Sidney Robertson and the Documentation of American Folk Music in the New Deal Era

FAIN: FZ-256604-17

Sheryl Kaskowitz
Unaffiliated independent scholar

Preparation of a book about Sidney Robertson (1903-1995), a folk-music collector in the 1930s for the Resettlement Administration of the U.S. government.

This book tells the story of Sidney Robertson’s folk-music collecting for the Resettlement Administration (RA), an experimental New Deal agency that resettled thousands of people hard hit by the Depression on newly created homesteads across the country. The RA’s Special Skills Division collected nearly 160 disc recordings, both to document the folk music of Depression-era America and to use the songs “as an integrating social force” on the RA’s homesteads. Nearly all of these discs were recorded by Sidney Robertson, a woman whose role in the history of public folklore is often overlooked. This book illuminates the lost history of the Special Skills Division and Sidney Robertson’s role in its folk-music collecting, uncovering a treasure trove of little-known recordings, filling in important information about the roots of the folk revival, and demonstrating New Deal leaders' belief in the power of folk music to effect change and to forge an "authentic" American identity.

Media Coverage

A Chance to Harmonize’ Review: Song Hunting in Hill Country (Review)
Author(s): Eddie Dean
Publication: Wall Street Journal
Date: 4/5/2024
Abstract: As part of the New Deal, FDR sent archivists into the field to record traditional folk music.
URL: https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture/music/a-chance-to-harmonize-review-song-hunting-in-hill-country-b9cd9d52

Associated Products

“Government Song Women": Margaret Valiant, Sidney Robertson, and New Deal Collecting (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: “Government Song Women": Margaret Valiant, Sidney Robertson, and New Deal Collecting
Author: Sheryl Kaskowitz
Abstract: Appearing on the "Documentation and Archival Collections" panel, this paper gave an overview of these two women's collecting activities as part of the Resettlement Administration's music unit, and discussed the unacknowledged contributions that they made to collecting methodologies and to the recording collections at the American Folklife Center.
Date Range: September 26, 2019
Location: Women Documenting the World Symposium, American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Primary URL: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/Symposia/womenethnographers/index.html

“'Government Song Women': Margaret Valiant, Sidney Robertson, and New Deal Collecting," presentation at the Women Documenting the World Symposium (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: “'Government Song Women': Margaret Valiant, Sidney Robertson, and New Deal Collecting," presentation at the Women Documenting the World Symposium
Abstract: As part of the "Documentation and Archival Collections" panel, this presentation gave an overview of the music collecting activities of Sidney Robertson and Margaret Valiant as part of the music unit of the Resettlement Administration (and, later, the Farm Security Administration), including their pioneering collecting methodologies and their little-known recordings within the collections of the American Folklife Center.
Author: Sheryl Kaskowitz
Date: 9/26/2019
Location: American Folklife Center, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
Primary URL: http://www.loc.gov/folklife/Symposia/womenethnographers/index.html
Primary URL Description: Women Documenting the World Symposium: Women as Folklorists, Ethnomusicologists & Fieldworkers

A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression—One Song at a Time (Book)
Title: A Chance to Harmonize: How FDR's Hidden Music Unit Sought to Save America from the Great Depression—One Song at a Time
Author: Sheryl Kaskowitz
Editor: Jessica Case
Abstract: The remarkable story of a hidden New Deal program that tried to change America and end the Great Depression using folk music, laying the groundwork for the folk revival and having a lasting impact on American culture.
Year: 2024
Primary URL: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/A-Chance-to-Harmonize/Sheryl-Kaskowitz/9781639365715
Primary URL Description: Simon & Schuster book website
Access Model: trade publishing
Publisher: Pegasus Books
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-1639365715
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Living New Deal Webinar: “Folk Music and the New Deal: Collecting the Hidden Soundtracks of the Great Depression” (Public Lecture or Presentation)
Title: Living New Deal Webinar: “Folk Music and the New Deal: Collecting the Hidden Soundtracks of the Great Depression”
Abstract: Many people are familiar with the New Deal’s legacy in the visual arts, but the soundtracks left by its folk music collecting activities have remained largely unknown. Beginning with a Music Unit within the Resettlement Administration in 1936 and continuing with the WPA California Folk Music Project in the late 1930s, the pioneering collector Sidney Robertson Cowell amassed hundreds of recordings that provide new insights into life during the Great Depression, as she followed her own interests in union protest songs and the folk music of ethnic immigrants.
Author: Catherine Hiebert Kerst
Author: Sheryl Kaskowitz
Date: 3/26/2024
Location: Webinar
Primary URL: https://youtu.be/qZ7-xziAiMQ
Primary URL Description: Webinar video (YouTube)

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