In Sonora, Mexico, 1944
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Henrietta: |
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 Henrietta
Yurchenco defies categorization - and likes it that
way. Ethnomusicologist, author, radio personality, professor,
pianist - all crisply packaged as a five-foot, silver-shocked,
energetic 90-year-old with vivid recollections, quick
wit and frank tongue. A fixture in New York artistic circles
for nearly 70 years, she's a generation-spanning colleague
to such personalities as Woody Guthrie, Bob Dylan, Bela
Bartok, conductor Otto Klemperer, poet Pablo Neruda, anthropologist
Daniel Rubin de la Borbolla, Aaron Copland, Charlie Palmieri,
and Alan Lomax.
A lone female voice on radio in 1939, Yurchenco championed
the folk music movement emerging out of the Depression
and then broadcast "Adventures in Folk Music"
on WNYC radio throughout the 1960s. She debuted Woody
Guthrie, Pete Seeger, Leadbelly, and Bob Dylan, among
others. At age 25, she traveled to remote regions of Mexico
and Guatemala to record native music of 14 isolated Indian
tribes for the Library of Congress - accompanied by mule,
200-pound Presto K recorder, and an automobile engine
and gasoline to power the recorder.
A veteran educator at the City College of New York (CCNY),
she legitimized The Blues, jazz, folk and world music
with innovative courses, workshops and field trips and
remains the world's leading expert in indigenous music
of the Americas. She is "Henriettissima" in
Mexico - radio personality and national icon who embodies
the identity and pride of the native genre.
Yurchenco has been recognized in "Songcatchers,"
a National Geographic publication and companion video
written and produced by The Grateful Dead's Mickey Hart,
as one of the most important pioneers of ethnomusicology
in folk and primitive music. She was also the first American
to be awarded the XXX designation by Mexico's Museo de
las Bellas Artes, and the National Archives of the Indigenous
Peoples of Mexico's sound division will be named the "Fonoteca
Henrietta Yurchenco" in December 2006.
 A
free thinker and innovator, Yurchenco is an expert on
how music reflects culture. Across al genres - from ancient
ritualistic chants to 60s folk ballads to today's hip-hop
and rap - she sees music as a mirror of the most intimate
aspects of human life - origins, identity, religion, relationships.
No ivory-tower academic, she finds in music hidden social
attitudes, political issues and interpersonal struggles,
and draws historical parallels that suggest trends - driven,
in the final analysis by her theory of "sexual politics."
In her memoirs, Around the World in 80 Years (click
here for more info), Yurchenco shares the pioneering
adventure story that defines her life and career. Chronicling
her far-flung fieldwork, broadcasting experiences and
years of teaching, lecturing and hobnobbing, the book
tells her story geographically and is accompanied by 50
photographs, many by the great Mexican photographer, Agustin
Maya, spanning the years. It is a spicy narrative that
is part pioneer's diary, part adventure saga, and part
tabloid chronicle of New York's music and artistic community
dating back to 1940. With more fieldwork in Spain, the
Balearic islands, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Ecuador, John's
Island (South Carolina) and Ireland, and among the Sephardic
Jewish community in Morocco, as well as extensive travels
in Eastern Europe under Soviet rule, the Orient, and South
Asia, she has explored world music at its most exotic
and politically charged. She offers priceless, freeze-frames
of such historic junctures as the American South during
the Civil Rights Movement, the Balkans behind the Iron
Curtain, and the folk music community's struggles during
the McCarthy era. |
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On the air, Mexico City, 2000
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