Ethnomusicology > Laura Boulton
One of the early figures in American ethnomusicology was Laura Boulton. Trained as a pianist, she began her travels with a trip to Africa in 1929. She visited Indonesia, Korea, Bali, India, Nepal, Japan, Borneo, and the Arctic, amassing a large collection of objects, transcriptions, and tape recordings. The Laura Boulton Collection of Traditional and Liturgical Music was left to Columbia through a bequest of Alice Fries Levi.
Boulton struck out on her own, before the days of established or standardized methods in ethnomusicology. Though she gained significant foundation and institutional support, she was not trained in research or in specialized areas relating ot her chosen field, and she lacked technical and scholarly resources. Yet Boulton represents the burgeoning early interest in world musics, and her collection remains a part of Columbia's history.