Sidney Robertson Cowell

Sidney Robertson Cowell (1948)

Sidney Robertson Cowell (born June 2, 1903 as Sidney William Hawkins in San Francisco , † February 23, 1995 in Shady , New York ) was an American ethnographer and anthropologist . Her recordings of American folk music were the first to deal not exclusively with indigenous or Afro-American culture, but also to deal with the musical roots of mostly European immigrants.

Life

Sidney Hawkins studied Romance Languages and Philology at Stanford University . In 1924 she married her first husband, Kenneth Greg Robertson. From 1924 to 1925 she studied piano at the École Normale de Musique de Paris with Alfred Cortot ; at the same time she translated for her husband, who was studying psychiatry at the University of Paris . She also attended seminars at CG Jung in Zurich, for which she also proofread. From 1926 to 1932 Sidney Robertson taught music at the Peninsula School for Creative Education in Menlo Park , California. She also studied counterpoint with Ernest Bloch and music from non-European cultures as well as piano with her future husband Henry Cowell at the Conservatory of San Francisco and with Charles Koechlin at the University of California, Berkeley . In 1933 Sidney Robertson divorced Kenneth Robertson.

From 1935 to 1936, Sidney Robertson was director of the music program for the Henry Street Settlement charity. From 1936 she worked as an assistant to Charles Seeger in the music program of the "Resettlement Administration", which dealt with the resettlement of impoverished families in planned cities . Her job was to work with John Lomax to collect folk music in Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee and North Carolina using a new type of portable recording device. In 1936 and 1937 Robertson worked in the Appalachian Mountains and the Ozarks , where she made recordings in lumberjack camps and the camps of African American " chain gang " prisoners. At the fourth National Folk Festival she recorded folk music of Northern European origin. She then worked for a short time at the Farm Security Administration , a successor organization to the "Resettlement Administration". From this time until 1957 she traveled repeatedly and often alone through the United States and collected according to Seeger's motto "Record everything!" Folk music recordings. Above all, she was characterized by the fact that, in contrast to her mostly male colleagues like Lomax, she did not treat the folk singers condescendingly, but did not neglect these respectfully treated and also newer folk music currents.

In 1938 Robertson received support from the Library of Congress and the University of California, Berkeley for her research in the form of record blanks and office space. This support also enabled her to apply to the Work Projects Administration , a job creation agency established as part of the New Deal , for funding for a project to collect Californian folk music. The California Folk Music Project was approved in October 1938 and Robertson received 20 employees to assist. In 1940 the project was ended due to a lack of funding.

Following Henry Cowell's imprisonment for moral crimes in 1936, Sidney Robertson campaigned for his release and pardon; Cowell was paroled in 1940 and Sidney married him in 1941. From that time on she took on more and more organizational tasks for her husband, while her own research waned. She also taught courses in American folk music at the University of Southern California . and from 1955 traveled with her husband on behalf of the American State Department and the Rockefeller Foundation to Europe and Asia to research the local folk music culture. Between 1955 and 1957, some of her recordings were released by the independent Folkways Records label. After Henry Cowell's death in 1965, Sidney Cowell campaigned primarily for the recognition of his life's work. In 1995 Sidney Robertson Cowell died in New York. Your estate will be held in the Library of Congress.

Works

• with Eleanora Black: The Gold Rush Song Book . The Colt Press, San Francisco 1940.
• with Alan Lomax : American Folk Song and Folk Lore: A Regional Bibliography. Progressive Education Association, New York 1942.
• with Henry Cowell: Charles Ives and His Music . Oxford University Press, London; New York 1955.

Sound recordings

• 1955: Songs from Cape Breton Island (Folkways Records; Sidney Robertson Cowell, recordings and production; John P. Hughes, production)
• 1956: Wolf River Songs (Folkways Records; Sidney Robertson Cowell, recordings and production)
• 1957: Songs of Aran (Folkways Records; Sidney Robertson Cowell, recordings and production)

Web links

• California gold. Northern California folk music from the thirties. Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell. Library of Congress American Memory, accessed February 20, 2017 . 
• Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946. University of Wisconsin – Madison , accessed February 20, 2017 . 
• Folk Music of Wisconsin. University of Wisconsin , accessed February 20, 2017 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Peter Stone: Sidney and Henry Cowell. (No longer available online.) Association for Cultural Equity, archived from the original on August 19, 2016 ; Retrieved February 20, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Orbituaries: Sidney Cowell, 92, Ethnomusicologist And Teacher. The New York Times , March 1, 1995, accessed February 20, 2017 . 
3. ↑ ^{a b} About the collector and her life. Folk Music of Wisconsin. (No longer available online.) University of Wisconsin , archived from the original on April 7, 2017 ; Retrieved February 20, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
4. ^ ^{A b c d} Sidney Robertson Cowell, Ethnographer and Folk Music Collector. Library of Congress American Memory, accessed February 20, 2017 . 
5. ↑ John Adamian: A bag of old songs from elsewhere. The intrepid field recordings of Sidney Robertson Cowell. JSTOR Daily, September 7, 2016, accessed February 20, 2017 . 
6. ↑ ^{a b c d e} Biographical Note. Sidney Robertson Cowell collection, 1901-1992. Finding Aid. Library of Congress , accessed February 20, 2017 . 
7. ↑ James P. Leary: Polkabilly: How the Goose Island Ramblers Redefined American Folk Music . Oxford University Press, Oxford; New York 2006, ISBN 978-0-19-514106-1 , pp. 174 .
8. ↑ Bell Yung, Helen Rees (Ed.): Understanding Charles Seeger, Pioneer in American Musicology . University of Illinois Press, Urbana 1999, ISBN 0-252-02493-1 , pp. 159 .
9. ↑ Biography. Henry Cowell Piano Music, accessed February 20, 2017 . 
10. ↑ Sidney Robertson Cowell. Folkways Records, accessed February 20, 2017 . 
11. ^ Sidney Robertson Cowell collection, 1901-1992. Finding Aid. Library of Congress , accessed February 20, 2017 . 
12. ^ Songs from Cape Breton Island. Folkways Records, accessed February 20, 2017 . 
13. ↑ Wolf River Songs. Folkways Records, accessed February 20, 2017 . 
14. ↑ Songs of Aran. Folkways Records, accessed February 20, 2017 .