Sonic colour zones: Laura Boulton and the hunt for music

Abstract

At the intersection of sound studies and the history of ethnomusicology, this article explores the production of sonic colour zones through Laura Boulton’s recordings in Africa and the Caribbean in the 1920s and 30s. Her own accounts, correspondence, field notes and recordings offer an opportunity to attend to alternative understandings of the relationship between humans and animals, and to situate recording practices within the field of natural history. At the same time, attention to technology and Boulton’s relationship to it allows for further theorisation of the gendering of ethnographic recording. And evidence about her interlocutors opens up an interpretive strand that considers their motivations and agendas as distinct from Boulton’s.

Keywords:

• Laura Boulton
• ethnography
• recording
• Africa
• Caribbean

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Aaron Fox, Robin Gray, Trevor Reed, Ana Ochoa, Joe Browning, Tom Western, Gabriela Aceves-Sepúlveda, Charles Carter, Columbia University, the Archives of Traditional Music, and to audiences at the Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver, and Sonología 2016 in São Paulo. All errors and shortcomings are my own.

Notes

1. For a recent critique of the “whiteness” of sound studies, see Stadler (2016).

2. In this essay I draw on material from the Bahamas, Haiti and Cuba.

3. Kohler argues that natural history collecting in the twentieth century took on a much more comprehensive focus than earlier collecting practices.

4. Boulton relied on the Hornbostel-Sachs classificatory system for musical instruments, as laid out originally in Zeitschrift für Ethnologie in 1914. She received a fellowship to study in Europe with Curt Sachs shortly after she returned from her Caribbean expedition. “Letter to Melvina Hoffman”, 29 June 1937, Series 1 Laura Boulton Correspondence 1937–1938, Laura Boulton Collection (LB), Archives of Traditional Music, Indiana University (ATM).

5. See for example Correspondence with Fairchild Aerial Camera Corporation, 16 March 1938, Series 1, Laura Boulton Correspondence 1937–1938, LB, ATM.

6. The correspondence from 1938 includes numerous allusions to her lectures on African music, and her inclusion of the Haiti materials as evidence of “African survivals”. Series 1, Laura Boulton Correspondence 1937–1938, LB, ATM.

7. “Letter to Mr Howe,” 11 December 1936, Series 1, Laura Boulton Correspondence 1936, LB, ATM.

8. The American Record and Transcription Service, which eventually changed its name to Art Records Manufacturing Company, made several albums featuring Blind Blake and his bands in the 1950s. https://www.discogs.com/label/464361-American-Recording-And-Transcription-Service-Inc

9. There is no further mention of her work in the Bahamas in her correspondence or field notes. West Indies 1937, C D I.A (1–3) West Indies 1936–1937, Caribbean Documents, Laura Boulton Field Research Documents, LB, ATM.

10. “Letter to Melville,” 25 September 25, Series 1, Laura Boulton Correspondence 1937–38, LB, ATM.

11. Boulton returned several times to record and film in Haiti, as well as working in New York with a Haitian musician and dancer, René Calvin.

12. Some contemporary communities do claim that Boulton’s recordings of their songs need to be described as theft (Gray 2015).

13. Laura Boulton Correspondence, Series 1, 1936, LB, ATM.

14. “Bringing the Songs Home”, http://music.columbia.edu/cecenter/BASC/. Accessed September 17, 2012. Trevor Reed has also returned some of the Hopi songs that Boulton recorded. I have shared the Bahamas recordings with Charles Carter, radio producer and owner of Island FM in Nassau.