Sound Analysis – Page 3 – The Digital Past Course Blog

Soundcite – Christina O’Farrell

The question I was aiming to investigate through sound clips was, “What was it like being an immigrant in the 1930s?”. I focused on immigration a lot this semester in different skill assignments we did because I felt like it was a very important topic to discover more on. Today, immigration is a very important topic and there’s a lot of unjust issues surrounding it, so I felt that trying to learn more about it in the ’30s was a good idea. Before investigation this issue, I had a guess in the back of my mind that being an immigrant to the United States during the ’30s wasn’t the best due to the Great Depression and all the other changes the country was going through.

One of the audio clips I discovered by Dominic Gallagher ¹ was a lament of what it was like being a Irish immigrant. I had to google what “lament” meant and I discovered it meant sorrow and grief. Upon learning this, the song that Gallagher sang made much more sense. He sings of loneliness and the tone of his voice doesn’t have a happy sound to it. It almost sounds as if he’s in a bit of pain. This really made me think that his experience of immigrating from Ireland to the United States in the ’30s was not a pleasant one. This only proved the idea that I had in my mind before investigating.

Another audio clip that I discovered was one from an Italian immigrant, Victor and John Marinetti. The song is in Italian, so the lyrics aren’t quite clear, but the name of the song is “Italian immigration song” ² The tone of the song isn’t very upbeat, it just sounds a little weary and just by that I assumed that the two singers were singing of struggles they encountered. Due to the song being called “Italian Immigration Song”, I figured it was a song about the issues Italians went through went immigrating to the United States.

None of the clips that I found seemed to have any uplifting songs or spoken word about positive experiences with immigration. It only proved the idea I had in my mind before. I also found it very interesting that two different groups of people, the Irish and Italians, both wrote songs of immigration to the United States. It reminded me a bit of the Federal Music Project ³ and I tried to find any similarities there. I remember learning in class about different songs that people wrote during the ’30s about traveling West and the folk songs ⁴ that came about there and that definitely reminded me of these songs.

I think by having the opportunity to add audio clips into this post, it provides more evidence of the point I’m trying to get across, which is that immigration in the ’30s was a struggle for people. Instead of having me go into thorough detail, the clip helps explain quite a bit.

Slave Narratives of the 1930s

Understanding slave narratives from first hand accounts is an important step in beginning to understand the atrocities that came with slavery. The 1930s provided a time where the slaves from the nineteenth century had not passed away yet therefore their stories of listen⁵ were able to be used in understanding the narratives that former slaves had to offer. Understanding slave narratives during the 1930s may not have been as important to the people of the time as it is today. This shows the important work that John and Ruby Lomax were doing during the 1930s and how it impacts the current discourse around the issues of slavery in the twentieth century. Perhaps John Lomax would have released an article regarding the creation of content for the future similar to Ian Milligan’s article where he discusses the creation of content for the “record of tomorrow.”⁶

The collection of Voices Remembering Slavery: Freed People Tell Their Stories is a unique moment in history where the former American slaves were given the opportunity to share their experiences. It could be argued that the former slaves were activists of their time however it was in a very passive manner. The Civil Rights movement had not began yet but having the ability to share their stories in an attempt to shed light on the realities of slavery is a form of activism because the ultimate goal is to promote equality. The personal story that uncle Billy McCrea shared with John and Ruby Lomax, listen⁷, provide the listeners with a snippet of a personal experience regarding the transactions of human people during the nineteenth century. This is an important interview to listen to for the modern day understanding of how slavery impacted the lives of those who were fortunate enough to outlive the atrocities of slavery. The Library of Congress describes the slave narrative archives far better than my abilities allow me, “The WPA narratives thus constitute an illuminating and invaluable source of data about antebellum and post-Emancipation Southern life, the institution of slavery, and, most important, the reactions and perspectives of those who had been enslaved.”⁸

Blog Post #9: Mexican American Folk Music Representation in Northern California

I chose to focus on the Library of Congress collection, California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties. I was shocked to see how many folks songs were available in the collection from so many different countries including Russia, Hungary, Finland, and Italy. I decided to hone in on Mexican American folk music because I wanted to create an expanded discussion on Mexican immigration to the United States, this time relating to the music. My historical question morphed into considering how Mexican American folk music in Mexican cultural settings on American soil is represented in the 1930s and 40s.

