Tradition-Bearers
Tradition-Bearers
Music keeps traditions alive. It can also transform them. Tradition-bearers preserve cultural heritage, songs, and stories, and pass them on to the subsequent generations. Music can also provide an outlet to influence changes within a culture.
Jean Ritchie
Marching Across the Green Grass and Other American Children Game Songs
Folkways Records, 1968
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
From left to right:
Patti Malone, George E. Barrett, Mattie L. Lawrence, C.W. Payne, Ella Sheppard (seated), F.J. Loudin, Maggie L. Porter (seated), B.W. Thomas, Mabel R. Lewis, Jennie Jackson, Laura Wells (seated)
The Story of the Jubilee Singers; With Their Songs
J.B.T. Marsh
Boston, 1880
Teaching Children Values
Historically, caregivers and educators have used music as a way to teach children morals, values, and societal norms. Nursery rhymes and folk songs can both warn and inform, teach and entertain.
Mother Goose
The fabled female figure Mother Goose has delighted children through s tories and songs since the 1600s.
The True Mother Goose
Blanche McManus Mansfield
Boston, 1895
Lithographic print
Smithsonian American Art Museum
“They’re swingin’ everything else — why not nursery rhymes?”— Ella Fitzgerald, New York Post, 1938
Mother Goose: The Old Nursery Rhymes
Illustrated by Arthur Rackham
New York, 1913
Gift of Wm. J. Ellenberger
Mother Goose's Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs, Set to Music by J.W. Elliott
Springfield, Massachusetts, around 1875
Legendary jazz artist Ella Fitzgerald’s (1917–1996) breakthrough song was “A-Tisket A-Tasket,” adapted from a childhood nursery rhyme.
Jazz Journal
London, May 1958
Gift of the estate of Floyd Levin
Children’s Music
Whether teaching children folk music or connecting to other school subjects, music plays a critical role in educating children.
For more than six decades, award-winning musician Ella Jenkins (born 1924) has performed multicultural music for child audiences. Her albums and songbooks teach children about a diversity of cultures, languages, musical concepts, histories, and geographies.
Ella Jenkins
Travellin’ with Ella Jenkins: A Bilingual Journey
Folkways Records, 1979
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
Ella Jenkins
This is Rhythm
New York, 1962
Ella Jenkins sings to a group of young children in the
Oratorium at the 2009 Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
Ella Jenkins, Sing Out!
February/March 1962
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award Issued to Ella Jenkins
2004
National Museum of African American History and Culture
Gift of Ella Jenkins
The GRAMMY Award Statuette and logo are registered trademarks of The Recording Academy® and are used under license
Family and Faith
Many women musicians started out performing in family bands or in their local churches. Sometimes they did both. These community-centered environments offered safe places to perform as well as protection on the road.
They also offered another type of safety: freedom to experiment with music while maintaining social “respectability” as women of family and faith.
Jean Ritchie
Esteemed folk artist Jean Ritchie (1922–2015) was born into a musical family. She performed traditional Appalachian songs, composed original material, raised environmental awareness, and reinvigorated interest in the mountain dulcimer.
Jean Ritchie’s Dulcimer
Made by George Pickow
Viper, Kentucky, 1951
National Museum of American History
Gift of Peter Pickow
Jean Ritchie
Celebration of Life: Her Songs… Her Poems
New York, 1971
Jean Ritchie
The Appalachian Dulcimer: An Instruction Record
Smithsonian Folkways, 1964
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
Lydia Mendoza
Lydia Mendoza (1916–2007), the “Queen of Tejano,” started out in a family band. She popularized Tejano (Tex-Mex) music, which blends the musical traditions of Mexican, Spanish, Polish, German, and Czech immigrants.
Lydia Mendoza
First Queen of Tejano Music
Arhoolie Records, 1996
Smithsonian Folkways Recordings
Lydia Mendoza
Part 1: First Recordings 1928–1938
Folk-Lyric Records, 1980
Lydia Mendoza
La Gloria de Texas
Arhoolie Records, 1980
Mahalia Jackson
Some musicians pushed the boundaries of what religious music sounded like. The “Queen of Gospel” Mahalia Jackson (1911–1972) used the words and music of gospel to support social causes, such as civil rights and desegregation efforts.
