Category: Sound Analysis

Every form of art, communication, and documentation has its limits. There are benefits of having a photograph or a in situ document of an event always offers information that is arguably the most important to many historians. However, in the case of more recent history, sources are much more variable than the odd document. Viable sources within the last century or so now include things like more abundant personalized statements, letters, biographies, and video, audio, and radio recordings. Audio recordings in particular offer a special kind of insight into the past. Providing all the necessary surroundings to recreate the same experience, the lack of visual representation allows one to create an environment from their own knowledge and imagination, while maintaining the real presence of the event.

One of the most special, and valuable places that I think historic audio sources come into play, is within the documentation of otherwise all but forgotten people. Some of the most important, and most populous peoples in the early 1900s, were farmers, agricultural workers, and cowboys. In a 1940 recording, called “Untitled cowboy song”, the performer recounts the journey of finding work, in order to gain the hand of a woman in marriage. While it’s unclear if the song documented the performer’s personal story, or if it was simply a draw upon a common cowboy experience, the recording is transporting.

The background of the audio is detailed with the sounds and voices surrounding the performer. The beginnings of the performance, the people surrounding the singer and the person recording the clip, detail normal, daily life. The beauty in having such clips and audio sources available for historic purposes, is that we are given every aspect of the time from which it came. As a historian, being able to immerse yourself in the sounds of the time, and the audible documentation of an event, you’re able to grasp the tone, the feeling, and the real emotion of the event. Given the aura of the 1930s, and the WPA and Federal One recovery projects, audio sources are so very important in being able to bring that time even more alive, and give more meaning to it’s preservation.

Citations:

“Untitled cowboy song”, Voices from the Dust Bowl: The Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940 to 1941 (533), Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/toddbib000080/.

For this assignment, I chose to ask about how John Lomax was able to capture the cultures and lifestyles of Americans as he traveled across the country, recording their different songs and sounds. Traveling the southern states with his wife Ruby, John recorded nearly 25 hours worth of folk music of the different people from Texas to the Library of Congress encased in over 700 recordings, ⁴ using “improved recording equipment.” A goal of the Lomaxes was to introduce folk (vernacular) music into popular culture. ⁵ This shows as an example of welcoming music for all the people, created by the people, a foundation block of the Federal Music Project. ⁶

While in Houston, Lomax made multiple recordings of a man named John B. Jones. Interestingly, he was able to capture the essence of an instrument that hunters used to communicate with their dogs while in the field. The hunting horns were created from a cow’s horn, and emitted a high-pitched sound, called a hunting horn call. From the audio file, this seemed to be an early rendition of a dog whistle. Lomax notes in the recording that these sounds were able to potentially alter signals from other hunters, but that the dogs only knew of this sound and one other, used to alert the dog back to the hunter when it may have strayed away, in a sort of effort to say come back here you [fools]. ⁷

As a visual learner, it can be very effective to read a description of any time period and create a picture of the story in your mind. However, when reading about audio, there is a disconnect when analyzing a work. Embedding an audio file directly into the text makes it possible for the reader to experience the story in a number of ways, which can help to believe the argument of the author. I feel that this was an extremely effective way to understand what was being addressed. By including these audio files into our blog posts, we are continuing to pass on the recordings of the folk music in the 1930s, preventing it from disappearance, in a way helping the influential figures of the Federal Music Project preserve history. ⁸

The historical question I have is why does the poor quality of audio from the 1930’s create a more authentic feeling for the listener? I believe it’s because when listening to older audio, we can expect certain things. In the context of slave narratives, we talked about and were warned that we could expect racism and that a lot of what was written or asked was from what the white people expected the black slaves had gone through ⁸. And we accept this because we understand that the 1930’s were a different time. So when we listen to an interview from the slave narratives, like this one with David White, we understand and accept that the quality is poor because the technology was new and wasn’t as refined as we have now ⁹. In this interview, I especially found it difficult to understand what was being said and even the transcript mentions it. But in a way, this poor audio is part of the experience of listening to older audio. If there was a crystal clear recording from the 1930’s, no one would believe that it’s actually from that time period. Even the songs from the time period have a static quality to them ¹⁰. So if the quality is so bad from that time period, then why do modern day people romanticize it? There are new songs today that mimic the static quality, “I Have Friends in Holy Spaces” by Panic! At the Disco comes to mind, and even in places like Instagram there are filters that are supposed to make your pictures look old ¹¹. This all comes down to what I believe is nostalgia and purely aesthetic. Not many people actually want to live in the 1930’s, they want just the good parts. Whether that’s good or bad isn’t up to me, but it’s when we take the history away from that context that things get messy. As technology advances, historians are going to have to continually adapt how they are able to listen or see or interact with data created on outdated pieces of technology ¹². So by being able to fake static or pictures to make them look older than they are, digital historians are going to have to reinvent the ways that they date a lot of content they study.

