More Ethnomusicology Archive Recordings Now Online at California Light and Sound

Submitted by Maureen Russell on March 17, 2016 - 5:31pm

The UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is pleased to announce that more recordings from the Archive's collections are now available as part of the California Light and Sound Collection on the Internet Archive.  California Light and Sound is a project of the California Audiovisual Preservation Project (CAVPP). 

I thought I would highlight several of these recordings recently added to the collection.

 

Buddy Collette and his band at the California Institution for Men in Chino, 1986, part of the California Arts in Corrections collection.  Buddy Collette, reeds; Al Viola, guitar; Al Aarons, trumpet, flugelhorn; Larry Gales, bass; Harold Jones, drums; and David Keller, manager.  Buddy Collette (1921-2010) was a Grammy-nominated jazz saxophonist, flautist, bandleader and educator who played important roles in Los Angeles jazz as a musician and an advocate for the rights of African American musicians.  He was one of the activists instrumental in the 1953 merging of the then all-African American musicians union Local 767 and the all-white Local 47.  Along with Marle Young, Benny Carter and others, Collette sought to tear down the walls between musicians of different races and to open opportunities previously denied African American artists.  Collette was the first African American to break through L.A.'s segregated studio musician scene when musical director Jerry Fielding recruited him to play in the ensemble of Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life" in 1949 and 1950.  As Collette told the L.A. Times in 2000, "I knew that was something that had to be done.  I had been in the service, where our band was integrated. My high school had been fully integrated. I really didn't know anything about racism, but I knew it wasn't right. Musicians should be judged on how they play, not the color of their skin."  Collette's many non-performing activities included urging the development of the UCLA Oral History project, Central Avenue Sounds, and the co-founding of JazzAmerica, a nonprofit organization working to provide education to gifted high school musicians.  In 1998, Mayor Richard J. Riordan designated Collette "A Living Los Angeles Cultural Treasure."  As novelist and journalist Emory Holmes II wrote in the L.A. Times in 2000, "If one has to choose a local hero whose story is emblematic of the West Coast musical heritage with all its underrated brilliance, originality and traditions, one could hardly do better than the amazing true life of William Marcel 'Buddy' Collette."

 

 

Musical Aesthetics in Los Angeles: Scott Lipscomb and James Horner, 1992.  Los Angeles-based James Horner (1953-2015) was an Oscar®-winning composer and conductor of film music.  Professor Scott Lipscomb's (UCLA Ethnomusicology PhD 1995) research focuses on music in a cinematic context.  I am sure many of you will remember that another UCLA Ethnomusicology graduate, Wanda Bryant (PhD 1995), worked with Horner on the film "Avatar" and shared her experience in EMR in 2012.  Musical Aesthetics and Multiculturalism in Los Angeles was a course taught by Professor Steven Loza.  The course ultimately inspired Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology, Vol X: Musical Aesthetics and Multiculturalism in Los Angeles, edited by Steven Loza, Paulette Gershen, and Eddie Huckaby.  "Volume X investigates musical aesthetics from both theoretical and ethnographic orientations. Its scope includes many of the ethnic communities of Los Angeles presented in detail and covers the issue of multiculturalism on a city-wide basis."

 

 

Dances of the World: Shazula Boot Dancers, Concert at the University of Judaism, 1995.  Choose tape 9 (T09).  The gumboot dance (or isicathulo) is a South African dance that is performed by dancers wearing Wellington boots, commonly called gumboots in South Africa.  "The history of gumboot dancing in South Africa is ... conceived by black miners as an alternative to the drumming that the authorities restricted, it used available objects such as gumboots, tin cans, and bottletops."  Dances of the World was produced by Los Angeles-based impresario Irwin Parnes (1917-1994).  Parnes was best known for pioneering the staging of multicultural, multiethnic productions. Parnes was the longtime managing director of the International Concerts Exchange Foundation.  He was also the manager of the Performing Arts series at the University of Judaism (now American Jewish University, Los Angeles).  From 1947 to 1992, Parnes presented 45 International Folk Dance Festivals in Los Angeles' old Philharmonic Auditorium, the Shrine Auditorium and the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

 

 

Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy discusses her Khmer Dance and Music project on KCET, 1987.  The recordings reveal a social history of the Khmer from Cambodia to California, illustrated by Khmer music, dance and interviews.  The original research was funded in part by grants from the NEA and NEH.

Here is the complete list of the fourth round of UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive recordings on California Light and Sound.  And more are forthcoming, so stay tuned!!

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