Laura Boulton

Laura Boulton née Craytor (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.

Laura Theresa Craytor was born in Conneaut, Ohio on January 4, 1899. She studied voice at Western Reserve University and obtained a B.A. degree from Denison University. In 1925, she married Wolfrid Rudyerd Boulton, Jr., who was an ornithologist and lecturer at the Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the ornithological staff of which she served in the early 1920s.

En 1929, Boulton comenzó sus estudios de posgrado en el departamento de antropología de la Universidad de Chicago . En enero de ese mismo año, inició la primera de una serie de expediciones de investigación que acompañaría o dirigiría durante los siguientes 50 años, llevando consigo una grabadora de cilindro para registrar música folclórica y cantos de aves . Este viaje a África, bajo los auspicios del Museo Americano de Historia Natural , que duró aproximadamente tres meses, le permitió a Boulton recolectar instrumentos musicales y grabaciones de las poblaciones indígenas de Egipto , Sudán , Uganda , Kenia y Tanganica . ^{[ 1 ]}

Durante los siguientes 50 años, Boulton participó en docenas de expediciones internacionales, recopilando extensas colecciones de grabaciones de campo, películas, fotografías e instrumentos musicales . ^{[ 2 ]} Su autobiografía, titulada The Music Hunter, documenta estos viajes, pero ofrece poca información adicional. Como se afirma en The Music Hunter , la misión de Boulton era: «Capturar, absorber y traer de vuelta la música del mundo; no la música de la sala de conciertos ni de la ópera, sino la música del pueblo…» ^{[ 3 ] [ 4 ]}

Boulton visitó y recopiló datos musicales e instrumentos de (además de las localidades mencionadas anteriormente) Mozambique , Nyasalandia , Rodesia , Transvaal , Provincia del Cabo , Sierra Leona , Liberia , Angola , Nigeria , Senegal , la Colonia de Níger , Dahomey y otras partes del África Ecuatorial Francesa , el Camerún Británico , el Congo Belga , Etiopía y Ghana . ^{[ 1 ]}

Boulton publicó numerosos artículos y películas, y colaboró ​​en la producción de multitud de exposiciones museísticas relacionadas con los objetos y datos que recopiló durante su investigación. Asimismo, impartió numerosas conferencias didácticas ilustradas para estudiantes de música y antropología en el departamento de antropología de la Universidad de Chicago.

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]

• Ukrainian Winter Holidays (Un Noël ukrainien) - documentary short, 1942 - musical director, director^[9]
• Eskimo Arts and Crafts (L'artisanat esquimau) - documentary short, 1943 - producer, director^[10]
• New Scotland - documentary short, 1943 - producer, director^[11]
• Ukrainian Dance (Danse ukrainienne) - documentary short, 1943 - producer, director
• Arctic Hunters (La chasse aux phoques) - documentary short, 1944 - producer, director
• Eskimo Summer (L'été chez les Esquimaux) - documentary short, 1944 - producer, director
• Habitant Arts and Crafts - documentary short, 1944 - producer, director
• Land of Quebec (Le Pays de Québec) - documentary short, 1944 - producer, director
• People of the Potlatch (Les Indiens de la côte ouest) - documentary short, 1944 - producer, director^[12]
• Poland on the Prairies - documentary short, 1944 - producer, director
• Polish Dance - documentary short, 1944 - producer, director^[13]
• Totems - documentary short, 1944 - producer, director^[14]
• 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)

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]

The Archive of Folk Culture at the Library of Congress contains wax cylinders, aluminum discs and reel-to-reel tapes of Boulton's field recordings of traditional vocal and instrumental music worldwide, with accompanying catalogs and commentaries. The Smithsonian Institution Film Archives contains the originals of her film footage from 1934 to 1979, including collaborative films with the National Film Board of Canada. Smithsonian Folkways has the originals of recordings Boulton made for Folkways Records.^[17]

From 1972 to 1977, Boulton took her personal collection with her to teach at Arizona State University. This collection, later named "The Laura Boulton Collection of World Music and Musical Instruments" came to Indiana University, Bloomington in 1996^[18] from Arizona State and the Laura Boulton Foundation. The musical instruments are housed at the Mathers Museum of World Cultures, while the remaining materials are at the Archives of Traditional Music.^[19]

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.^[20]

• Laura Boulton biography
• Laura Boulton Collection at Indiana University, Bloomington
• Boulton, Laura, 1899–1980. Collection of Byzantine and Orthodox Musics Finding Aid, Harvard University.
• About The Center for Ethnomusicology at Columbia University
• PDF: Ethnology and the N.F.B.: The Laura Boulton Mysteries
• Laura Boulton at IMDb
• Laura Boulton at femfilm.ca, Canadian Women Film Directors