Dear Henry:There seem to be so very many things to tell you, I don't know where to begin. My last letter was about Jugo-Slavs, no? Since then Austin and I have been to Carmel, with our usual phenomenal luck in finding singers and willing help of various kinds, and, if anything, a higher incidence than usual of absurd jokes. Carmel performed very well -- we stayed at the Greenes', which is always mad and amusing, and Tony throve in the midst of that hectic family, everybody talking at once and nobody listening to anyone else -- he said it seemed just like home. On the Saturday night we went to a Spanish benefit dance on Foam St. in New Monterey and found a surprising number of Basques, one of whom invited us to a big Basque picnic at Saratoga the next day -- but when it came to the point we all, including our Basque and his wife, were too tired to go. We were amused because we'd been told so many times that Basques were unapproachable and farouche. Originally we'd rounded up about a dozen people who were all to go in costume, just for fun; but we spent so long arguing Anne Greene and her escort into their costumes that we somehow missed the rest of the crowd, who never did turn up, so only the four of us arrived, in costume, among the dignified un-costumed Spaniards. At first they all frowned, then the men thawed; and finally the women, after we'd bought5¢ chances on dishes, candy, a box of groceries and a millinery order The music was nothing ---- very bad accordion player --- but they did several varieties of the broom dance designed to stimulate exchange of partners. This was a new wrinkle to Tony (it's pure American so far as I know) and he created tremendous amusement by failing several times to get the point, and the voluble efforts to set him right in three languages there were a few French Basques there too nearly finished me off. Very late in the evening they played some jotas, etc., on the victrola -- records provided by the Astec Studio Shop advt. in Carmel. Everybody without exception knew the jota and several couples danced the jarabe and Anne and I had three or four men and women teaching us the jarabe at once. Later Anne could n't get over the friendliness shown us, and the ease with which the ice was broken. All we had done, Tony and I announced in unison, was have a good time! I was worried once or twice because Annie and Adolph kept disappearing to take a drink of wine out in the car and for the most part they sat and watched, to out disgust: I was afraid they'd emphasize our character of outsiders..... just some more drunken smarty Americans ..... but finally they sobered sufficiently and toward the end they really entered into the spirit of the thingSunday, we chased cowboys----one odd specimen who used to work at Bettie Greene's stable; another great pal of mine, one of the famous Radcliffe brothers from Salinas, Bill Radcliffe. He's sixty or so now, but in his palmy days he and his brothers constitued a famous cattle-thieving gang. They were so well liked, however, that when they were finally arrested, the townspeople rose to a man and delivered them from jail leaving the Sheriff under the impression the crowd's intention was to hang 'em. Instead they were 'admonished', says Bill, and turned loose. When Bill told me this story I inquired [how?] come he'd reformed. Well, said Bill,[?] youknow they begun building fences all over this country and it was n't what it had been by a long shot. One day I was coming along a draw and seen 40 steer and without thinking much about it I run 'em off toward a private corral we had, without thinking what I was doin'. Then all of a sudden I come to and I says to myself, what the hell are you doing, Bill Radcliffe, 0063 2with a measly 40 head o' cattle, you what' run all of 400 head off all by yourself. I was disgusted, it warn't worth it. So I quit. Bill has had an awful lot of bad luck the past few years, illness, broken legs and so on, but he's acquired a nice new American wife, a nurse his first wife, if she was his wife, was a Mexican woman and we had a grand visit with them, interrupted by cowboys from neighboring ranches who came in to chat of 12-gallon cows, Mack's new fence, the palomino stallion at Matthiot's, and so on ad infinitum Tony and I sitting by fascinated. Bill is going to introduce us to his vaquero friend Buffalo Booooofallo, Gene Rodriguez, on the Laguna Seco ranch.The best bit of Monterey County vaquero exploration we really did yesterday in San Francisco a really remarkable piece of hunch-following.I was technically starting for my father's ranch at Fresno but Tony and I got into one of our interminable conversations and he undertook to ride as far as Colma with me (where I was nearly diverted for the fifteenth time by Tony's desire to explore the Serbian, Greek, Chinese & amp; etc. cemeteries!) ... anyhow, we started over the shoulder of Twin Peaks and I cut across a new way and found a surprising number of n ew houses, and one old-timer whose shingles were being bricked over little by little This house stands on a huge corner lot with a superb view in 3 directions and the lots were piled high with second-hand brick - plainly somebody was having a good time there. Tony announced he wanted to live in one of the buildings, which proved to be a two-story shop building witha perfectly livable lower floor which, a/as, lacks all plumbing as yet because, says the owner cheerfully, the depression ruined my credit! We just walked in and interrupted the sawing and the Brahms Fourth playyed FFFFFF on the radio to chat with a quite unastonished, friendly man, name of Garritt Moffett. It seems that he was one of the craftsmen that Mack gathered about him in Monterey but the depression made it impossible for them to earn a livin there so the various workers had to give up their lovely freehold homes and scatter. But: Songs? Says Garritt, sure and he starts right off in Spanish. He plays the 5-stringed banjo, the guitar, and a one-stringed violin invented he says by an acoustician from New York which turned out to be the good old rebec, exactly. Better yet, he knows a dozen old timers who sing, and he reeled off their names. Finally we cooked up an expedition to Monterey soon-- I said I'll furnish the beer! I still think that 's not doing so badly -- we just felt that either we knew, or else ought to know, the people living in that house .... Garritt Moffett went for years to the dances [?] at the Carmel Valley Center ? on the edge of the Marble ranch... where they did (he says) the Varsvieenne to a special Carmel Valley tune.... also lots of polkas, etc. You had to belong to the Farm Bueau to come that kept out Carmel. How the real people thereabouts do hate Carmel! Tony was offered a job as guide at the Mission, $30-40 a month for afternoon work, and two rooms at the Mission looking toward lobos, to live in.. for the summer. He is intrigued but doubtful, he is n't sure why, and I'll be interested to see how he decides.Today I wet to the Armenian Cathedral, and will write about that tomorrow I'm, getting, thank goodness, sleepy. Also we did some pretty good hunch-following in Monterey our last day there, and found a most wonderful old lady from the Asturias named Maria Garcia, who runs a modest Spanish restaurant in tye "Oldest Brick House in California" and sings, my goodness! some so very Arabic tunes, I nearly had a fit. We sat for four hours, she talking to Tony in a [Spanish?] so clear that I understood almost every word and finally felt immerused in the language was sure I could speak it too.... so I launched bravely forth only to find the words come out in Italian, to my disgust! Then Tony unearthed some remnants of "old Spanish-Calif. Families" with songs. He automatically takes on the ladies, I the gents, incidentally...very neat. 0064 May 16Maria Garcia lived near Orviedo originally, and she told a long nostalgic tale about the young ladies who used to come out from Madrid to spend their vacations on her family's farm ...... the picnics, long rides, and walks they took....... The Asturias region has not of course been fought over during the revolution but few people have any money now anywhere in Spain, and even if you do have money there is no food to be had, so she worries about her family. Some relatives from near Barcelona have come up to Orviedo because their farm was in the way of the armies and was destroyed. Whether she sympathizes with Franco or not, she gave no indication that I could catch. She spent 8 years in the Argentine before coming to this country, and sang a number of Argentine songs, two of them very Moorish in style, I was surprised. Her singing varies in style with the song surprisingly ---- and a good many of the songs were very Oriental --- others cast in the naive La Paloma general style.This typewriter's margin dingus is out of whack.Maria said she would record songs for us, but se wants her son to be present as she sings better when singing to accompany his dancing .... so much the better of course!She is a really remarkable woman. She has taught both her son and daughter to dance; she spent a week, two years ago, teaching Spanish cooking in the cooking school at the Emporium, and she had very shrewd notions for better team work among Italian fishermen of whose intelligence she is very scornful. It seems that nowadays the commission houses post a notice: Wanted, 10, or 20, or 6, tons of fish today. Then all the men go out, spend 40 or 50 dollars on gasoline, and each bring in the required amount. Thus the price of the fishaccepted is forced down, and all but one or two of them have had their trouble and expense for nothing. Let the union, says Maria, insist daily on a report of their needs from the commission merchants; then let the men rotate, and on the days they make nothing they at least will have no expenses. But, says Maria further, you can't teach them Italians nothing. The canneries are closed now, until next month, so times are bitterly hard. Last season was n't a good one, either. She