Sam Hinton and Jean Ritchie, promotional photo, 1960
Fifty years ago today, the famed Berkeley Folk Music Festival opened its annual concert series for the 15th and final time, presaging the sunset of a creatively and politically impassioned folk revival in America. Luminaries like Pete Seeger, Sam Hinton and Malvina Reynolds performed on Oct. 8, 1970, the first night of the festival comprising three days of workshops, panels, round tables, and eclectic performances that defined the folk scene of the era.
Folk balladeers Marais and Miranda at the Hearst Greek Theatre, undated.
A half century later (almost, if not quite, to the day), Northwestern Libraries has finished a massive grant project to digitize the festival’s archive, which resides in the Charles Deering McCormick Library of Special Collections and University Archives. Thanks to a $297,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2017, the Libraries’ Repository and Digital Collections team has been digitizing more than 32,000 items that chronicle the life of the Berekely, California festival, including photographs, posters, recordings, and business records.
Big Mama Thornton performing at the BFMF, 1970
“So many staff from many areas of Northwestern Libraries have been working on this project for years,” said Carolyn Caizzi, head of Repository and Digital Collections. “Aside from a few items awaiting copyright review, at last we can say this collection is fully online and ready for researchers and folk music aficionados to sift through from the comfort of their own homes.”
Now available at the Libraries’ Digital Collection portal, the archive includes links to 20 hours of audio that includes interviews conducted by festival founder Barry Olivier and some recordings of festival concerts. Scholars across the humanities — regardless of their proximity to Evanston — can now explore aspects of race, class, gender, and politics as expressed in the performances of the BFMF. Former Northwestern professor Michael Kramer, now at SUNY Brockport, has already used this collection heavily for the last 9 years to supplement his teaching and his research into the history and cultural heritage of the folk scene of the American West Coast. Although the Libraries’ work is complete with the grant to digitize and describe this vast collection, Kramer’s projects and research can continue remotely.
Over its lifetime, the festival hosted more than 200 musicians and artists from the vast spectrum of Americana—from folk legends like Joan Baez and Howlin’ Wolf to indigenous American dance troupes, norteño music, blues, bluegrass, and even electronic rock like the Jefferson Airplane.