Laura Boulton (January 4, 1899 – October 16, 1980) was an American ethnomusicologist. She is known for the many field recordings, films and photographs of traditional music and its performances and practitioners from Egypt, the Sudan, Uganda, Kenya and Tanganyika.[1] Boulton also collected traditional musical instruments around the world. In her work with the National Film Board of Canada (NFB) during the Second World War, she is recognized as being a pioneer for women who work in the film industry.
Over the next 50 years, Boulton participated in dozens of international expeditions, compiling extensive collections of field recordings, films, photographs, and musical instruments.[2] Her autobiography, titled The Music Hunter documents these travels, but offers little additional information. As stated in The Music Hunter, Boulton's mission was, "To capture, absorb, and bring back the world's music; not the music of the concert hall or the opera house, but the music of the people ..."[3][4]
Boulton was to publish many articles and films, and helped to produce a multitude of museum exhibits related to the artifacts and data she gathered during her research. She also presented a large number of illustrated educational lectures for students of music and anthropology at the University of Chicago's anthropology department.
Filmmaking
In 1941, John Grierson, the head of the National Film Board of Canada contracted Boulton as a "freelancer" to make a series of films on Canadian cultural communities. Fellow women filmmakers also at the NFB like Judith Crawley was also hired on the same basis, while Evelyn Spice Cherry, Jane Smart and Gudrun Bjerring Parker were hired as permanent employees.[5]
Although Boulton was originally only contracted for six weeks to make one film, her work at the NFB turned into a series called Peoples of Canada, consisting of 15 films. The goal of the wartime series was as a morale booster, that would "... broaden awareness of Canada's cultural mosaic, in order to create a feeling of national unity."[5] Although Boulton had little film experience, she collaborated with a number of experienced cinematographers, including Judith Crawley.[6][Note 1]
Robert Flaherty, the American filmmaker, and director of Nanook of the North (1922), served as a consultant on Boulton's three Baffin Island films.[8] Postwar, Boulton's films would meet with great acclaim in Canada, the United States and Europe, contributing significantly to the growth of the NFB's international reputation.[5]
Arctic Jungle (Carnet de voyage)- documentary short, Sydney Newman 1948 - co-cinematographer with Grant McLean
Across Wartime Canada (silent lecture film)
Canadians All (silent Lecture film)
Canadian Design (silent lecture film)
Legacy
Today Boulton's large collections of traditional music materials are found at several institutions. The Columbia University Center for Ethnomusicology has the Laura Boulton Collection of Traditional Music, with approximately 30,000 field recordings and accompanying documentation, purchased for Columbia in 1964. Boulton served as curator of this collection from 1962 to 1972. Boulton's liturgical music collection is found today at the Harvard University Archive of World Music, part of the Eda Kuhn Loeb Music Library.[15] The Music Library has digitized this collection and made it available on the World Wide Web.[16]
In 1977, Boulton started the Laura Boulton Foundation in New York City, a non-profit institution dedicated to supporting ethnomusicological research. Through the Foundation, Indiana University awards junior and senior Laura Boulton fellowships, designed for researchers to work with these materials.[19]
References
Notes
^Although Boulton did not have a filmmaking background, Grierson was intrigued with her interest in aboriginal cultures.[7]
^Boulton, Laura (1963). "I Search For Ancient Music"(PDF). Friends of the Columbia Libraries. Retrieved 7 Nov 2020. In the most remote corners of primitive lands, old people are dying and taking their songs with them; everywhere young people are discarding old cultures in their eagerness to assimilate the new. Even in the deep forests of Africa, folklore wears a new look: Elvis Presley, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra have become musical idols. The fads of today are setting the musical pattern of tomorrow.
Boulton, Laura. The Music Hunter: The Autobiography of a Career. Garden City, New York: Doubleday. 1969.
Druick, Zoë. Projecting Canada: Government Policy and Documentary Film at the National Film Board. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2007. ISBN978-0-7735-3259-5.
Harris, Craig. Heartbeat, Warble, and the Electric Powwow: American Indian Music. Norman, Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma Press, 2016. ISBN978-0-8061-5168-7.
Khouri, Malek. Filming Politics: Communism and the Portrayal of the Working Class at the National Film Board of Canada, 1939-46. Calgary, Alberta, Canada: University of Calgary Press, 2007. ISBN978-1-55238-199-1.
McMillan, Robert. "Ethnology and the N.F.B.: The Laura Boulton Mysteries." Canadian Journal of Film Studies / Revue canadienne d'études cinématographiques 1, no. 2, Spring 1991.
Patterson, Karin Gaynell. Expressions of Africa in Los Angeles Public Performance, 1781--1994. Los Angeles: ProQuest, 2007. ISBN978-0-549-40705-8.
Peek, Philip M. and Kwesi Yankah, eds. African Folklore: An Encyclopedia. London: Routledge, 2003. ISBN978-0-4158-0372-4.