mentioned that some Italian tenants in a house of hers have been unable to pay their rent for 16 months, and they have so little food that she takes them the beans, etc., left over from the restaurant. [How?] can I let those people go hungry, when here there are beans?, said she. At least we others always eat, and what I make extra for the restaurant I have to do anyway and often it is not eaten ...... excusing herself lest we think her 'soft'.The most interesting music I've heard in this state was at the Armenian service yesterday, and the service itself was entirely new to me and very intriguing in form. Did you know that one part of the very long service, which lasts over 2 hours minus the sermon, is called the Rite of Peace? and that the congregation exchange the kiss of peace along themselves.... the kiss goes from the celebrant of the mass to the deacon and from him to he men and women the men sit on the right, the women on the left, each member of the congregation nods right and left over the shoulder of his 2 or 3 nearest neighbors, saying "Christ is risen," to which the reply is "Christ is risen indeed, my friend." This is part of the regular Sunday service, and the celebrant and those prepared take communion every Sunday too. The service was chanted and sung almost entirely ..... by the priest 0065 4according to the most ancient traditions or so - was informed, I am not yet sure about this but it seems likely from what I could judge and by the choir according to the dispensation of the choir master, a priest who seemed rather disliked by the congreation, or those members I met. The music sung by the choir is a service composed by him, and (I was told) he intends the music shall not go out of his hands during his lifetime. It is interesting music in many ways but I am curious to show its basis .. as the organ is used with it (playing only a chordal accompaniment, with far-from-ordinary harmonic progressions) it can hardly however be of very ancient tradition. The choir doesn't know all of this music very well yet, but sings with a will, and occasionally the leader seizes the melody and goes off with it himself at a great rate. The tunes are repetitive and could easily be written down. A few of them were Gregorian but more were not .. I mean the melodies were Gregorian--- but the style of singing was not, at all .... Then there were two long tunes full of augmented seconds ..... The choir consisted of perhaps 15 girls and women, and the voices were rather insistent and piercing. No Oriental richness of intonation ... [even?] everybody sang every note right in the very middle, like Epaminondas with the pies.The priest and deacon, on the other hand, chanted in intricate curves like rabic script, with great dynamic variation, shadows and highlights, and the subtle pitch variation like Turkish music.... Oh, that reminds me I forgot to tell you about my Turk in Carmel---- that will have to be for later.Twice during the service the Host is carried clear around the altar, and at one point it is carried in procession, followed by the choir and the catechumens, clear around the church from north to south. After the benediction the congregation is given fragments of unleavened bread, like a thin bleached tortilla --- bread blessed during the service and eaten, so the woman said who urged me to accept a piece, in sign of fellowship.It seems the Armenian service is cast in a language much older than the current spoken tongue, and because it is now so little understood, they have recently published in (in French) a missal with an English translation on the right-hand page. This also contains about 20 of the melodies ordinarily but not in this Cathedral used for the service, taken? from a collection made in India and Persia 20 years ago. The congregation is noticeably elderly, and the preface to the missal comments on this as a general situation in Armenian churches everywhere, which the English text and rather full explanation of the ritual will, it is hoped, tend to change.Twice during the service the ministrant stood close to the altar and a red silk curtain with a great gold cross on it was drawn across behind him, concealing him for 10 minutes or so while the choir continued to sing. He is not apparently exposed to the gaze or the congregation while he blesses the bread and wine nor while he partakes of the Eurcharist himself.Miss Kalusian, a Sunday school teacher, from whom - borrowed her Missal to read during the long sermon in Armenian, had a pamphlet of instructions for Sunday school lessons which included `blackboard talks' for which one lesson plan lay open to my gaze during most of the service. The recommended [?] legend recommended for insription on the blackboard read:>SELL --- GIVE(picture of money bags, with [suppilcating?] hands below)Then a large cross, and one wordsFOLLOW ME 00665I could n't help thinking there was something peculiarly Armenian about that! Miss Kalusian gave me her phone number and offered to take me to meet the ladies' which sounds like an American Ladies Aid and in extra-ordinary contrast with the sense one had of the Orient during the service. I gather she belongs to a different church and that for her, coming to the Cathedral is an occasional form of extra religious exercise.The priests were bearded men with bristling eyebrows, very terrifying to look at, and several of the old women in the congregation looked at me so fiecely I was glad of the light of day. The service contains some good round curses on unbelievers and I was formally told I might stay through the [entire?] service --- apparently this is not usual (for non-communicantts) for at one point there is a brief ceremony for the dismissal of non-communicants by the deacon. As I inquired about the chanting of the service at the door, however, I was told to disregard this, though I had no idea what they were talking about until I read the missal.The hours and hours of sitting through long harangues in Finnish, Serbian, Japanese, and now Armenian, that I have done lately! dear me. You know, I really like it and am never bored, no matter how incomprehensible it is.It was too bad that Tony stayed behind in S.F. this trip. But I hope to bring him down here with me another time. We have designs on the [King?] City Rodeo next Saturday, where we have a tentative date with one of my vaquero friends from the Carmel Valley.Oh, about the Turk------knowing nothing about Turkey I am not very intelligible about this,and must ask Tony again what he told me. Perhaps you remember Steve Patterson's chop house, or grill, or whatever he calls it, a block north of Stanifrod's Staniford's drug store in Carmel? Bassett used to take his crew there for breakfast regularly at dawn on Friday a.m., after we had been up all night getting Pacfic Weekly out..... So Steve and I are old friends, and indeed, when I [came?] back to Carmel he greeted me as warmly as anyody, I was touched. He is a Turk (a Greek, Tony says) from Constantinople. His stories always fascinated me, but I never inquired about music and was astonished, the other day, when I asked, to discover that Steve knows ( probably) hundreds of songs in different styles, and that he comes of a small group of Greeks whose history is very interesting but about which Tony will have to tell you as I've forgotten the details. Culturally apparently they are of great interest. Steve sang us a few songs as we sat at the counter -- and they are so beautiful! He doesn't think much of his voice anymore, of course; but his singing was so smooth and controlled, and the melodic line so intricate..... so entirely un-Occidental. He plays the oude, the violin, etc., and music-making was apparently the constant occupation of his entire family ....... and there he has been right under my nose for six or eight years! His name is not, of course Patterson. He is a quite remarkable individual in many ways. (Steve died before I could record him.This is my first visit to my father's fig ranch near Fresno in 15 years. I am never going to find Fresno and exciting place to live, but the ranch is extremely comfortable, and the vines and trees are thick around the big brick house, and the lawns thick as mattresses, and the garden full of roses, and altogether it will be pleasant to be here for a while and sun this cough away --- I still spend about 3 days out of 7 in bed with it. Quite a lot of mone seems suddenly to be forthcoming for our project, through the University's kind offices; but there are still forms 0067 Address here is Route 10, Box 424, Fresno..to fill out and people to see, so I must still go back and forth. I have a swell 5-page letter from Herzog, dated May 8th, in answer to one from me dated Feb. 15th! so I have ceased trying to hurry any thing! But Herzog is very cordial and helpful. He saw Elkus last week and says they "agreed on the value of my planning." I purr. I phoned Wolff and for once said everything I had to say in the order in which I wanted to say it,--- he laughed very much at one or two things. Probably by this time you will have seen him.I keep meaning to outline the project plans for you, as they now stand, and ask you for a letter endorsing and criticizing, but I always get off on something else and then, suddenly, it is time to go to bed.... as now. I hope you can spare me a letter within the next two or three weeks....... [?] after I write a real letter on the subject.Warmest regards, Henry --- the very best luck to you..... The more Tony an I enjoy ourselves the more consciously we miss you. But our kind of expedition is never finished, and I shall be greatly surprised if we don't manage to go about together, the 3 of us, before so very long.As always,Phone: Pomeroy Greene Sharp Lomax - Edgar C.S. Beck Edgar mc EDGAR [-?] [Slam?] Anderson lcelanders Greg [?] Armin Tartarian [Jugo} [Slav] party [Cupertino] [Marianis?] [Batisas] [Icelanders?] 2 Swedes -------- Project Scotch San Antonio King City Carmel II Spanish Basques Joe Daniels Assyrians [Nestorians?]

