Courtesy, Sidney Robertson Cowell Collection, Music Division, Library of Congress.
Sweetwater Music Hall, the intimate nonprofit live music venue established in 1972, is hosting “Tunes from Our Backyard” a performance at Mill Valley’s Sweetwater Music Hall on Sunday, October 19, celebrates the WPA California Folk Music Project, a collection of live field recordings of traditional ethnic folk songs recorded around the Bay Area during the Great Depression.
Between 1938 and 1940, San Francisco musicologist Sidney Robertson, working out of offices at UC Berkeley with funding from the New Deal’s Works Progress Administration (WPA), documented the music of ethnic communities around Northern California. With a small team hired from the state’s relief rolls, Robertson collected 35 hours of folk songs in 12 languages, along with photographs and drawings of musical instruments immigrants brought with them when they left their home countries for California. Robertson was the first collector to record folk songs of ethnic immigrants and call them “American.”
The collection, archived at the Library of Congress in Washington, DChttps://www.loc.gov/collections/sidney-robertson-cowell-northern-california-folk-music/articles-and-essays/wpa-california-folk-music-project/ and the UC Berkeley Music Library, inspired composer and musician David Gerald Steinberg to create “Tunes From Our Backyard.”
A selection of these traditional ethnic folk songs, interwoven with Robertson’s original field recordings and artifacts from the WPA California Folk Music Project, will take place at the nonprofit Sweetwater Music Hall, https://sweetwatermusichall.org/ a nonprofit arts organization in downtown Mill Valley that has played a central role in the Bay Area music scene since 1972. Performing with Steinberg (woodwinds) will be vocalists Mae Powell and Karla Rivera Lozada, guitarist Mark Dzula and accordionist/cellist Ami Nashimoto.”
“Sidney Robertson’s original recordings offer a unique window into life in California during the Great Depression,” says Steinberg. “I’m honored to share this diverse collection of songs and to play a small part to ensure this music continues to endure and inspire.”
“Presenting this performance is truly in alignment with our mission, part of which is to preserve, promote and educate our community on the historical significance of music,” said Sweetwater Executive Director Maria Hoppe.
The program also includes a newly released music video by Berkeley songwriter Alexis Harte.“Your Rose Garden,” https://www.yourrosegarden.com is musical tribute to the storied Berkeley Rose Garden, built by the WPA in the 1930s and a beloved community space to this day.
“Tunes From Our Backyard” is sponsored by the Living New Deal, founded at UC Berkeley to educate about the history and continued relevancy of the New Deal (1933-1941), a constellation of federal programs under President Franklin Roosevelt that put millions of struggling Americans to work during the Great Depression.
Perhaps best known for the many roads, bridges, schools, post offices, libraries and parks it built nationwide, the New Deal also employed artists, writers and musicians. The Living New Deal’s interactive website, https://www.livingnewdeal.org is a crowdsourced archive documenting thousands of New Deal projects. The website received more than a million visits in 2024.
