RESOUND A Quarterly of the Archives of Traditional Music Volume 21, Number 1/2 January / April 2002 From the Arctic North to the Desert Southwest: Laura Boulton's Frolll the Director Music Collecting Expeditions Daniel B. Reed Among Native North Americans Music and Culture of West Africa: Christopher Geyer Out of the Archives and Into the Light PART ONE Laura Boulton is a name heard frequently around the ATM. Introduction We hold the Laura C. Boulton Collection, comprised of Laura Boulton (1899-1980) was, perhaps, the most prolific recordings collected worldwide from 1929 through 1979, with of the early collectors of music recordings. She traveled accompanying field notes, papers, correspondence, photos and throughout much of the world during a period of rapid films. We offer junior and senior research fellowships in technological change. Among her many recording trips, Boulton Boulton's nanle (see Chris Geyer's article in this issue of made four music collecting trips among Native North Americans Resound). And a major outreach endeavor, based on Boulton's that took place during several periods of her long and prolific collection, has come to fruition in the release of the CD-ROM career as a music collector. This article will describe these musical Music and Culture of West Africa: The Straus Expedition journeys and discuss Boulton's career and personal circumstances (Indiana University Press, 2002). during the periods of these trips. I have selected materials drawn Created by the ATM in collaboration with Indiana from Boulton's publications, field notes, and correspondence University's Teaching Learning Technologies Lab (ILTL) with to allow the reader to more vividly understand the circumstances support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, surrounding her music collecting efforts among Native North Music and Culture of West Africa represents the culmination Americans. I will discuss the economic, social, and political of years of work by dozens of people. The origins of Music conditions surrounding Boulton's work as a scholar, the and Culture of West Africa date back to the fall of 1995, obstacles she faced and her persistence to overcome them. Laura when Gloria Gibson had just begun her tenure as ATM Boulton is often left out of histories of the discipline of director, and I had just begun research, as the Laura Boulton ethnomusicology, yet she was an immensely important figure Junior Fellow, on materials Boulton collected during the Straus within the context of music collecting scholarship, central to the Expedition-a 1934 field study in West Africa. Gibson development of the field of ethnomusicology and the study approached me with the idea of creating a CD-ROM based of Native American music and culture. on ATM materials, and asked if I would be willing to If one were to look at Boulton's work chronologically, the contribute my Boulton research and writing to this project. I title could be "From Chicago, Illinois, to Pt. Barrow, Alaska" as gladly agreed to do so. This decision marked the beginning of that is the order in which she undertook her field collecting trips many years of stimulating involvement in this collaborative among Native North Americans between the years 1933 to project that demonstrates the great potential oE' archival 1947. My title does not reflect this chronology, but rather reflects materials for use in multimedia pedagogical tools. the two extremes of climate and topography between the Arctic Laura Boulton was just one of several participants in the and the desert, both of which Boulton regarded with a romantic Straus Expedition, which also included a taxidermist, a fascination. In a lecture Boulton gave in January of 1942, in photographer/ ftlmographer, and Boulton's husband Rudyerd, which she included music from the Hudson Bay Eskimos, the an ornithologist. Laura Boulton's study of music was thus only continued on page three one aspect of this expedition, whose primary objective was the documentation of rare birds. Over the course of eight feedback, while Sue Tuohy and her students in the course ''World months, Boulton recorded and documented the music of 21 Music and Culture" helped us to test the project at various stages ethnic groups across a vast stretch of what was then French of development. And of course, Gloria Gibson deserves credit and British colonial West Africa. and thanks for her many contributions to the CD-ROM, In Music and Culture of West Africa, you can hear sound including sparking the project with her initial idea, writing the recordings, see photographs, and view silent ftlm footage shot grant that funded the project, and securing the many copyrights during the Straus Expedition. These and other primary required to publish the final product. materials (correspondence, lecture publicity materials, press) Music and Culture of West Africa underscores the great provide a ftrst-hand glimpse into a period in West African value in archival collections, as only at an archive could such musical history and of a field experience from an earlier era rare, historically