Dear Charlie:Thank you and thank you. Your letter to Sharp was overwhelmingly kind and I still blush over it. Somany things crowd to my mind to say that I don't know whether I'll ever get caught up --- the more so as half a dozen people lie in wait to snatch this typewriter from me, even when I stand up to write ..... I'm home again and even went to a Swedish Party and danced the hambo last Saturday at Neptune Beach in Alameda, which was taken over entirely by 11,000 Swedes and Finns. The hambo is wonderful, a very hectic polka in which the lady is swooped around the room at a mad rate. This was the first such party I've attended where the young people shouted as loudly for the traditional group dances as their elders.. and the floor was too crowded to breathe during hambos, polkas and schottisches, and half empty during fox trots.One young man said to his party near me as they applauded for a continuation of hambo music That's the best dance of them all, ---breathlessly. This was the Mid d summer celebration..... I've been in bed recuperating ever since, but it was worth it and actually I'm not so badly off, I do get out and around whenever I'm sufficiently determined.'My' project is now out of my hands and going on its way--- the University has approved it and guaranteed the money (which it's getting from the State Relief Administration, incidentally,..) and it should be on its way to Washington by this time. In maybe a month I'll be at work again, imagine that! I have n't raised the question of my health, of course, because I fully intend to be quite well by then! but even if I'm not, I expect to have quite surprisingly good assistants and propose to wangle through. Halpert's old pal, Betty Ryan, suddenly proved to be a citizen of NYC and has returned to his project. But Mr. Lawton unearthed an even sweller gal for me, Sivart Poladian, who took her M.A. in at U.C. in music with a thesis on Armenian folk music (out of a book--- I mean, she used a published collection) and the thesis is really a grand piece of work. Sh has had all kinds of business experience working her way through U.C. as well, and is a delightful person, so I'm pleased. Happily she is eligible for certification. She is as difficult as Dr. Brown of sainted memory ever was, however, about getting the 'originals' of Armenian tunes and disregarding the present form here now. But I trust she can be cured of that.Had a visit with Henry the other day and he said he'd heard from you so I half expected that you were beginning to come to life. `I was so amused at your difficulties over your job, and sympathetic: it has been too funny for words out here, and it is just under 5 months since I started the organization of this project by talking to Giulio Silva of Fed. Music (one of the few really intelligent musicians on the S.F. project. Old Hertz, with his genius for nabbing good-paying jobs and doing nothing, is Cock of the Walk in the Bay Region.) Silva is S.F. director. "All I do," he said to me with a smile, "is just try to make a leetle music." I enclose Randall Thompson's Americana text, which Fed. Mus. did out here. I was more taken with text than music; the performance was really very good, though I understand it was done even better, later, by the UC chorus under Thompson.For two or three months I've seen only S.F. papers and practically no magazines and during my last visit with Henry I kept saying: "Why, Idid n't know that!" about various New York doings that he'd seen in the NY Times. Finally he said laughing: "Well, you just come over here regularly and I'll be only too glad to keep you in touch with what goes on in the world!" which for humor and courage takes the cake, it seems to me. Prospects of his release seem better than they have been. Medical opinion is unvarying that he should be released but the prison board has hitherto refused to except the opinion of any doctor paid by 0075 the patient. That eliminated Hery's very swell psychiatrist, a well known Vienna refugee of five years ago, Dr. Wolff. Dr. Wolff then rustled around and interested the famous Dr. Meyer, dean of psychiatrists in this country, when the latter was in S.F. for the 'convention' of psyc iatrists which immediately preceded the A.M.A. convention herelast month. Dr. M--- sent his assistant over to interview Henry. "I was too flustered," and Henry candidly, "to ask to have his [name?] repeated when I did n't catch it." But it seems said assistant is related to a young man whose name I've forgotten, though Henry told me.... someone you know whose music you recently praised in a letter to Henry. Dickinson? Hutchinson? or something... Anyway, the asst. was to report back to Drs. Meyer and Wolf, and Dr. Meyer proposed to interest the convening psychiatrists and get a group statement from them on the subject, which should weigh with the prison board if anything can. No publicity is to be given it at first, anyway .... so shshshshshs. Henry did n't specifically ask me to write you this but I'm sure he'd be glad to have your mind and Ruth's relieved to this extent. Then: It seems when his case came before the parole board their refusal to consider his parole was based on a statement of unknown source to the effect that Henry had been in prison before for the same offence. Therefore he was treated as a second offender and the statement that he was a "dangerous criminal" was read into his record at San Quentin. Doug Short, his attorney, was shown all this recently for the first time--- apparently they seem to be relaxing just a little, as they were even willing to let Doug know that the prison physicians consider him safe to be released. The problem now is how to persuade the prison board to save face and yet go back on their oft-repeated statement that no sex offender will ever be released during their jurisdiction. The statement that Henry had been arrested before is of course entirely erroneous, it needs hardly besaid. You'll understand how extremely important it is to keep all this under your hats for the moment...... The source of this mistaken information seems to have been a defamatory letter which was written when Henry was first arrested ---- somebody going a little nuts among the neighbors, probably.Lemme see, what else: Sally, bless her energetic heart, seems to have thought I was asking her for a job and she set to work like mad apparently to arrange me one. But it is n't quite like that..... for 'political' reasons connected with building up his job, Sharp likes to line up all possible 'cooperating agencies' --- at least I think that is it. Also it is only good sense, when I say material useful in recreation can be found, to ask the recr. people if they agree. Zanzig wrote me a letter out of the goodness of his heart despite his profound disapproval of the song sheets! and of the 'bad singing' of folk singers. "Cooperation is our Aim" nearly slayed [md] slew him; apparently! both for the reason that it 'sings badly' and because he pointed out that you don't achieve cooperation by singing about it but by doing something together! Of course he is dead right on both points, and I explained you would not have chosen that particular song except for pressure from the coop. educ. people. Zanzig is a perfect darling, I've always been crazy about him, and I've never seen such a perfect job of managing groups and producing beautiful singing with any group no matter how awkward or reluctant or shy, the first shot, as he can do --- it is miraculous, really. But of course he is thinking in such different terms..... He said: Look out, child, or you'll turn into a scholar! which, considering that scholars seem to consider me a little tainted by recreation and prog. educ. notions, tickled me. Zanzig disliked the records VERY much because, forsooth, they were so badly sung! even Mr. Russell of Marion Va failed to charm him. After he had heard the record and expressed himself I withdraw my request for a letter, but he insisted on writing one anyway. I told him if we published any songs strictly for recr. groups we'd ask him to try them out with some of his groups first, which he said he would do. He is a person-of-one-idear, like us, only the idear is different; but the one-idearedness makes us kin anyhow. He is doing a superlative job in his line, ---- extension courses for leaders, at universities through the country. He is a city worker, primarily.... disapproved of the Dodger because it fails to help toward mutual appreciation or different kinds of people! and I told him he was taking it too seriously, that it was playful, the sardonic middle west which somehow he fails to sense. I thought his opinions worth repeating, as coming