Ethnic music in northern Wisconsin and Michigan collection, 1886-2003 (bulk 1979-1982)

Author / Creator

Northland College (Ashland, Wis.)

Available as

Physical

Summary

From 1979 through 1981, Northland College in Ashland Wisconsin, aided by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the United States Department of Education, undertook projects to documen...

From 1979 through 1981, Northland College in Ashland Wisconsin, aided by grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the United States Department of Education, undertook projects to document ethnic music and heritage in northern Wisconsin and the western upper peninsula of Michigan. Outcomes were that staff trained local people in oral history, developed folklore resources, did an ethnic survey, and recorded, interviewed, and documented various ethnic traditions along Lake Superior's south shore. More than two hundred hours of cassette tapes, as well as field notes, commercial vinyl records, long play albums, reel-to-reel tapes, photographs, film negatives, color slides, and printed materials including collection files, articles, journals, manuscripts, monographs in various languages, newsletters, pamphlets, reference materials, Northland College student papers, broadsides, and newspapers were collected or created and then assembled into the Northland College Ethnic Heritage Sound Archive and Resource Center. In 1996, the Northland College archive was downsized and the Ethnic Heritage Sound Archive and Resource Center materials were divided among various locations. The Mills Music Library in Madison, Wisconsin acquired audiocassette copies of the field recordings and related paperwork, (dubbed the Ethnic Music in Northern Wisconsin and Michigan Collection), and the History Center and Archives at the Northern Great Lakes Visitor Center in Ashland, Wisconsin received the remaining materials as the Ethnic Music and Heritage Collection. In 2010, the Ethnic Music and Heritage Collection was transferred to the Wisconsin Historical Society in Madison, Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Historical Society transferred the collection to Mills Music Library in December 2015, where portions of the collection were reformatted to create an online digital version of the collection. Additionally, James P. Leary owns and houses private research materials related to the collection.

The Ethnic Music and Heritage Collection has many components including various media formats and document types, that were originally compiled and housed at Northland College. The majority of the work and the grants to fund this project took place between 1978 and 1982; however, items in the collection were added from both earlier and later years. The Ethnic Music and Heritage Collection is organized by media format. Series I, Manuscript Materials, consists of 20 boxes which contain articles, journals, manuscripts, monographs, newsletters, pamphlets, reference materials, interview case files, index cards, field notes and Northland College student papers, local community profiles, broadsides, newspapers, and office paperwork. Series II, Graphic Materials consists of three boxes which contains photographs and negatives. There are mostly contact photographs with corresponding negatives showing people who were involved in the projects, and examples of ethnic heritage or people playing ethnic music. Additional visual images are found among the slides in the collection that were taken or collected during these projects that have some general identification. Series III, Media, consists of 125 audiocassettes, 35 LPs, 104 audiotape reels (5-inch and 7-inch reel), 92 78-rpm audio discs, two 45-rpm discs. There is also one box of one compact disc and one U-Matic videocassette.

Show More