Sidney Robertson Cowell, a folk music collector in Northern California, partnered with the University of California, Berkeley and what is now the Library of Congress’ American Folklife Center, to comprise “35 hours worth of folk music recorded in 12 languages representing numerous ethnic groups and 185 musicians” from Northern California. ⁹ This collection of recordings is a continuation of the themes we’ve talked about in class, such as the recording of narratives from those who were once enslaved, accounts from migrant workers, and southern music being documented by the Lomax family. In creating these recordings, ethnographers of the 30s and 40s have made history readily available to future generations, while also using technology that was new for their time to further spread traditions to those unfamiliar.

As a part of music collected at the wedding of Ben and Rosa Figueroa on February 18, 1939 in Carmel, California, Cowell recorded a song performed by Mr. Figueroa, “Yo ando passando trabajo.” Cowell wrote in the dust jacket that Mr. Figueroa “didn’t want to sing this, but the Irish contractor for whom he works for was drunkenly insistent.” ¹⁰ In the recording, it seems like he’s is bothered by the fact that he’s performing a song at his own wedding that when translated from yo ando posando trabajo to English means, “I’m going to work.” You can hear his discomfort in what seems to be Mr. Figueroa’s choppy chords and unenthused singing.¹¹. I think this situation is interesting to think about in terms of the BackStory podcast we listened to, “Border Controls: Policing Immigration in America.” Francisco Balderrama says that Mexicans and those of Mexican descent were expelled from America because of “the argument there’s not enough jobs, that jobs were for real Americans.” Additionally, with the hit of the Great Depression, Mexicans were seen as “foreign” and “unwanted” (Balderrama, 2018). ¹² The fact that Mr. Figueroa is still in America celebrating his wedding means that some Mexican Americans were still able to make a living throughout the era of Mexican repatriation. However, it doesn’t seem as if he had much agency within his situation, especially if his employer was intoxicated and encouraging him to sing a song about work. It shows that despite being in America, some Mexican Americans still were beneath Americans of European descent.

Throughout this time, it also seems as if Mexican American musicians adopted European musical styles and performed them at Mexican celebrations. With the close proximity of various ethnic groups living together in Northern California, this mixing of cultures and traditions would’ve been easy. At the Figueroa wedding, the Anna Magdalena Waltz ¹³ was performed, which is named after Johann Sebastian Bach’s second wife. This, at the very least, shows German influences on Mexican folk music. Cowell wrote in the dust jacket that the orchestra was pleased with their performance because they were used to Mexican waltzes, which went “faster” than European ones ¹⁴. This diversity in music is referenced in Benjamin Filene’s Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music. In the chapter “Searching for Folk Music’s Institutional Niche,” Filene says that folk music became the “embodiments of America’s strength through diversity” (Filene, 2000, p. 133) ¹⁵. Thanks to new recording technology, Mexican Americans and those of Mexican descent were able to expose themselves to new genres of music while also having their own music shared within the United States, and beyond. Yet, it only seemed like their music was of concern, oppose to their actual livelihoods.

African American Inequality during the 1930’s

Throughout the semester an ongoing topic that continued to catch my attention was African Americans during the Great Depression. In class we discussed their unequal rights, listened to slave narratives as well as explored the Green book which mapped out safe travels for them. A lot of these resources have come from a caucasian perspective or produced by one. I was curious to explore more of the African Americans perspective of life back in the 1930’s.

From a previous reading from the American YAWP it was said that ¹⁶ and some of those difficulties included unemployment, unequal rights, programs excluding African Americans etc. Roosevelt at the time “… not only rejected such proposals as abolishing the poll tax and declaring lynching a federal crime, he refused to specifically target African American needs in any of his larger relief and reform packages”. African Americans attempted to take matters into their own hands by directly speaking to the president through recordings in hope it would get him to listen. There is a bundle of recordings from a variety of different ages, genders and situations but they all told their story and asked for the same thing. They wanted the president to try and help themachieve equal opprotunity. Hearing the recordings of people asking the president for help and knowing now that he did little to help them in the time affects us different. You can hear in their voices the hope they have for him to help and it is saddening that his helping hand was not extended to them.