from one of the smartest of his kind in the country. I would give a 0076 a nickel to know what he wrote --- what he found to say! I pointed out that folk singers had a style of their own, etc..... not unlike the Oriental placing of the voice and (with waggles or finger in air) Oriental melodic line, a continuous curve instead of the occidental series of fixed points. But that does n't interest him, natrually enough, though his group got the point and was interested. However..... it's all jammy..... the more points of view the better!I must [wite?] Sally--- she said she was sending you copies on the two letters, [hers?] and mine, so you'll know about my sweet Jugo-Slavs.... Her point about keeping the lines open for coop. with music and recr. et all is excellent and something I have been congratulating myself about in our set-up, though it is accidental, actually--- I did n't have sense enough in the beginning to figure it out for myself. We are a research project, upart of a big 1100-man U.C. WPA project... and while research seems to come under Mrs. Woodward, we don't stem directly from any of the ig Federal projects, so-called. Hence we can coop. equally with music, recr., and drama... and anybody else interested. Elkus wants to do some [typelological?] analysis a la Herzog, in cooperation with Herzog, for example..... and we're going to do some library indexing, at the other end of the scale. I'm' looking forward to much exchange of material ..... keep an ear to the ground for anything even remoted related to Calif. in songs, will you? Thanks SO MUCH for the tip about ragtime people in S.F. NYC and New Orleans..... (you should add Memphis). There must surely be some old boys out here....... An old minstrel trouper changed a tire for me on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley a few weeks ago! and he is priceless --- but be should be 'movied', his elocutionary gestures are beyond words. People like that fall off trees into my lap all the time, it is a kind of magic. Mother's garage man, I think I told you, turns out to be a much-interested-in-folk-lore French Basque; and her houseman is a Spanish Basque, who exmplifies all the things ever said about the Basque temperament, he is priceless.A letter from the hired-man-of-the-undertaker, now in Redding, Calif., remarked apropos of the Louis-Schmeling fight the other day: "Gee but the fight tonight lasted quick, did n't it!"I know of Botkin through Vance Randolph, they are friends.... and of course I have Botkins Play Party in Okla. book, a grand piece of work. I'd love to work for Botkin from all I hear of him, but feel I should work the thing put here for a few months anyway, first. I want the experience of struggling with WPA research workers at the bottom of the [ladder?] for one thing. The experience in organizing the thing has been priceless, but I want to see if I can work it out and bring part at least of our plans to a head ... hitherto I've always been a better starter than a continuer, but I expect that's something that can be remedied, with a little determination. By the bye, I was much interesed to have you say that ours will probably be the first large-scale competent entry of WPA into collecting..... and that's a statement I'd love to quote but am afraid you are mistaken ...... I am not sure how or where but collecting has been done by WPA in Oklahoma and New Mexico (under Campa of Univ. of NMex at Albuequerque) at least. Halpert went into New Jersey and I believe New York.... and of course JAL's foray under Hist. [Reo?]. was not a small undertaking. All of this was probably done by a single worker, however, except that I think the N. Mex. one may have been bigger, but do not know. In all those instances recording has been done on disks. There are undoubtedly other places where this has been done under WPA --- perhaps in Texas. I saw an article clipped from a NYC paper saying that Fed. music had collected about 2500 American folk songs. Was all of this on paper, for Pete's sake. Oh, there was also [Gellert?], who worked for Halpert for a while.I've thought of 'my' project as a very small one --- it does not even technically cover all of the state of California, due to administrative separation of this state into two.... a la North and South Dakota. So theoretically I cannot go 0077south of a line drawn just south of Bakersfield hitting the coast just north of Santa Barbara. But my disappearance from the district for brief periods will be winked at just so I don't ask WPA to pay mileage outside of N. Calif, I am told. The city of L.A. is a real field in itself, and later I fully expect to raise a little Cain until arrangements for extending the project can be made, because after all it is a little silly...... However I expect to be busy enough up here for a while.I have a plaintive letter from Knott in which she says she feels this year's festival was better than last; but she says she had the benefit of considerable advice from large numbers of folklorists, no two bits of which were the sme usually, so it was scarcely very helpful. She said she "sighed for understanding souls like you (SR) who take life seriously, but not too seriously." In view of what you wrote this amused me vary much! Of course it is all very well to be folkloristically critical but I'd like to see any of the nice old boys like for instance Gordan do as well! However perhaps the morning sessions should be definitely curned over to a committee of experts, quite out of her hands, to present the people who don't show up well on the big stage or who are too limited in their appeal. It seems to me to be a shame to waste her experience and drive, and really, when you consider the things she does n't know, the things she does know are quite surprising. It is awfully funny to think of her teaching at the Univ. of Washington!! no, its Wash. Univ. at St. Louis---- dear me. Speaking of middle western culture, I had an awfully funny letter from Vance Randolph in which he remarked that when meeting time came he was ill and unable to present his paper before the Miss. Hist. Soc. at Columbia, Mo., so lo and behold they gave it to May Kennedy McCord to road --- of all people! You'd have to know Vance, and the long story about friend May's jealous gossip about him which at one time seriously and perfectly unjustifiably upset Mrs. Randolph very much, a couple of years before her death .... I suspect May's resentment resulted from Vance's lack of response to her coy inveiglements... I don't know. Anyhow, Vance I imagine feels he wishes he lived in a period when one could remove obnoxious people from one's path without fear of anything but congratulation! and with cause, for really she is venomous. So his resigned amusement at the turn of events was droll! (All this is confidential, Randolph apparently says nothing aloud.)Lemme see, what other gossip do I know?By the bye, in writing Henry about prospective jobs, you know, don't you, that no ex-prisoner can be paid from Federal funds? Occasionally one gets on WPA --- a manon the Writer's Project in S.F. the other day gave his last place of employment as San Quentin! --- but not on non-security wage basis, and not during parole period. He told me this and I imagine wanted it conveyed to you, as he probably cannot write it....How swell that you plan to come out here! You can probably arrange to see him more than once, having come from a long distance, if you plan to be here only a short time. This is almost a routine request and all right to make, though Henry is very anxious no special treatment or priveleges be requested for him --- so much protest was received by the prison authorities at first that it created a little resentment and he wants not to call attention to himself in any way. But when you go to see him the first time, you can make the request verbally as you leave to see him again before the noraml [30?]-days between visits have elapsed. Conversations are surprisingly confidential--- they occur in a room full of people and the one or two guards can't possibly hear you......Oh: I ahppened to be in the phone office at Ventura, Calif., some months ago, when the phone operator from La Jolla called up and inquired what C.I.O. stood for, nobody in La Jolla knew. The phone operator did n't either, so just for fun I suggested she call the local newspaper. When nobody there knew, I confessed I did and gave her what she called the "English" for it.The title list looks very elegant but I see lots of small errors. In a day or two I will return with all the notations I can think of .....[most?] of the errors are probably due to my handwriting; but the foreign titles are surprisingly accur

