Uncategorized – Page 2 – The Digital Past Course Blog

The Core of the Hispanic Community through Music

The Hispanic community makes up the second largest demographic in the United States

. The community makes up significant cultural and economic influence not only on society but on politics as well. The US is often described using the “Melting Pot” analogy which shows the large number of different cultures. So, the fact that there is a large Hispanic community is not at all surprising. However, this was not always the case in the US. At some point this vast amount of people needed to leave somewhere and immigrate into the US. Most of this happened during the 19^th century but the base for the cultural fusion we have today can be traced back to the 1930’s. Many of the “classic” Hispanic signs, art, and music was first documented in the 1930’s. Using this documentation of music one can see why much of what is considered Hispanic today exists.

When talking about the effect and power of music Alan Lomax describes it perfectly as something that “honors the traditions of all people and enriches us as individuals”

. Alan Lomax was talking about The Global Jukebox, a website that preserves music in order to enrich later generations. The Hispanic music of the 1930’s can do exactly what the Global Jukebox sets out to do. In the Hispanic community, Religion is a very well-known staple with Catholicism being its biggest. This is represented in its music today and in the 1930’s. Jesus and religion being such a central figure in songs listen ³ shows its impact on the Hispanic Community. Like many other Hispanic songs from the 1930’s they have a religious aspect as their center point. This goes back to the core idea of the Hispanic culture in the US starting in the 1930’s. The music that is preserved helps show in what ways the developing Hispanic community expressed itself. The songs were made in order to bring together people from vastly different countries with two of the things they had in common: language and religion.

Often time the Hispanic people migrating moved through very distant lands in order to get to the US or even places of work. As mentioned before the Hispanic people were from vastly different places only really connected by their language. An Argentine could have incredibly different beliefs than a Venezuelan. The songs of this era also needed to bring people together in the US. The American Ballad being a primary example of this. Many parts of the Us were highly disconnected and a song that united all the places under one sound is incredible ⁴. In many ways for Hispanics the places they have gone through to get to the US unites them. Crossing rivers, hills, and mountains listen ⁵ in order to find jobs is common ground among many of its Hispanic listeners.

The Hispanic community being such a large part of the US can be traced all the way back to the 19th century. But, it was not until the 1930’s that its true culture began to take shape. Today we can analyze much of it using preserved songs in the Library of Congress. They show some of the common ground that was found during the time of migration and job search in the 1930’s. Also with religion being a such a staple in the community, the songs reflect this idea. In the future, as more songs are analyzed and songs from today are easily preserved the future generations will be able to see our culture through music.

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 ⁶ 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” ⁷ 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 ⁸ 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 ⁹ 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.

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. ¹⁰ 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.”¹¹

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.¹² 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.¹³

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. ¹⁴

How Mapping Shows What is Lost and What is Gained

The tours that were created in the American Guide Series were meant to help Americans “rediscover America.” I helped people from the 1930’s not only navigate the US but also learn much about its history, folk lore, and culture. However, due to this being in the middle of the Great Depression there was also a hope for this guide; to help reinvigorate some Americans. It was going to show the very best of America, and in doing so put some hope and pride in the Americans that lived there. This did have the side effect of ignoring some important aspects. While the American Guide Series did work in providing Americans with a tour of culture in the US it failed to accommodate and show what many people where actually going through.

One of the biggest aspects that was completely ignored was the accommodation for the colored people of the time. This period was really only in the early stages of the Long Civil Rights Movement (LCRM)

¹⁵

. Thus, many of what would change in the future simply had not happened yet. Many places and people in both the South and the North did not have anything to allow colored people to tour. Furthermore, this was something that was discovered when using the Mapping Project. When using the “Navigating the Green Book” tool I tried to find something that overlapped my current map of the American Guide Tour. This could not be done as there were no routes that overlapped my mapped tour. This is further demonstrated in the picture below.

