KRISTINA R. GADDY
  • Books
    • Well of Souls
    • Flowers in the Gutter
  • Writing
  • Open Stacks Blog
  • About
  • Contact

William Adams and the Sounds of KenGar

6/16/2020

6 Comments

 
     “‘Getting Up Cows,’ that’s what it’s called, ‘Getting Up Cows,” William Adams said. “An old fella played that. He was a cracker-jack old fiddler, though, I don’t believe he could beat me….”
​     Mike Seeger hadn’t come to the neighborhood to record Adams initially, but now he wanted to hear any tune the Black fiddler could remember, even if he forgot it halfway through or couldn’t remember the name. 
     “I forget how that goes, though, I haven’t played that since a long time ago,” the 72 year-old Adams continued before he put the bow on the fiddle’s strings and hesitantly pulled the tune from deep in his memory. In the end, it sounded like he might have just last played it a week or a year ago, not some 20-odd years earlier.
     The 19 year-old white Seeger listened intently as a brown strip spun from one reel of his Magencord recorder to the other, putting Adams’s notes indelibly down on tape. This was the first time he’d gone into the field to record a musician, but it wouldn’t be his last. This was probably the first and definitely the last time Adams’s fiddling was recorded. 
     This field recording wasn’t taken in some rural hamlet or deep holler, it was less than five miles from Seeger’s home in the well-to-do suburb of Chevy Chase outside Washington, D.C. And yet in 1953, when Seeger stepped into Adams’s neighborhood of KenGar, segregation left this community so separate from the white towns and neighborhoods surrounding it, a white person might drive by without even knowing it was there. 

Read More
6 Comments

Vote for Banjos!

8/18/2019

0 Comments

 

I've been asked to be on a panel at SXSW - but we need community votes to make it to the event!

Picture
     I've been asked to be on The Banjo Project: A Digital Museum's panel at South by Southwest (SXSW), along with curator Marc Fields and the amazing musicians Dom Flemons and Tony Trishka. However, we need community votes to make it to the next round of selection! 
     Click here to learn more about the project, register, and vote. 
0 Comments

The Golden Age of Our Country

7/4/2019

0 Comments

 
Side portrait engraving of man from the late 1700s.
St. George Tucker, engraved by Saint-Mémin, Harvard Law School Library collection.
     This February while at the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota, I came across St. George Tucker's A Dissertation on Slavery with a Proposal for the Gradual Abolition of It, in the State of Virginia. I received the William Reese Company Fellowship to research the papers of Captain John Gabriel Stedman, and other collections related to Suriname and the Americas before 1810. In a search for documents on slavery in Virginia, which I thought had the possibility to reveal more about early music and dance in the colonies and early Republic, I found Tucker's Dissertation. 
     Although it didn't end up helping me with that research, Tucker's opinions about the abolition of slavery struck me. Here was a man, standing up in front of the Virginia legislature, calling out Thomas Jefferson specifically and calling the United States more or less a bunch of hypocrites. 

Read More
0 Comments

Views of the Creole Bania

2/28/2019

0 Comments

 
     I spent February at the James Ford Bell Library at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on a William Reese Company Fellowship, looking at the papers of Captain John Gabriel Stedman and investigating the banjo's early history in Suriname and the Caribbean. 
Picture
     This is a banjo, one of the earliest images of a banjo. This engraving is only one of four pre-1800s images of the banjo, taken from Stedman's memoir Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Suriname. The special collections at the Bell Library have Stedman's diaries from Suriname, notes and journals from after his time in Europe, the original 1790 manuscript, and many different versions of the published memoir. To the left is a hand-colored plate from the English first edition, while below are versions from the German, French, and Dutch editions.

