used index
cards and her memory.
So [inaudible] a friend
and photographer did
fieldwork with her.
And, these 14 disks
actually are the basis of one
of her extreme publications
and long history of publishing
and the basis of [inaudible]
her transformative work.
So like I said, 14 disks,
that also includes one booklet
with an article and photographs
by [inaudible] and article
by Cabrera explaining
these disks.
And, they give amazing context
to what it is we're looking at.
So here's just poorly,
poorly scanned quality
but interesting nonetheless
of what she has to say
at this time in [inaudible].
[Inaudible] was the
daughter of a,
both were daughters
of well off families.
And, [inaudible]
had a sugar mill.
The family had a sugar
mill in [inaudible]
and that was the base
for their fieldwork.
And, so in [inaudible] Province,
there was a large Afro-Cuban
population descendant
[inaudible] culture.
And, so this is extremely
rare fieldwork
and very prolific and important.
I will hold off for
the music until the end
and see how long I have.
So from this collection, four
recordings were published,
four CDs, three from [inudible]
Folklife and the fourth
from the Library of Congress
Endangered Music Project.
And, so I wanted to speak
kind of briefly more
about this project, Ken
Dolby in his discussion
of the collection said that
this music was recording
by [inaudible] in the 50s
under the guidance of Cabrera.
I think it, from
my understanding,
she was the photographer and
Cabrera was the ethnographer,
the fieldworker with the
more sense of experience.
So that's interesting.
And, the researcher actually
brought that to my attention
that there might be some
future conversations there
as to who decided what.
[Inaudible] actually like
I said, prodded Cabrera
in the pathway to record.
She had her recording material.
She was very interested
in the technology.
And, so thus the
14 disks were born.
I also want to say that
Cabrera spoke about this time
in the introduction
for [inaudible].
And, very roughly translated
from the Spanish, she said,
I wanted to, without changing
their funny and peculiar modes
of expression, these elders that
I've met, many of them children
of Africans, the most aware
and respectful continuators
of their tradition and whose
trust and confidence I can gain.
I wanted them to be heard
without an intermediary
exactly how they spoke to me,
by those who study the deep
and living imprint left
on this island by the magical
and religious concepts, beliefs
and practices of blacks
imported from Africa
for several centuries of
interrupted trafficking.
So she's well known
for her commitment
to literal translations,
to making sure
that the truth was heard
and that she didn't have
this editorializing version
of their songs and
their religious beliefs.
And, then I also
have a quick story.
A researcher came in and
brought to my attention
that the Lydia Cabrera
papers at the University
of Miami were actually missing
this important fieldwork.
There's about 1,800
digitized items, manuscripts
and mostly photographs
from what I could gather.
But, that Isabel Castellanos,
a well known scholar
in Afro-Cuban religion and
music and traditions is her,
is Cabrera's heir
and intellectual
property rights holder.
And, that she had her own
section of these 14 disks,
these, her own copy
that were lost to time,
loaned to someone
and never returned.
And, it was her life's regret
that these weren't part
of this collection.
And, so I told the
research like, you know her,
I can do that, that's
what AFC is all about,
we're ethical in this way.
So hopefully I can help
facilitate repatriation
and a duplication of
this material for her.
And, we're in contact now.
So stay tuned.
So the next collection I wanted
to address would be
[inaudible] the recordings
from the Dominican Republic.
These 39 sound disks
were actually recorded
for the Dominican government.
And, so part of the 1948
Duplication Project,
the Library of Congress kept a
copy, gave the originals back
to the government of
the Dominican Republic
and gave a copy to Mrs.
Boggs as she was later known.
These recordings include
fieldwork of folk music, songs,
dance, as well as
religious holidays.
So Edna Garrido, this is a
scan from one of her books
in the collection, was an
educator and studied folklore
at the University of [inaudible]
Santo Domingo and traveled
to the U.S. in 1946 to
continue her studies.
She studied under
Professor Boggs, Ralph Boggs
and married him two
years later, so,
where they eventually
settled in Miami Florida.
She was an educator
and folklorist
and she actually founded
the first Folklore Society
in Santo Domingo in 1947.
And, from there she also was
the founder of the Bulletin
of Dominican Folklore that
ran from 47 to 48 I believe.
So another well known scholar
who we have some really
amazing recordings from.
So I think we have time.
I forgot to run a timer, so.
[ Music ]
So I've been listening to
that at my desk and kind
of annoying everyone because
I get up every five seconds
to like, I mean, you
saw me yesterday.
So that's one very high energy.
Let's see.
[ Music ]
Okay. So we'll return to that.
The third collection is
a recent acquisition.
So we went from the late 40s
and late 50s to now 2016,
both acquisitions from that year
are these next two collections
Mintzi Martinez Rivera,
she collected [inaudible]
from the Seri lands, sorry,
wrong collection, back it up.
[Inaudible] cultural traditions
for her dissertation research.
She studied with,
for 2007 to 2011
but what is actually
very interesting is
that the concentration of
materials are from 2009 to 2010.
She spent a whole calendar
year in this community
and did full lifecycle
events, weddings, baptisms,
religious holidays,
saints days, funerals.
And, so she really
did a day in the life
and this collection has 10 hours
of sound, 5,000 photographs
that have not been processed
yet otherwise you would
have gotten 30 minutes
of photographs.
And, the manuscripts, which I
think are extremely interesting.
So these manuscripts are 12
notebooks of her fieldwork.