Earlier this semester we looked into how people were mapping racism over the years. The article Mapping Racism and Assessing the Effect of Digital Humanities explained that ¹⁷. African Americans were trying to do all that they could in order to reach the people and the president. Sound recordings, interviews and maps were brought to life to explain their struggles. Digital humanities have helped embody the emotions and hardships African Americans faced during this time period.

Bond, Sarah Emily. “Mapping Racism And Assessing the Success of the Digital Humanities”, History from Below. Retrieved from https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/10/20/mapping-racism-and-assessing-the-success-of-the-digital-humanities/

“The Great Depression”, The American Yawp. Retrieved from http://www.americanyawp.com/text/23-the-great-depression/

“Dear Mr. President”,Dear Mr. President collection (AFC 1942/003), Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/afc1942003_sr39/

Thinking about Mobility and Music

A lot of the music written during this time of the 1930s was gathered together from differing cultures. Together, these songs would come to make up the conception of the American folk tradition. These songs (passed down or home-grown) were sought after by the Federal Music Project’s Alan Lomax in order to not only preserve the culture, but its relevance as well as the songs could find new meaning in the future. ¹⁸

What most interested me about these times is the focus on mobility which seems to become greatly apparent. People moving West for better lives, or people traveling the states in order to see what America has to offer in the form of scenery. Immediately, my mind went to the songs collected about travelling. The collecting of these audio clips makes these songs easier to access as well as make them live on through a digital world, making them accessible in the future.

“I’m Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad” ¹⁹ is a song that focuses on this kind of movement in the states. The narrator mentions going to where the climate suits her clothes, bringing to mind the idea of travelling in loose-fitting clothes that someone might have to wear back then thanks to the Depression. Having to wander around in those clothes would not be great, especially in inclement weather. The narrator’s repetition of this notion in the song plays into that “bad feeling” that they have, not only having to walk around in poor clothes, but also having been pent up in prison for some reason.

A favorite of mine is “Back to Arkansas” recorded in the Arvin FSA camp in California. ²⁰ The themes of the poem line up well with the idea of travelling West back in the thirties. ²¹ Many people were uprooted thanks in part to the Depression. Tag teaming with the Dust Bowl, it really hit the farmers hard. People from Oklahoma and Kansas and many other places packed up and started migrating around to find land suitable to work as well as good paying jobs. These same details can be found wrapped in the words of “Back to Arkansas.”

Themes of mobility being found within and around these songs and poems really shows how it played such a role at the time. People going out and looking for something new, be it because of their clothing or because of their lifestyle or someone going somewhere, be it for travel and touring or finding a better life.

The Mexican Migrant Experience

What did the Lomaxes want to learn about Latino migrants during the Great Depression from their songs? John and Ruby Lomax were aware of the plight of the Hispanic migrants, and recorded some of their songs in the late 30s. Never accepted in America, never accepted in Mexico when local governments deported them, and subject to unjust deportations, the Mexican-Americans of the 1930s became an entire “lost Generation… people that were lost in Mexico, people without the documentation, people that were denied their right to a life as an American.” ²² Even so, Mexican immigrants had a significant stake in America, as they “had long been an integral part of agricultural production in the United States and were not newcomers on the scene even in 1940. In fact, when the Dust Bowl families arrived in California looking for work, the majority of migrant farm laborers were either Latino or Asian, particularly of Mexican and Filipino descent.” ²³

Mexican migrants had to transition from “workers [that] were regarded as essential” during the 20s to aliens, “regarded as foreign… unwanted… not supposed to be here” during the 30s. Families had to cope with the greater scale of deportations that followed. All this translates into the songs John and Ruby Lomax recorded as a shocking chipperness. The migrant lullabies and children’s melodies are playful, frequently implementing sunny patters ²⁴ and colourful lyrics ²⁵. The Lomaxes and the Mexican singers chose to record the songs from the latter’s childhoods, songs designed to convey happiness and positivity to the youth, having nothing to do with ugliness or Mexican migrants’ situation. Buoyant songs glow ²⁶ when compared to the African-American lullabies the Lomaxes recorded, which, perhaps in a truer but more weathered reflection of the era, are far more bluesy and sombre and quiet. ²⁷ ²⁸