Read More
0 Comments

The Women of the Hull-House

3/20/2018

0 Comments

 
     Inspiring women, innovative approaches to living and learning, and pioneering social justice work: sound like something from the #metoo or #TimesUp movements? Maybe, but it was also how women at the Hull-House in Chicago lived and worked over 100 years ago.
Picture
Smith Hall of the Hull House, 1910.
     While I was in Chicago in February, I had a chance to visit the Hull-House and be totally amazed by these women, who I already knew a little bit about. Here is a tour and brief history of the settlement house.

Read More
0 Comments

The Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes

3/7/2018

0 Comments

 

Think hockey is a white sport? The fast-paced action and some signature moves are thanks to a pioneering Black Hockey League that changed the game forever. 

Read my piece on OZY.

Picture
The Africville Sea-Sides, c. 1922. Team members include: Aaron 'Pa' Carvery, Frederick Carvery, James Carvery, Richard Carvery, William Carvery, Jr., James E. Dixon, William Carvery Sr., T.G. MacDonald, Richard Dixon, James Paris, Jr., and Mantley. Photo from the Public Archives of Nova Scotia.
     The Coloured Hockey League of the Maritimes was truly innovative in so many ways, and I'm glad that George and Darril Fosty researched the story in their book Black Ice: The Lost History of the Colored Hockey League of the Maritimes, 1895–1925. I can't remember where I first heard about the anecdote that led me to the Fostys' book, and I didn't know much about the history of Black Canadians in Nova Scotia or the Maritimes, but I've found some cool research of which I hope to share more.
0 Comments

Rewriting History: The Lee-Jackson Statue in Baltimore

6/5/2017

0 Comments

 

You never know what you'll find in a box. 

     Last year, my friend Erik found a recording titled "Dr. Freeman's speech dedicating the Lee-Jackson Monument in Wyman Park" in a friend's record collection. The 33 1/3 LP was homemade, and the fact that it dealt with a seemingly out-of-place confederate statue in a city park about two miles from his house intrigued him.
     He shared the recording with me, and I knew the story of the recording had to be told through audio. My radio-producer friend Nadia Ramlagan and I started researching the the speech, the event, the artist, the donation, and produced a radio piece that aired last week on the Marc Steiner Show. 
          The story explores the history of the statue, and how that history should be a part of the debate about what to do with the confederate monuments in Baltimore today. ​​
Picture
1948 cover of Baltimore Magazine, with a feature story on the monument.

 Listen to the piece and explore our research. 

0 Comments

Maryland Emancipation Day 

11/1/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture

     "Mr. President, it is my desire to be free," Ms. Annie Davis wrote to Lincoln on August 25th, 1864.

     Although it had been more than a year and a half since President Lincoln's Empancipation Proclamation, the answer to Davis's question was "No." The executive order that more than 3 million enslaved Americans would be freed didn't apply to any border states where slavery was still legal, and even to some areas of the south like New Orleans, the to-be state of West Virginia, and the area around Newport News, Virginia. Davis lived in Bel Air, Maryland, and that physical location meant that in August of 1864, she was not free. She would have to wait until November 1st, 1864 for the decree from the Maryland General Assembly and a new state constitution. 
Belair Aug 25th 1864
Mr President
It is my Desire to be free, to go to see my people on the eastern shore my mistress wont let me you will please let me know if we are free and what i can do. I write to you for advice please send me word this week or as soon as possible and oblidge.
Annie Davis
Belair Harford County, MD.
Belair Harford
     Today, Maryland is thought of as the Mid-Atlantic, with barely any relationship to the south. But the fact is that the state is south of the Mason-Dixon line, and before Washington, D.C. brought transplants from all over the United States, I've seen references to suburbs like Kensington and Silver Spring as being "sleepy southern towns." More importantly in the context of today, Maryland Emancipation Day, this was a slave-holding state, a fact that many people seem to forget when talking about Frederick Douglass, a fierce abolitionist who was enslaved and worked in the Inner Harbor of Baltimore City, or Harriet Tubman, a heroic Underground Railroad worker born on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. During the Civil War, the state also had
many southern sympathizers, including the man who shot Lincoln, John Wilkes Booth (like Annie Davis, a resident of Bel Air, Maryland). 
     "Slave Statistics," a record of the enslaved people in Maryland and their owners at the time of emancipation exists for some counties in Maryland, but not for Harford. I haven't been able to find anything else about Annie Davis in a brief search. I want to thank Mr. C.R. Gibbs and the Reginald F. Museum of Maryland African American History and Culture for the Maryland Emancipation Day Lecture, where Mr. Gibbs shared this powerful letter. 
0 Comments