Dear Henry:The project description, etc., has at last gone off --- to Washington, as I understand it. Mr. Pomeroy, WPA a dministrator for the University, tells me he has signed it. I understand from someone else that he [md] Pomeroy [md] considers we cannot possibly keep 20 workers busy for a year on [folk?] songs. Dear me, he is in for a surprise. I have hopes that Miss Poladian's bad luck in getting a teaching job --- she has tried in vein for 2 years and is very depressed about it because all the people who have been graduated by the Music Dept in her year, last year, and half of those who graduated this year, have been placed------ I rather expect that she will qualify for WPA and join our project. This is of course swell from my point of [?] view, as she has some notion of musicological research and in addition is trained office worker. She is a natural executive, always thinking for everybody and one jump ahead of the procession all the time. This is a defect in the field I find but a great asset to ave behind you among the files and books. She is a most charming person and if we do manage to get her I shall feel much more secure[ / about the value of any musicological stuff we may do..... She will be much better than the girl whom Herzog recommended (who has since gone east) as head of the office, because she [md] Poladian [md] has musical training. She is a little disapproving of her countrymen, or at least superior toward them, alas. I am told it takes 30 days now for a University project to be approved. Ho!Calif. Folk Song ProjectMeanwhile, I have a long list of explorations with Tony Austin about which to write you. It has more Armenians, Assyrians (including Joe Daniels, whom you know) Icelanders, Mr. Botica the Dalmatian bagpipes player, the annual Swedish midsummer festival, more Jugo-Slavs, the Caledonian Society and your friend Pat O'Neill with his Union pipes, the Nestorians at Turlock, the fiesta de San Antonio at Mission San Antonio--- I think Itold you a little of that --- and various odds and ends of things. I can hardly sit still at the typewriter because Tony tells me that almost next door to a Foster's where we get coffee frequently someone has placed on display two kinds of strange fiddles which sound like the two instruments variously described as the Hardanger fiddle.....You know I think we talked, last time, without my mentioning the Icelanders at all, yet I had only the preceding week recorded among them. Anna had arranged with a young couple who live on the shoulder of mount Davidson over toward San Jose Avenue, named Phillips, to have a party whenever I should be ready, so I gave the word, finally, and she [md] Mrs. Phillips--- gathered perhaps a dozen people, most of whom sang. One very serious gent had a number of songs written out (words) and he paced about nervously and begged me to hurry up so he could get his chore off his chest! He sang ten or twele songs of which perhaps half were supposed to be rymur. But I have my doubts about some of them, because the definitions they could give me of the rymur were so contradictory. One of them was a 'contemporary' song of 1902 or so. It seems that at the end of each Icelandic legislative session it is customary for various people to write long songs, a verse for each act or the legislature. This bit of song has survived because the Icelanders thought it so amusing that the legislature proposed to appropriate money to teach each Icelandic girl to sew and cook. [?] The joke lay, as nearly as I could make out, in the superfluity of such attempts on the part of the schools when every Icelandic mother teaches her daughters these things as a point of pride. Among the guests on this night was a Mrs. Benonys from Berkeley, who is a saleswoman at Roos Bros there, incidentally--- a pleasant white-haired fine looking woman with a semi-trained voice. She has a brother in Iceland who is a composer (I am beginning to think the remaining population in Iceland consists of composers exclusively, this has been said to me so often!) and he has collected and published a volume of Icelandic folk songs which she promised to request for me. This collection was made about 25 years ago. She will be very helpful as time goes on I think, because she does n't care about recording herself and knows in general what is valuable for my purpose, as Anna, bless [her?], is far from doing. 0080 Late in the evening a silent man asked me whether I knew the Passiupsalmer (Passion psalms) and when I said I did n't he burst forth [tunefully?] as if he were alone on a remote country farm. It seems there are 50 of these (this is what I was told and I am sure it is not entirely accurate but it is interesting anyway) and they were composed [md] the words--- by various men and gathered together by one of them, very early in the Refomation period. They were intended to be sung to familiar folk tunes, and the tunes and words seem to be more or less interchangeable, like the English ballad tunes, on occasion. There is one of these psalms for each day of Lent, (excepting Sundays, for which there were special services in church) and they were sung at family prayers in the farm houses all over Iceland. Each one is a long story about one ofthe New Testament characters... I recorded bits of one about Joseph of Arimathea and another about Pilate and still another whose title was translated for me as "Peter on the High Chair." Everyone assured me over and over that this was authentic "15th centurymusic"- (the 15 yahrhunderts, I suppose and therefore the 16th century, no?) I don't know whether this is legend or fact,-but the tunes are remarkably like Bach's chorale tunes in form, scale, rhythm... though, bawled lustily as they were without harmonization the resemblance is not at first obvious.These people (excepting possibly two of the older men) are not the ones who sang in 5ths for you..... and the only group singing they did was a dance song, in which Mrs. Benonys sang a line, the chorus replied in unison, and after repeating all this everybody sang a sort of refrain in unison.... sea chanty or negro spiritual form. Either it was a very dignified dance indeed or their fatigue as the hour grew late was responsible [md] but they sang it most decorously and slowly.They assured me that was the way they sang it for dancing, but I really think they were too tired to know.Earlier in the day Anna and I recorded Mrs. Sigurasson's songs at Laguna Honda, but the old lady did n't sing as well as the first time I heard her and she mixed things up a good deal and for most of her songs (she sang at least 20, in two 'shifts') it is impossible to be sure of the melody. However, those records are obviously going to be useful in stimulating other Icelandic memories --- nothing seems to give a [ shy?] (singer the [?] urge to perform like hearing a bad performance of something he knows. Mrs. S---'s Icelandic speech is marvelously pure and clear, everyone said. I was struck by two things with the Icelanders--- undoubtedly on insufficient evidence, but I'd like to know what you think---- first, there seemed to be a number of melodies in two parts used for texts whose verses had four lines instead of two, requiring the repetition of the short tune. As I understand the Eddas are in a two-line verse form, and as the Kalevala certainly is although it seems to be sung habitually in a 3-line form by repeating the 2nd line--- I wonder whether those particular tunes might not legitimately be suspected of being much older than the words, survivals of very early days indeed? When the scale tones are few and the range small, I can hardly resist this notion.... Second, no two people present seemed to agree exactly upon text, tunes, or both, to familiar folk songs. Given what you told me of frequent improvisation among Icelanders, and the narrative, ballad character of so many of their songs, I wonder whether they don't provide a parallel to our stage of development in American folk music. Talking with Zanzig the other day, who craves songs for group singing, I realized all over again what individualists our singers are and what a small amount of folk singing in this country is group singing (American folk singing, I mean, inthe sense of Ky. mt.. Ozarks, etc.) Group songs are almost entirely dance songs, singing games and / their relatives... Also we have a bewildering number of variants in this country, and from what Herzog says somewhere, that is conspicuously true of American tunes (which he has been trying to classify) when compared with Finnish and Hungarian tunes (where classification has been atempted by Ilmari Krohn and Bela Bartok.) This is conspicuous when you think how settled in form most German and French tunes are ----, though as I think of it this may be because there it islargely the dance tunes which have survived as songs...Later, when the project starts and I ha ve more records, I am to meet with these and other Icelanders again. I