Music Commons^™

Strahm, Franz Joseph, 1867-1941 (Sc 454), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 454. Four letters from Franz Joseph Strahm, professor of music, Western Kentucky University, and his secretary to Virginia Helm regarding concerts, piano lessons, and musical compositions. Also one from Alice Strahm in 1950, and a photograph of Strahm at the piano.

Pain, William (Sc 425), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 425. Original and typescript copy of a ballad, “Lovly Molie,” composed by William Pain, Logan County, Kentucky.

Travelstead, Nelle (Gooch), 1888-1974 (Sc 621), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 621. Letter from Nelle (Gooch) Travelstead, Bowling Green, Kentucky, to Mrs. Joe Bryant Helm, Smiths Grove, Warren County, Kentucky, thanking her for coming to Bowling Green to play the piano for events.

Civil War, 1861-1865 - Songs (Sc 418), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 418. Holographic copy of the words of a Confederate song entitled “The Southern Wagon.” The song was composed during the Civil War as a parody of the song “Wait for the Wagon.” Author is unknown.

Shakers (Sc 358), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 358. Typed copy of letter written by Urban E. Johns, South Union, Kentucky, to Honorable McLean, Washington, D.C., regarding sheep husbandry in Logan County and South Union; a hymn (with words and music); reward certificates given to deserving pupils by teachers; and a list of members of the Brick House and the Square House, Union Village, Ohio, during the 1837-1867 period.

Shakers - South Union, Kentucky (Sc 357), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 357. Letters and postcard, 1893-1922 (3); words (2) and words and music to Shaker hymns (3); undated receipts (3); and notes about the Shakers compiled by Pauline Smith, Bowling Green, Kentucky, for a speech.

Strahm, Franz Joseph, 1867-1941 (Sc 258), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Mansucripts Small Collection 258. Letter written by Franz Joseph Strahm, music department faculty member, Western Kentucky State Teachers College, Bowling Green, Kentucky, to Mrs. Joe Bryant Helm, Smiths Grove, Warren County, Kentucky, declining an opportunity to play the piano in Louisville owing to his ill health.

Carpenter, Tom W. (Sc 247), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 247. Letter, 15 February 1895, to Mrs. Nellie Thomas, Bowling Green, Kentucky from Tom W. Carpenter, treasurer of the Methodist church, related to her $1.00 subscription for liquidating the indebtedness of the church and parsonage. Letter sent in Carpenter’s business envelope identifying him as an agent for various manufacturers of pianos and organs.

Essays (Sc 245), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 245. An essay by an unknown writer concerning the progress of musical education in this country compared to that in portions of Germany.

Taft, Ann Celine (Fa 49), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 49. Oral history interview with The Straightway Gospel Singers from Gallatin, Tennessee conducted by Ann Celine Taft for a folk studies class at Western Kentucky University. Subsequent paper titled "The Straightway Gospel Singers" also included.

Autobiographical Sketch Of A Group Based Musician (Fa 48), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid and full-text scan of paper (Click on “Additional Files” below) for Folklife Archives Project 48. “Autobiographical Sketch of a Group Based Musician,” a paper and interview executed for a folk studies class at Western Kentucky University. Author chose to remain anonymous.

"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

Jesus Music: The Story Of The Jesus Movement And Evaluation Of Its Musical Impact, Shimon K. Galiley

Senior Honors Theses

Few recent historical developments have had as much impact on American Evangelical Christianity as the Jesus Movement. Dating back only a few decades, this movement resulted in the conversion of many countercultural youth and the consequent revitalization of many American churches. One of the greatest impacts of the Jesus Movement was its new music which came to be known as “Jesus Music.”

This thesis describes the history of the Jesus Movement and the musical impact it had on American Evangelical Christianity.

Shakers - South Union, Kentucky - Hymns (Sc 177), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 177. Manuscript hymn book and instructional manual used by the Shakers at South Union, Kentucky. Includes copied portions of Isaac N. Youngs' "Rules of Music."

Baird, Nancy Disher, B. 1935 - Collector (Sc 2443), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and typescript (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2443. Letter, 17 October 1863, to Ellen Fort from two Confederate soldiers imprisoned at Camp Douglas, Illinois; correspondence of Nell Bate Baird regarding her membership in the American Federation of Musicians, 1930; and 1936 federal income tax return of H. H. Baird and Nell Baird, Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Mcgoodwin, Henry Kerr, 1871-1927 (Sc 153), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 153. Letter to Florence Ragland from Henry Kerr McGoodwin, a Boston, Massachusetts architect and Bowling Green, Kentucky native, praising her and women in general. Includes a manuscript booklet compiled by McGoodwin consisting of verses of published sons with his remarks.

Composers - Kentucky (Sc 109), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 109. Letters and forms received by Clara Elledge, member of the Music Department, Western Kentucky State Teachers College, Bowling Green, Kentucky, in response to her inquiries concerning Kentucky composers and their works and includes listing of both.