The 1930s were marked by a multitude of struggles for America and its people, but perhaps one of the most all-encompassing was the question of what it now meant to be an American. It was certainly much harder to sell the former American identity of prosperity and success that marked the industry of the Gilded Age and the 1920s when a grand majority of the country’s working class was now facing unemployment, homelessness, and even starvation. Environmental disasters such as the Dust Bowl, stacked on top of often total financial loss, only exacerbated the desperation of the decade as “farms literally dried up and blew away”[1] with the old promises of the American Dream. The solution of turning to the arts, via government programs such as the Federal Music Project, helped to craft a narrative that still resonates in American society today – taking such hardships and rebranding what came of them as the fruit of American culture.

Take the FMP’s extensive efforts to record the folk music of the decade. The very nature of “folk” music, regardless of the discourse that later arose over what qualified, necessitated looking to the rural populations of America – in particular, to the large groups of migrant workers who were striking out west with their families in hopes of better fortunes. It might have been unintentional, but this undertaking still helped to prove how many different cultures formed together to make “American” folk culture. Many of the songs and instrumentations that were recorded as such, in actuality traced their roots back to listen genres that were brought to America by immigrants. Even the most straightforward “folk” music, thought of today to be the earliest predecessor of the “all-American genre” that is contemporary country music, shared many stylistic similarities with the rhythm-and-blues music that evolved from the work songs listenof enslaved African Americans.

In a sense, this did help to prove the FMP’s ideal that “all of this music belongs to the nation”[2]. But it also raises the issue of appropriation – because of this music’s source diversity, is it truly accurate to lump all of it together under a label as broad as “American”? And who has the right to decide what art belongs to a nation that continues to often reject said art’s human creators?

Sources Cited:
[1] Bindas, Kenneth J. All of This Music Belongs to the Nation: the Federal Music Project of the WPA and American Cultural Nationalism, 1935-1939. UMI, 1989.
[2] “The Migrant Experience  :  Articles and Essays  :  Voices from the Dust Bowl: the Charles L. Todd and Robert Sonkin Migrant Worker Collection, 1940-1941  :  Digital Collections  :  Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/todd-and-sonkin-migrant-workers-from-1940-to-1941/articles-and-essays/the-migrant-experience/.
[3] “The Dark cloud and a Caucasian folk song”, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2017702005/
[4] “We Hab a Jest Gawd”, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/flwpa000069/

Lynching is the act of hanging a man or woman for alleged offenses, in most cases without a legal trial. Lynching are typically carried out by a large mob, many of the people present do not even know the crimes the individual was accused off, they are just bystanders. In Virginia this was the main form of justice between 1880 and 1930. There were over 90 men hanged (over 4000 world wide), all but a handful were African American. In 1880, Virginia passed the “Lynch Law,” in hopes to assert dominance over the African American population. It was not until the mid 1930’s till an ‘Anti-lynching’ movement was put into place, but till this day there is still no law against it.

In 1935 in Dunnsville, Virginia three (Hill, Lowman, War) interviewers interviewed Aunt Phoebe Boyd. Ms. Boyd was a former slave and participated in the 1930’s WPA slave narratives.  During this interview she walked the interviewers through her childhood and teenage years. She told stories in great detail about these years. One story that stuck out to me was when she witnessed her first lynching. She briefly mentioned seeing multiple throughout her years as a slave, but she went into detail about one in particular. She recalled seeing a man on a stage, struggling and crying with a thick rope around his neck, and two police officers standing on the side near a leaver. The police officers were laughing at the man who was about to lose his life. She mentioned how his mother, father and brother stood in the crowd crying in a way she had never seen before. She recited a short prayer for them. People who lived near and people who are just walking by stopped and stood watching. None of them knew the reason why this man was being hung, and no one was bothered enough to ask. One of the interviewers had asked Aunt Phoebe Boyd if they buried the bodies, but she responded that they burned them instead. Ms. Boyd had explained that her faith had made her stronger, and her faith is the reason why she made it through her years as a slave.