And, so while we do talk at
the AFC of the end result
of fieldwork and the beautiful
photographs and oral histories
that are gathered, I think it's
also very important to note
that AFC collects the
actual notes and process
of these ethnographers
and folklorists.
So for instance, this
is her first journal.
This is mid journal.
I scanned a page
from June of 2008.
And, here's she's
talking to, I believe,
a friend she's staying with,
Solksa and said how do you
navigate the world outside
of this area of [Inaudible]
and Solksa said well I just
tell them where I'm from.
I know that nobody
speaks my language outside
of this community.
And, luckily, when I was in
Guadalajara, the question here,
she said she had
another community member
that she spoke her
language with.
And, I think what's really
interesting is, on the right,
she says I really have
to develop better develop
my techniques for interviews
and I really need to
better develop my questions.
And, so then she has a list
of possible informants.
So first journal, there's 12.
And, later on, this is March
of 2009 the last one was June
of 2008, she's a
prolific writer.
And so she's decided to start
numbering, if you can see
in the top right corner,
her journal entries.
And, so this, she
says she's had a warm,
she's been warmly
received by the community.
And, she speaks at length
about her emotional connection
to the people that she's working
with, the temperature every day,
what they cooked, what
exactly it is that she can do
around the house, and the
conversations that are had,
and the things that
people would like to do
for her on her behalf.
So it's really an
emotional journey,
if you feel like digging in.
And here, not even the last of
the 12 journals, she's already
on page 782 continuation.
So she is a methodical
note taker.
And, I think that
this collection,
when I see the photographs,
I'm sure I'll be
speaking a different tune.
But, for now, I think that these
notebooks are just an amazing
overview and insight
into fieldwork today
and into this community.
It really is, I was just,
I spent like a few hours
with it just reading
and I felt kind
of closer to her in that way.
So I need a meter.
So 2016, again, Margo Holy
Collection of Siri Music.
Margo, again, ingratiated
herself with the community,
had a kind of adopted family
that she spoke with at length.
And, the Seri people are in
the state of Senora Mexico.
This is off the Coast of
the Gulf of California,
so across from the Baja
California Peninsula.
And, so what's really
interesting about this is
that the Seri people,
I believe 20 years ago,
their population was
down to 75 individuals.
And, they are now, have 500
individuals in the community.
It's a very small community.
This includes 42 sound disks,
our first succession
of the materials.
They are CDs from 39
artists, storytellers
and singers and dancers.
And, what's interesting
is that the 42 disks,
they're actually available for
purchase from her collection.
And, that's all of
the proceeds go back
to the community
and the artists.
But that we have
over 1,100 songs
by these 39 storytellers
and artists.
So I wanted to talk about
Isabel Tores Marina,
she was 100 years old at the
time of being interviewed,
and approximately 4 months of
being interviewed by Margo,
or Holy, sorry first name
basis and I don't feel like,
I haven't done a PhD, I
just feel like I know her.
So she was 100 years old.
And, what's interesting is that
Holy was introduced to geoglyphs
on the Island of Tiburon Island
meaning Shark Island off the
coast of Sonora.
And, these [inaudible] one
person showed them to her
and she saw a publication
from approximately 35 maybe
40 years ago now describing
these geoglyphs.
But, when she went to do her
research, she actually found
that none of the
Seri people she spoke
to in the community had any idea
of the origin stories
for the geoglyphs.
And so she was told to
speak with this person,
she drove down an hour south
from where she was located
and met with Isabel.
And, Isabel said I do think I
am the only person to know this.
And, I'm glad that you met me
and I'm glad I'm
able to tell this.
And, so it was really
interesting reading this
oral history.
And, so she learned the
stories of the giants.
Here are the geoglyphs, two
races of giants one larger
than the other who drew
supernatural powers
from these geoglyphs.
And, the icons have
different meanings.
So I won't go into it right now.
But the cross for instance gave
a certain, a certain power,
the concentric circle
or bullseye there.
So there was a lot of
different stories relating
to the iconography.
So she not only remembered, you
know, all of about the two races
of giants, but she remembered
with clarity what
these geoglyphs meant.
So that is a very important oral
history and that will be part
of the second accession of
this continuing acquisition.
So and here is a
landscape of Tiburon Island.
What's also interesting
about this is that,
since many of the Serian people
didn't know that these existed,
when she brought it to
their attention and it was,
it's still known as a
sacred space, whether
or not they had known
about the geoglyphs.
She's now been told
and will continue
to keep their location a secret.
What actually brought her
to publish, these are scans
from a book from this material
to publish this book is
that a photographer, while she
was doing her fieldwork, went in
and started taking aerial photos
and kind of disrupting the area.
And, so she decided to
beat them to the punch
and maintain the Seri
people's intellectual property.
So this was done in order
to maintain their
connection to the space.
And Tiburon Island is
actually uninhibited except
for some military postings
on I think the southern edge.
And, so even though people
aren't allowed to access their,
you know, homeland in
some ways, they still want
to maintain the secrecy
of this from outsiders.
So I think I went fast
enough to play some music.
I was trying to, you
know, keep it going, so,
so here is some really
beautiful songs.
Let me, let me do the,
let me do this first.
[ Singing ]
So I'll leave you on.
[ Singing ]
So hopefully I've
enticed you to come visit
and explore all the
Latinas in our collection.
[ Applause ]
>> Nancy Groce: I want
to thank everybody
for a wonderful morning.
We will continue at 2:00.
In the meantime, might I
suggest the upstairs cafeteria
on the 6th floor, there are,
get to the 6th floor there
are directional signs.
And, thank you all
so much for coming.
We'll see you in the afternoon.