Swedish lute [harp-lute]. About this image
|| About the Collection ||
The WPA California Folk Music Project is a multiformat ethnographic field collection that includes sound recordings, still photographs, drawings, and written documents from a variety of European ethnic and English- and Spanish-speaking communities in Northern California. The collection comprises thirty-five hours of folk music recorded in twelve languages representing numerous ethnic groups and 185 musicians. This elaborate New Deal project was organized and directed by folk music collector Sidney Robertson Cowell for the Northern California Work Projects Administration. Sponsored by the University of California, Berkeley, and cosponsored by the Archive of American Folk Song (now the Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center), this undertaking was one of the earliest ethnographic field projects to document European, Slavic, Middle Eastern, and English- and Spanish-language folk music in one region of the United States.
|| Teacher Resources ||
- Activity: Songs for Our Times ("Casey Jones")
- Collection Connection
- Lesson Plan: America Dreams
- Lesson Plan: Exploring Cultural Rituals
- Lesson Plan: The Grandparent/Elder Project
- Lesson Plan: Links to the Past
- Lesson Plan: When Work is Done
- Lesson Plan: Port of Entry
- Presentation: Women Pioneers
|| Collection Details ||
General
- Span Dates
- 1930s
- Bulk Dates
- 1930s
- Major Language(s)
- Armenian, Basque, Croatian, English, Finnish, Gaelic, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Scots Gaelic, Spanish
- Repository
- American Folklife Center, Library of Congress
Physical Collection
- Number of Items
- 1,000
- Contents
- sound recordings - 817, photographs - 168, drawings/sketches - 45, manuscripts (correspondence, field notes)
Access/Copyright
- Copyright Info
- http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/afccchtml/cowcpyrt.html
- Preferred Citation
- American Folklife Center, Library of Congress
