Does the 1960s song cycle Folk Songs exemplifies post-World War II ideas of the curator as a “virtuoso in choosing” (von Hantelmann, 2012)? Mills College commissioned Luciano Berio to compose Folk Songs which he wrote for and dedicated to Cathy Berberian. While some assert the centrality of Berberian’s role in this artistic process (Placanica, 2014, Meehan, 2011, Scaldaferri, 1994 and 1997) others (de Benedictis, 2024; Hooper, 2023) caution against revisionism. Taking cues from both approaches, this presentation and listening session seeks to highlight networks of labour involved in the album’s creation.
I situate Folk Songs within the broader context of “the West” as it was being reshaped in the postwar decades, alongside folk revivals, modernist performance, and avant-garde composition. Treating these practices as coeval reveals shared methods of collecting, arranging, recomposing, and archiving – practices present in both curatorial and artistic labour. Figures like Alan Lomax,who arrived in Italy in 1954, and the internationally mobile John Cage show how sonic, cultural, and personal exchanges blurred and inscribed boundaries of genre and nationality.
Considering this, we will listen together to selections from Folk Songs. For example: “Black is the Colour” invites comparison with contemporary recordings (Ritchie, Simone, Baez, Imlach) and reveals contrasts between collected and composed versions. “Ballo,” an original composition by Luciano Berio, challenges the notion of the album as a folk archive. “Azerbaijani Love Song”, drawn from a recording, raises issues of recording-as-writing and diasporic memory.
Together we will discuss question such as: How does Cathy Berberian’s voice relate to the emerging Anglo-American folk voice? How does this relate to her ability to choose with the materials at hand (voice, cultural memory, etc). Does her understanding of her role reflect a postwar, Fordist view of cultural production as fragmented yet interconnected labor? If folk is tied to cohesive communities, what kind of cultural product is Folk Songs – and what does it, in turn,
produce?