California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties. Collected by Sidney Robertson Cowell
California Gold: Northern California Folk Music from the Thirties is a multi-format ethnographic collection that contains more than 35 hours of recorded folk music, as well as still photographs, drawings, and written documents. European ethnic, Spanish- and English-speaking communities are represented.
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These online exhibits provide context and additional information about this collection.
- The Ethnographic Experience: Sidney Robertson Cowell in Northern California
- Glossary of Musical Instruments
These historical era(s) are best represented in the collection although they may not be all-encompassing.
- The Civil War and Reconstruction, 1850-1877
- Development of the Industrial United States, 1876-1915
- Emergence of Modern America, 1890-1930
- The Great Depression and World War II, 1929-1945
Related Collections and Exhibits
- American Life Histories: Manuscripts from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1940
- American Variety Stage, 1870-1920
- California as I Saw It: First Person Narratives, 1849-1900
- Civil War Photographs, 1861-1865
- FSA/OWI Photographs, 1935-1945
- Hispano Music and Culture of the Northern Rio Grande
- Map Collections, 1500-2004
- The New Deal Stage: Federal Theater Project, 1935-1939
- Panoramic Maps, 1847-1929
- Southern Mosaic: The Lomax Southern States Recording Trip
Recommended additional sources of information.
- The American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress
- Folklife Sourcebook: A Directory of Folklife Resources in the United States
- Folklife and Fieldwork: A Layman's Introduction to Field Techniques
- A Teacher's Guide to Folklife Resources for K-12
Specific guidance for searching this collection.
For help with general search strategies, see Finding Items in American Memory.
**Note: Some folksongs portray stereotypes to varying degrees, and some contain profanity, while others clearly present a certain religious point of view.