Sites:

“Interview with Aunt Phoebe Boyd, Dunnsville, Virginia, 1935 (Part 7 of 8).” The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1984011_afs25752a.

“An Introduction to the WPA Slave Narratives  : Articles and Essays : Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project, 1936-1938  : Digital Collections : Library of Congress.” The Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/collections/slave-narratives-from-the-federal-writers-project-1936-to-1938/articles-and-essays/introduction-to-the-wpa-slave-narratives/.

“Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories” explores the way in which such narratives have impacted modern-day Black History. The individuals documented in these various presentations say much about living life as African Americans between the 1870s to the 1930s. 

In connection with the audio collection from “Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories”, “Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers’ Project” is a narrative collection that consists of texts derived from the oral interviews. The interviewers were writers that were trained in the phonetic transcription of speech.

An interview with Wallace Quarterman at Fort Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia was conducted by Alan Lomax, Zora Neale Hurston, and Mary Elizabeth Barnicle. Quarterman describes Quarterman’s life during enslavement. He discusses the time he heard gunshots and began to sing “I surrender, surrender, surrender” listen for he and his had to “leave their land for the sake of Uncle Sam”. listen

Enslaved African Americans were nothing more than property. They worked as domestic house servants, providing services for their master’s and were overseer’s of families. In the second part of this interview, Quarterman discusses being set free and expresses such with much zeal. He then breaks into song listen. Though a freed man, he was unable to seek opportunities that the white man could have because listen. Without an education, resources were limited and work was scarce.

Embedding the audio of Wallace Quarterman engages the reader as it offers a real-world experience, stimulating the mind and creating a sense of imagery.  Giving insight as it can tell us about character, place, and time. It also informs us as well as moves us in ways visuals cannot.

Hearing Quarterman describe his life as a slave in the 1930s has raised concerns. We are aware of the cruel and inhumane treatment endured by slaves though, why must history be a never ending cycle of unfortunate events. Black history has been repressed, rewritten, and condensed in the cataloging of American history. Modern-day history continues to showcase the prejudice against African- Americans through racial discrimination,oppression, and marginalization of people of African descent have all contributed to an under-representation of black voices. 

“Interview with Wallace Quarterman, Fort Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia, June 1935 (part 1 of 2)”, Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1935001_afs00342a/ .

“Interview with Wallace Quarterman, Fort Frederica, St. Simons Island, Georgia, June 1935 (part 2 of 2)”, Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories, Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1935001_afs00342b/ .

During the 1930s, the Midwest had experience severe storms in the form of sleet, hail, or dust. Through an interview, one notes the sheer power of these dust storms during these times and what damage they caused to the locals. The source came from an interview conducted by Charles Todd and Robert Sonkin who worked for the Farm Security Administration who interviewed a man by the name Charlie Spurlock. Charlie had gone into detail about how they survive out in the Midwest with these storms going on. He recalls the type of storm ²⁰ it was that tore through his town and ravaged on for 14 hours; he also talks about the damage ²¹ it caused to the buildings and surrounding objects as well. The FSA fits into the bigger picture by recording and taking photographic evidence of the conditions of how people were living in rural areas. Everyone was affected by the Great Depression and the FSA went around to see how people were living by taking photographs and conducting interviews with some of the people. These interviews not only give us an insight on these conditions, but they also allow us to hear about the struggles they have to deal during those times.

The great thing about audio clips is that they add another level of analysis to what a person is reading. A good reason for adding audio clips by embedding or by adding the audio file to the page is that it gives clarity to what a writer is saying. Audio clips allows a reader to get a glimpse into what was really going on during that time period; not only that, but it also becomes a sort of immersive experience as you listen to the words of the interview in this case or the audio of a song in another case while reading the writers words. You can practically imagine the writer’s words come to life as you listen to the audio thus giving you a more memorable experience. In this scenario, listening to an audio clip rather than reading about the damage caused by dust storms is that if you listen closely, it is as if you can see the interviewee describing what these storms did to the town with hand motions.