enjoyed them so much --- suche grand people. Thank you so much for the experience, Henry.... I had an awful time getting the titles straight, everybody spelled Icelandic words at me, nineteen to the dozen and all at once. On the way to record Mr. Botica's bagpipe playing the next day, we stopped at Anna's to check these over and Anna insisted on calling up Caroline Cummings, despite our insistence that we had an appointment and must go on. I did n't know she [had?] phoned and we were absorbed in checking the Icelandic titles in Anna's little Oriental room, Anna, Barney, Tony and I, when Mrs.... I forget her name [md] Caroline--- came in, full of conversation and anxious to show us the pictures of her new house. I was quite honestly scarcely conscious she had come into the room, as I was concentrating on Barney and Anna against the girls' conversation with Tony and the son-in-law, and Tony reproached me afterwards for my rudeness. I' did speak to her and then I turned back to what we were doing without 00812another word. Tony, who had never before seen me as intent on one thing (Mr. Botica was waiting for us and we were going to be late) was appalled and considered I had seriously hurt Caroline's feelings. I don't see how I can have, unless she is so accustomed to the center of the stage that she cannot forego it when there's work to be done. It was a matter of perhaps 6 or 7 minutes after her arrival..... It is too bad if she was offended as it was not her fault--- Anna should not have telephoned her to come [md] we thought we'd headed her off. Apparently fate does n't intend C.C. and me to make acquaintance, for a couple of weeks later at a dance rectal in the S.F. Museum of Art I looked right through her as she passed near me --- she had on a different hat and I did n't have my glasses on and I really did n't recognize her at all. But Tony reproached me indignantly again! It is too bad I had to be distraite with the same person twice like that, but I'm afraid I can't worry about it as much as perhaps I should.I think I'd better conclude this and get it off, as I can't possibly cover all the ground I want to today anyway----- and there are those instruments which may be removed from the window any minute --- !You'll be glad to hear I finally had two letters, a long list of stuff to check over, and an unbelievably cordial copy of a letter to Jim [ Sharpe Sharp?], from Charlie. He writes that he goes on national staff of Fed. Music to supervise social music (recreational music) and teaching... WPA. [ July 1st. He says it is n't what he wants but will do for the moment and as, he says, it is understood [?] the folk music base is to be encouraged [?] it won't be time and effort wasted. He was complimentary beyond words, both in his letter to Sharp andthe ones to me, about our project plans [md] and says such elaborately enthusiastic things I was quite floored, partly with astonishment and partly with embarrassed blushes. He [ says?] the reason he delayed writing so long was that he lost my letter giving Sharp's title! which is exactly like Charlie --- only he mentiones mentions casually that he 'gave Herzog a list of suggestions for the project to forward to you' so I suspect his discovery that Herzog had agreed to act as one of our advisers and his resurgence of interest in the project coincided.... But there, one must n't be fussy... and one can never hold even his most obviously Yankee calculations against Charlie for long--- at least I neve can. He writes me further that this will be "the first large-scale competent entry of WPA into the collecting field" which would be very exciting if true. However Lomax collected for the Historical Records Survey for about a year [md] result, lots of negro records, an [?] enormous bill for travel expense, and no work for WPA-ers provided in connection or as a result. Then some woman, I never knew her name, collected widely with a machine in Oklahoma; and Campa has been fathering a state-wide project in New Mexico, at the Univ. of N. Mex. Also WPA has gone with a recording machine into New Jersey and into Florida, to my certain knowledge.Anyhow, apparently Charlie is feeling pretty cheerful, as you deduced from your letter! I am so relieved that he has a job, they must have had a bad time, as his salary stopped in January and unless they have both changed enormously since last year, they never had a cent of money saved. Of course this is largely because Charlie has sons in college and was contributing loyally to a number of 'causes'; but their vague propensity for getting into elaborate jams of one sort and another was expensive too. Once they heard that [?] some friends were closing their NYC apartment for a week [md] friends who had once offered them said apartment, perhaps a year before, and whom they had not seen nor heard from since. So they sallied forth to NYC expecting to locate the key through some psychic process. Of course this failed them and when they still had found no shelter at midnight on Saturday Charlie became very firm with Ruth (he told me) and they went and registered at (I believe) the Ritz. If not the Ritz, it was a comparable hotel, and Charlie showed me his $28-for-two-days bill not without some pride! They had to stay for two days because they could n't find anyone to lend them the money to get themselves out of the hotel until Monday. There are a good half dozen such stories, complications rainingfrom every direction in a way one somehow feels could only happen to the Seegers. Once a member of the Special Skills staff rescued the two children from a drunken farmer's wife with whom the Seegers [?] had enthusiastically left them (farm life will do them so much good) while they--- the parents--- went on a long field trip through the deep south and to Arkansas. Being helpless herself with a small son who had typhoid, Judy persuaded one of the hospitals in Washington, with great difficulty, to take the children until their mother could return ----- this after frantic 0082attempts to make some less gruesome arrangement ---- Washington is such a city of transients and of furnished rooms that nobody Judy knew had room for two small children. Then Judy wired Ruth to come home, not unnaturally. Ruth wired back pleasantly saying that as the emergency has now been met she saw no reason why she should return, and thank you very much. The hospital bill was $120 dollars when I returned ahead of Ruth 2 or 3 weeks later, and I then helpfully preceded to remove the two small tykes, to whom I was a complete stranger and who were as limp as rags and afraid of their own shadows by that time--- and I took them out to a friend's farm in Maryland. The friends's little boy was visiting an aunt in the city and came down with whooping cough after we had been there 24 hours, so I and the two small Seegers had to depart hastily so he could be brought home. If I had had any money at all I would have taken an apartment with them until Ruth returned, but I had only been working a month or so after six months' [histus?] .... so I returned the poor mites to the hospital where this time they had to stay ten days; and Ruth removed them as soon as she found a house and got moved. Judy can rave furiously on this subject to this day; but happily it all seemed too ludicrous to be true, to me ---- except from the pointof view of the two poor waifs in the center of the storm. You see after Judy had pain-stakingly talked the kids into the hospital then I had to talk them out again without paying the bill; and then after 48 hours there was again having to back track on all my previous speeches...... Washington is such a city of [wanderess?] that there was no boarding school taking such small children that had room for two more.....The woman who wrote about mission music is Anna Blanche McGill, a great pal of mine, a nice white-haired maiden lady in mourning for her sister Josephine who collected in the Ky. mts. She was a part of the 'folklore front' in the office of the National Folk Festival people at Chicago --- expected to prevent bad breaks in that field on the part of Sarah Gertrude Knott, the head of it,-and she managed to rearrange the grammar of the broadcasts slightly, and so on. She belongs to the [Densmore-Rague school --- and as I seem to have a fatal fascination for enthusiastic white-haired ladies she quite adopted me.Charlie's job will take him about the country ---- and, he hopes, out here......I have been in Fresno briefly again, surrounded by [Amerians?] two deep, so have not seen C.S. Smith. I have to see Ed. Lindeman at U.C., too, I am told, though I do not quite understand why. I had a hasty letter from his assistant in charge in Washington asking me to get in touch with him -- no [explnation?]. However he's a man I've always wanted to meet, he knows a lot of things I'd like to know.Like you and a few other people.Must stop, must stop. More soon---see you soon -- --- all good things to you...Sidney

