Boulton, Laura, 1899-1980

The music collector Laura Boulton, or musical anthropologist, as she was known in the early days of her fieldwork, recorded some 30,000 musical examples in the course of her 81 years. During a career which took her from hidden corners of the globe to urban centers alike, from royal palaces to tribal huts, she embarked on expedition after expedition at a time when such journeys were considered exotic, dangerous, and beyond the reach of the average traveler.

Born in Conneaut, Ohio and educated at Denison University (from whom she also received an honorary doctorate), LB pursued additional studies at the University of Chicago, the Sorbonne, and in London. Trained primarily in vocal performance and music theory, she entered the musical world as a singer although she went on to pursue university graduate work in musicology and anthropology. In 1929 at the invitation of Mrs. Oscar Straus, she joined the Straus Central African Expedition under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Though she accompanied the traveling party as collector of botanical and ornithological specimens, her primary interest was to record whatever music she could on the trip and thereby launched a lifelong career as collector of the world's "unknown and exotic" musics.

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