Starspangled Music Day—Friday, September 12, 2014
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
XL Search About Us Membership Why SAM? Join or Renew Benefits Student Forum Institutions Listserv Conferences Future Conferences Montreal 2017 Past Conferences Perlis Concerts Awards & Fellowships StarSpangled Music Day—Friday, September 12, 2014 Lowens Book Award Lowens Article Award Dissertation Award JOIN Volume XL, No. 3 Cambridge Award US TO Student Paper Award (Fall 2014) Block Fellowship Charosh Fellowship Contents Cone Fellowship Graziano Fellowship Hampsong Fellowship Star-Spangled Music Day Lowens Fellowship McCulloh Fellowship Honoring Judith McCulloh McLucas Fellowship Thomson Fellowship Tick Fellowship SAM/2.0 Campaign Nears Honorary Members $800,000 Lifetime Achievement Award From the President Distinguished Service Citations Student Travel Interest Group and Subvention Funds Digital Lectures Committee News Publications Student Forum Journal of the Society for American Music SAM Bulletin Upcoming JSAM Contents CELEBRATE A BANNER BIRTHDAY! Organization Call for Reviewers Board of Trustees The Star Spangled Music Foundation (SSMF) in partnership with the Committees Interest Groups American Choral Directors Association (ACDA), America Sings, New Members Handbook Resounding Joy, and others are pleased to announce a national Star- Resolutions Reviews Sonneck Circle Spangled Music Day for Friday, September 12, 2014 in celebration of Gifts & Contributions the 200th anniversary of the United States National Anthem—“The Bulletin Board Resources Star-Spangled Banner.” For this day we ask that Americans far-and- Web Resources wide sing patriotic songs—including “The Star-Spangled Banner”— Remembrances Libraries & Research Centers and discuss the history and significance of the anthem. Performances Awards of the Society Classroom Syllabi may be videotaped and posted to YouTube, Twitter, and other social K-12 Teacher Resources media outlets using the hashtag #Anthem200. See the website for About the Bulletin Contact SAM further information and ideas: starspangledmusic.org/national-day- of-patriotic-song-september-12-2014. SAM members and Star Spangled Music Foundation board members Susan Key and Mark Clague with NEH Summer Scholars studying U.S. music. Each teacher contributed a curricular project now available at starspangledmusic.org. Return to Top Honoring Judith McCulloh: A New Endowment, an Enduring Legacy I’ve been asked to “shine the spotlight” on Judith McCulloh to celebrate her contributions to American music in general and folk music in particular. The Society for American Music is honoring Judy’s work and memory with its newly established Judith McCulloh Fellowship, a competitive grant program to support an annual, short- term research residency at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Since I drafted this piece, Judy passed away after a long and valiant struggle with cancer, so I am obliged to write in the past tense. But even now I sense her at my shoulder. Judy was never one to shine the spotlight on herself, so I will tell you that this most recent honor joins a long list. The American Folklore Society has named her the first recipient of its Lifetime Award for Service to Photo courtesy of MaryE Yeomans the Field (to be awarded posthumously later this year), and she was named a National Heritage Fellow by the National Endowment for the Arts in 2010, receiving the Bess Lomax Hawes National Heritage Fellowship, given to an individual who has made major contributions to the excellence, vitality, and public appreciation of the folk and traditional arts. The Association for Recorded Sound Collections gave her its Award for Distinguished Service to Historical Recordings, which honors a person who has made outstanding contributions to the field, outside of published works or discographic research. Other honors include a Society for American Music Distinguished Service Award, an International Bluegrass Music Association Distinguished Achievement Award, an International Country Music Conference Lifetime Achievement Award, a University of Illinois Chancellor's Academic Professional Excellence Award, an Ohio Wesleyan Distinguished Achievement Citation, and some twenty ASCAP-Deems Taylor Awards for outstanding books. She was a founding member of the Society for American Music, served for many years on the board of the COPAM initiative to publish Music of the United States, and was instrumental in establishing the journal American Music. She served as president of the American Folklore Society and served on the Board of Trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress at a time of crisis when her leadership, vision, and unflagging lobbying efforts helped to save the center from dissolution in the 1990s. She was a longtime member of the Center's Board of Trustees, a Fellow of the American Folklore Society, and an Honorary Member of the Society for Ethnomusicology. But Judith McCulloh was more than an editor, more than the brilliant architect of the Music in American Life