Re: [ARSCLIST] Henrietta Yurchenco, Pioneer Folklorist, Dies at 91

[Andy Lanset <andy.lanset@xxxxxxxxx>]

It is with great sadness we note the passing of former WNYC producer
Henrietta Yurchenco this week. Henrietta produced Leadbelly's program, Folk
Songs of America, here in 1940 and 1941. Woody Guthrie was a guest on more
than one occasion.  She also provided a regular showcase for what we now
call 'world music' as well as  the Duke of Iron's original calypso
works.  Without
her tireless efforts, the first and second WNYC American Music Festivals
would never have achieved the acclaim they did in those early years.
Henrietta left WNYC to go on to a brilliant career as a world-renowned
ethnomusicologist and authority on indigenous music of the Americas; saving
music that would have been lost forever were it not for her efforts.  She
returned to our air in the 1960s with yet another folk music program and she
generously donated her surviving program scripts to the WNYC Archives along
with providing us with several hours of oral history testimony about her
time here.  She was a feisty and sharp lady to the end and we'll miss her
occasional phone calls telling us about the way things should be in this
troubled world.

Andy Lanset, Archivist
WNYC Radio


On Dec 14, 2007 4:03 PM, Dave Nolan <davenolanaudio@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> From the New York Times:
>
> Henrietta Yurchenco, Pioneer Folklorist, Dies at 91
> By DOUGLAS MARTIN
> Published: December 14, 2007
>
> Henrietta Yurchenco, whose quest to save living music from the past took
> her from the mountains of Guatemala and southern Mexico to a New York City
> radio station to the Jewish community of Morocco, died Monday in
> Manhattan.
> She was 91.
>
> The cause was lung failure, her son, Peter, said.
>
> Like a linguist nailing down a dying language, Ms. Yurchenco, an
> ethnomusicologist, recorded music from long ago that faced an unclear
> tomorrow. In an interview, Pete Seeger said she "went to places people
> didn't believe she would be able to find."
>
> Among her thousands of recordings are ritual songs from North, South and
> Central American Indians, including peyote chants, and music celebrating
> everything from love to agriculture, found from Eastern Europe to the
> Caribbean to Appalachia to Spain.
>
> Oscar Brand, the folk singer and radio personality, citing her work with
> Native Americans, said, "She went out of her way to discover the soft
> spots, the shining things you couldn't see in the mists back in the
> mountains."
>
> Ms. Yurchenco was also a radio producer, announcer and interviewer.
> Beginning in the 30s, she broadcast only folk music, both traditional and
> modern, at a time when few knew it.
>
> Woody Guthrie called her in 1939 or 1940 and asked if he could be on her
> live show. Bob Dylan, a little tongue-tied, did one of his early radio
> interviews with her in 1962. In an interview with NPR in 1999, she said
> she
> scoured union halls and immigrant groups to find genuine music.
>
> Ethnomusicologists study music in varying ethnic contexts. Ms. Yurchenco
> began by tracking down 14 all-but-unknown Mexican and Guatemalan tribes,
> reaching them with little but a mule and 300 pounds of recording
> equipment.
> She eventually recorded 2,000 of their songs for the Library of Congress.
>
> Later, she studied the music of the Sephardim, Jews who had been thrown
> out
> of Spain in the 15th century. She arrived in Morocco just as many
> Sephardim
> were preparing to move to the new state of Israel, and she seized a last
> chance to capture their ancient songs in the original context.
>
> Ms. Yurchenco was intrigued by women's roles in creating music and of the
> sexual politics involved in making it. Mr. Seeger said women may be the
> best music collectors, partly because many have the patience to appreciate
> a grandmother singing a 400-year-old ballad to a baby.
>
> Ms. Yurchenco wrote several books, including a biography of Woody Guthrie.
> At least one book is still to be published: a study of the music of
> Morocco's Sephardic women. She long taught at City College, lectured
> widely
> and fought fiercely for her leftist ideals.
>
> Starting in 2005 and continuing almost until her death, Ms. Yurchenco
> invited like-minded friends to her apartment to sing songs against the
> Iraq
> war, often the same ones used against the Vietnam War. Some of their
> singing was broadcast on Internet radio.
>
> Henrietta Weiss was born in New Haven on March 22, 1916. She told The
> Villager, a neighborhood newspaper in Manhattan, that her father was "a
> dreamer who started out in business and failed miserably." She was a
> promising pianist who attended the Yale School of Music.
>
> At Yale, she met Boris Yurchenco, an Argentine-born painter, at a meeting
> of the John Reed Club, named for the American writer who chronicled the
> Bolshevik Revolution. They were married in 1936, the year she was first
> arrested in a protest; she was demonstrating against a brass band from
> Mussolini's Italy.
>
> In 1939, her musical interests led her to WNYC, the public radio station
> then owned by New York City. She made friends with people like Burl Ives,
> the folk singer and Alan Lomax, a legendary music collector.
>
> In 1941, she followed her husband on a trip to Mexico. An engineer from
> WNYC came along to record music, and she took over when he left. With
> financial support from groups like the American Philosophical Society, she
> repeatedly visited the area to record animal sacrifices, healing
> ceremonies
> and much else. Scorpions, both yellow and green, were a persistent
> problem.
>
> Ms. Yurchenco and her husband divorced in 1955. In addition to her son,
> Peter, of Skillman, N.J., she is survived by two grandchildren.
>
> Legend has it that Mr. Seeger and the Almanac Singers, an earlier name for
> the Weavers, wrote the song "Kisses Sweeter Than Wine" in Ms. Yurchenco's
> relatively quiet bathroom during a noisy party in her apartment. Mr.
> Seeger
> said that was not quite true, though he recalled her famous parties.
>
> Mr. Seeger explained that Leadbelly, the great folk and blues artist, was
> in Ms. Yurchenco's bathroom with the singer Sam Kennedy, who perched on
> the
> obvious as he sang "Drimmin Down," a lament about a dead cow. (Leadbelly
> later livened up the beat and used the tune for his own cow song, "If It
> Wasn't for Dicky.")
>
> Mr. Seeger liked the melody and added lyrics about wine.
>
> Dave Nolan
> Audio Archivist
> 92nd St. Y
> Audio Digitization Room - basement
> 1395 Lexington Ave.
> NYC  NY  10128
> (212) 415-5559
> e-mail to: dnolan@xxxxxxx
>