Mrs. Sidney Robertson, a folk-song collector who has in the past cooperated with Mr. John Lomax in collecting folk-songs, is at present in northern California investigating folk-music. She has at her disposal a recording machine and a car but lacks the necessary blank discs. If the Library will furnish her with the discs, she is willing to record them for the Archive of American Folk-Song at her own expense.

Since the Archive contains no records from California, I recommend that she be furnished with fifty acetate discs (cost ca. $37.50).Chief, Division of Music

Please purchase the above records from Radioscriptions, Inc., 726 Eleventh Street, N.W., Washington, D. C., and ask them to send twenty-five to the Music Division and twenty-five by railway express to Mrs. Sidney Robertson, 70 Avon Way, San Francisco, California.

Mrs. Sidney Rbertson70 Avon WaySan Francisco, CaliforniaDear Mrs. Robertson:The Acting-Librarian, Mr. Roberts, has approved my recommendation that we place at your disposal fifty acerate discs for use in recording folk songs in California. You understand, of course, that these discs are to remain the property of the Library of Congress and are to be returned to us as soon as convenient after the records have been made. For purposes of shipping you will find several franked labels enclosed.

For the time being, at least, it seems advisable to keep this venture completely separate from the WPA project in order to avoid any confusion. The Archives is prepared to cooperate in this manner with individual collectors of standing.The material you describe is very interesting, but please do not neglect any songs of Anglo-Saxon origin which may be available in that territory. Are there any miner songs still being sung?The records will be shipped to you as soon as possible - twenty-five will go out today. Will you need the others immediately and if so where shall we send them? Please do not wait until all these are recorded before sending them to us. For many reasons this will be much more profitable. After all they are safer here than stored in your car.Alan is now on a recording trip which will take him through Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota. You probably know about Charles Seeger's new position with the Federal Music Project.With best wishes for a pleasant and successful trip,Sincerely,Harold SpivackeChief, Division of MusicHSmr

Mrs. Sidney Robertsonc/o Music DepartmentUniversity of CaliforniaBerkeley, Calif.Dear Mrs. Robertson:The news regarding the project of the W.P.A. rather confuses the situation regarding the discs sent you. Please acknwledge their receipt immediately. I cannot send you any more discs until I get that receipt because of various complications regarding bills, vouchers, etc. Please tell me also if you received any envelopes for the records.

I shall send you a supply of cards immediately. (I'll need a receipt for these, too.)

Enclosed you will find a photostat copy of my article on cataloging folk-songs and a few sample cards. Please copy and return the photostat as it is the only copy I have. The article was published in the Notes of the Music Library Association. Analysis of published collections should follow the regular A.L.A. rules for cataloging, a copy of which you can find in any library. Please make separate cards for titles and refrains and even first lines, if you can. Send me a few samples of the first cards made and I shall be glad to advise you.

I believe it will be possible for the Library to take care of shipping charges involving the Library's property. But please notify me before you ship us anything and I will instruct you how to proceed.With kindest regards,Harold SpivackeChief, Division of MusicHSmbr

Dr. Harold SpivackeMusic Division, Library of CongressWashington, D.C.Dear Dr. Spivacke:I am so sorry to have confused things by requesting the blanks in two different ways. Enclosed are receipts for disks and folders and cards. The latter I have not seen yet but I am assured that they are being held for me at the University.It is too bad you had to wire me, the more so as the records had been in my hands for 36 hours when your wire arrived. The confusion was occasioned by the fact that the post office here changed the address of my mother's house to a number on a street that hitherto had no residences on it and therefore was not in the city directory. Until your package miscarried we had no way of knowing that; and I daresay the only reason your telegram arrived was that I had just telephoned around to notify the various agencies likely to have to deliver to us.When the express delivery people couldn't find the house, somebody had the idea of mailing a holding-till-called-for card. This got mixed with other papers at the house unfortunately, and apparently by the time I found it and telephoned the express company, they had notified you of non-delivery.Upon receipt of your wire I called the express company again to make sure you had not sent me a second box of 25 disks; but they are not now holding anything for me, so the transaction should be complete now.To add to the general confusion I was struck by a falling tree in a wind ten days ago -- casualties not serious, just a series of sprains, all slight -- and on the same day my recording machine was stolen from my car, standing in my mother's driveway. I had left a window open when I locked up at night. Another is available temporarily, however; and I'll buy a second one if this one doesn't turn up soon. The mike and other loose bits of gears, needles, etc., I still have, fortunately.Since I wrote you about my conference with E. Lindeman, I should now explai that when he got back to Washington he found the set-up there had changed during his weeks on the Pacific Coast and the work he hoped to have me do doesn't now seem possible. While I very much regret losing the opportunity of working with him, I am better satisfied to stay with what I've started out here until I feel I've learned what I need to know about the problems on a small scale. Everybody out here, almost without exception, considers that I've tackled something that can't be done. Either they feel there are no songs, or else that work for 20 people cannot be provided. Henry Cowell and Albert Elkus are the single exceptions. I should have hated to abandon the ship before proving them mistaken. 0092 2Thank you for the photostat copy of your article. It is a real help. I will return it soon.

I was discussing the problems with Christine Fredericks, librarian of the music department of the San Francisco Public Library, and it seems to me that in cataloging records made in the field here we should leave the choice of the main title to you. But we will do cards for first lines and refrains on the books we index, with pleasure, and for the records when possible.

Do you want us to type our cards before forwarding to you, or confine ourselves to plainly-written cards done by hand, to be typed by you later? We won't type for a while, anyway, until we get settled into our jobs.....

One more query: I don't suppose there is any way of persuading the Audio Devices people to ship records in a square tin box so that disks and folders be kept together? The presto people who sold me my records here provide such a box to every 25 or 30 records and they keep the disks clean in the field and would be very handy for shipping. I certainly don't want to send records back to yo separated from their folders, as this allows two more points at which errors can be made: [?] marking them in duplicate, and replacing them at your end.

We are not yet settled in our quarters but will be in a few days.

Thank you so much for all your trouble. I mn looking forward to the time when my work, my living quarters, my car and my dog will all be settled in the same town. There is certainly a star of confusion over folk song collectors. I really have done a number of other jobs that ran smoothly without perpetual explanation and correction and adjustment; but just let me touch folk songs and immediately everything in connection begins to act as if it were possessed,-- including me.Cordially yours,Sidney H. RobertsonP.S. Enclosed receipts are personal. Now do I transfer them to WPA or the University for the project, and send you official receipts? Or what?