and culturally rich materials be found. Digital of musical research. Media and information collected by technologies offer new avenues of access to such materials, and scholars in more recent years help shed light on the materials allow us to integrate numerous media-sound recordings, Boulton collected and demonstrate the ways Africans are using photographs, ftlms, field notes and other print media-into these musics today. We are extremely grateful to the many single presentations. While our current focus is on the scholars who generously offered us photos, recordings, and development of on-line resources, Music and Culture of West data that greatly enhanced the archival materials from the Africa serves as a model of the kind of pedagogical outreach Boulton collection. projects that the A TM will continue to pursue in the future. Music and Culture of West Africa covers a broad range of African musical cultures, from the Tuareg of Timbuktu at the edge of the Sahara Desert to the Wakpe in the equatorial rainforests of Cameroon. Of the many types of presentations the CD-ROM offers, I will mention just a few here. For each town featured in the CD-ROM, there exists an introduction to the social and cultural lives of the people who live there. These presentations provide a general context in which to learn about the roles music plays in these peoples' lives. Within each town are located presentations on various aspects of music and culture, centering on issues of organology, perfonne.rs and performance contexts, music and meaning, and change and continuity. Additional presentations on the topics of fieldwork, Laura Boulton, and the Straus Expedition explore how Laura Boulton's career fits into the history of ethnographic research. The cover of Music and Culture of West Mrica A presentation on representation investigates how Africans, their music, and the Straus Expedition were portrayed in the popular media in 1934. Readers of Resound might particularly enjoy a presentation on the recording technology used during RESOUND the expedition. And finally, particularly noteworthy is a fabulous A Quarterly of the Archives of Traditional Music subsection of the CD-ROM, conceived by Alan Burdette and Peter Alyea and written by Burdette, consisting of interactive Marilyn Graf, Editor presentations designed to instruct users in basic techniques and We are pleased to accept comments, letters, and musical principles associated with West African music. submissions. Please address your correspondence to RESOUND at: Of the many people who made this CD-ROM a reality, several played critical roles and deserve individual mention. Archives of Traditional Music Ethnomusicologists Burdette, Heather Maxwell and Alex Morrison Hall 117 Indiana University Perullo, and folklorist John Johnson contributed writing to Bloomington, IN 47405 the project. Jiangmei Wu's visual design is as aesthetically [email protected] pleasing as it is functionally effective. Proje'ct Manager Kathryn www.indiana.edul-libarchm Propst, who possessed seemingly boundless tenacity and Daniel B. Reed, Director patience, deserves praise for keeping us all on task during the Marilyn B. Graf, Archivist many years of labor that this project required. TLTL director Suzanne Mudge, Librarian Mike Casey, Coordinator of Recording Services David Goodrum generously supported the project, committing Meredith Vaughn, Publication Editor resources far above and beyond what we initially imagined. ISSN 0749-2472 The project's advisory board provided essential support and 2 It is largely based on Boulton's rich correspondence with music Laura Boulton's Collecting Expeditions scholars, recording comparues, funding agencies, friends and Among Native North Americans family during these years. The actual materials she collected Continued from page one became secondary as I became deeply fascinated with the Haida of the Northwest Coast, and the Navajo and Zuni from personal and historical situation of Boulton's life and career. the American Southwest, Boulton boasted: "I have recorded These letters revealed the historical, social, and economic their most ancient songs from Alaska down through the conditions of Boulton's work and the difficulties she faced. Southwest states and into the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Boulton's correspondence revealed a remarkable story through Mexico."1 (Boulton wished to convey the vast geographic scope her letters about music recording, Native American culture, of her work to her readers and lecture audiences) travel and personal challenges, and historical circumstances such Boulton regarded Native American music as as war and the Depression. representative of the "oldest music in the Americas," and as such felt that it should be recorded and preserved before it An Extraordinary Music Collector "died out." Preservation was one important mission for her Boulton's correspondence reveals several issues regarding recording of non-Western and folk music throughout the world her career, including her relationship with scholars of musical generally.