Lost Witch Song from the Wizard of Oz

10/27/2016

0 Comments

 
Picture
Image of the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodsman, and Dorothy from the 1902 production of "The Wizard of Oz."

     While searching through the Levy Collection at in the Johns Hopkins Sheridan Libraries Special Collection for witch images, I came across ​"The Witch Behind the Moon," and it was so complex that I thought it deserved it's own post.


Read More
0 Comments

BCG Throwback

10/14/2015

0 Comments

 

In honor of the Banjo Collector's Gathering (aka 19th Century Banjo Gathering aka Banjo Geekathon) coming to Baltimore in two weeks and my recent article about the BCG in the Old Time Herald, I thought I'd post some of the pictures from last year. 

These instruments are all in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City. 

Read More
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Come in, the stacks are open. 

    Away from prying eyes, damaging light, and pilfering hands, the most special collections are kept in closed stacks.  You need an appointment to view the objects, letters, and books that open a door to the past. 

    Here, pieces of material culture are examined in the light. The stacks are open. ​Read the stories behind objects and ephemera found in private collections, archives, and museums. 

    Archives

    June 2020
    March 2020
    January 2020
    August 2019
    July 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    February 2014
    December 2013

    Categories

    All
    16th Century
    17th Century
    18th Century
    19th Century
    20th Century
    21st Century
    African American History
    African History
    Alcohol
    Alcohol History
    America
    Animal
    Appalachian
    Art
    Bad Science
    Baltimore
    Banjo
    Banjo Collector's Gathering
    Books
    Canada
    Cancer
    Cat
    Celebrations
    Chesapeake Bay
    Chicago
    Christmas
    Circus History
    Civil War
    Clown
    Cold War
    Colonial History
    Communism
    Conjoined Twins
    Cook Books
    Crab
    Culinary History
    Devil
    Dutch History
    Easter
    England
    Eugenics
    Exhibits
    Fiddle
    Film
    Food
    Food History
    France
    "Freak Show" History
    German American
    German History
    Goucher College
    Halloween
    Hockey
    Hollywood
    Hospital
    Human Development
    James Ford Bell Library
    Jewish History
    Lincoln
    Lost Baltimore
    Lost History
    Lying In
    Lying-In
    Magazine Covers
    Map
    Maritime History
    Maryland
    Maternity
    Medical History
    Medical Procedures
    Medicine
    Metropolitan Museum
    Midwifery
    Minstrelsy
    Monsters
    Museum
    Music
    Native American History
    New Jersey
    Newspapers
    New York City
    Obstetrics
    Ozy
    Patent
    Photography
    Plain Weave
    Political History
    Politics
    President
    Print
    Psychology
    Public Transportation
    Science
    Sheet Music
    Skansen
    Skeleton
    South American History
    Sports
    Stedman
    Streetcar
    Suffragettes
    Suriname
    Sweden
    Swedish History
    Theater
    The Knick
    Third Reich
    Traditional Music
    Traditions
    Transportation History
    Tri-racial Isolate
    Typeface
    Typography
    U.S.
    USA
    U.S. History
    Valentine
    Vegetarian
    Vegetarianism
    Victorian
    Violin
    Virginia
    Weaving
    West Africa
    West Virginia
    Wisconsin
    Witch
    Witches
    Women
    Women's History
    World History
    World War II

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Books
    • Well of Souls
    • Flowers in the Gutter
  • Writing
  • Open Stacks Blog
  • About
  • Contact