The image shows two maps overlapped. One with green dots shows accommodations for colored people while the other shows my personal mapped tour. As you can see it is not a matter of how people would have experienced it differently. It’s that colored people would not have gotten to experience it at all. The tour that I had chosen from the New York Guide gave a route that showed amazing history of the area and other cultural phenomena. But due to the period, men and women of color would not be able to do what other people could.

When actually looking at the mapping of the New York tour, I noticed a fundamental difference between how the Guide portrayed the US. The guide would often label things with picturesque description. Using things that many could view as inspiring or beautiful. This was completely by design when creating the series. Going back to what was discussed about the American Guide, one must remember why it was made. It was meant to help showcase the “ “true” America to its people” ¹⁶. This of course was sacrificing the representation of what Americans were feeling at the time. This is especially poignant when comparing many of the routes to the thousands who migrated west for work. These guides needed to try and give hope to American and if it had shown the unemployment and the desperation that was the migration in the west it would have had the opposite effect. My personal mapping tour showed many luxurious places filled with mansions or economic success. This was in stark contrast to what was being felt but was none the less necessary.

With this mapping project one can begin to understand what was being done to help the overall feeling of the depression; while also showing how people truly felt. This idea is best shown in the comparison image. The lack accommodation shows how there was still a very long way to go in terms of civil rights. With the American Guide and its wording throughout the mapping shows how the FWP was trying to reinvigorate the American People. Mapping gives these opportunities by showing physical primary sources that can be traced throughout history.

Mapped Tour: https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/be6a50a50d5982225a5712534d8d24ad/placeholder/index.html

Blog 8

Archives are used to preserve the past as it was unedited by the framing of historical texts. As we explored the Special Collections I was struck by the volume of information that was preserved, essentially in pristine condition, about the Federal Theater Project (FTP). My group in particular had multiples of the same pamphlets as well as multiple copies of transcripts on onion paper. It underscored the ideas that we have been discussing in class all semester, historical pieces are not just stumbled upon and kept, they are intentionally selected and preserved and that selection process also needs to be interrogated.

Elvia Arroyo-Ramirez questioned ” Who gets to be remembered and historicized by way of record creation? Who is forgotten or purposefully silenced in history by way of omission or destruction of records? How are records themselves (official records created for governmental purposes in particular) used to communicate misguided notions of holistic representation, truthfulness, neutrality, and objectivity?”¹⁹ All of these questions can be used to not only interrogate the archival process and the preservation of certain history, but also about the ways those histories are remembered, retold, and reinforced by broad cultural narratives.

Although the FTP might have been deemed radical by the government, it was also extremely popular with the people. Digitized newspaper clippings and play reviews lend credence to the idea that it was broadly enjoyed by the public and the main obstacle to their success was government intervention. The “Voodoo MacBeth” was extremely popular and ran for several months with sold out crowds. Although The Cradle Will Rock was “shuttered at the last minute by nervous WPA officials who found the labor opera’s sentiments too radical”²⁰ the public chased down the performers and listened to them sing it from the auditorium in a different theater. As the FTP continued to create perform more daring and radical works, the government also attempted to smother it by making claims about how the public would react. The archives in particular make it more obvious how well received and enjoyed the bulk of the FTP’s works were and highlighted how determined the government was to control the narratives that where being created and disseminated with their funding.

This is in contrast to how well received the Federal Music Project (FMP) was by the government although it was doing much of the same kind of work. The FMP was arguably more radical because it preserved the folk music of different kind of people and celebrated it rather than spreading specific subliminal (and obvious) messages by way of performance. The FMP fostered a more organic dissent from the status quo that inspired more collective movement and was more dangerous in the long run. Perhaps this is why its actual history has systemically been obscured to the point of thinking it reinforced ideas of nationalism and patriotism.

Both the FTP and FMP highlight the importance of archival information and access to that information in the digital space. It allows for the reexamination of historical narratives and a more honest accounting of the past.

