1 finding aid(s) found containing the word(s) United States. Work Projects Administration (Calif.).

  1. W.P.A. California Folk Music Project collection, 1936-1991

    7 boxes 4.5 linear feet.. manuscripts: 115 folders.. 239 sound discs (35 hours) : analog, 78 rpm, mono. ; 12 in.. 170 photographic prints : black and white ; various sizes.. 24 drawings.. -- American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

    Summary:

    The California Folk Music Project of the California Work Projects Administration (WPA) was conceived and directed by Sidney Robertson Cowell and co-sponsored by the Music Department of the University of California, Berkeley, and the Music Division, Library of Congress from 1938 to 1940. Additional support was provided by the New Music Society of California and the Society of California Pioneers. The resulting collection of sound recordings, photographs, correspondence, field notes, and drawings documents the musical culture, including religious music and folk song, of many ethnic and English-language performers in northern California. The collection includes the documentation of the music of Anglo Americans, Armenians, Assyrians, Basques, Croatians, English, Finns, Hungarians, Icelanders, Italians, Norwegians, Russian Molokans, Scots, Portuguese, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, Spaniards and Spanish Americans from 1938 to 1940. The sound recordings were deposited in the Archive of American Folk Song at the Library of Congress in 1940. The collection also includes a few instantaneous sound discs made by Sidney Robertson Cowell in Missouri and Iowa for the Farm Security Administration in 1936-1937, and includes folk music research, writing, photographs, and technical drawings and sketches of the musical instruments, generated by Cowell and by the WPA staff who worked for her, plus related documents to 1991.

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