Maureen Russell

UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research

The UCLA Library Center for Oral History Research collects and creates oral history interviews related primarily to the history of Southern California and the Los Angeles metropolitan region. Today...

The Ethnomusicology Archive, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

When I became editor of this column, the previous editor, on hearing of my institutional affiliation, said, “That is a collection I have long admired and had hoped to write about in the column.” Her sentiments, coupled with the fact that our current faculty director is retiring from UCLA, inspired me to devote this column to the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive. UCLA Ethnomusicology was established by Mantle Hood in 1960 (see Figure 1). Its primary mission is to explore the rich variety of musical expressions throughout the world by combining hands-on musical experience with academic study. Founded in academic year 1960/1961 as a research unit of the then–Institute of Ethnomusicology and opened on October 13, 1961, the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is a vital part of this ethnomusicology mission. Holding over 150,000 audiovisual recordings, the Archive collections include noncommercial field recordings and commercially produced recordings of traditional, folk, popular, and art music from Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific islands, Europe, the Middle East, and the Americas on a variety of formats. The UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is the joint second largest ethnographic sound archive in North America. The Archive’s collections are many and varied; some of the most important are UCLA Ethnomusicology faculty and student research field recordings. A sampling of these collections include Lois Anderson (Uganda), Donn Borcherdt (Mexico), Robert Brown (India), Laura Boulton (South Africa), Margaret Caton (Iran), Sam Chianis (Greece), Michael Crawford (Indonesia), Peter Crossley-Holland (India), Jacqueline DjeDje (Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica), Richard Hawkins (Chile), Charlotte Heth (Oklahoma Cherokee), Mantle Hood (Java), Nazir Jairazbhoy (India, Pakistan), Robert Kauffman (Zimbabwe), Roderic Knight (Gambia, Sierra Leone), Fredric Lieberman (Sikkim), Jacob Love (Samoa), Scott Marcus (India), Colin McPhee (Bali), Jose Maceda (Philippines), David Morton (Thailand), Linda

Thousand Oaks Library, Grant R. Brimhall Library, Special Collections, American Radio Archives, Thousand Oaks, California

The American Radio Archives is one of the largest radio broadcasting collections in the world. The Archives focus on entertainment programming from the “Golden Age” of radio, up to the 1950s. It in...

Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Margaret Herrick Library Special Collections

Blue skies, sunshine, palm trees, cruising down Sunset Boulevard … I feel like I can only be heading to one place, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library, located...