The Federal Theater Project

The archive contains numerous different artifacts that can be used to better understand the way people behaved and interacted with certain mediums. It can be from hundred-year-old posters about a play, to a doll that has had its strings tangled up from decades ago. It also allows the general public to be able to donate certain items that they deem important or interesting enough to give away to scholars to research or study. Some of which can be very important to the person donating, as shown with Kurt Schwitters in the article we read. ²¹ Through these artifacts, scholars from all over have access to information that would otherwise be impossible to find.

Certain materials digitize better than others. For instance, the posters my group had which covered certain theatrical plays would be easier to digitize due to their two-dimensional nature, than the doll or jacket that require more than one angle to understand fully. They could attempt to emulate the physical object, as Bill LeFurgy mentioned in his article. ²² It would be much harder to digitize something that has many fine details, both visually and physically due to the feel of the item not being able to be digitized. This affects our interaction of the materials by not being able to feel what the object is made out of or how heavy it is. Overall, digitizing can be useful, but not when feeling an object helps gain more information.

I didn’t truly understand how diverse the Federal Theater Project was until I witnessed all the diverse groups and plays that they were putting on. Not only white and black performances, but performances from Java, Japan, Eastern Europe, and India. It was a surprising amount of diversity in an age that I would suspect to be not very tolerant or at the very least ignorant of the cultures portrayed in those plays. This helps to show me how diverse things were even in the early 1900’s, or at the very least, shows how radical the Federal Theater Project was when compared to the other projects we’ve studied. However, it does change the way I look at this time period, as I expected it to be a bit more, homogeneous with the culture of the United states. In the end, I guess there was a lot more color, both racially and creatively, than I expected.

Archiving the FTP

The issue of archival has always been contentious within the theater community. Not only does there persist the question of how one goes about archiving theater (especially when centuries of iconic productions have already been lost to the ages), there are individuals who believe that theater isn’t meant to be preserved. The script is written down, they argue, and to leave future directors and actors any more traces of previous productions interferes in the creation of new art. To which a counterpoint is presented of, how else can the evolution of theatrical practices be examined? With this context, it isn’t a wonder why the Federal Theater Project became such a large target for controversy.

What these arguments come to a head on more than anything else is public accessibility. Theater is haunted by an air of elitism that doesn’t hang as heavy over art forms like music or film. The FTP wasn’t immune, even as certain projects sought to bridge this gap, thanks to internal conflicts of interest among the people running the show. Some wanted everything to remain within the professional circuit, while others insisted that rural American theater needed to experience its own revival. Archiving is much the same. There are those who believe the general public won’t appreciate the effort that went into both the productions themselves and the act of preserving them, classist issues of locking archived materials behind paywalls, and discourse over what “deserves” to be archived in the first place. All this dictates the way that future generations interact with what winds up preserved.

Interestingly, FTP productions like “the voodoo Macbeth” that won over the public were the ones which polarized critics and controversy. Efforts to revive community theater were similarly mixed – the infamous beaver communism play, for example, was being put on in schools. These were preserved, arguably to the best technological abilities of the late 1930s, through photographs, books, and other primary sources. But was all that able, or positioned, to survive the jump to digital archives? The cost-benefit of preserving authenticity or extending longevity isn’t a clear-cut issue. You can type a transcript of a news article, but that’s not the same experience as seeing the original newspaper, even if said newspaper is in very real danger of falling apart should it ever leave its climate-controlled glass box.

The FTP wasn’t the only project to dissent over what was “worth” preserving, and even what outlasts its creators doesn’t always fall into the hands of archivists eager to share. The controversies which surrounded the FTP are just as important a part of its legacy as the works that came from it, though. History is its own archive, and the FTP was a product as much as it was a producer. If all we tried to preserve of it were the “good” parts, would we really be doing it justice?

Blog Post 8

Archives serve valuable roles in society, not only for scholars but also for the general public. They curate collections based around specialized topics, to provide an accessible wealth of resources for the consumer. Rather than functioning in the manner of a museum—which tend to only show the highlights of already-published research—or a library with copies of published books—archives collect primary source materials pertinent to a specific set of topics and preserve them. Often, these items are one-of-a-kind, so preservation and proper curation are of the utmost importance, as is the treatment and organization of the items once they are incorporated into the collections. In order to make things more accessible for the general public, archives often digitize items deemed suitable for electronic viewing and exhibition.

