The Berkeley Folk Music Festival & the Folk Revival on the US West Coast—An Introduction
Reviewed by: Julesa Grimes
Review started: March 12, 2023
Review last updated: April 10, 2023
Site link
Data and Sources
- The Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive which is housed at the Northwestern University Libraries and consists of about 33,500 photographs, posters, flyers, press clippings, correspondence, publicity information, audio, video, and more about the Festival and the folk music revival as a whole.
Processes
- Assembling primary sources that pertain to the Berkeley Folk Music Festival originating from an existing archive.
- Organizing photos and videos into sections based on year and contextual relationship.
- Background information that frames primary sources and adds context
Presentation
- Archival Information is stored in the “exhibits” portion of the website.
- The exhibit is separated into easily navigable sections .
- Timeline
- Playlists
Digital Tools Used
- Wordpress
- Spotify
- Youtube
- RSS
Languages
- English
Review
The Berkeley Folk Music Festival & the Folk Revival on the US West Coast—An Introduction, is a digital archive that aims to explore the significance that the West Coast, specifically California, played in the revival of American folk music. The archive is composed of about 33,500 digitized photos, videos and audio clips originating from the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Archive which is housed at Northwestern University Libraries. Upon opening the archive, viewers are met with a brief welcome statement written by the exhibit curator, Dr. Michael J. Kramer, which explains the purpose and importance of this collection. Visitors are then directed to the project “forward” where curator, Scott Krafft, explains how the archive came to be housed at Northwestern University when the music festival occurred in California. The archive was bought from The Berkeley Folk Music Festivals creator and manager, Barry Olivier, by the former Assistant University Librarian, Richard Press, and R. Russell Maylone,former curator of the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections. The addition of this context is helpful because it allows archive visitors to understand the journey of the source material and it makes us consider if the archive would have ever been displayed had it not been acquired by Northwestern.
Visitors of the archive are then directed to the exhibits tag which breaks up the material into various segments. The first segment is titled “Introduction: What Was the Berkeley Folk Music Festival?” which sets the tone for the rest of the exhibit as it explains the historical context of the festival and poses questions regarding its cultural impact. The questions implore readers to consider the historical context surrounding the festival and how it influenced or was influenced by simultaneously occurring events. The Berkeley Folk Festival was occurring at the same time as the Civil Rights Movement, Anti-Vietnam War activism and Free Speech Movement, which occurred on Berkeley's Campus. The questions posed in the archive act as a compelling invitation for readers to become deeply engaged in looking for the answers within the archive. Readers are encouraged to look beyond the idea that the Berkeley Folk Festival was simply about fun but a place to share ideas, politics and unpack the complexities of American culture in the years following the end of the second world war.
The next section in the exhibit tab is titled “Barry Olivier: Festival Director.” Here, visitors receive a biography of Barry Olivier along with his journey to becoming the festival director. It was especially interesting that this portion housed letters that Barry Olivier wrote to musicians asking them to participate in the Berkeley Folk Music Festival. One specific letter that Olivier wrote to Bob Dylan portrays Olivier's commitment to curate a festival that would not just be fun, but also encourage artistic freedom. The next 4 sections are split into four time periods—1958–1961, 1962–1964, 1965–1966, and 1967–1970. Each section explores the festivals in depth by showcasing the performers,photos, and flyers taken from each annual event. These sections allow visitors to see how the festival changes from “a weekend of folk music” to a large factor in the revival of folk music in the United States.
There is a lot of information in this archive, but the implementation of sections, searchable tags, access to the digital repository, timeline, playlists of both live and recorded festival music allows visitors to navigate the website in a way that is not overwhelming. It should be noted that the website does provide features that improve its accessibility including alt-text for all images, however, there are no transcriptions for audio or video content. This archive does reach its goal in the sense that it does not just present the Berkeley Folk Festival as an event, but as a unique cultural occurrence during a tumultuous time in America.