California Gold: Sidney Robertson and the WPA California Folk Music ProjectCalifornia Gold offers a compelling cultural snapshot of a diverse California during the 1930s at the height of the New Deal, drawing on the career of folk music collector Sidney Robertson and the musical culture of often-unheard voices. Robertson—an intrepid young woman armed only with a map, her notebooks, and the recording equipment of the time—proposed and directed a New Deal initiative, the WPA California Folk Music Project, designed to survey musical traditions from a wide range of English-speaking and immigrant communities in Northern California. In California Gold, Catherine Hiebert Kerst explores Robertson's distinctive and modern approach to fieldwork and examines the numerous ethnographic documentary materials she generated with WPA project staff to capture a cross-section of the music that people were actively performing in their communities. Kerst highlights some of the most notable songs, images, and ephemera of the collection, capturing and contextualizing the diverse musical traditions that California immigrant communities performed during the New Deal era. Kerst also foregrounds the ethnographic insights and accomplishments of a significant woman folk music collector who has received less attention than she deserves. |
Contents
Sidney Robertson and the | 1 |
The Musical Heritage | 42 |
Popular Musical Traditions of AngloAmerican | 98 |
4 Exploring the Diversity of Musical Cultures | 158 |
Epilogue | 295 |
Sidney Robertson in California 19371940 | 303 |
Notes | 315 |
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Common terms and phrases
accompanied Alan Lomax American Folklife Center ANGLO-AMERICAN MIGRANTS Anglo-American songs Archive Armenian Azorean ballads Basque Berkeley Boomtown California Folk Music Carmel century CHAPTER FOUR Charles Seeger collection dance DEAL CALIFORNIA Deal Woman djan documentation father fieldwork Finnish folksong gold rush guitar gusle Henry Cowell Hungarian Icelandic immigrant instruments Italian James Lionel Hall John Library of Congress Lionel Hall lived Lomax married melodies Mexican Molokan Monterey mother mountain Music in California Music Project MUSICAL CULTURES musical traditions musicians Norwegian performed played popular Puerto Rican Record sleeve notes Recorded in Oakland Refrain rímur Robertson recorded Robertson wrote San Francisco sang Scottish Gaelic Shasta Shasta County Shasta Dam Sicilian Sidney Robertson Cowell singers Singing of Love singing unaccompanied Spanish sung traditional music TRADITIONS OF ANGLO-AMERICAN tunes Tuolumne County typescript Väinämöinen variants WPA California WPA Field Report WPA project WPA staff Yellow song ջան