series at the University of Illinois Press, more than a scholar, more than a visionary protector of a vital center for studying and preserving American traditional culture. She was herself a force of nature: inspiring and transforming those around her, nudging those in need of nudging, and nurturing those with stories to tell. A certified folklorist, having earned her PhD at Indiana University with a dissertation based on deep ethnographic research into the histories and practitioners of an iconic folksong, Judy proceeded over four decades to apply her expertise, insights, ingenuity, eloquence, and dauntless energies to the cultivation of American music as a subject of serious scholarly study. Judy’s approach to this endeavor came directly out of her background as a folklorist, in that she valued and nurtured the story inside each individual. Judy’s contributions have been a major force in the preservation, understanding, and documentation of American folk culture. Her Music in American Life series runs the gamut of American music, from blues and gospel to bluegrass and country, doowop, jazz, rock, cowboy and railroad songs, minstrelsy, opera, pow-wow and ghost-dancing songs, and more. Her particular interest in folk, roots, and traditional music helped build a place for those musics in scholarly domains, with foundational publications such as Neil Rosenberg’s Bluegrass: A History, Dena Epstein’s Sinful Tunes and Spirituals, Nolan Porterfield’s Jimmie Rodgers: The Life and Times of America’s Blue Yodeler, and Norm Cohen’s The Long Steel Rail: The Railroad in American Folksong (the full list would occupy this whole publication). In addition to the Music in American Life series, Judy created the series Folklore and Society, publishing sixteen books that stand as models of folklore scholarship. As the development officer for the Press, she created the L. J. and Mary C. Skaggs Folklore Fund, an endowment to support the publication of folklore books, by piecing together small donations to match a grant she secured from the Skaggs Foundation. She also established the Henry and Edna Binkele Classical Music Fund to support books on classical music topics. In all these material ways, Judy contributed immeasurably to the establishment of American music and folk culture as credible scholarly fields. For countless individuals who have sat with Judy and discussed their book projects, her contributions go far beyond the material. Always asking, “What brought you to this project?” Judy sought the connections between writer and subject, looking for the author’s investment in the topic, the personal perspective that gives a narrative energy and life. An incisive but always gentle critical reader, Judy had a gift for encouraging and shaping, but also for telling it like it is. She patiently guided many an author to confront the realities of publishing without losing heart. She brought many a book to fruition whose authors, I daresay, didn’t realize they had a book in them, or doubted they had the wherewithal to complete it. When I last saw her, in June 2014, she had slowed down, but she still had that twinkle in her eye when she detected that someone had a story to tell. Her vision and encouraging spirit live on for all those of fortunate enough to have crossed her path. Laurie Matheson Editor-in-Chief University of Illinois Press Return to Top SAM/2.0 Campaign Nears $800,000 In June Mariana Whitmer, the Society’s Executive Director, submitted to the National Endowment for the Humanities confirmation of $150,000 in contributions to the SAM/2.0 Campaign. Once the donations were validated as non- federal in nature and that they had been given expressly for the Campaign, the NEH matched them at a rate of one-to-three and mailed the Society a check for $50,000. With this and recent contributions by SAM members, the Campaign now stands at $788,529. Although we have raised $788,529 towards our $1-million goal, only $357,900 of that amount can be counted towards the NEH Challenge Grant. This is because donations received prior to December 1, 2012, bequests received at any time, and federal donations are ineligible under the conditions of the challenge program. We are still in need of $144,321 in order to receive the full Challenge Grant amount of $175,000. Your donation or pledge is needed to complete both the NEH Challenge Grant and our $1-million goal! Other exciting developments in the Campaign include meeting the minimum threshold to endow the Judith McCulloh Fund. In recognition of Judy’s lifetime contributions to American music (see Laurie Matheson’s article in this issue), the Judith McCulloh Fellowship will fund an annual, short-term research residency at the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage. Look for the call for proposals next year, as the fellowship will be awarded for the first time in 2016. Members who wish to make contributions to this fund in Judy’s memory are encouraged to do so. The Aaron Copland Fund for Music has earmarked its $20,000 donation to establish the Vivian Perlis Fund.