Highlights from the Ethnomusicology Archive: the David Morton collection

David Morton (1920-2004), a protégé of Dr. Mantle Hood, received his BA, MA, and Ph.D. from UCLA, where he became a Professor of Music in 1962.  A Rockefeller grant recipient, he studied in Thailand in 1959 and 1960.  The results of this research formed the basis of his dissertation, "The Traditional Instrumental Music of Thailand" (later published by the University of California Press).  He donated these recordings to the Archive in 1967.  He returned to Thailand in 1969 (with the aid of a grant from the American Council of Learned Societies) to record the repertory of Luang Pradit Phairo to whom he dedicated and edited an issue of Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology (vol. 2, no. 2).  He retired from UCLA in 1985 and donated the remainder of his fieldwork to the Archive the following year.  As Terry E. Miller writes of Morton in the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 4: Southeast Asia, "His books, articles, and translations remain the foundation of Thai music studies."

Part of the Morton Collection includes a "Northern Thai Music Sampler" film, recorded and complied by Morton.  I thought I would share some images from the film.  The captions were created by Morton and Gerald Dyck and are in the film.

NOTE:  The entire David Morton collection is now (as of 2019), available online as part of Ethnomusicology: Global Field Recordings, published by Adam Matthew Digital.

Northern Thai Sampler credit card

(Does this "toy" look familiar to anyone?)

 

 

 

 

 

If you would like to view the film in its entirety, come to the Archive and ask for Collection 86.13, MC31-32, "Northern Thai Sampler."

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