Allen Family Collection (Sc 108), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 108. Letters to Mrs. A. C. & Mollie Allen, Simpson County, Kentucky, 1868-1893 (3), unpublished poetry written by various authors, 1893 (14), and printed songs, n.d. (5).

Moates, Lassie (Taylor), 1892-1981 (Sc 143), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Mansucripts Small Collection 143. Sheet music, lyrics and poems written by Lassie (Taylor) Moates, Richardsville, Kentucky. Includes typescripted newspaper clippings about Moates's compositions.

"Go In De Wilderness": Evading The "Eyes Of Others" In The Slave Songs, Erik Nielson

School of Professional and Continuing Studies Faculty Publications

This essay explores the trope of the wilderness in the slave spirituals, arguing that it functions to recreate symbolically the natural landscape into which slaves regularly took refuge in order to elude white surveillance. Drawing on a variety of sources, it considers the unique surveillance culture in the antebellum South, its effect on the everyday lives of the slaves, and the ways in which the slaves used their natural surroundings to avoid it. It then uses a close analysis of the song "Go in the Wilderness " as a point of departure for a broader discussion of the way the …

Whence Comes Black Art?: The Construction And Application Of “Black Motivation”, Derrell Acon

Lawrence University Honors Projects

George Schuyler, in his tragically misguided 1926 essay for The Nation magazine, “The Negro-Art Hokum,” suggests that the only difference between Blacks and Whites is the color of skin, and that both races experience the same social, psychological and educational forces in America. He blatantly disregards American racism and inequality, and in his attempt to put forth his advocacy of color-blindness he merely projects and perpetuates the most racist of ideals within our country. Schuyler views the concept of Black Art very narrowly and insists on the impossibility of such an idea because of the supposed Americanness of the art. …

Detroit Blues Women, Michael Duggan Murphy

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

DETROIT BLUES WOMEN

by

Michael Duggan Murphy

August 2011

Advisor: Dr. John J. Bukowczyk

Major: History

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

"Detroit Blues Women" explores how African American "women's blues" survived the twentieth century relatively unscripted by the image-makers of the male-dominated music industry. In the 1920s, African American blues queens laid out a foundation for assertive and rebellious women's blues that the many musical heirs who succeeded them in the twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty first century sustained, preserved and built upon. The dissertation argues that women's blues, which encouraged women to liberate themselves …

Travelstead, Chester Coleman, 1911-2006 (Mss 281), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 281. Chiefly personal and professional correspondence, speeches, journal articles, reminiscences, and news clippings of noted educator Chester Coleman Travelstead. Of particular interest are the materials related to his 1955 dismissal from the University of South Carolina owing to his support of racial integration. Also includes correspondence and diaries of his mother Nelle (Gooch) Travelstead, long-time Western Kentucky University faculty member.

Lair, John, 1894-1985 (Sc 2380), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2380. Letter, 16 January 1954, from John Lair, Renfro Valley, Kentucky, to S. M. Gowder in Powder Springs, Georgia, regarding the inability to fulfill his request for the 13 December 1953 broadcast of the Renfro Valley Sunday Morning Gathering radio program.

Green, Alice (Dunham), 1882-1977 (Sc 2346), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2346. Alice Dunham Green's transcription and arrangement of the Kentucky folk ballad "Weevily Wheat"; letter, 26 February 1953, from Harry L. Jackson, Cleveland, Ohio, to Mary T. Moore, Bowling Green, Kentucky, discussing the song's connection to his family.

White, Arthur Carlton, Jr. (Sc 2314), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Small Collection 2314. Paper: "Professor Franz Joseph Strahm" written by Arthur Carlton White, Jr. for an "American Music" class at Western Kentucky University.

Ruth Ghilain Luhring, Ruth Ghilain Luhring '43, Ann Harding

All oral histories

Mrs. Luhring is a member of the class of 1943 and graduated from the School of Music. She was interviewed at Westminster Village in Bloomington by the Director of Alumni Relations.

Passing For Black: Coon Songs And The Performance Of Race, Patricia R. Schroeder

English and Creative Writing Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Maxine Lebkuecher Drexler, Maxine Lebkuecher Drexler '46 And '57, Amy Uden '11

All oral histories

Professor Drexler received both a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Music from IWU. She was an adjunct faculty member, specializing in Voice, at IWU for 32 years.

Moody, Thomas Newton, 1938-2024 (Mss 287), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Manuscript Collection Finding Aids

Chiefly letters from Moody, a Franklin, Kentucky native, written to his parents while attending college at Southwestern at Memphis and the University of Kentucky, and while teaching afterward in Elizabethtown. Also includes letters of the family of Moody’s grandmother, Drucilla Jane (Harris) Short.