Boulton, Laura (b. 1899 – d. 1980)
Laura Boulton studied the music of Africa and Native North America. Many of her extensive field recordings have been commercially released on Smithsonian Folkways Records. The Mathers Museum of World Cultures, at Indiana University, houses the Laura C. Boulton Collection of recordings collected worldwide from 1929-78, with accompanying field notes, papers, and correspondence. Her autobiography, The Music Hunter: The Autobiography of a Career, was published in 1969. In 1977 she founded the Laura Boulton Foundation, a non-profit institution dedicated to supporting ethnomusicological research. Three years following her death, the Laura Boulton Foundation established an annual ethnomusicology lecture series in honor Boulton’s prolific fifty-year career.
Archive call number: 69.2
9 sound tape reels: Field recordings made by Laura Boulton in South Africa, 1969. Contents: men’s, women’s, and children’s vocal music and drum and flute music of South Africa