Folklore, Mythology, Folk Music, and Ethnomusicology

Author(s): Wayland D. Hand

Source: Western Folklore, Vol. 23, No. 1 (Jan., 1964), pp. 35-37
Published by: Western States Folklore Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1520540
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Folklore and Mythology at UCLA
FOLKLORE,MYTHOLOGY,FOLK MUSIC,
AND ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
WAYLANDD. HAND
THE OPENINGOF THE NEW SUITE of the Center for the Study of Comparative
Folklore and Mythology at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the
occasion for a brief review of the program in Comparative Folklore and
Mythology at the big West Coast institution, as well as a survey of the col-
lateral work in the fields of Folk Music and Ethnomusicology.
The move into a spacious eleven-room facility in the new highrise Social
Sciences Building early this year marks an expanding phase of a program of
work that began in 1933, when the late S. B. Hustvedt, world-renowned
ballad scholar, first offered a course in English balladry on the new Los
Angeles campus of the University. Regular courses in the field of folklore
date from 1940 and were headed up by Wayland D. Hand, who joined the
U.C.L.A. staff in 1937. By 1954 work had expanded to a point where the
interdepartmental Folklore Group could come into being. From a staff of
seventeen, with seven courses in folklore and another seventeen offered in
folklore and related subjects in member academic departments of the Group,
the offering had grown by 1961 to represent a staff of twenty-seven people
and a panel of forty courses. Addition of Jaan Puhvel, scholar in Indo-
European linguistics and comparative mythology, to the staff in 1958 led to
the development of work in mythology and the founding in the spring of
1961 of the present Center, with a program of work in mythology as well as
in folklore.
Later in the same year (1961) work in ethnomusicology, which had flour-
ished for some years under the leadership of Mantle Hood, and had nomi-
nally operated under the aegis of the Folklore Group as well as being an
integral part of the Department of Music, was reconstituted as the Institute
of Ethnomusicology, with Mantle Hood serving as Director.
Ballad and folk song studies, which had languished since the retirement
of Hustvedt in 1948, moved forward with new impetus following the ap-
pointment in 1962 of D. K. Wilgus as Associate Professor of English and
Anglo-American Folk Song, with a joint appointment in the Departments
of English and Music and a program of work wholly in the folk song and
folklore field. Research facilities in the field of folk music have been notably
expanded by the housing in the Center of the headquarters and archives of
the John Edwards Memorial Foundation for the study of folk music, par-
[35]
36 WESTERN FOLKLORE
ticularly the study of commercially recorded white country music. (A de-
tailed report of the Edwards holdings will be given in "Collectors and Col-
lections" in the April number of WF.)
To capitalize on the interest in Folklore and related studies at U.C.L.A.,
which has largely been elective, and to achieve a better integration of course
work, a separation of the teaching and research functions was effected in the
fall of 1963, with D. K. Wilgus heading up the Folklore and Mythology
Group, and Wayland D. Hand continuing to direct the research activities
of the Center. Course offerings now number fifty-nine, including twenty-one
graduate courses. Courses are taught by a staff of thirty-three instructors
drawn from twelve academic departments. Latest course to be added to an
expanding series in the courses in the folklore of different countries and
ethnic groups is a two-unit course in Gypsy Folklore. Taught by Walter
Starkie, eminent authority on Gypsy lore, the course is believed to be the
first such given at any university in the world. This spring, Myles Dillon,
noted Celticist, will introduce a course in Celtic Folklore and Mythology.
Featured in the teaching program at U.C.L.A. is the performance of the
folk arts. Impetus to this study has been the highly successful work of the
musical study groups in Ethnomusicology, as described in the special survey
of work in Ethnomusicology below, the program of the newly constituted
Department of Dance, and courses in puppetry in the Department of Theater
Arts. In the folk music field, the first annual U.C.L.A. Folk Music Festival
got off to a auspicious start in May of last year with an audience of over
12,000 paid admissions in a three-day program.
Research projects in the Center, which are partially funded by national
foundations, include Indexes of Classical and Indo-European Mythology;
Studies of Important Themes of Indo-European Comparative Mythology; a
Dictionary of American Popular Beliefs and Superstitions; an Index of
American Folk Legends; Studies in Philippine Folklore and Mythology;
Studies on the Impact of Hispanic Folklore on the Folk Culture of Latin
America, and a Discography of LP Recordings of Traditional Singers in
the English Language.
Strong folklore offerings in Summer Session have featured the Folklore
and Mythology Group's program for many years, with an impressive list of
visiting staff people, including MacEdward Leach, Tristram P. Coffin,
Holger Nygard, Austin E. Fife, Herbert Halpert, Bacil Kirtley, Richard A.
Waterman, John Greenway, D. K. Wilgus, and Francis Lee Utley. Notable
visiting lecturers during the regular sessions include Seamus O'Duilearga,
William J. Entwistle, Stith Thompson, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Archer
Taylor, George Pullen Jackson, Roger S. Loomis, Joseph Fontenrose, Louis
C. Jones, J. Frank Dobie, Charles Seeger, Clyde Kluckhohn, M. J. Hersko-
 RECEPTION HEAD.COMPARATIVEHEA
DIRECTOR AND STORAGE STAFF RESEARCHROOM AND MUSEUM MYTHOLOGY MY