Dear Henry:I wrote the Reno Gazette people just after seeing you, and phoned the News today to check on it. The girl I talked to could n't tell me whether or not the renewal of your subscription had come through but said she would check back on it and write for the missing copies since Aug. 9th also.Yesterday I spent the day with the Molekani on the Potrero hill. Their singing is really something amazing, and they are the friendliest folk ever. I don't know how much you know about them, so I'd better start from the beginning. The word Molokan means Milk-drinker; and they believe themselves to be the first Russian Christian Church, according to the sign on their church building. One of their members, however, told me that their forefathers were Russian Catholics who seceded --- I suppose about the time of the Reformation. They are a kind of Russian Puritan, and their difficulties, musical and otherwise, are so exactly like the history of the Pilgrims I could hardly believe my ears. There is a small congregation of Molekani at Santa Rosa; and another quite large one in Los Angeles. The latter call themselves something my friends here translated as "Holy Jumpers" and in general their music is livelier. The San Francisco congregation seems to belong to an older and more conservative tradition.The congregation is perhaps two-thirds man -- fine Russian types, blond mostly, short and stocky; the old men with soft thick beards had beautiful faces, I loned for a camera. The women all / wear a simple costume which in traditional, and was apparently designed much as the Quakers evolved theirs -- for the sake of simplicity and avoidance of vanity. They seem to have achieved the simplicity; but vanity is rampant: I hardly ever knew a group of women, elderly as these are mostly, who were so fascinated by their own and others' clothes. They dress in white silk mostly for the morning service, and in soft colors, lavender, pink, pale blues and greens, and delicate flowered silks, for the evening one. They wear big lace scarves wrapped around their heads in a special way --- the scarves made of lace, usually crocheted, but at any rate all made by hand, white or cream / colored. Some of the younger women are beautiful, with straight brows and deep-set eyes. The older women can't be called pretty; but they are smiling and pleasant-looking. Most of the women of this group work in the Galland Laundry, day in, day out, and keep track of their enormous families too. Most of them have 8 to 14 children; and as they marry at 14, 15 and 16 years of age there were several grandmothers in their early thirties. Mr. Agapoff, who took me home to meet his wife, remarked that the noticeably barrel-shaped figures of the older women were due to their frequent child-bearing, a child a year for 10 years or so being considered normal. "Those ladies look so strong and big and well because so many children has given their insides a good workout," Mr. A-- said seriously, "These younger women around here are n't good for nothing, they look like cigarrettes cigarettes." The women's costumes are made long and straight -- with a long overblouse on a square yoke, high necked, long sleeves and long skirts; and they have embroidery on them, mostly machine made -- delicately done, not like the characteristic Russian embroidery in cross- [?] stitch [?] or heavy wool which we think of usually. I have an idea that every bit of decoration was fought for bitterly, as the right to wear short sleeves to Mass has been in the Catholic Church.[?] During the service the congregation is arranged in an odd fashion which is dictated by the kind of psalm singing they do. The chief singers among the men sit on two long benches facing each other. At the far end is a small table with a huge Bible on it, and the chief preacher and his two aides sit at that facing the room. Across the near end of the two men's benches are two other benches on which two rows of women sit facing the men and the table, with their backs to the door. Those four benches hold the `singers'; the rest of the congregation [?] around the [?] walls, women to the right, men to the left, and they act as 'helpers' singing with the others as they can. The 'singers' are self-elected. You simply join the group on the singers' benches if you feel you want to sing -- and can. No is likely to think he [?] can sing unless he really can, I was told. 0096 2The psalms sung in the morning are 'sad'; those in the evening, gayer, except for one 'sad' one which is the appropriate mood for preceding the praying. When the praying is to begin the benches are picked up and sat against the walls and the group sings standing up and then kneels on the bare floor, -- this three times-. That is, three short psalms alternate with three rather short prayers. There is also a brief reading from the Bible by the chief preacher, who looks exactly like Lenin, though the idea would horrify him. The chief part of both services, and of the children's Sunday school also, is the singing. The difference is that the children sing hymns taken from a reival hymnal published in Tennessee, in English, and within the last three weeks an harmonium has been bought for the Sunday School, in the face of as stringent criticism of ungodly new ways as was ever offered the progressive members of the early New England congregations. I located the church, in the morning, by the cheerful singing of the children audible all over the neighborhood; to my great amusement they were singing the revival hymn "Revive Us Again", which was only familiar to me as 'Hallelujah I'm a Bum'. I knew it was originally a hymn but I'd never 'met up with it' before.To return to the elders upstairs; I don't know whether I can make clear what happens during the psalm-singing, although I listened for two hours in the morning, another hour or so in the afternoon and two hours and a half in the evening, and sang with the women part of the time. I don't understand what the cue is that brings in the second part ....As nearly as I now know, however, what happens in this:One of the men, on a nod from the preacher or perhaps just 'as his heart moves him', 'lines out' a line of the psalms, half chanted; another man starts one of perhaps a hundred (they say) tunes, slowly, and by the time he has sung the first short phrase of five or six notes others are joining him; as soon as the men get going the women come in an octave higher; meanwhile the second bench of men starts in canon, sometimes the same tune, other times a quite different one which gives an effect of antiphony, except that after the first few notes everybody is singing at once. The front beach of women sings with the bench of men on the right, all high voices; the second row of women sings with the lower voices among the men, on the left. In general the women parallel the men in octaves except where the range obliges them to move in opposite directions to their octave -- that is, they will sing a fourth up when the mentake a fifth below, to reach the same note. The two melodic lines weave in and out with no concern for hrmony; but occasionally two of the man with very low voices seemed to make harmonic parts of their own during two or three long notes only so that momentarily the effect was of three parts instead of two. Both of the two main parts move freely; measures of 8th notes in one part move against half-notes and quarters in the other part for a phrase and then they switch around. The 8ve, 4th and 5th of the scale are very plainly what Cecil Sharp called 'strong' notes --- that is, the melody seems formed around those tones chiefly; when the note values are shorter the passing tones are embellishments around the others and are likely to be sung differently by different singers; but they all arive with vigor on the 'strong' notes of the scale. Because they move mostly in conctrary motion there were few parallel 4ths and fifths; but in only one psalm were consonant intervals noticeable -- one part of one psalm did move in parallel thirds and sixths. I would say their feeling for their psalms was truly contrapuntal; they don't shout one another down, either, but apparently hear both their own and the other part. As the singing becomes more and more intense, the singers don't wait for the liner out -- they all know the psalms by heart anyway -- so his chant becomes momentarily a third voice. At Christmas and Easter the church is crowded and the singing does n't stop all night and gets very rhythmical and excited, I was told. But this congregation does n't go in for 'jumping'. You can imagine how beautiful it was, however, with this average congregation of 90 people, of which perhaps two-thirds were 'singers'.I forgot to mention that the part lined out is rarely more than eight-ten syllables; and as many notes are sung to each long-drawn-out syllable, this brief phrase may result in a musical phrase of thirty measures, though the average seems to be about 16 [measures?]. 0097 3Mr. Agapoff illustrated the extension of a short verse into a long musical phrase for me in several ways later in the evening, and although of course I have n't an idea in the world of the meaning of the Russian words, I was struck with the fact that extra syllables seemed to be interpolated during the singing, about as if one sang the word 'milk' this way: "Mil-ee-ra-il-y-ka." The only Russian example I remember is the ward Gospodoy, which I've probably misspelled; it means 'Lord'. Mr. Agapoff sang something like this: "Go-o-ro-ossi-po-ra-do-loy". More than one tone to a syllable even then, of course.I listened outside all morning and then went searching through the building for someone who spoke English. In the Sunday school room I ran into Mr. Agapoff, who is the son-in-law of one of the chief preachers and the nephew of another. He was interested in what I wanted to do (record the whole service, excepting the prayers, possibly and the reading at the Bible, as I knew this would seem especially sacrilegious to them), and championed the cause at the meeting later. I was introduced to a lot of people; among them the preacher to whom Mr. A-- was not related, a pleasant man who said he could not of course decide such a thing alone, but they would discuss the matter and determine the attitude of the congregation. Mr. A-- said he would get a group together at someone's house if the congregation turned the idea down, so at the meeting which followed the evening service I was not alarmed, but only a greatly-intrigued spectator.Like the Quaker meetings, the church represents a community organisation in which every man has a voice and a vote; and believe me, they exercised their voices! I did n't remain for the voting, but am to be informed later. But they let me stay during the discussion, although some of then were greatly embarrassed by a big man around seventy who shook ? his finger at me across th big room and urged that the money-changers (me) be cast out of the temple. This was not with a lot of 'nitchevos' around the room and probably did my cause good. Another man was worried for fear the records would be put in circulation and be played in a saloon or a dance-hall! and a third man made a dramatic speech to the effect that the Americans had a symphony ? orchestra, a civic chorus, and songs of their own so why did n't we leave them in peace? It took them a long time to grasp the historical idea, of course, although a good many of them had been plaintive about the impending loss of the old way of singing. In general the younger group (men and women between 50 and 65) were in favor of the idea; over 65, nothing doing. My friends seemed to feel that the proposal would go through, however, and that these who disapproved would simply stay at home. It was the same thing, they said, when they had a Christmas Tree in the church last year for the children. A lot of the old people classed the tree among the forbidden 'idols'. I had a fine time! Such a spate of Russian; and such a sense of democracy in the gathering -- men and women alike free to speak. I reassured them about commercialization of the records, and spoke briefly about the great beauty of the music they'd brought with them, which the U.S. gov't did n't want to have lost -- the first I ever spoke with a translator at hand going into action between each sentence of mine. Afterwards half a dozen men came up with cards and invitations to come home to tea with their families, which of course I shaIl do --- they are sweet people. At the moment, however, I stuck to Mr. Agapoff and the sweet little woman who translated for me.Mr. Agapoff has a neurotic wife whom he took me home to meet --- leading me in the back door down the side of the hill and showing me his Russian steam bath he has just built, the double bunk in the bedroom, and his wife -- in that order. She is recovering from a nervous breakdown', due, sid Mr. A-- to 'too much experience we had in our family.' It seems that when Mr. A-- and his wife were about 14, (they had been living in S.F. since they were 2), their parents decided to return to the old country to escape the contamination of modern city life. But the part of Russia they had lived in now belonged to Turkey, and their relatives were living along the Don River in holes in the ground covered over with branches --- they emerged to [greet?] the repatriates like moles from the ground.