California Gold

Sidney Robertson and the WPA California Folk Music Project

Catherine Hiebert Kerst, Library of Congress

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English

University of California Press
17 July 2024

Folk & traditional music

California Gold offers a compelling cultural snapshot of a diverse California during the 1930s at the height of the New Deal, drawing on the career of folk music collector Sidney Robertson and the musical culture of often-unheard voices. Robertson—an intrepid young woman armed only with a map, her notebooks, and the recording equipment of the time—proposed and directed a New Deal initiative, the WPA California Folk Music Project, designed to survey musical traditions from a wide range of English-speaking and immigrant communities in Northern California. In California Gold, Catherine Hiebert Kerst explores Robertson's distinctive and modern approach to fieldwork and examines the numerous ethnographic documentary materials she generated with WPA project staff to capture a cross-section of the music that people were actively performing in their communities. Kerst highlights some of the most notable songs, images, and ephemera of the collection, capturing and contextualizing the diverse musical traditions that California immigrant communities performed during the New Deal era. Kerst also foregrounds the ethnographic insights and accomplishments of a significant woman folk music collector who has received less attention than she deserves.

By: Catherine Hiebert Kerst, Library of Congress
Imprint: University of California Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 33mm
Weight: 635g
ISBN: 9780520391314
ISBN 10: 0520391314
Pages: 376
Publication Date: 17 July 2024
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Catherine Hiebert Kerst is a folklorist, cultural researcher, and writer who worked for many years as Folklife Specialist and Archivist in the American Folklife Center, Library of Congress. Her work focuses on archival collections from the New Deal era and research on Danish American culture in the Midwest.