Salmon begins her essay bemoaning how a nine-month teaching commitment at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, which typically granted three months of blissful summer research leave, had stretched into twenty-one long months without a single trip to European archives. Reflecting on this situation, she stares into her yard, the only primary source available. She describes its fence, the hedges, an orchard just beyond, dangling electrical wires, and a passing garbage truck. Salmon comes to realize that these sights, much like archival texts, testify to rich histories of everything from property to agriculture and technology. \u201cOur back yard,\u201d she writes, \u201chas the records of all the ages within its narrow enclosure\u201d (19). Although in the past I sympathized with Salmon\u2019s European archive withdrawal, staying still for one year has compelled me to consider the unique interconnected histories that every place holds, especially the University of North Texas and the greater Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. Wondering what \u201crecords of all the ages\u201d might be found in our own backyard, this spring doctoral students in the graduate seminar on Music and Archival Practice in the 21st\u202fCentury\u202fdeveloped research projects using\u202f<\/span>UNT\u2019s<\/span>\u202fMusic Library\u202fand\u202fSpecial\u202fCollections.\u202f\u202f<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n Our\u202fcourse\u202fbegan with\u202fpractical skills in archival research\u202fand an introduction to\u202farchival theory through the lens of recent music scholarship.\u202fMusicologists have long relied on archives for sources\u202flike\u202fcompositional\u202fsketches,\u202fpersonal letters,\u202fand legal records\u202frelated to musical production.\u202fThe institutional history of archives began in earnest with the French Revolution,\u202fimplicating\u202farchives in a nineteenth-century\u202fpositivistic\u202fdrive\u202fto categorize knowledge toward imperial and colonial ends.\u202fRecent work\u202fin music, however,\u202fhas changed that\u202fstate of affairs.\u202fWe consulted\u202fscholarship\u202fby historians and musicologists including\u202fGlenda\u202fGoodman, Maria\u202fRyan, Sarah\u202fEyerly, Mary Caton\u202fLingold,\u202fJillian C. Rogers,\u202fLisa\u202fBarg, Tammy\u00a0Kernodle,\u00a0Dianthe\u00a0Spencer, Sherrie Tucker,\u202fand others\u202fto consider how our methods and methodology might inform the\u202fmusic\u202fhistories that we write from archival materials.\u202fOlivia\u00a0Bloechl\u202fshared the possibilities of \u202f\u201cDoing Music History Where We Are\u201d<\/a>\u202f in her\u202fkeynote address\u202ffor\u202fUNT\u2019s\u00a0Graduate Association of Musicologists und\u202f<\/em> Theorists virtual conference in February. As the students began their own archival research, they learned to question the provenance of collections and how they are catalogued. Like Salmon, we engaged cultural and social histories that went far beyond the \u201cgreat figures\u201d of history allowing us to tell the stories of local people whose influence extended in some cases around the globe. \u202f\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This series of blog posts presents the results of our research. You\u2019ll find a diverse collection of stories from pioneering women professors and librarians at UNT, to white jazz collectors who shaped the reception of jazz, listening cultures transferred via music boxes, the social meaning drawn into 1970s Willie Nelson ads, and DFW citizens who moonlighted as organ technicians and contributed to the LGBTQ movement of the early 1990s. There\u2019s even more to this research than what is written here. Other projects in the course revealed the ethnic biases of Chinese music historiography, the values built into the materials of UNT\u2019s Murchison Performing Arts Center, and the influences of a UNT composer in 1970s experimental music. Indeed, our backyard contains \u201crecords of all the ages.\u201d\u202f <\/p>\n\n\n\n With these\u202fblog\u202fposts we invite you\u202fto consider the history in your own backyard\u202fand to use the vast archival collections of public and university libraries to help us add to the rich histories that\u202fconnect your backyard to our shared\u202fglobal history.\u202f\u202f<\/p>\n\n\n\n The door to the Edna Mae\u00a0Sandborn\u00a0Music Reading Room had remained closed since mid-March of 2020 due to the ongoing global pandemic. The fourth floor of the Willis Library, where the Music Library and Special Collections reside, was generally sleepy but still visited by avid researchers. Much to our excitement, Dr. Geoffroy-Schwinden arranged with Maristella Feustle to retrieve materials from the music archives for study in \u201cThe\u00a0Sandborn,\u201d as we\u00a0endearingly\u00a0refer to this research\u00a0space. The doors to The\u00a0Sandborn\u00a0opened, and the students\u00a0diligently visited\u00a0weekly\u2014at minimum\u2014and oftentimes\u00a0more.\u00a0The\u00a0Music Library staff had the pleasure of observing their discoveries (students\u00a0occasionally\u00a0leapt from their seats after finding something unexpected).\u00a0After students synthesized their findings,\u00a0we\u00a0now\u00a0have the pleasure of learning about what they\u00a0uncovered\u00a0while\u00a0musicking in the\u00a0Sandborn\u00a0in this\u00a0monthly\u00a0series aptly titled by Dr. Geoffroy-Schwinden, \u201cLocal Archives, Global History.\u201d We hope you enjoy.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n –Kristin Wolski, Music Information Literacy and Outreach Librarian<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Local Archives, Global History: Post 1 by Dr. Rebecca Geoffroy-Schwinden As\u202fpandemic lockdowns\u202fsettled\u202finto\u202fplace during\u202fthe spring\u202fof 2020 many scholars felt\u202fprofound disappointment\u202fas\u202ftheir summer research plans disintegrated\u202famidst\u202fthe stressors\u202fof illness,\u202fupended\u202ffamily life, and\u202fdisrupted\u202fwork\u202froutines.\u202fHistorians\u202fin particular\u202fgrieved\u202fthe personal loss of\u202fa favorite job-related activity, archival research,\u202fand\u202ffaced the\u202fanxiety that came along with a year-long\u202farchival exile, which\u202fthreatened to\u202fset back publications\u202fand\u202fpossibly\u202feven\u202fhiring and promotion\u202fopportunities\u202ffor years\u202fto come.\u202fSitting\u202fin my backyard… Read more »<\/a>","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[17],"tags":[19],"class_list":["post-221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-musicking-in-the-sandborn","tag-local-archives-global-history"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2021\/08\/willis-fourth-sandborn-2.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/98"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":565,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221\/revisions\/565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Black](\"https:\/\/blogs.library.unt.edu\/music\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/11\/2021\/08\/Photograph-of-a-backyard-taken-from-a-high-view-740x497.png\")
Note from the Editor<\/h2>\n\n\n\n