Archive collections are often divided into series, based on topic. From there, they are further prioritized based on their research value (i.e. whether the topic is pertinent to any studies at the University or organization running the archive, and whether they seem useful to future studies); the identity of the donor (i.e. whether the donor was an important alum or beneficiary of the archive and its parent organization); and how notable the source is (i.e. whether it is a unique collection of primary sources connected to major events or movements, national or local history, etc., or whether it is something smaller-scale like a collection of old personal photographs and documents from the donor’s family history). Collections have to be completely processed before anything can be digitized, and this prioritization comes into play during that processing phase. Afterwards, materials are selected to be digitized. Not everything in any given collection is necessarily useful in a digital format. While some things, like photographs, might be useful in digital form, paper documents are sometimes better examined in physical copies, as it is easier to understand important details such as the scale of the item, details that might be rendered illegible onscreen, and the physical material factors of the item. Manuscripts are usually left un-digitized for these reasons, as people are generally willing to come in to examine them by hand, and acknowledge that it would be easy to miss important details and material factors otherwise. Other examples of items better left un-digitized are three dimensional items, which would not be properly represented through digital photography. While computer screens allow for engagement with a wide variety of sources, there are times when the physical item has more to tell than merely what one is able to see, and for those reasons many things are left un-digitized in the archives for scholars and researchers to interact with in-person. When there are copyright issues involved, digitization usually takes much longer than usual, as it is necessary to obtain permission to upload the information, as opposed to merely storing it in the archive itself.

In class, we had the chance to examine primary sources from the Federal Theater Project in collaboration with the George Mason archives, and in our small group discussions came to a few important conclusions. First, we conducted a brief historical analysis of the items (my group centered on Hamlet stage production flyers from 1939), discussing how the artwork and subjects of the items engaged with themes from our class readings, such as the optimism and escapism that accompanied an otherwise grim point in American life. Beyond the specific example of Hamlet—a play with a twisting plot line, with a grim tone mimicking that of daily existence—we found that the overall initiative of the Federal Theater Project engaged with the ideas behind the movement for public art as a whole, in that it created a point of involvement in American communities as well as providing a low-cost form of entertainment and escapism in a time when that was more than necessary. The ability to observe the physical forms of the items rather than the digital forms gave insights into the manner that the flyers may have been posted or distributed, an idea of scale that would have been lost in digital form, and important scribbled-on details in one of the three otherwise identical flyers which gave the important indication that these flyers came from Chicago, Illinois. After using the archive collections, I felt like I had a much better understanding of the motivations behind the Federal Theater Project, and the work that was produced by it.

Senie, Harriet F., and Sally Webster. Critical Issues in Public Art Content, Context, and Controversy. Smithsonian Inst. Press, 2005.

George Mason University Archives and Special Collections.

Test Post-Digital Sound Studies

This is a test post for Digital Sound Studies Project. In order to make this project, I can take a clip of audio that I find compelling and embed it directly into the text of my post. For example, I am interested in the work that Sidney Cowell did as a woman working for the WPA. Her fieldwork created hundreds of recordings with people performing their traditional cultures. For example, Cowell documented the history of square dance calling within Southern communities who moved West because of the Dust Bowl.²³

Cowell attempted to create a record of folk culture in the 1930s, and was devoted to creating as objective as a record as possible. Cowell approached as cultural expression as equally valid and deserving of respect and a place within the historical record. As she wrote, “How does one find songs? They are everywhere at hand.”²⁴

This legacy is essential to understanding the record from which people have continued to draw in order to locate and define America’s folk cultures. It also represents the spaces available for women like Sidney Cowell to find spaces within the WPA to pursue her own her intellectual and cultural as a program director.