Ethnomusicology

James Arkatov was born in 1920 in Odessa, Russia and raised in San Francisco, where his father, Alexander Arkatov, owned a photography salon. In 1938, he was invited by Fritz Feiner to join the Pittsburgh Symphony. Later, he joined the San Francisco Symphony with Pierre Monteux, and went on to be principal cellist of the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra under Fabien Sevitzky. Arkatov returned to California in 1946 as a studio musician and was later appointed principal cellist of the NBC Symphony Orchestra. In 1956, he married Salome Ramras Arkatov. In 1968, he founded the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra (LACO) and was its first principal cellist. According to LACO: "The Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1968 as an artistic outlet for the recording industry’s most gifted musicians. The Orchestra’s artistic founder, cellist James Arkatov, envisioned an ensemble that would allow these conservatory-trained players to balance studio work and teaching with pure artistic collaboration at the highest level." Arkatov began photographing musicians when he was with the Pittsburgh Symphony. In 1990, he published his first book of photography, "Masters of Music: Great Artists at Work." In 1998, he published his second book, "Artists: The Creative Personality." In May 2015, the Arkatovs donated James' photographs of world music performers to the Ethnomusicology Archive. Many of these photos highlight UCLA Ethnomusicology's famous World Music Ensembles. Arkatov died May 11, 2019 at age 98.

In 1963-1964, Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy (Founding Chair of the UCLA Department of Ethnomusicology) visited 8 states in India, recording tribal, folk, devotional, and classical musics. The research was designed to supplement Arnold Adriaan Bake's 1925-1929, 1931, 1932, 1938, and 1955-56 surveys of Indian music throughout the South Asian subcontinent (Bengal, (West Bengal and Bangladesh), Nepal, Tamilnadu, Kerala, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Sindh (Pakistan)). Bake’s original fieldwork was to have resulted in a book on South Asian music--in collaboration with Tamil specialist John Ralston Marr—but with Bake’s sudden death in October 1963, the book could not be completed. In 1984, Nazir Ali Jairazbhoy and Amy Catlin-Jairazbhoy returned to the original sites of Bake’s 1938 fieldwork in South India (Tamilnadu, Kerala, and Karnataka) in order to solicit responses to Bake’s photographs and audio recordings of various Indian performance traditions in an examination of continuity and change. A curated selection of images and recordings from 1963-1964 and 1984 are included in this collection, as well as field recordings made by Bake in India on a Teficord machine, January 1938 to March 1939.

Donald R. Borcherdt, known as "Donn" to his friends and colleagues, received his B.A. from UCLA in music in 1956. He earned his M.A. in music with a specialization in ethnomusicology in 1962, and by 1966 had advanced to doctoral candidacy in music with a specialization in ethnomusicology. Borcherdt conducted field research in Mexico in 1960, 1961, and 1963-1964 and in Chile in 1966-67. Borcherdt also hosted the weekly radio program, "Many Worlds of Music," in 1960-1962, on KPFK in Los Angeles. In 1961, Borcherdt, started a student-run mariachi class, Conjunto Mariachi or Conjunto Uclatlán [the land of UCLA], in the then Institute (now Department) of Ethnomusicology at UCLA, making UCLA the first academic institution in the United States to offer mariachi classes. In 1967-1968, Borcherdt made a final fieldwork trip to Mexico to continue his studies on mariachi music in Jalisco and Michoacán. He died unexpectedly in Mexico in 1969.

Established in 1961, the UCLA Ethnomusicology Archive is a world-renowned research archive dedicated to the study of musical traditions from around the globe. The Archive’s collection of more than 150,000 audio, video, print, and photographic items documents musical expressions throughout the world. As part of UCLA’s Department of Ethnomusicology, the Archive preserves and makes accessible over 60 years’ worth of materials that record the department’s famed musical performances. This Ethnomusicology Archive Photographic Collection represents a selection of images from the Archive's large photo collection. Included are images from the 1960s and 70s of the World Music Ensembles and guest artists: Mantle Hood, founder of the Institute of Ethnomusicology, with the Balinese and Javanese gamelans; Dong Youp "Danny" Lee, who led the Music of Korea from 1967-1997; Robert Ayitee and Robert Bonsu, who founded the Music of Ghana in 1966; guest artist Gayathri Rajapur Kassebaum playing gottuvadyum; Donn Borcherdt, founder of the Music of Mexico in 1963; Tsun-Yuen Lui, who founded the Music of China in 1959; and many more. Also included are fieldwork photos from: Fred Lieberman (Japan, 1963); Tsun-yuen Lui (Hong Kong, 1967); David Morton (Thailand, 1959-60); Bonnie Wade (India, 1968). Please browse this collection and learn more about UCLA Ethnomusicology's legendary history.

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.

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