Music and Culture of West Africa: The Straus Expedition (review)
2003; Music Library Association; Volume: 60; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/not.2003.0144
ISSN1534-150X
Autores Tópico(s)Global Maritime and Colonial Histories
ResumoIn 1934 four Americans, including anthropologist Laura Boulton and her ornithologist husband Rudyard, carried out an expedition in West Africa, as Boulton herself described it, "to collect specimens for the new hall of exotic birds in the Field Museum of Natural History, to film the customs and ceremonies of tribal life, and to record the music of French and British West Africa" (CD-ROM [cdtext.pdf], 65). Funded by the Carnegie Corporation and friend and benefactor Sarah Lavanburg Straus, the so-called Straus Expedition, which included three vehicles shipped to Dakar and a nine-person local support crew, traveled more than eight thousand miles across West Africa through colonial territories that have since become the nations of Senegal, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Benin, Togo, and Cameroon. Laura Boulton's role was to collect music, and she did it with a passion. The expedition brought back more than 360 sound recordings, more than forty minutes of silent film, close to five hundred photographs, and fourteen musical instruments. With the exception of one record album edited by Laura Boulton (African Music. Folkways Records FW 8852 [1957], LP) and some photographs, this material has until now remained tucked away in various archives and collections. This excellent two-CD-ROM set makes available a treasure trove of Boulton's materials, presenting them in an accessible, [End Page 508] user-friendly, and highly educational manner. Ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, historians, and students of African music will have much to explore here.
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