Collection of papers and audiovisual materials representing the life work of ethnomusicologist Vida Chenoweth. Manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs, and films mainly of her work with the Usarufa and numerous other people in Papua New Guinea, but culture groups from other places are also represented, including Vanuatu, Indonesia, Solomon Islands, Cook Islands New Zealand, Kenya, Zaire, Ethiopia, Madagascar, Ivory Coast, Ghana, South Africa, Cameroon, Senegal, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Mali, Cameroon, Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, and the United States. Includes work done by her students at Wheaton College and colleagues at the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Includes recording logs, analysis, song transcriptions, song texts, theses, correspondence, Chenoweth's diaries (1980s), and field notes. Sound recordings include music and spoken word from various provinces in Papua New Guinea, such as Eastern and Western Highlands, Madang, Morobe, East New Britain, New Ireland, and Irian Jaya provinces. Moving images include Chenoweth family films, as well as documentation about music and practices from throughout Papua New Guinea, the Cook Islands, Vanuatu, and other regions. They also include content from the South Pacific Festival of the Arts in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. LOC numbers and original identifiers listed below reflect the donor, Vida Chenoweth’s, numbering system. Contact reference staff for more information.

LOC numbers and original identifiers listed below reflect the donor, Vida Chenoweth’s, classification system to uniquely identify each geographic area and culture group. This classification system was applied to an earlier classification system that Chenoweth developed to track her collection of sound recordings and moving images. In this system, the format is identified by letter, then by year, and then separated by a slash and followed by a number indicating its chronology in the collection. Chenoweth’s LOC classification system references her sound recording and moving image classification system. Contact reference staff for more information.