Mantle Hood papers now available online

The Ethnomusicology Archive is happy to announce that the Mantle Hood Papers are available online on UCLA Library Digital Collections.  This collection focuses on Hood's early papers and correspondence (1950s) and was donated to the Archive in 2011 by Hood's sons, Marlowe, Maiyo, Mitro, and Madé.  These materials are now online as part of the yearlong celebration of the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive's 60th anniversary. Established in 1961, the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is a world-renowned research archive dedicated to the study of musical traditions from around the globe.

Mantle Hood (1918-2005) was a pioneer in the field of ethnomusicology. He taught at UCLA from 1954 to 1975 and was the founder of the Institute (now Department) of Ethnomusicology at UCLA. Hood trained numerous scholars who went on to found ethnomusicology programs at the University of Washington, UC Berkeley, UC Santa Cruz, University of Hawaii, Wesleyan University, Brown, and Florida State University, as well as programs and research institutes across the globe. One of his major theoretical contributions to the field was "bi-musicality," the idea that as a fundamental aspect of research methodology, ethnomusicologists—presumably musical in the Western classical tradition—should learn to play the music of the cultures they study. Considered controversial when published in 1960, the theory has now become an established part of the discipline. He was a leading figure in research on Javanese gamelan music and arranged for one of the first gamelans to be taught at a U.S. university. This set of instruments (bronze gongs and metallophones) was cast in Java and given by the Javanese the honorific name Khjai Mendung (Venerable Dark Cloud). Hood is also remembered for his ethnographic documentary film on Ashanti drumming, "Atumpan: The Talking Drums of Ghana." In 1971, he published "The Ethnomusicologist," which outlined research issues and questions in a then still nascent field. He received numerous awards and fellowships, including a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Ford Foundation Fellowship. Hood served as President of the Society for Ethnomusicology from 1965 to 1967.

I thought that I would share a few items from the collection.  To see all 218 items, please go to the Mantle Hood Papers.

Dances of Indonesia: A Program for the Sixth National Conference of the United States National Commission for UNESCO. Auditorium, Veterans Memorial Building, San Francisco, California, 7th November 1957.

Letter from Mantle Hood to John S. Rodriguez Jr., Business Manager at the University of California Medical School Field Staff, regarding shipment of the Javanese Gamelan, 20th June 1958.

Postcard from Guy Carawan in China to Mantle Hood at UCLA, 1957.

Postcard from Guy Carawan in China to Mantle Hood at UCLA, 1957.

Photos © Mantle Hood, All Right Reserved. (For permission to use any Hood images, contact the Archivists.)  Photos © Regents of the University of California, All Right Reserved. (For permission to use any Hood images, contact the Archivists.)