John and Ruby Lomax, along with the migrants who lent their voices for the project, seemed to want to convey the good feelings of a traditional childhood, not the very real malaise that came from the Great Depression. The lullabies of the migrants speak of sweet fruits and hugs ²⁹ and covering up from the cold, a joyful little habitat away from the oppression buffeting Mexicans from all sides. I believe the folk lullabies the Lomaxes wanted the nation to remember are keenly related to the popular escapism propagated by the broader arts, performing the role of “a lifeline as well as a pleasant diversion, a source of optimism and energy as well as peerless insight” for underprivileged Mexican families. ³⁰

The FMP in California

The New Deal government wanted to promote its policies with a federal control over the country. Actually, the states adapted the policies to their own circumstances. As a result, the New Deal shaped the states with diversity. How was music rediscovered through the FMP in California?

It is possible to come across sounds recording on the Library of Congress database. Sidney Robertson Cowell, who worked for the California Music Project, was facing cultural competition with music spreading in the 1930s through new technologies like the radio, movies, and similar centralized media³¹.

Cowell documented Anglo-American songs in Central Valley, Boomtown, Shasta County, California.

Cowell illustrated the story of merchants being stolen in the mountain³². She makes us take a glimpse into everyday life histories through music inspired from a mix of cultures in the 1930s.

Ward Ford, the performer, immerges us also into the life of farmers³³. He sheds light on the usual troubles that farmers had to deal with.

The stories are sung, and it brings a different atmosphere. We want to listen to them, and we can picture in our mind the merchants being stolen in the mountain or the farmer who plows the field. We let them rock us. We suddenly imagine ourselves in Central Valley back in 1938 and what it was like to live at that time in California.

Radio Diaries shared content about Ballad for Americans³⁴. Paul Robeson sings “I am the nobody who is everybody”. In other words, the radio documentary translates this expression as the way for Paul Robeson, and the folk culture in the 1930s, to talk to all Americans ³⁵.

The FMP in California helped to enhance the folk culture and brought meaning to people life. Cowell, among others, was recording the voices of the time so we can hear them forever.

The FMP reminded people that it was still possible to live under the sun of California, singing your troubles, between joy and sorrow, the 1930s and the Great Depression.

Embedding audios helps to integrate the sound within the text. It results into a great uninterrupted flow. Nothing can stop the audience from feeling the atmosphere of the 1930s. It is also a direct and practical tool. Within a click, the audience can listen to the clip while reading. It allows a combination of reading and listening at the same time creating a dynamism within the text.

Blog Post 9

California, home to gold mines and new possibilities. In the midst of the Great Depression, people began to move west. Talk of a fresh start spread throughout the country. People packed up and left the East. Entire families left behind everything they knew and moved to a strange new place. Many people didn’t even get to California; they stopped and settled in the mid-west, or at the time, the Dust Bowl. However, with these mass migrations of people, came with it the spread of art and music. Folk music became huge. People writing and singing songs about everything one could think of. Songs like the one below. The type of singing changed as well. It began to vary from upbeat and happy to slower and emotional. A lot of the time, with folk music, the voice of the singer was lower and rougher, also demonstrated in the song below.

listen to this

This song is called “The Lowlands Low,” sung by Ward H. Ford, in 1938. “Recorded by Sidney Robertson Cowell in Central Valley, California on December 25, 1938. Forms part of a group of field materials documenting Warde Ford performing Anglo-American songs on December 25, 26, and 27, 1938, and Septebmer 4, 1939, collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell in Boomtown [Central Valley], Shasta County, California.”³⁶ Sidney Robertson Cowell collected many recordings of different folk singers of the time. Her collection, California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties, has played an essential role in understanding the lives of people in the thirties. Without her recordings of these folk songs, our view of music from that time would be different. Folk music had such an impact on the lives of Americans. It kept their hopes up. It helped them to believe that they would make it through this Depression. Folk music was not only big with the white population but with the people from all backgrounds. “The folk became figured not as failures or malcontents but as embodiments of America’s strength through diversity.” ³⁷ Many of the musicians and singers of the time were from non-anglo backgrounds. This next song is sung by a Portuguese-American named, Mary Silveira.

