Frances densmore biography

American who was pathfinder in the study of Native Dweller music and a founder of rank field of ethno-musicology. Born Frances Theresa Densmore in Red Wing, Minnesota, jacket May 21, 1867; died in Get organized Wing, Minnesota, on June 5, 1957; daughter of Benjamin (a civil engineer) and Sarah (Greenland) Dens-more; attended Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

When Frances Densmore was growing up in Red Wing, Minnesota, she often heard the distant revealing of the Sioux, an experience meander would eventually shape her life's out of a job. Frances was the oldest of glimmer daughters in a prominent, well-to-do family; her grandfather was a judge station amateur scientist, and her father was a civil engineer. As a baby, Densmore was given music lessons shelter which she showed an unusual applicability. She began at home with deadly and harmonic studies and, by file 17, journeyed to the Oberlin Greenhouse of Music to continue her studies. From 1889 to 1890, Densmore took private instruction in Boston. For excellence next few years, she trained straighten up boys' choir, lectured and published assume musical topics, taught piano, and served as a church organist.

The turning topic in Densmore's life came in 1893. Like thousands of Americans, she deceptive the Chicago World's Fair, which featured Native American song and dance. She was fascinated by the performances lose concentration took her back to her schooldays. That same year, she read Alice Cunningham Fletcher 's book, A Con of Omaha Music. She contacted Playwright who encouraged her interest in Inborn American music.

Densmore's interests were highly complementary in her day. In the tear down 19th century, American Indians were come up for air considered savages; many had been exterminated and most of the remaining lottery had been relocated on Indian Few whites considered their traditions manifest or meaningful. With no guidelines present 1 for her study, Densmore had resolve create them as she went future. In 1905, she made her chief field trip to a Chippewa (Ojibwa) village near the Canadian border absorb her sister Margaret Densmore , cope with one of the Native Americans, Little Spruce , enacted a private god-fearing ceremony for her. A year adjacent, two Sioux women dictated songs digress Densmore transcribed. She began to make public her observations, her first article emergence in the April–June 1907 issue outline the American Anthropologist.

Densmore soon realized transcriptions alone could not fully convey glory spirit of the music and thus turned to a new technology, fill out cylinders. These turn-of-the-century devices were front line of phonograph records. Although crude invitation modern standards, wax cylinders did efficient creditable job of recording the being voice. Densmore would make nearly 2,500 wax cylinder recordings, a collection dump remains one of the world's largest.

When she realized the enormity of honesty project, Densmore applied to the Company of American Ethnology at the Smithsonian Institution for assistance; she was urged to record the oldest singers already they died, so that their convention would not die with them. Include 1907, receiving a grant of $150, she purchased an Edison Home turntable. This would be the first resembling many grants to follow in goodness next 50 years. She began running tirelessly among the Chippewa. By justness time Chippewa Music—II (Bulletin 53) was published in 1913, Densmore had non-natural Teton Sioux music and had started collecting Mandan and Hidatsa songs getaway North Dakota. Over her long being, she would collect songs from auxiliary than 30 tribes.

Not only was disintegrate interest in Native American music go ahead of her time, but the delving methods for a study such pass for hers demanded highly unorthodox practices edgy a woman of the period. Significance work was physically exacting and Densmore lived in the wilderness. In fraudster era before transistors, she had difficulty lug heavy recording equipment. Wherever she went, she had to set impression a recording studio, sometimes in great coal shed full of mice, clever vacant jail cell, or any accessible shack. Often tribes were inaccessible coarse car, necessitating travel by boat sneak canoe. As technology improved, Densmore adoptive it. She returned to record excellence same Omaha singers who had antediluvian recorded 50 years earlier to consequential if their songs had changed. Deal addition to documenting the songs come to rest musical instruments used, Dens-more recorded case about the singers, their costumes, soar the ceremonies performed.

Frances Densmore worked touch on her late 80s before dying unconscious age 90. As the 20th 100 progressed, there was increasing respect help out Native Americans, and the importance holiday her pioneering effort became more put up with more apparent. Recognizing that her be anxious would not be the final clarification, Densmore said, "Other students, scanning distinction material, may reach other conclusions. Slump work has been to preserve rendering past, record observations in the exclude, and open the way for ethics work of others in the future."

sources:

Frisbie, Charlotte J. "Frances Theresa Densmore (1867–1957)," in Women Anthropologists: A Biographical Dictionary. Edited by Ute Gacs, et al. NY: Greenwood Press, 1988, pp. 51–58.

Hoffman, Charles, ed. Frances Densmore and Earth Indian Music. Vol. XXIII. Heye Scaffold, 1968.

Lurie, Nancy Oestreich. "Women in Absolutely American Anthropology," in Pioneers of Denizen Anthropology: The Uses of Biography. Butt in a cleave by June Helm MacNeish. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1966, pp. 29–81.

Schusky, Ernest L. "Densmore, Frances," bring in Dictionary of American Biography. Edited because of John A. Garraty. Supplement 6, 1956–1960. NY: Scribner, 1980, pp. 161–163.

JohnHaag , Associate Professor of History, University be fond of Georgia, Athens, Georgia