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1,~~~~~~~4

C O R R I D R

JOHN EDWARDS
FOLKLORE SEMINAR ROOM HEAD, FOLK MUSIC FOLK MUSIC FOUNDATION
MEMORIAL
LABORATORY ARCHIVE OF CALIFORNIA AND WES
--Courtesy

CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF COMPARATIVE FOLKLORE AND MYTH

Artist's sketch of the new headquarters of the U.C.L.A. Comparative Folklore an
believed to be the first facility in the United States designed especially for stu
mythology, and related fields.
A-
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~~aJ1%LI71Cla -i.

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INSTITUTE OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY
Rehearsal room for performance acnd study groups in the musical cultures of Southe
facilities emphasizing student performance in non-Western musics. The Institute also
and transcription, archives, and staff library.
FOLKLORE AT UCLA 37

vits, Yolando Pino Saavedra, and Aurelio M. Espinosa, Jr. Special institutes
and seminars: Folk Arts of the Pan Pacific (1956); American Folk Song and
Balladry (1958); Summer Conference on Latin American Folklore (1963).
Ralph S. Boggs, leading folklorist in the Latin American field, assisted in
the planning of the Conference in addition to offering a course in Folk
Literature of the Hispanic World in the Summer Session.
Besides offices for the heads of various branches of the Center (Compara-
tive Mythology; Primitive Myth and Ritual; Folk Music), the Director, and
an Archivist, the new quarters provide a Staff Library and Research Room;
the Archive of California and Western Folklore; a Folk Music Laboratory;
editorial and staff rooms; a seminar room; reception room; and storage room.
An additional three rooms are on loan to the new Medieval Studies Center,
which will work closely with the Folklore and Mythology Center.

THE ETHNOMUSICOLOGY PROGRAM

MANTLE HOOD

WHEN THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA entered the field of non-Western

music in 1954, extensive research had to be undertaken to collect material
on which instruction and analysis could be based. By 1961, research had
grown so important that there was need for a separate administrative entity
to the new program. Thus the Institute of Ethnomusicology was established.
The Institute planned its first long-term program as a double effort. One
phase involves pure and developmental research to reformulate such funda-
mental concepts as rhythm, form, timbre, among others-for current concepts
are quite inadequate for both Western and non-Western music; to develop
scientific instrumentation to make analysis more objective, an area in which
music is generations behind the times; and finally to investigate such basic
difficulties as transcription and notation. In the other phase, a ten-year pro-
gram of area studies would yield specific knowledge of various musical
cultures of the non-Western world, the first five years devoted largely to
studies in depth, the second five years to comparative studies.
The research program is now well under way. Seminars have dug into
reformulation of concepts. In the laboratory an instrument has been de-
veloped that reduces an aural pitch line to a visual record on timed graph
paper, with variable inclusion of detail. Members of the staff and graduate
students have made field trips to Alaska, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Greece,
Yugoslavia, Israel, Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Iran, Uganda, Ghana, the
Philippines, Bali, Java, Thailand, Laos, India, and Japan. Instruments,
texts, tape recordings, and a photographic record have been added to the
collection.