listen

Also part of the California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties collection, this song titled, “Bella aurora” or Lovely dawn, ³⁸ expands on our knowledge of folk music. Sidney Cowell, saw the diversity in the music and the performers. This opening verse to “Bella Aurora,” gives us the upbeat and happy folk music that helped to get Americans through this rough patch. Prior to this collection of music, many of the non-anglo musicians never received any credit for their music. White Americans would here their music on the radio all the time. However, women, African Americans, Mexican Americans and many more rarely heard their music. If they did, it would be being sung by a White, Male, American not the original creator. ³⁹

Folk Songs in the 1930s

The very first audio I listened to was from the collection “Voices from the Dust Bowl.” I’m not sure why I picked this specific audio and frankly, I can’t be sure if I even liked it or not. It’s certainly an intriguing song performed by Ruth Elliot in the summer of 1940 in Arvin FSA camp. The song, titled “The Old Apple Tree in the Orchard,” starts off quite beautifully and simple by depicting a child reminiscing about their father and an apple tree he planted. However, the song quickly takes an interesting turn when the singer then describes the father having an affair with a married woman, followed by his subsequent murder by the neighbors for doing so.⁴⁰ This song certainly brought this question to mind: why were folk songs like this so popular for everyday Americans in the 1930s?

The song was sung as if it was a common children’s rhyme that just about everyone knew and loved. Despite what the lyrics suggest, the manner in which the performer is singing gives the song more of a humorous tone than a dark one. The song doesn’t seem to have too much historical meaning as it seems to have been written solely for entertainment purposes, but perhaps the reason for entertainment in the time period creates a historical relevance for the song.

The LA Times article by Morris Dicksten suggests that the arts, primarily music and movies, were not a means simply to distract Americans from their everyday struggles but was more of a means to counteract the crippling economy.⁴¹ Dickstein was probably right in that assertion, but for everyday Americans of that time, the arts likely meant more as a distraction than an economical support system that they wouldn’t see positive effects from for many years. In the Library of Congress article, “The Migrant Experience,” the author states that “when they were not working or looking for work…the migrants found time to engage in recreational activities,” such as “singing and making music.”⁴² “The Old Apple Tree in the Orchard” certainly sounds like a song that was likely created out of boredom to create a lighter atmosphere than the situations the Depression and Dust Bowl created.

Decolonizing our Discipline

Historical discourse includes and excludes events, people, and concepts very deliberately, especially in neocolonial societies. But it’s important to be aware of that there is the ability and responsibility to reconstruct the narrative. One method of decolonization is the prioritization of the voices of the colonized and oppressed. Through the recording of the first-hand experiences that marginalized people face, there lies an ability to prevent the erasure of the history that those in power were willing to hide.

Archival sources include letters, photos, memos, manuscripts, and more. But, often, the written records in an archive cannot emphasize the emotion or significance of an event the way that an audio source can. ⁴³ The “Voices Remembering Slavery” collection in the Library of Congress could be very resourceful to someone analyzing memory, emotion, or how people remembered traumatic events from their own past. In addition, using oral histories as legitimate sources plays a larger role of helping shift away from archaic structures of oppression.

It is important to note that oral historical records aren’t meaningful in their nature, they can be highly problematic as well. In the Slave Narrative Collection, the interviewers were primarily white and that led to a perpetuation of stereotyping the informants, who were all Black. But as the Library of Congress notes, “the representations of speech in the narratives are a pervasive and forceful reminder that these documents are not only a record of a time that was already history when they were created: they are themselves irreducibly historical, the products of a particular time and particular places in the long and troubled mediation of African-American culture by other Americans.”⁴⁴

The perspective through which the marginalized are analyzed and understood in academia has historically been that of white men. But by privileging oral history, there is an acceleration of the process of changing the rigid metanarrative that has been consuming our society for decades. In 1940, Juan Bautista Rael documented the Hispanic music and culture of the Northern Rio Grande.⁴⁵ The documentation of Mexican wedding songs, alabados (hymns), and other forms of music provide proof that American culture has been created and shifted by various groups of people.⁴⁶

Decolonizing the archives and history as a discipline means accepting oral histories as legitimate and useful sources. Although, because technology has made it so easy for everyday people to be a part of this archival process, I wonder how historians’ perspectives on the validity of oral histories will shift in the next decade. Just as the 1970s propelled a “new social history,” or a history that is written from the bottom up, the upcoming decades also have potential to facilitate collaborative collecting and further democratize the archive. ⁴⁷