Mahalia Jackson: Walking with Kings and Queens
Nina Nolan; illustrations by John Holyfield
New York, 2015
Mahalia Jackson
Jazz Journal
London, May 1972
Gift of the estate of Floyd Levin
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the “Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” rose to prominence in the 1930s as a pioneer of mixing “secular sounds,” such as electric guitar, with sacred lyrics.
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
Eighteen Original Negro Spirituals
New York, 1938
Courtesy of the National Museum of African American History and Culture
Gift of Gayle Wald
Sister Rosetta Tharpe performs at the 1967 Newport Folk Festival
Photo by Diana Jo Davies
Ralph Rinzler Folklife Archives and Collections
Keepers of Tradition
Women researchers, performers, and collectors have worked to document musical expressions across the United States. Their efforts have provided an invaluable record that many scholars, artists, and community members continue to use today.
Documentarians have come from a variety of backgrounds. Some identified with the groups they recorded. Others were outsiders who wanted to record something they feared could be lost. In some cases, their audio and print recordings were the first efforts to formally collect music that had been passed from generation to generation through oral tradition.
Lucy McKim Garrison
Abolitionist musicologist Lucy McKim Garrison (1842–1877) was one of the first researchers to document and publish traditional songs sung by enslaved African Americans in the Southern United States.
“Roll, Jordan, Roll”
Slave Songs of the United States
William Francis Allen, Charles Pickard Ware, and Lucy McKim Garrison
New York, 1867
Ella Sheppard
Ella Sheppard served as assistant director, soprano, pianist, and arranger of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers. Founded in 1871, the group interpreted and popularized concert spirituals based on traditional music of formerly enslaved African Americans.
The Story of the Jubilee Singers; With Their Songs
J.B.T. Marsh
Boston, 1880
From left to right: Patti Malone, George E. Barrett, Mattie L. Lawrence, C.W. Payne, Ella Sheppard (seated), F.J. Loudin, Maggie L. Porter (seated), B.W. Thomas, Mabel R. Lewis, Jennie Jackson, Laura Wells (seated)
Ella Sheppard
The Jubilee Singers, and Their Campaign for Twenty Thousand Dollars
Gustavus D. Pike
Boston and New York, 1873
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), such as Fisk University, often provided music training and opportunities to Black women who lacked access to large conservatories due to segregation.
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston’s research included the documentation of traditional songs, music, and stories of African American culture. In Mules and Men, she documents several songs that she encountered during field work in Florida and Louisiana.
Zora Neale Hurston
Mules and Men
New York, 1969 (reprint of 1935 edition)
From the Ellis B. Haizlip Collection
Zora Neale Hurston
Mules and Men
New York, 1969 (reprint of 1935 edition)
From the Ellis B. Haizlip Collection
Frances Densmore
The staged photo on this album cover depicts Mountain Chief (Pikuni Blackfeet, 1848–1942) listening to and interpreting a song in Plains Indian sign language for musicologist Frances Densmore (1867–1957).
Densmore specialized in recording and documenting Indigenous North American music at a time when Indigenous languages, traditions, and lifeways were being actively suppressed by the U.S. government. Densmore and her contemporaries were often driven by assumptions that Native traditions would soon disappear. Today, Indigenous scholars use her work as just one part of their ongoing efforts to preserve and strengthen Indigenous traditions.
Frances Densmore
Healing Songs of the American Indian
Folkways Records, 1965
Photo by Harris and Ewing, Washington, D.C., 1916
Smithsonian National Anthropological Archives
Joanna Colcord
Born on a sailing ship and raised on the seas, Joanna Colcord (1882–1960) was an important documentarian of sailor songs and sea shanties.
Joanna Colcord
Roll and Go: Songs of American Sailormen
Indianapolis, 1924
Joanna Colcord in her late teens or early twenties
Photo by Frederick R. Sweetser
Penobscot Marine Museum
Alixa Naff
Scholar Alixa Naff (1919–2013), the “Mother of Arab American Studies,” collected music that was popular among the first wave of Arab American immigrants who arrived in the 1880s through 1940s.
Om Kalsoum
Alamphon Records
Faris and Yamna Naff Arab American Collection
Archives Center, National Museum of American History
