Frances Densmore

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Frances Densmore (May 21, 1867 – June 5, 1957) was an American ethnographer and ethnomusicologist. She was born in Red Wing, Minnesota and specialized in Native American music and culture.^[1]

As a child Densmore learned to appreciate music by listening to the nearby Dakota Indians. During the early part of the 20th century, she worked as a music teacher with Indians nationwide learning, recording, and transcribing their music, documenting its use in their culture.^[1] She helped preserve their culture in a time when white settlers were encouraging Native Americans to adopt Western customs.

Densmore began officially recording music for the Smithsonian Institution's Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE) in 1907. Many of the recordings she made on behalf of the BAE are now held in the Library of Congress. While her original recordings were often on wax cylinders, many of them have been reproduced on other media and are included in other archives. The recordings can be accessed by researchers as well as tribal delegations.

Densmore was extremely prolific and frequently published in the journal American Anthropologist.

Some of the tribes she worked with include the Chippewa, the Mandan, Hidatsa, the Sioux, the northern Pawnee of Oklahoma, the Papago of Arizona, Indians of Washington and British Columbia, Winnebago and Menominee of Wisconsin, Pueblo Indians of the southwest, the Seminoles of Florida^[2] and even the Tule Indians of Panama. She wrote The Indians and Their Music in 1926.^[3]

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Frances Densmore page from Minnesota Public Radio
• Frances Densmore Minnesota Historical Society
• Historical notes based largely on Frances Densmore's descriptions
• [1] Finding Aids to Collections in the Smithsonian Archive of Folk Culture, includes a finding aide for a Densmore collection of wax cylinders.