# Sidney Robertson Cowell & the WPA California Folk Music Project, 1938-1940

Catherine Hiebert Kerst discusses how, as a young woman of 35, Sidney Robertson proposed, organized and directed a California Work Projects Administration project designed to survey musical traditions from a wide range of English-speaking and immigrant communities in Northern California. Her efforts generated the WPA California Folk Music Project (1938-1940), a remarkable multi-format ethnographic field collection (with recordings, photographs, sketches and drawings of the musical instruments, and field notes) that captured a unique cross-section of the music that people of many backgrounds were performing at the time.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2017
- By: Library Of Congress
- Genres: History, Music
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021690523/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Tweens profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021690523?play=1)